GCC Presents: Melissa Walker (and an awesome contest!)

Melissa Walker is not only one of my Girlfriends Cyber Circuit sisters, she is one of my favorite YA authors and an amazing writing bud. I'm super excited to read her new book UNBREAK MY HEART and to share this interview with her about it so you can learn more!

About UNBREAK MY HEART 

Summer will be the season for Melissa Walker fans to fall in love all over again. UNBREAK MY HEART is told in alternating chapters that chronicle the year that broke Clementine Williams’s heart and the summer that healed it. Inspired by Melissa’s own experience sailing with her family as a teen, this is the perfect beach read for fans of Sarah Dessen, Deb Caletti, and Susane Colasanti.

Usually Clem would dread the idea of spending an entire summer sailing with her family—two parents, one annoying little sister, and no internet, all on one tiny boat; however, right now escaping her life on land sounds pretty good. Clem did something bad during her sophomore year, even though she didn’t mean to. She fell for her best friend’s boyfriend and thought that he was falling for her too. Now the school year is over, the truth is out and he’s been excused while she’s been exiled, leaving her with no friends and zero social life.

When she and her family set sail the last thing Clem is looking for is another romance, but perhaps it found her anyway. His name is James. He’s cute, funny, and best of all, doesn’t know anything about her past. He and his dad are sailing the same route as Clem and her family for the summer and he's just the distraction Clem needs. Can he break down Clem's walls and unbreak her broken heart?

About the author

MELISSA WALKER is the author of Small Town Sinners, the Violet on the Runway series and Lovestruck Summer. She has worked as ELLEgirl Features Editor and Seventeen Prom Editor. Melissa manages I Heart Daily, an e-newsletter and blogs for ReaderGirlz, an online community for teens. A Chapel Hill, NC native, Melissa now lives in Brooklyn, NY.

The Interview

Q: What inspired you to write this book?

MELISSA: A painful friend breakup I went through has been on my heart forever, and I wanted to write something that captured those emotions.

Q: The main character of my first book, I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE, is the kind of girl I wanted to be (a rock star!), the MC of my second book has a lot more in common with teenage me. Is your main character someone you wish you could be, someone a lot like you, or your total opposite? How so? 

MELISSA: Clem feels a lot of the emotions I felt when going through a situation similar to hers, in terms of losing a friend. But though my characters start out somewhat like me, they always end up being wholly their own person.

Q: If there was a soundtrack for your book what are five songs that would be on it and how do they relate the story?

MELISSA: There is one! It's here, with explanations for each song: http://iheartdaily.com/novel-playlist-unbreak-my-heart/

And if you create your own breakup playlist, you can enter to win a copy of the book plus an IPOD loaded with songs!

Q: In addition to writing books, I also write for a website for teens called Rookie, which has a regular feature called "Literally The Best Thing Ever," wherein we write about a thing that we think is super mega awesome (even if it is the type of thing that others might call a guilty pleasure, we believe there is nothing guilty about pleasure!) and explain why we think it is literally the best thing ever. It's generally a kind of unexpected thing, for example I wrote one about the soap opera, One Life To Live. I don't expect you to write a whole essay obviously, but can you briefly tell us what either you or your character (or both!) would say is "Literally The Best Thing Ever" and why? 

MELISSA: Clem would probably say that "literally the best thing ever" is Root Beer in a glass bottle. I don't go into it at length in the book, but she has serious love for the thick glass that the old-fashioned root beers were served in, the way the coolness clouds the bottle when it's ice cold and condensation drips down the sides. The first sip of a soda served that way, out in the cockpit of a sailboat on a hot summer day? Heaven.
 Q: What are you working on for us next?


MELISSA: I have a letter in DEAR TEEN ME, an anthology of YA authors writing letters to their teen selves, which is out in late October. And I've got another book in the works for 2013, but I'm keeping mum for now. (Aside from the "ack! This book is so hard to write!" rants on twitter.)

Aches & Pains and Grown-Up Nostalgia

Since I write primarily for teenagers, I probably shouldn't write a blog post about feeling old, but yanno... I have that whole honest-to-a-fault thing going and until I have an outlet for writing about grown-up type things (which I'm looking into both in terms of freelance and I still really, really hope my adult book AKA the Bartender Book AKA Getting Back To Nowhere sells) this is my space for babbling about everything, so yeah.

These thoughts are stemming from two places. The first, unfortunately, is physical pain. I spent most of last week in such terrible back/shoulder/neck and knee pain that it made it almost impossible to concentrate on writing. You see I was always this flexible kid who could do things like sit crosslegged in an office chair all day with no problem. Now, at nearly 33, this along with my ability to snap back from a hangover and my drinking tolerance in general has diminished considerably. I've developed really bad habits in terms of how I sit and write and I know it is going to be a major pain in the ass to break them. It also may involve a new chair and/or desk neither of which I can afford right now, so it's frustrating. And the knee thing comes from a combo of running, standing all night at my bartending job and sometimes slipping and twisting it... Not cool. Anyway, I don't mean for this to be a whine fest. I only bring it up because A. if any of my fellow writers have chair/lumbar support pillow or other ergonomic typing at desk for long hour suggestions, I would love to hear them and B. my week of grumpiness over my old age/aches & pains probably fed into this grown-up nostalgia moment I had that was really bittersweet and one of the few things I've really felt worth documenting on the blog for a while. (That is why my posts are sporadic. If I don't have anything that I really want to reflect on, I don't try to force myself to post because I have novels and freelance articles to write that are more urgent.)

So Friday morning I was cleaning the house. I'd just gotten Jack White's new album Blunderbuss on vinyl so I put it on. I haven't really followed Jack's post-White Stripes career. In fact my White Stripes obsession started to fade after Elephant, but I'd heard good things about Blunderbuss and was in the mood for that rock/blues mash-up that Jack does best, so I got it and let me tell you, it did not disappoint. It made me nostalgic for the White Stripes though, so I put their self-titled record on and wow, holy shit, hello flood of memories! But something was very strange about it....

I'm a very nostalgic person. It's a Cancer thing. It's also why I write for teens because I still have such a strong bond with who I was between 1992 and 1999, ie. 13 and 20. I love writing for Rookie because I get to reflect on that time period. I can channel those emotions for my books and my articles so easily. And of course, being me, the main way I've channeled them is music. 

The bands I'm super-attached to, the ones that changed and defined my life are for the most part from my teen years: Nirvana, Hole, Rancid, Social Distortion, The Cure. As I was listening to the first White Stripes album, I realized that they were the first band I fell in love with as a grown-up. I discovered them when I was 21, just moved back to Chicago to finally go to college and try to act like an adult. I'd delayed this for a few years. Even though I'd been emotionally messed-up in high school, I'd kept my shit together and graduated early, but after my eighteenth birthday things just fell apart. The three years that followed are a blur of booze, sleeping pills, other drugs, reckless behavior, slashed arms, lots of tears, lots of fights, bad relationships, spending all the grocery money on boxed wine.... You get the idea. (I'd love to write a book about this time period, like fictionalized, but it seems that despite this being almost as interesting and drama-filled a period as the high school years, no one is really buying...)

Thanks to an incredible mother who knew how to apply pressure using equal parts encouragement and mild threats, I pulled myself out of it. (Well, most of it. The bad relationship and alcohol abuse would continue a few more years.) I need music that was completely different from the angry punk of my high school years and the goth and glam of my late teens/first two years of my twenties. Via a music messageboard I discovered The White Stripes right before they exploded with their White Blood Cells album. I obsessed over them the same way I obsessed over bands as a teenager. I went to see them in concert every time they came to town, including once on my birthday and one expensive but totally worth it New Year's Eve show. I got posters and cut out pictures of them from magazines and added them to the collage the existing collage in my old room (because due to the pathetic way I'd been existing, I'd had to move back home to go back to school):

Also, since things had changed a bit since I was a teenager, ie. the internet had become this insanely awesome thing, I also found websites where I could trade bootlegs of their live shows. So I had like a million White Stripes CDs and could listen to them constantly. And that's pretty much what I did from the end of 2000 to 2004-ish. Then, I discovered the next obsessions (The Distillers, Against Me!, Civet and The Gaslight Anthem) and moved along, much like I did as a teenager. 

I'm used to certain bands and songs bringing me back to moments from my teenage years. If I hear anything off of Rage Against Machine's self-titled album, I'm instantly transported to fall of sophomore year, the overcrowded backseat of a black Saturn where I'm smoking cigarettes and stoned as fuck on top of my not-really-a-boyfriend's lap. Early Sleater-Kinney takes me to the smoky Fireside Bowl or a nearby apartment on Talman in Logan Square where I spent so much of my junior year of high school. The Queen Is Dead album by The Smiths takes me to my very first apartment in Madison. But it has never happened with grown-up memories until Friday morning when I put that first White Stripes album on and all of a sudden it was the summer of 2001 and I was at the pool with my four year-old niece and her mom.

My niece is not my niece by blood, but she is in every way that matters. Her mom and I have been friends since third grade and considered ourselves sisters since fifth. We've fought horribly just like real sibilings and have that same unconditional love that has carried us through. I have that same kind of love for her daughter, but it's like even more potent. I can't even explain it because the kind of love I have for that kid is like nothing I've ever experienced. At this point I can safely predict that she is probably the closest I'll ever have to a daughter of my own and I just have those mother-lion, I will kill for you feelings about her.

Today when I heard Jack White sing, "I felt just like a baby, til I held a baby..." I practically burst into tears because it so perfectly summed up how I felt during her early childhood. She was born a few months after I graduated early and moved to Madison, so I didn't meet her until she was 9 months old and I was home from my disastrous first year of college. I've babysat. I've had lots of little cousins around. But this was completely different. This was my sister/best friend's baby. She was only 18 when she had her and I was still 17, so it was surreal at times. We were still kids. We were so immature. We screwed up in a lot a LOT of ways. But oh how we loved her. Oh how it was love at first sight when she smiled at me. Since I was living in another state, I didn't get to really spend much time with her until I moved home at 21. The summer of my White Stripes obsession, was the summer after she turned four and listening to it, I just see her splashing in the pool, running around with those gorgeous brown waves trailing out behind her. The song "Astro" where Jack sings about "Tesla doing the Astro," when I first heard it, I misheard the lyric as "Tessa does the Astro," my niece's name. And I still sing it that way.

She just turned fifteen last month. Fifteen. So when I found myself thinking of her as a four year-old, I realized that I was reflecting on a memory that was over ten years old. Definitely, officially nostalgia. The White Stripes are my first grown-up band and my first source of grown-up nostalgia. It's surreal. It's bittersweet. I feel old, but god those are some beautiful memories.

And I really do want to distill those ups and downs into stories like I did my own teenage years in IWBYJR and BALLADS and the new book I'm working on. Once an older reader of BALLADS asked me on Facebook if I would ever write not necessarily a sequel with the same characters, but a book with characters who'd lived through teenage years like my characters in BALLADS as adults. What are those people like now, he asked me, saying that he was one of those people. I'm one of those people, too, and I really do hope I'll get the opportunity to write a book like that because I have an idea that's been percolating for a couple years now, ever since that question was asked of me. But I've got to sell the Bartender book first and hopefully the new YA I'm working on, so I can support this habit, this job of mine that keeps me forever young despite the grown-up nostalgia and aches and pains. I've got thoughts and worries and concerns about that too, but I'll save it for another time.

Hope you didn't mind me being an old lady and waxing nostalgic today. Fair warning that it may happen again in a few years when I put on an Against Me! record and reminisce about my fabulous semester in LA after a bad break-up and the early days of my relationship with my husband. Oh music, the power you have over me.

GCC Presents: Jessi Kirby

One of my lovely ladies from the Girlfriends Cyber Circuit has a new book out! Here are the details on Jessi Kirby's new YA contemporary, IN HONOR:

Honor receives her brother’s last letter from Iraq three days after learning that he died, and opens it the day his fellow Marines lay the flag over his casket. Its contents are a complete shock: concert tickets to see Kyra Kelly, her favorite pop star and Finn's celebrity crush. In his letter, he jokingly charged Honor with the task of telling Kyra Kelly that he was in love with her.

Grief-stricken and determined to grant Finn's last request, she rushes to leave immediately. But she only gets as far as the driveway before running into Rusty, Finn's best friend since third grade and his polar opposite. She hasn't seen him in ages, thanks to a falling out between the two guys, but Rusty is much the same as Honor remembers him: arrogant, stubborn. . . and ruggedly good looking. Neither one is what the other would ever look for in a road trip partner, but the two of them set off together, on a voyage that makes sense only because it doesn’t. Along the way, they find small and sometimes surprising ways to ease their shared loss and honor Finn--but when shocking truths are revealed at the end of the road, will either of them be able to cope with the consequences?

 Jessi Kirby is the author of Moonglass, published in May 2011 by Simon and Schuster. She is also a wife, mom, English teacher and former librarian, beach bum, runner, and lover of Contemporary YA, strong coffee, and dark chocolate.

 Let's meet her and hear more about her new book, shall we?


Q: Please tell us what your new book is about and what inspired you to write it.

Jessi: IN HONOR is a road trip story that begins with a pair of concert tickets and a mistaken last request, and ends with truths discovered on the road.

Q: If there was a soundtrack for your book what are five songs that would be on it and how do they relate the story?

Jessi: Theme song of the entire book: Sparks Fly by Taylor Swift
And a few more:  Long Trip Alone by Dierks Bentley, Free Fallin’ by Tom Petty, Fans by Kings of Leon, and Where Are You Going by Dave Matthews

Q: Who were some of your inspirations to become a writer or the inspirations that keep you writing? Feel free to include other authors, teachers, parents, or people in other creative fields, whoever is an inspiration to you!

Jessi: Judy Blume was my very first inspiration.  I first read her books when I was in 3rd grade, and that’s when I decided I wanted to be a writer.  Along the way I’ve found so many amazing writers, all of whom inspire me every time I read their work:  Sarah Dessen, Deb Caletti, and Sarah Ockler, to name a few!

Q: Even though music plays in so heavily into my storytelling, I rarely can actually listen to it while I'm writing. Can you? How does music fit into your writing process?

Jessi: I can’t listen to music while I’m writing either.  I need quiet.  But I do make playlists for each book, and usually I listen to those while I’m running, before I sit down to write for the day.

Q: What is next for you? What are you working on now?

Jessi: Right now I’m working on revisions for my 3rd novel, GOLDEN, which is another contemporary YA due out in 2013.  And of course I’ve got a few new story ideas percolating.

Work-In-Progress Wednesday: What I've learned about backstory from watching TV

So, as I mentioned in my latest Teen Fiction Cafe post, I watch a lot of TV. I feel guilty about it sometimes, especially when it cuts into my reading time, but I consider television to be a much better storyteller than it used to be. I barely watched anything in the mid to late 90s, I even spent most of the early 2000s scoffing that it was all reality crap. But then I realized there were some incredibly well-written programs out there. (There is some fun mindless entertainment, too, and I definitely indulge in that because everyone needs to unwind.) Suddenly I found myself more engrossed in TV than movies because I get to enjoy a longer story arc. And even though I spent years riding the whole "TV kills brain cells" train, I've actually found myself learning a ton from my shows lately. It's like a free--or I guess cost of my cable and Netflix subscriptions--education in pacing, character development, dialogue, and more.

Since I love to write nuanced characters, who the reader will either love to hate or will love but be frustrated with at times because they are REAL people living in shades of gray rather than black-and-white and making poor choices at times, those are the kinds of shows I seek out. That's why I love Mad Men and it's a large part of the reason why I've managed to watch two seasons of Sons of Anarchy in less than two weeks. Seriously, I watched half of season three on Sunday alone. It was insane. I spend a lot of time pondering the characters and how the writers make me empathize with people I would normally dislike and keep me going on the roller coaster ride with the characters I do like even when they make one bad choice after the next, but character development is something I'd like to think I'm pretty good at... I have a bunch of tools for it anyway.

On the other hand, my biggest weakness as a writer is backstory. It probably goes hand-in-hand with the character development thing. I know so much about my characters and have fleshed out their history in such a big way that I can't help bringing it into the book. Without fail, every time my critique partners get back to me on a manuscript, they ask if I can somehow trim the backstory. It is the bane of my existence. Not them saying that because they are almost always right, but the trimming. Ugh. Especially with this book because there is so much history, not just for my character but for her entire family.

I noticed a really interesting thing while I was watching Sons of Anarchy though. We were thrust into the lives of these interesting, insane characters in this motorcycle club which obviously has a lot of history. Plenty of hints were dropped about the past, many of which caused me to turn to my husband who has already seen the first four seasons of the show and ask questions. Of course, he'd always shake his head at me and tell me to be patient. (And let me just say that gentle reprimand occurs a lot in our marriage!) So I kept waiting for the flashbacks, like the ones we got in Mad Men as Don Draper's secret history was revealed. But three seasons into the show and I've yet to get a single flashback.

This frustrates me a bit because A. I'm impatient and B. I'm so character history obsessed, but for the most part it leaves me in awe. There is still backstory on Sons of Anarchy, it's a show with rich characters who have a lot of history, but it's only given to us in the moment. We learn about the past through dialogue. The past comes up when it's relevant to show, like when someone's former lover shows up. Still, these are places where I would be tempted as a writer to pause and let my character reflect via flashback, but on SOA they never do. You learn all you are going to learn from what the character's say, write (there are some voice over monologues from Jax's dead father, but we only get those when Jax is reading things his father has written), and from the expressions on their faces, body language, and physical reactions.

And I am fucking jealous.

I don't think I'd be capable of doing this. Definitely not with the book I'm currently working on and the other ideas I have also seem too drenched in character history to pull off something like what SOA does. But one day, dammit. It will be a goal.

For now, I just am going to have to rely on my CPs and a bunch of handy highlighters when I finish a manuscript so I can look at where I've gotten too backstory heavy and how I can trim and redistribute. However, when I can I will be trying to find ways to get history across in a scene/through dialogue. And for those of you who struggle with backstory and are RWA members, do check out the recent Romance Writers Report for an interesting article about how to cope with your oversharing habit.

What about you? Do you have backstory issues or tips for dealing with it? And what TV shows have taught you what kinds of writing tricks?

Work-in-Progress...err Thursday: The Joy & IMPORTANCE of Writing Conferences

I'm back from my travels, but still running quite behind on things as you can probably tell by the fact that we are having Work-in-Progress Wednesday on Thursday.

To follow up on my last post (from way back in March, yikes!) the good news is that after much schedule juggling I did manage to meet my goal and get my partial in to my agent before I left for Seattle on the 5th. I ended up writing my synopsis on the planes to and from Seattle and polishing it yesterday and today, but the major goal was met and I was rewarded not only with vacation but a stellar conference experience at the RT Booklovers Convention when I got back!

I wanted to post about that for Work-In-Progress... Day because I think that socialization with other writers and publishing industry folk is KEY to being a writer. I know it sounds weird because the majority of our work is done alone in front of a computer screen, but if you don't have those outside-of-the-office writerly connections, your writing suffers. Here are the three very important things I get from other writers (and book industry people):

1. Improved Writing Skills

I have my MFA in Creative Writing, but I don't by any means feel like my education in writing is complete. In fact, I wish I could continue to take classes on writing and the various topics that I want to research for my books. (Right now that means mythology and also how to identify a corpse. Those are today's hints about what my WIP is about.) Since going to college forever is not an option, I talk to writer friends and I go to conferences. In the past I've been to really academic conferences (AWP) and really industry-focused ones (BEA and ALA). These are great in their own ways, but I was really excited to go to RT because it has a YA track with panels that spoke specifically to my interests like "Murder, Mayhem, and Madness," which gave me some great insight into writing suspense and action, a key in my WIP, and something I know I'm not as good at as say character development. I wrote down one seemingly simple nugget of advice from that panel (though unfortunately I didn't write who said it!): each character that goes into a scene should come out changed in some way. This is a great reminder for me to use in determining if my scenes are working.

Another amazing panel I went to was "Voices Inside Me: Shifting Between Narrators," which might have been the best discussion of point-of-view that I've ever witnessed. Hearing Melissa Marr talk about how her writing goals relate to trying out new forms of point-of-view storytelling like framed stories gave me ideas of new goals and challenges to set for myself. She also mentioned that one of the reasons she writes multiple point-of-view stories is because "a story doesn't happen to just one person." I agree that multiple threads make for a fuller story hence I've played with POV in every project... except oddly the one I'm currently working on. We shall have to see about that.

I also did my own panel on boundaries in YA fiction and learned from listening to my fellow panelists. Here is a picture that Rachel Vincent took of us. (I'm terrible at taking pictures during conferences so sadly I will be linking to other people's pics for the most part.)

2. Knowledge of the Market/Industry

The panel that I jotted the most notes down from was a marketing panel called "Wasting My Time: Making Sense of the Changing Landscape." There were authors who had tried many different promotion techniques from group tours to Skype visits as well as a "gatekeeper," Deborah Schneider, who does programming for the King County library system. (That would include Seattle, my fave place on earth and ummm their library system is STELLAR.) I learned from Deborah how important it is to have a media page on your website including a photo of the correct, print-ready quality (300 dpi). I also got a TON of ideas of how to better promote future books from the authors who'd tried them, so I'm extra excited to finish the WIP and sell it.

Talking about The Market/The Industry is a scary thing. It can be overwhelming for many writers, myself included. I've never written for it, but I've learned the importance of paying attention to it. Publicity-wise different things work for different people and I've founded that chatting at conferences is an excellent way to learn new tricks. Also though I find speed-dating with librarians, booksellers, and readers to chat up my books completely TERRIFYING, it is a great way for me to spread the word. (Plus those folks love books like me, they aren't really scary.) Part of publishing is promoting your book. Like it or not, that's the way things are, so taking those opportunities to do promo, or if you aren't published yet, to practice by talking to other writers or pitching to agents and editors is essential. Again, a very important part of going to a conference. (But just a part. The reason I talked about skill improvement first is because I think that fun as it may be, you aren't getting the most valuable experience if you are just sitting at the bar "networking.")

3. Sanity

Only fellow writers really truly understand the fact that basically YOU HEAR VOICES AND WRITE THEM DOWN AND THAT IS YOUR JOB. My other friends and husband listen patiently to me, but I know they probably think I'm neurotic. (And I am a little bit. Kind of goes with the territory.) In addition to having practical advice to offer me about developing my plot, my editing skills, and promoting my books, my author friends provide emotional support that I would be lost without. They get my worries, my fear of failure, my struggles with balancing the various activities of being a writer with having an actual life. I have people like Mari Mancusi, who I set goals with daily on Twitter and Jeri Smith-Ready who I Skype with regularly to talk writing neuroses among other things, but at RT I got to see them in person. I had dinner with Jeri and drinks with Mari (and went to a pseudo-wedding with champagne, cake, and hunky Fabio-type cover models--the sort of bizarre, totally amusing thing you do not see at the academic conferences I'm used to. Seriously they could learn a thing or two about a good time from the romance world.) We talked shop, but also got to relax and have a good time. I finally met Zoraida Cordova (whose book, The Vicious Deep, is out in less than two weeks and sounds AMAZING), an agency sister who I've only gotten to chat with online. Oh and ditto with Stephanie Perkins (who Rachel Vincent took this great picture of me with, two Stephs with brightly colored hair who write YA contemp, crazy, huh!) I had dinner with her and Beth Revis (who I've had the joy of hanging out with at a retreat before and it was lovely to see her again) one night and it was non-stop laughs and smiles--except when Steph and Beth nearly came to blows over a difference in opinion about Harry Potter, haha, but it was quickly resolved when we started talking about Firefly. That is the kind of nerdiness I love and crave. Also we got into plot talk and I was describing a particularly gruesome part of my WIP when the waitress came up. Suddenly realizing we were in public, I blurted, "I'm talking about a book! We're writers!" Because like I said, around each other, we can drop our guard, talk about our characters like they are real (because in our heads, they are) and be the person we are when we are tucked away at our desks all alone with unwashed hair.... I'm not sure how good it is to bring that into the world, but it is good for us, so the world is just going to have to deal.

Basically my favorite part of RT was that from when I walked in the door and found Kim Derting (and here's a cute pic of us that Amy Plum took) to my last dinner with Jeri and her fabulous Team Kilt blogger/book lover crew, I was surrounded by friends. I got to catch up with people I rarely see in person. I received advice, encouragement and loads of big hugs. It reminded me of how wonderful the YA community is, how filled to the brim with sweet, talented people, and how lucky I am to be a part of it.

And the YA community can throw a great party too. Teen Day on Saturday was an incredible day-long affair (and thank you, Melissa Marr, for all your hard work that went into it!) where YA writers got their own special place in the giant book fair, we had panels, speed-reading, and speed-dating with teen readers (meeting readers is always a huge highlight for me) and we had a big bash where we got to talk to the readers and mingle with our idols. I nearly wept when I met Francine Pascal, creator of the Sweet Valley High/Sweet Valley Twins series that I was addicted to as a kid. But I pulled it together. managed to thank her for inspiring me to write and got this picture of us taken:

Again, aside from that, I was remiss at taking good Teen Day photos, but Vania Stoyanova who is a way better photographer than I could ever be captured it really well and you can see it on her tumblr.

Between mad deadline dashes, crazy juggling of all the writing jobs and writing-related tasks, worries, anxieties, and writer's block or slumps, all of which I've experience lately, this writing thang can be draining. But I refilled the well at RT. I reminded myself of why I write, who is out there doing it with me and cheering me on, and got a slew of ideas for new ways to challenge myself. So I'm revved and ready to get back to work.

Thank you RT and everyone I saw there. I will definitely being seeing you next year in Kansas City.

What about you? How do you connect with other writers to refill the well? What conferences or conventions have you gone to and loved?

Work-in-Progress Wednesday: Goals and Rewards

When I was really struggling with The Bartender Book, I went to a wine-tasting at a (totally amazing) local wine shop called House Red. I was writing it up for my freelance job for the local paper, but I tried one wine that I just Had. To. Have.

However it was 45$ and my usual wine budget falls in the 5 to 10$ range at Trader Joe's. It was available for pre-order (because it was coming all the way specially from Italy), so I decided to get it. I told myself that if I'd finished the book when it came I could drink it.

As you can see from the picture, it is still unopened. I finished the book, but I ended up doing so about a month before the wine arrived. I used another little incentive: a trip to New Orleans with my husband. I wanted to finish before we left so I didn't have the book on my mind. With a bunch of all-nighters and my co-workers at the bar graciously agreeing to take a couple of my shifts, I met my goal. I had a lovely trip and I was actually in revisions when the wine arrived.

I could have used the wine as a reward when I finished those, but since I like revisions, I didn't feel I needed it. I decided that since wine only improves with age, that it would keep until I sell a new book.

Opening that bottle of wine is the big reward for a goal that is sort of out of my control. I can't determine when or if the Bartender Book will sell. All I can do is keep writing so that if it doesn't someday I can still drink that damn wine.

Enter the Modern Myth YA. Because of my slump, I've been hesitant to set big goals. As I've mentioned before, daily word count goals tend to cause more trouble than good for me (because I start to value quantity over quality, I veer off path, I stress unnecessarily), so my general goal is just to do a couple of 90 minute write sessions a day and follow my natural rhythm.

Then my friend Lindsay came back for another visit (that's the reason for no WIP Weds on March 14) and a week off got me itching to revise. I also had a conversation with my lovely agent and she said she would really like to see what I was working on if I had a solid chunk and it wouldn't interrupt my flow and maybe just maybe we could even shop on partial. After running a compile in Scrivener, I found to my delight that I'd produced a little over 100 pages already. They were rough though, but why not polish them to get back into the manuscript, please lovely agent A, and maybe just maybe (big big maybe) get a step closer to drinking that wine. Plus I have a trip to Seattle coming up on the 5th. Trips are great goals for me and I would have a good amount of time to get it polished before then.

Except last week my elderly cat Sidney got really sick (that's the reason for no WIP Weds on March 21), so my whole week was filled with distraction and anxiety. I still have four chapters to polish (and mind you it took almost a week to polish one of my chapters, but it averages more like a day or two), one which needs a bunch of scenes still written (that could definitely take a week!), and I need to turn my garbled outline into a working synopsis. All in *GULP* three-and-a-half working days. (I leave on the 5th, but have some other commitments on other days.)

I'm not really sure it can be done, but I'm trying not to beat myself up about it (and since lovely agent A is so very lovely it makes it easier) and I'm also so into and excited about it that I'm actually willing to work on it on the plane and during my downtime on vacation. We shall see what happens.

But due too my crazy goals there will be no WIP Weds next week (unless I check in to declare victory) or the following week (Seattle) or the week after that (RT conference, come and see my events if you are there). But I'll be back in mid-April, with more updates, snippets and maybe some real solid goals about finishing the last 2/3rds of this book if I'm brave enough.

However, you should all check out my lovely CP, Kaz Mahoney's blog because she is setting goals for a sort of spring NaNoWriMo and if you are trying to set some goals too, you should join her. I will be once I get back.

What kinds of goals do you set and what ways do you reward yourself both big and small?

Work-in-Progress Wednesday: Writing like an early 90s rock song

I have friends that can rough draft a novel in a a couple of weeks. Friends whose daily word goal is 3K. Lots and lots of friends who participate in NaNoWriMo every year and many of them "win" by getting to the 50K word mark/finishing a novel in a month.

I kind of hate you guys.

Not really of course. I'm just jealous. I want to do #1K1hr writing sprints on Twitter. I want to "win" NaNo. But I've tried many, many times and I can't. Maybe one day there will be a novel that just pours out of me and I can feel comfortable writing the first draft fast and dirty, but so far it hasn't happened. Especially not with my current WIP.

I know that the key to fast-drafting is embracing the Shitty First Draft. And I do. But I find it really fucking painful. Since the beginning of this year (and November of last year when I took my first real crack at this version of this book), I've been hating every word I write. Scenes, especially those with a lot of dialogue are the worst. There's too much he says and I say and I can't seem to remember how to finesse it. There aren't enough gestures and facial expressions and emotional reactions, but at the same time there are too many and they just sound awkward. Description and back story comes more easily, but as usual there is way, way, WAY too much of it. (I will definitely have to do a whole blog on back story at some point.) My sentences are clunky and long-winded. I can never find the right word or metaphor to describe something, so I just ramble on and on until I do--or more often than not until I mentally scream at myself "Shitty First Draft! Just leave it and move on."

But I can't do this fast. I'll spend an entire day anguishing over a paragraph or a page (or what I think is a page in Scrivener... I can't really tell, which is good in some ways, bad in others). A chapter generally takes at least a week. This frustrates me terribly, but when I try to write fast--and I did in November--I would feel awesome about for like a week because those big word counts are like instant gratification, but then I'd realize that I wasn't seeing my scenes at all or my characters and I didn't know them or their voices or their feelings. Then I'd reach a point where I didn't know what was supposed to happen next and since I didn't have a good grasp on my characters or the tone of the story, I couldn't push forward. Of course, I also have a lingering fear of writing too fast because I did so with The Bartender Book and it resulted in me veering way, way, way off course, getting stuck for a few months, and having to rip out an entire story line.

So yes, I'm definitely jealous of people who can dive into a new idea and plow right through a draft without getting majorly stuck, losing their way, or feeling completely disconnected from the story. Maybe what they are basically doing is a big, rough outline of the plot points knowing they will fill in the details and probably a bunch of missing scenes later. I've always assumed this was the case, especially with those NaNoWriMo novels since the 50K goal is short even for a YA and only half to two-thirds the length of an average adult book. And since I always write way too long at first, that's why it's counter-intuitive to me. Or maybe it's because my stories are more character-driven than plot-driven, so I can't really write a skeleton draft that hits the major plot points without spending the time to develop my characters. I don't know. Those of you who fast-draft PLEASE TELL ME YOUR SECRETS! Because maybe one day....

But for now I'm a slow writer and I have to make peace with that. Actually I don't know if I'm that slow (that might be overachiever Stephanie measuring herself unfairly against others) and I'm certainly better than I used to be seeing as my first book took over three years to write. But I definitely have my own distinct writing rhythm and I think it's kind of like this:

Yep, that's right. I can relate anything to a Nirvana song. I'm not talking about the lyrics of this song, but the rhythm. That classic early 90s structure of slow-fast-slow-fast/verse-chorus-verse-chorus, probably a bridge in there somewhere. This is how I seem to write. I start out slow, may spend an entire day or two anguishing over the opening paragraph or a transition between chapters or scenes (I hate those!). Then I get to the meat of the scene and I begin to speed through it. I allow myself to be rough and messy because I'm just excited to power through it. Then I slow down, sometimes looping back to fix things or sometimes getting stuck in another anguishing-over-every-word-even-though-they-are-still-rough phases.

This is how I work at the beginning of a book especially. I think it comes from the pattern I developed in college. At Columbia College Chicago, we had workshops where we wrote every time we were in class. We played these word games that got our seeing going (that slow build of the first verse), then we were coached to get down as much as we could on the page in a 10 to 20 minute period (the chorus), then we were assigned to push the piece as far as we could for the next class, which resulted in more verse-chorus-verse at home for me.

We also polished the pieces we worked on over the semester, so it's sort of ingrained in me to double back at a certain point and revise. I tend to do this at the beginning of a book especially. The first fifty pages are essential for me to get to know the characters and set the tone of the book. I spent a couple of semesters perfecting the first few chapters of I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE. Though of course at the time, I viewed that as a novel-in-stories, which is why many of the chapters in that book, especially at the beginning, could stand alone. Until The Bartender Book, this worked out well for me because I often edited the beginnings of my books so well that I wouldn't need to do much with them later. Even though I made a lot of changes to the beginning of The Bartender Book in revisions, I still can't shake that need to spend a lot of time with the opening chapters of my book. At that point my writing is probably more like an endlessly looping electronic song... which I don't have the best example of, but I guess I'll go with a Cure remix:

I do a lot of looping back and careful editing at the beginning of a book. I also tend to do it when I'm stuck. When I wrote I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE I was able to write non-linearly. It was encouraged in my workshops ("Go to the moment that's taking your attention," we were always coached) and it came naturally with the story because that book isn't exactly linear. But I haven't really been able to do that since then. I'm not sure why. What I do instead sometimes is charge really fast through a scene that I'm not seeing the particulars of (I fast-draft/have a chorus moment) to get to the next scene or chapter that I have a clearer idea about. I did that with chapter three of my WIP, though I must admit it's nagging at me. But I just keep telling myself that once I hit a sticky spot, I can go back, fix it and polish the other rough patches.

Truth be told part of me wishes that I could always write like this:



Slowly, carefully, anguishing over each word until it's right. But I'm way too impatient and critical of myself for taking too long, so I get almost just as frustrated with that as I do when writing too fast. Hence the happy medium of the early 90s rock song:



Sometimes the rhythm does not come naturally. I spend way too long writing slow and verse-like and I have to give myself that kick in the ass to speed up and get to the chorus. My favorite part of the writing (well, of first draft writing, I should say because my actual favorite part is revising) is when the early 90s rock song gives way to the punk song:

Then I'm writing hard, fast, and messy and I don't care because I'm so into the scene. It's not even intentional, it's natural.

I finally hit that stride last week, though I did back slide a bit on Monday and I'm a little uncertain about what will happen next, so I may end up pulling one of these today:

This pattern doesn't necessarily allow me to write as fast as I would like, but it's the way I work at least for now and I'm trying to come to terms with it, reminding myself that even though it goes slower than I would like, it has resulted in books in the past. The beautiful thing about writing is that there is no right or wrong way to do it. So what is your pattern like? What do you love about it, hate about it, and what tips would you share.

And here's a little chunk from when I was writing punk song hard-and-fast last week:

“Jesus, Dee, were you so drunk that you don’t even remember?”

I was so drunk that I went into the bathroom and puked. So drunk that I still couldn’t see straight when I stopped throwing up. I looked in the mirror and thought my eyes were all pupil. Black holes. Or like my head was just a skull.

Then He found me on my way out of the bathroom. His hand was warm against the small of my back through the thin sweater.

“Hey, Dancing Girl,” he said. “You’re Seph’s sister, right?”

And I nodded.

“You need another drink?”

Water was what I really needed, but I nodded again anyway.

And then… Black. Like I’d fallen into my own eyes in the mirror. Like Alice down the rabbit hole.

I blink trying to remember anything about the kitchen besides lots of spilled liquor on the sleek marble counter tops.