Jonene's Awesome News

Leisha here.

I missed my week to post due to the perfect storm of sickness and children. Ugh. BUT I'm jumping in now to post for Jonene. Actually, I locked her in a closet and hijacked her post because she won't brag about herself. Luckily, I'm good at bragging about my friends. It's a skill.

Jonene locked in a closet

Jonene has been sitting on some fabulous news for a while now, and it's time to shout it out. Jonene signed with an agent! I'm going to write that again because it's just that awesome. Jonene signed with an agent! (See, awesomesauce!) She will be working with Judith Engracia of Liza Dawson Associates. 

Judith Engracia not locked in a closet

I met Judith at LTUE in Utah this spring. She is brilliant, kind, and a perfect match for Jonene, who is also brilliant and kind. Jonene is a fabulous writer, and her book is absolutely delightful. She and Judith will make a great team. I'm so happy for both of them. Congratulations Jonene! I can't wait for your book launch. I'll be the first in line.  

Don't Get Off the Boat

Books are about feelings. We introduce the readers to certain characters and situations to make them feel a certain way. Different kinds of books give different feelings, which is good, because everyone has a slightly different taste in feelings. This is why different people like different genres.

One of my very favorite feelings to get from books is a boat feeling. I love those books where the plot happens in a confined space far, far away from civilization. I love the delicate balance of authority the captain has. I love the potential for mutiny, whether we're on the captain's side or whether he's the villain. I love the feeling that the entire world that matters is as small as a boat. So, when I randomly pulled a book off of the public library shelf--on the grounds that it had a dragon on the cover--and turned to the first page, I was delighted to find that it was a boat book. I checked it out and hurriedly finished the book I was currently reading so I could start this one. But after about twenty pages, I was much less interested. Where the book started as a boat book, it became quite apparent that it was not going to continue as such. As soon as the main character gets to land, he's going to start a new life training a newly hatched dragon.

I am now deeply disappointed. Not that there's anything wrong with dragon-training stories. Dragon-training stories have fantastic feelings. But if I'd known I was picking up a dragon-training story, I would have thought about it a little differently. And now I'm not sure whether or not I can trust this author, since she switched the story type on me like that. It's good, so I'll still read it. I'm just not so excited about it.

I was thinking about my sudden lack of interest in the book, and I realized that this has happened before. A book starts out as a boat book and a little while in, the characters get off the boat and start having the plot on land. And I always either stop reading or end up disappointed in some way.

When you start a story, you're setting a tone. The first page should give you the same kind of feelings that the book gives you overall. The first scene of a story should have something to do with the main theme. The first hundred pages should be consistent with the second hundred pages. We don't put corn flakes in cans and label them green beans. When you package your story as something it's not, your audience can't find you. If I had happened to hate boat books, but love dragon-training books, I might have put this one down after the first page.

If you start with an intense magical battle, don't give me a story about elementary school kids. If you spend half a book in an entirely realistic world, don't have the martians land or the neighbors turn out to be vampires. And if you're going start in the middle of the ocean with nothing between you and the waves but a few planks of wood, by all means, don't get off the boat.

Write Space

I'm reading, "Imagine: How Creativity Works," by Jonah Lehrer. One of the key ingredients in creativity, according to him, is being part of a creative community. Pixar movies are awesome not just because of the talent at their studio, but because of the way they encourage their employees to work together. On the ground floor they have a huge open lobby with a breakfast cereal bar, an espresso bar, and I think I remember a video game room and a ping-pong table (my brother works there, I've had a tour). In spite of all these cushy amenities, the Pixar team works very, very hard and they've produced some of the best animated pictures of the last two decades. According to this book I'm reading, that's because people get their best ideas, and the impetus to make those ideas into reality, when hanging out with other creative people.

So now I'm envisioning my perfect writing space. It is no longer an isolated nook cut off from the rest of the world. No, it's a teeming hive of writing activity. I'd find dozens of dedicated writers from all sorts of genres to come and join me. We would each have a comfy little office with a nice computer and a window. The central lobby becomes our hang-out area with couches, tables, chairs, a big-screen TV, and lots of snacks and drinks. The walls are covered with art, especially book cover art, and white-boards. Plenty of white-boards. Everyone is encouraged to come out of their cubicle whenever they need a break and bounce ideas off anyone else who happens to be there.We'd hold workshops and classes right there in our own space, invite other writers we admire to come hang out with us, and go on field trips to crazy places just to get the creativity flowing.

We would write some of the most awesome books in the world.

Who's with me?

I *Love* Outlining

In my early days of writing, stories were unintentional things. I would hear characters chatting in my head until something they said intrigued me, and then I would build a scene around it. Why did they say that? Where are they? How did they get there? Who is that anyway? Slowly, the scenes that cloaked these bits of internal dialog would string themselves together into a sort of sequence. The missing scenes would begin to fill themselves in. At last I would have something that vaguely resembled... well, a... um...

Okay, this turned out, for me, NOT to be a great way to construct the kind of intricate, tight-meshed, all-the-gears-ticking-perfectly plot I like best.

When I complained about this problem, my husband suggested that rather than trying to use the random things my brain burbles up and make them fit into a story, I should make the story first. When my internal characters play out random scenes, then I could decide whether or not it fits and where it should go. The story was a blueprint, a plan, a scaffold, an armature. The scenes were lumps of clay that could be molded onto that armature, creating not some kind of free-form blob, but something intentional.

But that was called outlining. Ugh. It sounded like too much work and not much fun. Outline a story? When I could be drafting scenes?

I decided to try it anyways.

First I picked a story template. The one I like to use is from a lecture given by Dan Wells, the Seven Point Story Structure, which I've already blogged about here. Another popular one is Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet from the "Save the Cat" website. Once I had chosen my template, I decided on two main plots and three subplots. Then I made a five-by-seven table in my word processor and started filling in the empty squares with the major points in each of the plots. Usually I do this after I write the first draft, but it was surprisingly fun to do it BEFORE.

Once I had all the plot points in place, I began to create scenes. I tried to make sure that each scene contained a major point in at least one of the plot lines. More than one was better. I didn't do this all in one sitting, but instead spent a couple of weeks on it. As I worked, I began to see better ways to order the scenes. There were even a few scenes that I could combine with others, or completely cut out! And the beautiful thing was, there was no prose to sacrifice. It was completely painless to say, "Eh, don't need that. Out it goes."

So now I have all my scenes planned out, and all I have left to do, as my daughter says, is to "illustrate the scenes with words." Will the story be stronger this time? The burning need to know the answer to that question should keep me typing to the last. I'll let you know how it goes.

The Good Kind of Pain

No pain no gain, right?



Riiiight. When I'm running and my knee hurts, it's gain, right? Riiiight.

Okay, so not all pain is gain. But pain relating to writing can definitely be gain. I was with my critique group a week ago where I had submitted a chapter. It was good, because I had gone a long spell without submitting anything. [insert plug about how critique groups are awesome because they can give you a writing goal you need to meet.]

Anyway, the critique of my chapter started something like this:

"It just didn't flow"
"Yeah, it was boring"
"It wasn't exciting at all"

My first thought was: aaaaauuuuuuughhhhhh.... what a world!
And my second: I'm never submitting again!

Once my critique group got past deflating my head a bit, they pin pointed issues in the chapter. While I think they may have started harshly, the feedback they gave was useful.

So I took the pain of that moment and rewrote it.

This week they had much better things to say!

Sometimes we need to hear the painful things so our writing can grow and our writing can get polished.

So....

I Don't Believe in the Publishing Fairy Anymore

Once upon a time, about nine years ago, I finished writing a book. I wrote those glorious words, THE END. It was THE END of years of dreaming, hoping, wishing, and working. It was THE BEGINNING of my education in the other half of what goes into making one of those rectangular, paper things with shiny covers that you find on the shelf at the library. Now that I'd written a book, of course the next step was to get it published. But that was going to be easy, right?

I had this idea in my head that if I was a good little girl and fed the mice and did my chores, the Publishing Fairy would descend with gossamer wings and a sparkly wand and grant me a publishing contract. All I had to do was sit quietly my the corner by the sooty fireplace and send out a few query letters now and then.

Eh, it ain't happening.

I'm a proud admirer of the members of our crew here at the Scribblers Cove who didn't sit around waiting for the Publishing Fairy, but instead went and got their own ride to the ball. Sue and Emily have both found success in the self-publishing arena. I know they both work hard at self-promotion, but that's not much different from authors who go the traditional publishing route. At our last SCBWI-Hawaii conference I asked a friend who recently published with a traditional publisher how her second book was coming along. She rolled her eyes and said, "I had no idea how much less time you have for writing after you're published." Then she went on to talk about book signings, school visits, and all the things she does on the internet to promote her book.

No matter which way you do it, publishing isn't a happy ending. It's another beginning.

I'm still all starry-eyed about going to the ball, but I'm taking a different approach now. I don't want to have to run off at midnight because I'm afraid my gown's going to turn back to rags. No, I want to be there because that's where I belong. Not long after I finished my first manuscript, a friend of mine gave me a great book on writing style that was even better than a magic ball gown. My writing improved almost immediately, and I went on to read and study several more books on the craft. About five years ago I started going to writing workshops and conferences, which not only taught me more about how to create great books, but built a network of helpful, supportive friends who were doing exactly what I was doing. Since that first time I wrote THE END, I've written four more books and now I'm about to start a fifth. Most of all I'm trying to develop habits that will carry me not just to publishing, but sustain me throughout a full writing career.

See you at the ball.

Time Off for this Crazy wRiTeR

See them lovely waves a'lappin' round them sandy shores, Cap'n? Well, that be where I be. Enjoyin' life from a hard day's sweat in the sun. More like a hard day's work from writing.

Though writing is my first love after God and family, I've decided to take a 9 month break from it because of my pregnancy! My brain cells seem to vanish and my creative juices all head toward my baby. Hehe. But if you look at the calender, time's nearing for Junior to be born (March 10th is his expected birthday). So fast, isn't it? Wait a cotton pickin' second, me thinketh that a hard day's sweat in the sun is where I've been this entire time, carrying a wee bairn ain't no picnic. Oh well.

I've been doing lots of sleeping and decluttering of the nest as well as making sure that my other chikadees don't starve--that's a double fulltime job with baby growing. Whew!

So how badly has my writing suffered? Well ...

Interesting enough, I've had many inspiring stories to write, but I've jotted them as mere summaries in my notebook for later times. During my first trimester, I co-authed a trilogy with my sweetie 16 year-old. Boy, she sure is a spitfire of a partner, one that makes dreams come true as well as stories! She rocks the ship with such fierce devotion as well as creativity. I had entered Eros into Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Contest, but didn't make it to the first round, but at least I polished it and uploaded the cover that took me over 3 hours to paint. Gorgeous, isn't it?

I be hopin' to join the crew to par with more published books at the wheel, but til then, mateys, baby comes first.

Cheers!