A Bummer of a Writing Day Turns Awesome

Lately I've been struggling with a revision. It's a story that, for whatever reason, I refuse to quit on, and so every other year for over a decade I've been rewriting it.

I've added characters. I've killed characters. I've changed settings and reworked plotlines. I've played around with the voice, the language, the target audience. This used to be a middle grade novel and now it's become young adult. I even changed the title three times. Sad fact: I love the title now, but I'm probably going to have to let it go because I noticed that there's a new YA novel out with the same title.

Darn it.

(just a few of the printed off versions)

I have a nice little writing process that I've figured out over the years, tricks I've learned and methods that seem to work. Every book I've written has been a little different in how it comes together. Thin Space, for all of the work involved (at least five rewrites over two years) was a relatively easy book to write.

This one, obviously, has not been easy. But I press on with it. At the core is a story and main characters and a world that I love, and those aspects have never changed. One of these days, one of these rewrites, I know it's going to click...

That day was not yesterday.

I stared at the computer screen most of the morning and into the afternoon, writing a sentence and then deleting it. There is a part of me that can deal with this kind of cruddy writing day, that thinks: "oh well. I'll figure it out, eventually." There is another part that screams in frustration, that doubts that I will ever get this book "right" (whatever that is), that doubts that I even CAN write anymore, hisses in my ears, "Thin Space was a fluke and who am I kidding? that book isn't even good, quit now blah blah blah."

That part was winning.

And then I had to shut down, at the height of this self-doubting/depressing internal rant, to go give a talk at my local high school. The librarians there and at the public library oversee a joint teen book club every month and they invited me to visit. I gave the school librarian, Laura Piazza, who has been a debut writer's dream by the way, a handful of advanced review copies of Thin Space last fall and she's been passing them around to students and teachers.

Talking to this group made me feel better immediately and reminded me what is at the other end of the sometimes excruciating process of writing a book: if you do keep plugging away, eventually, that finished story will one day make it into the hands of readers.

(I love this picture! First, because these ladies were all so cool and  enthusiastic about Thin Space, and second, because it looks like one of the book clubbers is Hermione Granger...) 

Attacking the Stack Whilst Creating another Stack

Back in January I set a goal for myself to read the 49 books that had collected in teetery tottery piles around my house. I vowed that I'd read 4 books per month, which left room for me to read new books that might come onto my radar, and I gave myself an escape clause: I'd put down a book if it didn't grab me right away.

Five months into my Attack the Stack Reading Challenge, I figure it's time to share my progress.

The good news: I am on track.

I've read an average of 4 books per month and I only quit on one (which, truth be told, I feel guilty about it) Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe. This is one of those classics that I somehow skipped along the way and always wondered about. I may still be wondering about it for the rest of my life. It's a fascinating depiction of a certain time and place in America, and I am sure that it was a ground-breaking piece of literature when it was first published. But I am struggling with the language--it's over-written, to the point of absurdity. Also--and I know it's unfair to judge an old book by today's standards--but it is racist in a way that makes me anxious and sick. I want to believe that writers are observant and sensitive to their surroundings and to issues of obvious inequality.

Um. I guess not! But the main reason I ended up putting this book down was that I simply could not read more than ten pages at a time without falling asleep. I'm so stubborn when it comes to reading books I start, that I have a feeling I will pick this one up again. If nothing else, I will use it when I am having trouble falling asleep.

But back to my progress on tackling the stack...
The bad news:
I have created another stack!

(New stack)

Here's a pic of the original stack in case you were wondering:

(Old stack)

I am glad that I committed to my challenge. I've loved many of the books and wondered WHY WHY WHY they had been sitting so long in my stack in the first place.

Some faves so far:

What I Was by Meg Rosoff.  No idea why I waited so long to read this one because I've LOVED everything Meg Rosoff has written. This book was a slow-building, absorbing story with a freak twist at the end that I did NOT see coming. Like all of Rosoff's books, it doesn't fit neatly into any category. Coming of age? Historical fiction? Magical realism? Analysis of gender roles in society?  Whatever. Everything the woman writes is brilliant and transcends all genres.

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo. I went to her book-signing back in the fall and thought she was cool. I have no excuse at all for waiting so long to read her book. It's a fantasy, but instead of being set in the stereotypical Lord of the Rings/Middle Ages type world, it's set in what feels like turn of the last century Tsarist Russia. Great story.

Lest anyone thinks that I don't read books outside the YA genre--

My favorite adult book so far (when I say adult book it always sounds like I am talking about porn. But I am not. Ha ha) is The Fiction Class by Susan Breen. The main character is a writer who teaches a workshop once a week and after the class goes to visit her crochety dying mother in a nursing home. There's so much in here about relationships and aging and choices we make, but also some very interesting stuff about writing and writers too.

High Tide in Tucson by Barbara Kingsolver has been sitting on my bedside table for years. Kingsolver is one of my favorite writers but I had the impression that this collection of essays was going to be dense, something I'd have to work my way through. I was wrong. I read it like it was a novel, in two days. It's thought-provoking but has some laugh out loud moments too. This book reminded me that a truly good writer is NEVER hard to read.

Last but not least, a book I finished a few weeks ago and am still thinking about. Many Stones by Carolyn Coman, is an oldie by YA standards, published in 2000, and I am stunned that I never read it until now (It was a finalist for the National Book Award) I can't think of a more perfectly put together book. Short and powerful--simple and complex at the same time. The main character Berry is still reeling from her older sister Laura's death in South Africa. Laura was volunteering at a school and was murdered, right around the time that the Apartheid system was falling apart.

Berry's father, a take charge/no nonsense kind of guy, decides that the proper way to deal with their grief over Laura is to go to South Africa and donate money to the school where she worked. Berry has no desire to go on this trip. She doesn't get along with her father and still holds a lot of anger toward him for divorcing her mom. The book is the two taking their trip and painfully and awkwardly trying to relate to each other. The politics and history of Apartheid hover behind the story, a back drop to Berry and her father's broken relationship.

The book asks: How do we go on living after tragedy? How do we forgive the people who have hurt us? There's no real answer, of course, but like every great novel, the reader finds a bit of hope at the end.

How to Publish a Book 101

When I was fifteen, a gazillion years ago, I wrote my first book. I gave it what I thought was a poignantly symbolic title: Another Leaf Just Fell, which was just perfect for the subject matter, a tearjerky--heavy on the symbolism--YA romance about a girl who falls in love with a handsome popular boy who, unbeknownst to her, is dying of cancer. (Cue soap-opera-y music.) I hand wrote the first draft of this manuscript and then revised it several times before painstakingly tapping out the whole thing on my typewriter.

handwritten (above) and typed version. CANNOT believe I saved these!

Finished at last, I was ready to pursue publication, but I had no clue how exactly to pursue said publication. In a great moment of serendipity I stumbled upon an ad in the back of my Seventeen magazine for a publishing company called Carlton Press. Carlton, according to the ad, promised great success for its authors. I wrote my first query letter and crossed my fingers.

Several weeks later I got a response from B. Leiter, Associate Editor. For only three thousand dollars Carlton would happily publish my book. Mr?/Ms? B. Leiter added kindly (and I'd say somewhat snarkily) that if the cost was too much, perhaps I "should try some of the giant firms who do not require any subsidy from their authors." I had never heard the term vanity press at this point, but even my naive little fifteen year old self had an inkling that the Carlton route was probably not the route I wanted to trek down.

Besides, I did not have anything approaching 3000 dollars.

I put the manuscript away.

It would be nearly fifteen years before I wrote another novel, and fifteen years after that before I snagged my first publishing deal from one of those giant firms that don't require a subsidy from their authors. It was a loooong road to publication and there were a ton of things I had to learn along the way to navigate that road.

It probably didn't help that the publishing business kept changing even while I was trying to figure it out. I remember going to a writing conference in the mid 1990's where the keynote speaker, an editor from Simon & Schuster, told the eager children's writers that we did not need to have an agent and he would gladly accept full, unsolicited manuscripts from us. Too bad I didn't have a decent one to send him at the time.

A few years later Harry Potter transformed the children's book industry. Suddenly there was big potential money to made on kids books and everyone and their mother thought it would be easy to write them. Twilight hit next and wannabe writers jumped on the YA vampire gravy train. The publishing houses that used to take unsolicited manuscripts from unknowns were buried under their wizard-y, vampire-y slush piles.

Agents, who rarely used to handle children's fiction authors, took notice (money to be made!) and now, for the most part, they are the gatekeepers who wade through the slush piles. That editor at Simon & Schuster, by the way, is a senior editor these days and won't look at anything but agented queries. The other big houses are the same. If you're a children's writer and you want to take the traditional path, you probably need to find yourself an agent. (Good luck!)

And don't get me started on e-books and Amazon and publishing house mergers and bookstores closing. The times they are a-changin' in the book publishing industry. Which could (and does) freak anyone associated with the business out. Are books going the way of the dodo? Or is this just a (painful) bump in the road as stories leave the paper format behind and the industry scrambles like Music and Newspapers to figure out how to keep making money as the mode of transmission changes?

Who knows?

I'm choosing not to freak out. Maybe I am like one of those resistant, optimistic horse and buggy owners who will insist to my dying day that automobiles will never catch on--but I think stories and the people who tell them will stick around. How these stories will be published, and what "published" even means in this new age--that, I have no idea.

At the moment most of the writers I know are still firmly and/or shakily on the traditional publication path, but I've met a few people who are striking out and trying self-publishing and having great success. An entire industry is springing up to help these writers--editors, book designers, publicists, etc.

There's a little tension between the two groups, which sort of reminds me of the tension I used to feel when I was a working mom, and later, when I was on the other side as a stay-at-home mom. I never understood that animosity. I mean, we were all moms trying to do our best raising our kids. What was the point in blaming, or being envious, or griping about which group had it harder?

And when it comes to writing and publishing books, the bottom line, I think, is that we all want to tell good stories and get them out there, somehow, into readers' hands (or onto readers' electronic devices).

So that's the longest intro to a blog series ever, but what I'm going to do over the next few weeks is interview writers about their various paths to publication--ask them, specifically, the burning question that my naive fifteen year old self would've wanted to know:

How do you get published?  

Tune in, in June, for the answers...

The Big Break-up that Changed the Course of My Life

Over on YA Outside the Lines, we're blogging about Moments of Growth--in our characters and in ourselves. Here's a pivotal moment in my own life, that might serve as a cautionary/inspirational tale for a teen...

  

Confession: I once dated the same boy for nine years. 

The romance started innocently enough when the boy asked me to a middle school dance. We were both eleven years old. He passed me a note in class: Will you go to the dance with me? Circle yes or no. I circled yes.

Our relationship ended over the phone when we were twenty. In between was lots of soap opera-y drama--teary break-ups followed by desperate attempts at reunions. Everyone, including our parents, thought we belonged together and would eventually get married.

There were a variety of contributing factors that led to my falling into and sticking with a long-term teen relationship. Here are a few: 

• I didn't have the most stable home-life, and this relationship--rocky and ridiculous as it was for most of the time--was one sure thing I could count on
• My father died when I was young. This may be the biggest factor. And now that I see my own daughter and the very cool relationship she has with her Dad, I know how essential a father is when it comes to a girl's developing sense of self. Her identity as a woman, whether she believes she needs a guy to complete herself and fill some emptiness, or not--all seem inextricably tied to how the first man in her life, her father, treats her.
• The weirdest aspect of my relationship with this boy was how fated it felt. The longer we dated, the more it seemed we were meant to be together. Every time we broke up, it was always the thing we would say when we got back together. "We've been with each other so long, how we can quit now? We're worth working on," we said. As if we were a married couple and not two sixteen-year-olds.

Every so often reality would creep in on me or else bash me upside the head. What we had in common when we were eleven (not much, really, except we both thought the other one was cute) and what we had in common at age twenty changed drastically. Example: I majored in English in college. He failed high school English. I could give you a billion more examples, and it is clear now how wrong we were for each other, but back then, it was like I was slogging around in a muddy fog. I could not see myself and this boy for what we were.

Some part of me must have though, and I marvel at that part. It made me apply to a college 1250 miles away. Oh, it would've been so easy and expected to go to the school in my state. An added bonus: my guy told me he'd be hanging out with me there all the time! Never mind that the place was cheaper, which would make things simpler for my single working mom too.

But I went away. Even though I was scared out of my mind. I think I held onto the guy at this point out of sheer terror. It was nice to have a boy back home waiting for me if this whole going off to college thing fell through.

Going far away to college (and I HIGHLY recommend this, kids!) was like waking up from that muddy foggy dream. There is great freedom in starting over in a place where not one other soul knows you. Hey, you can be anyone you want. You can be alone for the first time ever and realize you won't fall apart.

You can pick up the phone one day and break up with your boyfriend of nine years.

The week leading up to when I did the deed, I was a manic wreck. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I wasn't just breaking up with a boy, I was tearing apart the expected pathway of my life.

The funny thing was I think he was almost relieved when I told him. I am not saying that I didn't break his heart. (Or that he hadn't broken mine, either, multiple times) Just that we were both weary of it, of each other, and someone, finally, was going to have to put the relationship out of its misery. I am not sure, exactly, how that someone was me, how I mustered the courage to say what needed to be said and stand firm. But somehow, I did it.

And after, for weeks, I walked around in an excited daze, grinning like a loon.

If I could do this thing--change the entire trajectory I had been on since the age of eleven, geez, what else could I do?

I really could be anything I wanted to be. I could live anywhere I liked. I could follow any dream. There was no prescribed path for my life, after all, and every option in the world was suddenly open to me.

(One half of the once happy couple) 

The First Bad Review (gulp)

Yeah, so I knew it was bound to happen. A bad review. As far as bad reviews go, it wasn't even that bad. More meh-ish, really. I only read the first paragraph, took in the two star out of five star rating, and then handed it to my husband to read the rest.

He was adorably defensive on my behalf, pointing out how ridiculous it was and wrong, etc. I nodded along, and weirdly, defended the reviewer. Oh well, I said. She read the whole thing, right? And she took the time to think and process her reaction. Her review--um, the paragraph I read of it--was thoughtful.

The rest of the day, I'd click on my Goodreads account (this is where the review went up) and, yup, it was still there, the two star review. I kept waiting to feel something. Anger. Depression. Annoyance. But nope. What I actually felt was more like relief. I got my first bad review, and apparently, I'm going to be okay.

Not all writers have the same reaction. I've heard that some argue back to the reviewer, a faux pas in my opinion, but then I've had good training taking criticism.

This goes back to college when I was a creative writing major and we had these marathon workshop sessions where we tore each other's work apart. Our professor jumped in here and there when things got a little too personal, but for the most part he let us go. The poem, the story--the writing--speaks for itself, he told us. What you meant to imply was either there on the page or it wasn't, and hearing readers articulate their responses was something a writer was just going to have to deal with.

Use it as fuel to work harder, ignore the critic, or call him a dingbat in your head, but never EVER argue back.

I grew an even thicker skin when I began submitting my work. Here's a cool perk of being a publishing late bloomer: you get LOTS of practice absorbing criticism. I have a wonderfully bulging file of rejection letters from agents and editors that spans over 20 years. They range from bland form letters to very personal and specific signed handwritten notes. Some of the phrasing sticks in my head even now.

Fun sampling:
"full of authorial mistakes"
"depressing"
"unbelievable characters"
"no teen appeal"

The nice thing about rejections is that once you absorb the blow, you really can use them to make your writing better.

Negative reviews, unfortunately, can't be used that way. The book is as finished as a book can be.

Even when a book is in ARC form, there's not much that can be fixed, aside from formatting issues or typos. True story: when I did my final pass through Thin Space, my editor pointed out that I'd used the word "clench" 33 times. So, yeah. Gotta nice clench in my stomach upon hearing that. And then, clenching a thesaurus in my clenched hand, I opened the manuscript back up and got rid of 30 of those clenches.

Reviews aren't for authors. Reviews are for readers.

As a reader, I read reviews to help in my decision-making process. A million+ potential books to read-- which one should I pick up next? Or maybe I've just finished reading a book and am grappling with what I thought about it--something didn't quite work for me or I wasn't connecting with the story. I read a few reviews and find that other readers felt the same way. Or not.

There's a whole community of readers out there weighing in and digesting and mocking and passionately loving books, and they're talking and sharing and complaining and defending.

The writer truly plays no role in this equation except possibly to lean in now and then and marvel that a book she wrote is now being passed around in the world. Hated. Loved. Thrown across the room in disgust.

Or cherished so much it is read, again. And again.

Interview with Jennifer Castle

One of my absolute favorite reads of 2011 was a novel called The Beginning of After by debut writer Jennifer Castle. The book was an advanced review copy, in a stack of other ARCs, and at first, I put off reading it. The subject matter seemed so...dark. A girl's entire family dies in a car accident and she's got to figure out how to live her life after that utterly devastating event. When I finally did pick it up, I found to my surprise that the novel totally transcends that synopsis.

Yes, the girl does have to deal with the tragic loss of her family, but The Beginning of After is about so much more than that--it's a true coming of age story that's brilliantly written and moving and complex. I knew as soon as I finished it that I'd discovered an author that I'd eagerly follow from that point on.

A cool coincidence: a year later my publishing company sent me a comp sheet, which is basically a list of books that the marketing department thinks are comparable to yours, and The Beginning of After was on my list. I wrote to Jennifer Castle to tell her that fun fact and to point out that maybe one day soon our books would be "shelf buddies" because of our last names. She graciously replied and we've been corresponding ever since. She kindly read and blurbed my book Thin Space. And a few weeks ago I was able to read her latest book You Look Different in Real Life. I wasn't surprised, this time, to find that I absolutely loved it. This book is different from The Beginning of After in theme and tone--there's some humor and snark--but it's just as insightful and thought provoking, and proves that Jennifer's Castle's debut was no one-hit wonder.

I'm thrilled that Jen has agreed to let me interview her today, so without further gushy adoration from me, I'll start as I always do, by asking:

Where do you get your ideas?

Jen: My ideas don't come to me in those economical AHA! moments that some writers get. Mine come slowly, picked up as fragments I learn about or discuss with people around me, news stories, non-fiction books, my own memories ignited by something random in the here and now. Then there are the bizarre notions that pop into my head, seemingly out of nowhere, as I try to go about my day -- you know the classic inopportune spots like traffic lights or in the shower. All this stuff stays in orbit for a while and then eventually, gravitates into the shape of something. Characters and their journeys usually come to me before actual story elements.
                     
Jody: That sounds like how it works for me too. I carry ideas around (sometimes literally, on scraps of paper) for years. And thank goodness for the shower, right? I read once that there's something elemental about water when it comes to creativity. Not sure if this is true or not, but I'll take it. Anyway, once you have your idea, what's your next step? Do you outline the story in advance or just start writing and see what happens?

Jen: I do sort of a combo. I used to write screenplays, so my mind naturally travels around the classic three-act framework. I need to know where I'm starting, where I'm going to be halfway through a story, and where I want to end up. I need to know where things get effed up in the story, and what's at stake. But I don't like to outline the whole thing, because I want to leave breathing room for the characters to evolve as I write them. I'll usually map out 50 pages at a time. I'm also a big fan of the "vomit draft" where you just pound out that first go-round, some of it raw and very much half-planned, and doing the real work in revision. In other words, I feel completely disorganized and this is probably why drafting is much longer and more excruciating than it should be.

Jody: Ha! I like that term "vomit draft." I work that way too and find that you've got to have a lot of trust in the process when so much is done by the seat of your pants. Plus, there's a thought in your mind the whole time about how much work you'll still have left to do once that vomity draft is finished.

But everything about this process seems to take a long time. Has that been your experience? Did you have to write many practice novels before hitting your stride? Did you get many rejections?

Jen: Okay, so you're totally going to hate me for this answer: The first book I wrote was the first book I sold -- The Beginning of After. Originally, TBOA was not a YA book, and I had written about 100 pages of Laurel in college, so maybe that version counts as a separate book? And it did take me six years to write, on and off, so it sure feels like more than one book to me.

As for rejections...well, um. Again, you're going to hate me. I queried two agents and both offered to represent me. But I did receive rejections when the manuscript went out on submission to editors. Quite a few, actually, for various reasons, before it was acquired by the exact right editor at the exact right publishing house: Rosemary Brosnan at HarperCollins. I know my experience is not typical and believe me, I'm still grateful for how heartbreak-free it was. I got very, very lucky. I have enormous respect for authors who struggle through years of multiple manuscripts and rejections before finally getting that first deal. Those experiences usually translate into some mad skills for an author moving forward.

Jody: Nah. I don't hate you! You're making it sound like you just fell into it, but six years working on a book isn't overnight success. You earned your mad skills, is what I'm saying. For me it took, um, a tad longer, *cough*-- twenty years, give or take a few --*cough* but it's necessary time, I think, looking back. Every writer moves at her own pace, figures out what works and what doesn't, even down to the nitty gritty of scheduling your writing time. I was talking to Jennifer R. Hubbard last month and she sets a very specific work schedule for herself every day. Do you do that kind of thing?

Jen: I'm a morning writer. Unfortunately, I have young kids, who are by definition morning people (alternatively known as Crazy Demanding Why The F*&$ Are You So Energetic at 6am People?). So my work doesn't start until well after the school bus has pulled away with my children on it. I usually write from 10am until noon, take a break, then work again for another hour or two. Sometimes that second session doesn't happen, and I try not to feel guilty about it. I tend to work in short, intense creative bursts and then flame out, and once I'm getting diminishing returns on the page, it's time to stop. When drafting, I go for 1,000 words a day. My other thing is that I don't let myself take two consecutive days off from writing; if I skip a day for whatever (usually dumb-ass) reason, I have to write the next day, even if it's just for 90 minutes at a coffee house on a Sunday morning, surrounded by hungover college students.

Jody: Isn't it funny how we have to set rules for ourselves? And how we have to deal with guilt when we break those self-made rules? I know this might sound crazy to non-writers out there, but I think that it's one of the things that goes along with working for yourself. Unless you're given a specific deadline, it all comes down to you and the blank computer screen every day, and if you're going to write the words... or not.

Add to that all the other day to day life-stuff we have to deal with. At the risk of making a sexist generalization, I think this may be more of an issue for women writers. Like, I don't picture Stephen King having to clean toilets. Maybe that's not fair though. Even Stephen King lives in the world and has other junk he's got to do, pay bills etc. You mentioned waiting until your kids get on the bus each day, how do you balance your writing time with everything else that's going on?

Jen: It's very, very hard. I've learned to be hyper-protective of that morning block of writing time, not just from others but also from myself. As in, "Yes, Jen, I know you want to watch last night's Downton Abbey before you go online and accidentally see who died in this episode, but GO WORK NOW." My endless task list of assorted life-crap also has to wait. I don't even look at it until after the words are done. I don't know if you experience this too, but people often assume that because I write for a living, I can work or not work as the mood strikes, and why can't I make that coffee date/Pilates class/PTA event/doctor's appointment? I just behave as if I have to go into an office and report to a boss for a certain period of time, and find that saying "Sorry, I have to work" or "I'm on a deadline" is something nobody argues with.

Jody: Oh, yeah, I get that too from people and it's very tempting to give in, to "just this once" blow off work. But then I think: when I was teaching, could I skip out of my classroom and go to a movie or spend an hour scrolling around online? Uh, no. Speaking of scrolling around online, it's pretty clear lately how much marketing and promotion writers are expected to do now, and so much of this involves social media. What's your take on this aspect of the job?

Jen: Sometimes I feel pretty lame and rather lost about that stuff. What really works? What should I be doing that everyone else seems to be doing but I don't feel comfortable doing? When I feel that way, I go back to the thing that always guides me: I do what feels natural. I can only be myself in social media, and it may not be as "effective" at selling books as some people's selves, but I'm okay with that. So I post on Facebook, on my personal page as well as my author and book pages, only when I have something I feel compelled to share. I use Twitter the same way, although I'm still not comfortable jumping in on conversations; the whole thing feels like a big high school cafeteria and I'm the shy new girl looking for a table that won't shun me.

I enjoy blogging on my own website and look forward to blogging as a new member of YA Outside the Lines, but again -- I try to do it in a way that says, "When I post, you know it's something worth reading." The part of "promotion" that I enjoy the most is connecting personally -- through social media or email or in person -- with readers, bloggers, booksellers, librarians, teachers, and especially other authors. These connections often lead to great bookstore or school events, coffee chats, lovely rambling email threads, and other experiences that may or may not help sell my books, but make me feel so blessed to be doing what I love and sharing it with the world.

Jody: Love that philosophy Jen, and it seems to me that you're doing it all exactly right. Before I let you go, what are you working on now?

Jen: I'm gearing up to start the draft of a new novel, for which I'm already under contract with HarperCollins. I think it's time I tackled a full-on love story, don't you think? I'm ready to fall head over heels as I write and hopefully take the readers with me. Right now, I'm having a lot of fun building the characters and mapping out their relationship. This is going to be the most personal piece of fiction I've ever written and I can't wait to start. I'm not able to just yet -- I don't start drafting until I've done a lot of what I call "character journaling" first: I write journal entries as if I were the character. It really helps define a character's voice as well as develop who they are, where they're coming from, and where they want to go.

Along with promoting You Look Different in Real Life and the companion short story "Playing Keira," this is what the rest of 2013 will be for me.

Jody: I can't wait to read it! And I should mention here that I've read  "Playing Keira" (out May 7). I love the idea that you were able to take a character from the novel and further explore her POV. I'm also really intrigued about putting a short story out there, as opposed to a novel. You don't see that much in YA, but with the rise of e-books, maybe short stories will find a niche. I hope so. And I hope you write a story for each one of the characters in YLDIRL.

Thanks, Jen, for talking with me, and dear loyal blog readers, if you want to learn more about Jen and her work, you can find her in the usual places:

Her website JenniferCastle.com
On her facebook author page
On Twitter @Jennifer_Castle

And if you'd like to check out her new story "Playing Keira," click here. 

Fun Times on a Dead Author Vacation

So last week was our daughter's spring break and while many of her friends were cavorting around the sunny beaches of Florida, she was cavorting around museums or traipsing through cemeteries helping us search for dead author tombstones. Yes, this is what passes as a fun family vacation when your mom is a former high school English teacher. Luckily, her father shares my passion for all things American literature/history. He's also a big go-go touristy guy who thinks that lazing about on a beach is a waste of a week when you could spend it instead hitting three cities (Philadelphia, New York, and Boston) and poking around every suggested site in the accompanying guidebooks.

For the most part our daughter was a good sport, trailing after us, her gooby parents, with only a few minor complaints. Snippets from some of our conversations:

Me: Hey! Look! Emerson's grave!
Her: wow.

Dad: Did you see that? It's the white dress Emily Dickinson wore!
Her: Yeah. Cool.

Me: You wanna walk around this pond and find the site of Thoreau's cabin?
Her: Um, not really.
Dad: Come on! It's only a half mile walk! Let's race!
Her: No. Really. I'm fine.

We wore the poor kid out, walking the heck out of the old section of Philadelphia, tromping through most of lower Manhattan, and following the Freedom Trail in Boston. We also explored Amherst, Mass, (home of my beloved Emily Dickinson), Concord (Thoreau! Emerson! Hawthorne! Alcott!), and Salem (a shout out here to our amazing tour guide, Susan, of the Hocus Pocus Night-time Witch Tour. While I'm at it, I should give another shout out to Seamus, our guide on a horse and carriage ride through Central Park. And his horse Marcello. And to Lucy, the ultra cool docent at the Emily Dickinson House.)

Here are some of the fascinating facts those unfortunate beach-going friends missed:

The Declaration of Independence was NOT actually signed by all those signers on July 4, 1776.

Ben Franklin's privy was located only a FEW FEET away from his water supply.

Emily Dickinson dashed off many of her poems in letters to friends and often scratched off words and wrote in alternate word choices. Meaning, these poems weren't as "dashed off" as some people believe...

She had a brother named Austin, who lived next door and sort of looks like a brooding rock star in pictures.

There is a photograph of her that has recently been discovered and is in the process of being verified.

That's probably her, in her late 20's, on the left

Nathaniel Hawthorne was so ashamed of his family's connection to the Salem Witch Trials (an ancestor, John Hathorne, one of the judges) that he added a "w" to his name.

Thoreau's grave is just a small marker that says simply "Henry." Many visitors to the cemetery where he is buried have placed stones, coins, pencils, and pine cones around the grave marker.

You can visit the site of his cabin and leave a stone (or rock) there too. And after, you can stop by the Thoreau Gift Shop and buy a T-shirt or a coffee mug that says: Simplify, Simplify on it. (For those in the know, the actual quote is Simplify, Simplify, Simplify, but apparently that didn't look as simplified to the T-shirt creators.)

The woman who wrote The Five Little Peppers (Margaret Sidney) and the author of Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) are buried right around the bend from Thoreau. Emerson is across the path. Meville is NOT buried in this cemetery, but some guy named Melvin is--which we discovered after circling around for an hour and getting briefly lost).

If you hike the Freedom Trail in Boston, you'll see the Old North Church, Paul Revere's house, the site of the first public school in America, and a cemetery where the British used tombstones for target practice.

Also, there are several Starbucks.

And an Urban Outfitters.

Beat that, beach-goers.

The teen as a four year old, ticked off in Paul Revere's garden, during a previous, fun, literary-themed vacation.