On Finishing a Draft (Again)

The other day I finished working on a draft of a novel that I have been revising (on and off) for five years. This was version number 4.

There will be a draft 5.

Writing this draft almost killed me (in order to meet a totally self-imposed deadline, I worked 6 to 10 hours a day for 46 days in a row)

--but it also taught me the greatest truth I know about writing (again).

Trust the process.

Say it with me, people:

TRUST

THE

PROCESS.

I understand this mantra now at the very core of my being. I say it at the beginning of every new project. I say it somewhere in the middle. And I say it at the end. Most of the time I don't even believe it.

And then I do.

Trusting the process means:

• pushing forward, writing every day whether or not you want to/feel like it/care/have fantasies about flinging your laptop through a plate glass window
• focusing on the day's goal--whatever it happens to be--a passage, a scene, a chapter, a word count, a character arc, a plot line, etc.--and not worrying about what you will have to work on the next day (or God forbid, next week) 
• pushing out of your mind if this story is any good, if it will ever sell, what your agent or editor will think, and/or what the bloggers on Goodreads will say. I heard once that every writer has an ideal reader in mind while writing--this is the person you imagine reading and responding and it is the person you most hope to please. My ideal readers are my husband--who is extremely critical, and yet, I admit, nearly always right, and my writing critique partner Donna, who knows exactly what to say and how to say it and who has kept me from jumping off a ledge too many times to discuss here. I need both of them in my writing life. I also need to push them out of my mind during writing sessions.
• celebrating small successes and going easy on yourself when you feel like you've failed. 
• reminding yourself and then believing it--that this is only a draft and you will finish it, and if you have to, (likely) you can pick it up again and go back in, knowing that each time you really are getting closer and closer to that nebulously termed "right" feeling of completeness.

A few months ago I was chatting with one of my favorite writers Rae Carson. We had volunteered for Small Business Saturday to work at our local children's bookstore Cover to Cover. Small Business Saturday, unfortunately, turned out to have been poorly scheduled in our town of Columbus Ohio--it coincided with a college home football game and not just any college. The store is about 10 minutes away from where the Ohio State Buckeyes play.

Rae and I spent quite a bit of the quiet day in the bookstore chatting--about our favorite books and about the writing life (she is a New York Times best selling author, so let's just say that her writing life is a tad different from mine). But at the same time, there are similarities--ie: figuring out how to balance writing with promoting and with actual living of life with kids and bills and grocery shopping.

At one point the conversation turned to what our latest project is. Rae has a three-book trilogy out, the glorious Girl of Fire and Thorns, and now she is working on writing her next three-book series, something she's already sold on synopsis. When she told me this, my mouth dropped open. I can't even imagine writing under that kind of pressure--selling a book before you've written it... Yikes.

I told her that I was working on a rewrite of a rewrite of a rewrite, and we lamented about how to fit in writing around travelling (I laugh as I write this because Rae's travel schedule dwarfs mine--I think she said she hasn't been home for more than a month at a time in several years). She asked if I had sold the book yet and I said no, and she had a funny expression on her face.

She said something like, Wow, I can't even imagine that kind of pressure.

My mouth dropped open again. What do you mean? I asked.

She said, you're writing something without knowing if it's ever going to go anywhere?

After a pause, I laughed, because this is how I've written every book I've ever written. I've never had a guarantee that anything was going to sell.

We parted that day, probably both feeling sorry for the other person. Okay, that's stupid. I do not feel sorry for Rae Carson. She probably does not feel sorry for me either. So, forget I said that.

My point is, (I think this is my point), that writing is hard for every writer, no matter where you are in the process or in your career.

I know that my friends and family look at my crazy, totally self-imposed work schedule and shake their heads in amazement and confusion. Why not take a day off? Why work so hard for something that you could easily put off for another day? Why work into the night in order to get just one more sentence?

The answer: I don't know.

The answer: it seems to be my process.

And, I trust it.


PS: For the record, I am taking a two-week break from writing. I am traveling soon to the area where I grew up. I will be visiting libraries and schools and reconnecting with old friends and relatives. Stay tuned for all the fun (and pressures of a different kind)...

"Recreating a Living, Breathing History" (Guest Post Mary Cronk Farrell, author of PURE GRIT)

I'm so excited to feature Mary Cronk Farrell, the author of the new book Pure Grit: How American World War II Nurses Survived Battle and Prison Camp in the Pacific on my blog today. I recently read the book and I was blown away by it.

The story is riveting--horrifying, heartbreaking, and somehow inspirational. And all the more so because it is true. What these women went through is incredible and how they managed to do their jobs during their captivity is even more amazing.

I've never tried to write non-fiction (unless you count this blog), but I am fascinated by the process. Here's Mary's take on some of the research-gathering involved in writing non-fiction:

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Mary Cronk Farrell

In writing a true story about events in history, the writer’s task is to recreate a world, bring alive not only long-passed people, but an environment that may have completely disappeared. That was my challenge in writing PURE GRIT: HOW AMERICAN WORLD WAR II NURSES SURVIVED BATTLE AND PRISON CAMP IN THE PACIFIC.

I needed to recreate a number of different worlds for this book, none of which I had ever experienced myself. How would I make the sights and sounds of a combat hospital realistic? Where would I discover the smells of a tropical jungle? How could I imagine the feelings running through a person’s body as she realizes shrapnel is flying around her, or a machine gun is firing from a fighter plane over head? Would my own feelings of hunger translate to the starvation experienced by prisoners of war, or my knowledge of loneliness come anywhere near that of a person who cannot know she will ever see loved ones again?

To find the details necessary to bring a story to life, I turned to personal accounts such as diaries, letters and historical documents. In the case of the American military nurses in my book, the historical record was rich with possibility.

From a 2003, Fort Worth Star-Telegram newspaper interview I learned about one nurse’s motivation for joining the Army Nurse Corp:  “Hattie Brantley had always craved adventure. She didn't want her mother's life as a farm wife with half a dozen kids pulling at her skirt while she washed and cleaned and hoed the garden.”

Initially, I studied books written by the nurses themselves, two of which had been published shortly after the end of World War II. I also found a book written by a doctor who served with the nurses, a civilian nurse who was there and a missionary woman. From Barbed-Wire Surgeon, by Alfred A. Weinstein, M.D. I gained details like this:

 “Sounds familiar to the operating pavilion vibrated through the air: the zzz-zzz-zzz of a saw as it cut through bone, the rasp of a file as the freshly cut end, dripping with red marrow, was ground smooth, the plop of an amputated leg dropping into a bucket, the grind of a rounded burr drill easing its way through a skull, the tap, tap, tap, of a mallet on a chisel gouging out a shell fragment deeply imbedded in bone, the hiss of the sterilizer blowing off steam, the soft patter of nurses’ feet scurrying back and forth…”

Some POW nurses had been interviewed for posterity by the Army Nurse Corp and the Department of Defense. These would be my primary sources, but they were not so easily found. The U.S. Army Office of Medical History was moving from the east coast to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, and the documents I needed were boxed up somewhere, nobody seemed quite sure where. It was about two years before I found the oral recordings and their transcriptions. Here’s a typical quote from these interviews. Army Nurse Helen Cassini described the dusty conditions in the tunnel hospital on Corregidor:

“We had no air conditioning of course. And we even had to wear masks--wet masks in order to breathe. We would take gauze and wet it, put it over the patients'--mouths in order for them to breathe a little bit more comfortably. When the shelling and bombing would occur, it was even worse because the dust, the little stones would just fall down through the cracks and cover everything.”

Santo Tomas Prison Camp where the nurses were held captive. (National Archives)

Archived at the Women in Military Service to America Foundation, I found notes from an interview with Navy Nurse Margaret Nash who had been imprisoned at Los Ban᷈os Internment Camp in a rural area some distance from Manila.

“Our menu was interesting. Have you ever tasted wall paper paste? Well, that’s what we had for breakfast, weevils and all. It was called lugao. They would give us milk for it and if you were lucky you’d get a banana. The second of our two meals a day was a stew of all native vegetables….We had no meat, no protein of any kind, and that’s why there was so much beriberi and malnutrition.”

Army Nurse Frankie Lewey treating a wounded man. (National Archives)

I resorted to secondary sources when I couldn’t track down the original, if the bit of information seem seemed imperative to recreating an experience. For instance information on the feelings associated with starvation which I learned from a newspaper quote cited in the book All this Hell: U.S. Nurses Imprisoned by the Japanese (Mohahan & Neidel-Greenlee, University of Kentucky Press, 2003).

“Hunger makes one constantly dizzy and causes a severe basal headache that never leaves…I had been without vitamins for so long I could not read a line of print. The letters swam together.”

And similarly, the feeling of homecoming after three-years in POW camp.

“A few minutes later, the dramatic moment of the whole trip arrived when Lieutenant [Margaret] Nash…sighted her mother on the porch.
“Mother! Mother!’ she exclaimed with outstretched arms and tears rolling down her cheeks. It was only a matter of seconds until she was in her mother’s arms.” 

Once a writer discovers details like this, all that’s left is weaving them seamlessly together into a narrative.

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Mary Cronk Farrell is an award-winning author of Children's/YA books and former journalist with a passion for stories about people facing great adversity with courage. Her books have been named Notable Social Studies Book for Young People, SPUR Award for Best Juvenile Fiction about the American West, Bank Street College List of Best Children's Books, and NY Public Library Best Books for Teens. For more information on Mary and her books see: MaryCronkFarrell.net 

Pure Grit is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and at indie bookstores.

In Which a REALLY Camera Shy Writer Consents to Appear on Camera (with a brief digression about Italian hand gestures)

When you are writing and submitting and collecting rejections and rewriting and pursuing publication for as long as I have (hint: 20+ years), you tend to have very elaborate daydreams about what it will be like when your book finally appears on the bookstore shelf.

My daydreams included book signings and school visits and conference talks. (Which I am thrilled to say have all come true.) But also, crazier stuff like movie premieres and NY Times Bestseller lists and, okay, I will admit it: my Printz Award acceptance speech. (Alas, these daydreams are as yet unfulfilled.)

But one thing that never flitted across my mind was appearing on camera.

Suddenly, though, I am faced with three such events. To be clear, I am not talking Oprah or the Today Show. 

Thank God.

My three media-related thingys are on a MUCH smaller scale. An interview on a public television station in Connecticut. A taped skype-like chat with the cool people at my publishing company (April 16). And this Saturday March 15 (oh, shoot, I guess that is tomorrow!) a live chat on Twitter with a blogger/book reviewer named Rachel.

Some truths about me pertaining to appearing on camera:

1. I have never appeared on camera.

2. I don't even like having my picture taken. (See here for the angst involved in having my book jacket photo taken and how it almost caused my husband to divorce me.)

I asked a friend who is a bit more media savvy than I am if she had any tips about being on camera and she said, and I quote: "Don't move around too much."

This advice added another layer of anxiety that I hadn't even considered. You see, while I have not been blessed with the well known Italian Cleaning Gene, I have inherited the Italian Hand Gesture Gene.

To put this another way: I cannot talk unless I am moving my hands.

Literally.

After someone pointed out my talking/hand gesturing style to me, I sat on my hands and words literally would not come out of my mouth.

This tendency may be a problem (tomorrow!!) when I appear on the small screen. But I am going to try to forget about it and have fun with the interview. For the record, I still don't know exactly how it works. I think it's going to be a skype-like chat, with me facing my own laptop screen, My first order of business will be to find a quiet (clean. Ha ha) corner of my house to park myself.

If any of you would like to tune in to this potentially amusing program (which will happen live March 15 from 8:00-9:00 pm EST, but will likely float around online for YEARS), here is the link to do that. (I think) If you are on Twitter, you can tweet me any burning questions you may have by using the hashtag #JodyLiveChat (Ask your kids for help with this. I asked my daughter and she was extremely informative.)

I'll share the upcoming dates and links for the other two events, which will likely be equally amusing. But as of now, you may mark your calendars:

April 8th on Wethersfield CT TV14 

April 16th at 4:00-- online. There's a VERY COOL promotional tie-in, if you tune in to this one--something awesome that I can't mention yet, but I will soon...

PS. If ANYONE has any media advice between this moment and um, tomorrow, at 8:00, please please please feel free to share. (Just don't tell me to sit on my hands.)

(A friend snapped this pic of me doing a book talk--mid hand gesture)

UPDATE: Here's the link to the live chat interview 

On Writing a Trilogy--Guest Post by Mike Mullin (SUNRISE Blog Tour)

I am so excited to be a stop on Mike Mullin's Sunrise Blog Tour. For the record I've read all three books in the Ashfall Trilogy. This is a riveting, nail-biting, (almost too) realistic, post-apocalyptic adventure that follows main character Alex as he does his best to survive after the supervolcano under Yellowstone explodes and takes out half of the United States. (See below for the synopsis and for other info about Mike and where you can find him and his books.)

Over the years, I've gotten to know Mike "virtually," and have met him in person, too, at a book signing. Side note: teachers--this is an author you MUST invite to your classrooms. Let me just say that when Mike karate chops a cement block in half, he will get your students' attention. Side note #2: Mike has become a gracious and generous mentor to me. He blurbed my book Thin Space, and he is my role model for promoting and teaching and presenting. (Except for the karate chopping of cement blocks aspect.)

Here's Mike now on what it's like to write a successful trilogy:

I’m probably the wrong person to ask about writing a trilogy. I’ve only done it once—maybe it was a fluke? Who knows if I can do it again? The question would probably be better asked of someone like Cinda Williams Chima, although now that I think about it, I’m not sure she’s ever written a trilogy. She always seems to turn her trilogies into tetralogies or more.

Perhaps the quintessential trilogy was The Lord of the Rings. But J.R.R. Tolkien never intended to write a trilogy—he turned his opus in to his publisher as one book, so long that it was unpublishable given the technology of the time.

I had the advantage of knowing almost from the beginning that I was going to write a trilogy. I had expected Ashfall  to be about 80,000 words, a fairly typical length for a young adult novel. But I kept thinking of new and interesting ways to torture my poor protagonists. As a result, Ashfall grew and grew (it was published at 101,000 words), and I still hadn’t come anywhere near exhausting my store of ideas.

I also thought a lot about endings as I was drafting Ashfall. One of the many things I love about young adult literature is that most books end on a note of hope. I don’t think it’s an absolute requirement—Charles Benoit’s You, for example, is a brilliant book with an ending like a gut-stab, but hopeful endings are normally a feature of YA novels. To deliver any kind of believable hopeful ending for Alex and Darla, I had to follow them through the entire volcanic winter, which could last anywhere from three to ten years. I simply had too much story for one book.

So I set my draft of Ashfall  aside for a few days and wrote an outline for the whole trilogy. My outlines are chaotic affairs—pages of rough notes, not neatly marching columns led by Roman numerals—but all the major turning points in the trilogy exist in that first outline.

I paid special attention to the transitions between books. I tried to tie up every plot thread except one at the end of both Ashfall and Ashen Winter. I can’t really talk about what plot threads I left open without getting into massive spoilers, but readers of the trilogy will know exactly what I mean. My theory was that by tying up almost all the loose ends, I’d make each book somewhat satisfying on its own, but leave one thread as a cliffhanger to propel readers through the books and tie them into a cohesive trilogy.

I also paid attention to the scope of the books. In a great trilogy, the scope of the work increases from book to book. The Lord of the Rings starts with a small cast of characters centered around Gandalf and Bilbo and set in The Shire. By the end of the trilogy, there are dozens of major characters involved in epic battles all over Middle Earth. The Hunger Games starts as a family story centered on Katniss and ends in world-changing revolution. The progression of scope in my work is simpler: Ashfall is about Alex and Darla’s struggle to survive, Ashen Winter is about family, and Sunrise is about building a community capable of outlasting the long volcanic winter.

It has been a joy to spend more than five years with Alex and Darla, but I’m ready to move on and write something different. I’m working on a stand-alone young adult thriller now. I’ll leave it to readers to judge whether the Ashfall trilogy was successful or not, but despite the fact that I’ve only done it once and am full of doubts about the future, I’m satisfied. I can look back at the 335,000 words of young adult fiction I’ve published with pride and say, yeah, I did that.


About the author:

Mike Mullin’s first job was scraping the gum off the undersides of desks at his high school. From there, things went steadily downhill. He almost got fired by the owner of a bookstore due to his poor taste in earrings. He worked at a place that showed slides of poopy diapers during lunch (it did cut down on the cafeteria budget). The hazing process at the next company included eating live termites raised by the resident entomologist, so that didn’t last long either. For a while Mike juggled bottles at a wine shop, sometimes to disastrous effect. Oh, and then there was the job where swarms of wasps occasionally tried to chase him off ladders. So he’s really glad this writing thing seems to be working out.

Mike holds a black belt in Songahm Taekwondo. He lives in Indianapolis with his wife and her three cats. Ashen Winter is his second novel. His debut, Ashfall, was named one of the top five young adult novels of 2011 by National Public Radio, a Best Teen Book of 2011 by Kirkus Reviews, and a New Voices selection by the American Booksellers Association

About SUNRISE

The Yellowstone supervolcano nearly wiped out the human race. Now, almost a year after the eruption, the survivors seem determined to finish the job. Communities wage war on each other, gangs of cannibals roam the countryside, and what little government survived the eruption has collapsed completely. The ham radio has gone silent. Sickness, cold, and starvation are the survivors’ constant companions.

When it becomes apparent that their home is no longer safe and adults are not facing the stark realities, Alex and Darla must create a community that can survive the ongoing disaster, an almost impossible task requiring even more guts and more smarts than ever—and unthinkable sacrifice. If they fail . . . they, their loved ones, and the few remaining survivors will perish.

This epic finale has the heart of Ashfall, the action of Ashen Winter, and a depth all its own, examining questions of responsibility and bravery, civilization and society, illuminated by the story of an unshakable love that transcends a post-apocalyptic world and even life itself.

Excerpt

The first two chapters are available on my website at: http://mikemullinauthor.com/books/sunrise/. You may reprint the first two chapters in whole or in part on your website so long as you do not charge anyone anything to access them. Warning: the sample does contain Ashfall and Ashen Winter spoilers.

Blog Tour Info:

Website: Mikemullinauthor.com
Twitter: twitter.com/Mike Mullin
Facebook: facebook.com/Mike.Mullin.author

Buy Links for Sunrise:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
The Book Depo
IndieBound

How a Fearless Possibly Insane Dog Taught Me to Face and Conquer My Own Demons

Every day two battles are fought and won in my house.

Battle # 1 is fierce and loud and stressful and contains lots of slobber and flying hair.

Battle #2 is fought by my dog.

First, a bit about Battle # 2.

So if you have been following my blog for a while, you may recall that after my son went off to college I became a reluctant and later a ridiculously adoring dog owner. My Zooey is the perfect writing companion. She naps by my side for two to three hours at a time, and then she demands a walk, usually at the moment when my eyeballs are burning out of my skull from staring at my computer screen. Zooey is the reason I change out of my pajamas each day. She also has saved me from becoming a sad, partial empty-nester. (I suspect that without Zooey, I would sob every time I walk past my son's empty bedroom.) She has without a doubt saved my daughter from my helicopter mom tendencies. Now those helicopter blades are hovering around Zooey.

How do we keep Zooey from jumping on visitors? How do we teach her not to dig a giant *&^ hole in the center of the backyard? What can we do to keep her from eating sponges and kleenexes and computer mouses/mice? How can we help Zooey and the crochety yet beloved old cat get along better?

And the big one: how do we stop Zooey from losing her freaking mind every single day when the mailman comes to the door?

My son on break from college figured out the answer to this one.

The Zooey vs the Mailman War has been going on for about a year and a half now.

The battle begins when the truck first putters down the street. Zooey is fast asleep, curled beside me.

She recognizes the truck sound--which is somehow different from any other vehicle sounds--and she is UP and ready for battle.

There's five minute tense growly period between when the mailman steps out of the truck and takes his sweet time walking up the street toward our home.

The moments when the guy places his foot on our front porch and passes by the picture window are the heat of the battle, with Zooey in full-blown attack mode, splattering spittle and barking like a wild beast. Time slows. The mail box clicks open. Zooey races to the front door and throws herself against it. The mail box snaps shut. Zooey licks herself furiously, does a victory lap around the house, and jumps back onto the couch to continue her nap.

My son watched this battle take place every day when he was home on break and we'd marvel at the intensity and lunacy of it. On his last day home, we watched the battle unfold again and my son announced that he'd figured it all out.

Zooey is the type of dog who will bark when anyone comes to the door, but as soon as that person steps inside, she sees that the person is a welcome friend and taking a cue from us, she greets them (by jumping on them--I know, not a good dog trait. We're working on it)

But, the mailman is NEVER INVITED INSIDE THE HOUSE.

In Zooey's mind he truly is the enemy. Every day, however, the man has the audacity to drive down our street and waltz right up to our door. Zooey's barking, her brave counterattack against the window, is the only thing that keeps the enemy from gaining entry.

And it works! She wins the battle every single day. The mailman retreats. Zooey has completed her mission. The only solution, my son said, is to invite the mailman inside. (He may be right, but at this point, I don't know if I want to risk the mailman's life to test this hypothesis.)

Okay, you may be wondering at this point what Battle # 1 is.

If you have been following this blog for a while or even for the past month, you may have noticed that it's a daily struggle for me to sit down each day, open my computer file, and get to work. I've written about my struggle here and here and here, in case you want a recap. Apparently I have to learn over and over again that the only solution is to write. It never gets any easier. Regardless of how long I have been writing, despite the fact that I have learned the lesson, that I know LOGICALLY that each day is difficult, somehow my hesitance to get to work still surprises me.

Writing, many days, feels like a battle. A battle against self doubt. A battle against laziness. Steven Pressfield does a much better job than I talking about this in his brilliant little book The War of Art. (This is a must read for any writer struggling to do the work, by which I mean EVERY writer.) Pressfield calls it the battle against Resistance.

Each day I am surprised by the intensity of Resistance. Each day I am Zooey snoozing along happily and shocked at the sound of the mailman's truck turning down my street. That bastard is here again? But I just fought him yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that! Who the heck does this guy think he is?

But like Zooey I fight my battle every day. I spring onto the back of my couch and hurl myself against the plate glass window, drool and hair flying. And at the end of the day, I snap my laptop shut, secure in the fact that I have chased that demon off.

For today.

For the record, this day I have successfully beaten back Resistance 18 days in a row. I sign off now to fight the battle of DAY NUMBER 19.

Wish me luck.

Books that Sucked Me in and Blew My Mind

Lately, I have been a good book reading roll, which is a nice roll to be on when you are NOT on a good writing roll. During the day I (mostly) struggle to meet my writing goals, but at night, I know I can curl up with a great book and all is right again in the world. You would think it would not be satisfying to read a good book during the time you fear you are writing a bad one, but you would be wrong.

It's actually the opposite.

Reading "bad" books makes me tired. Each page is a chore. I was reading a book that shall not be named for my book club. The first night I picked it up, read two pages, and fell asleep. The next few nights the same thing happened. I think I got up to ten pages and finally set it aside.

Compare that to how I felt when I was reading Courtney Summers' This is Not a Test.

From the very first page, I was sucked in, and then I was turning pages--but not so fast that I would miss anything. Here's the premise: it's the end of the world. Zombies are attacking the town and the few kids who've managed to evade death/zombiehood hole up together in the local high school. Now, I know what you're thinking: zombies? another end of the world book? Bleh. But this is the brilliant Courtney Summers we are talking about. Turns out the main character had been planning to kill herself that morning and the end of the world feels like a relief.

There is nothing cooler than a thought-provoking page turner and this one had me thinking long after I closed the book: What's the point of living? How do you fight for survival when you don't want to survive? Can a damaged girl on the verge of giving up, find hope in the worst of circumstances? Read a book like this and you are reminded why you write in the first place.

I am not a big graphic novel fan. I should amend that to say I haven't read many graphic novels. If you are new to the genre too, here is a good one to try: Boxers and Saints by Gene Luen Yang.

It takes place during the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1898. It's actually two books, companions, that tell the same story from characters on the opposite side of the war. First, we meet Bao in Boxers and sympathize quickly with his plight. He is one of the Chinese peasants who rises up against the foreigners, many of whom happen to be Christian missionaries. In Saints we see the struggle from the other point of view, a girl named Four Girl, who is drawn to Christianity, but not for reasons you'd expect. When the two meet, it is a moment of horror and heartbreak that I don't think I have ever experienced before while reading a book.

I have been a big fan of David Levithan ever since I read Everyday. His latest, Two Boys Kissing, is stunning and ground breaking.

The main story is two boys decide to break the record for the world's longest kiss. But there are other stories too, of boys going on their first date and a boy who is repulsed by his own sexual identity and contemplating ending his life. The narrator is a Greek chorus of men who have died from AIDs, looking down at the events with sympathy and pity and fear and joy.

I've seen many reviews of this book, but none have discussed the thing that stood out most to me: the most perfect bit of writing I've ever seen--that should be given to any human who ever contemplates ending his own life:

"Sometimes perspective comes far too late. You cannot trust yourself....you cannot live for anyone else's sake. ...you cannot stay alive for your parents. You cannot stay alive for your friends. And you have no responsibility to stay alive for them. You have no responsibility to anyone but yourself to live. 
But I'm dead, he would say to us. I'm already dead.
No, we'd argue. No, you are not. ...your future self is still alive. You have a responsibility to your future self, who is someone you might not even know, might not even understand yet. Because until you die, that future self has as much life as you do."

This book will stay with you long after you close it.

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness is KILLING me.

I've been listening to it on audio and let me say here that audio books are art forms in and of themselves. Whoever is reading this one is awesome. He does various voices, including a dog, and has me alternately laughing and almost crying. Confession: I have not finished listening to this book. I can't think of a time when this has ever happened to me--that I love a book and am completely caught up in it and yet I cannot bear to pick it up again because I am so invested in the characters and so worried about what is going to happen to them.

Brief synopsis: it's a weird world where there's a small town populated only by men. All the women died after some kind of alien virus and the men caught what they call The Noise, the ability to hear each other's thoughts. It's driven most of them to suicide, but the few who are left, are struggling, and this is the world that Todd Hewitt has been born into. When we meet Todd, he's walking around with his dog Manchee, annoyed and bored and so tired of listened to the noise. He can hear the dog's thoughts too but that's not very exciting. The dog mostly says stuff like, "Pooh, Todd, pooh."

Everything changes for Todd when he meets a girl, a girl whose thoughts he can't hear, and that pretty much starts Todd (and Manchee) off on a non-stop nail-biting journey where Todd realizes fairly quickly that everything he's been told about himself and his world is a lie.

Oh my God, I love this dog. Anyone who has read this book, please please please tell me that nothing happens to him. (Shoot. I know something bad is going to happen to him. Which is why I am afraid to keep listening.)

And last, but definitely not least:

Sex & Violence by Carrie Mesrobian.

This novel was one of the finalists for the Morris, (the award given to best YA debut novel), and deservedly so. I finished reading it a few weeks ago and I still can't stop thinking about it. It's the main character Evan--how real and tormented and complex and floundery he is, but it's also the world, this small town in Minnesota, a lake with an island that no one is allowed to visit, and the group of kids that become Evan's first friends.

If you've heard about this book, what you've probably heard about is the edgy topic at the core: the um, sex and violence. It's true. The book is edgy and dark and kind of in your face about it. When we meet Evan, he's settling into yet another school (his single dad--who reminds me of the single dad in September Girls, another great book--moves around a lot, and so Evan never gets to stay in any place too long.) Evan's coping mechanism is to not get too close to anyone, unless you count hooking up with a string of  "easy" girls.

This strategy backfires in a big way when Evan is beaten up by a conquest's ex-boyfriend, beaten up so badly he ends up in the hospital. His dad takes him back to Minnesota, the dad's childhood home, to recuperate, and it is a long period of recuperation for Evan--grappling with a physical recovery and post traumatic stress, but also struggling with guilt and the role he may have played in the events leading up to his attack. There's more here too about father and son relationships, and relationships between men and women, and the true consequences of violence and of sex that may make some readers uncomfortable, but made me so very grateful that a book like this exists to ask the questions.

Highly recommend.

Writer's Block Knocks Me Down. But I Get Up Again.

I didn't used to believe in Writer's Block. I was doing a book talk somewhere or a school visit and during the Q and A a person asked me what I did to combat Writer's Block and I said, with a straight face and totally meaning it, that I did not believe in it. Then, I probably laughed. Ha ha. Writer's Block. Pshaw. Never happened to me before. Unless you count a few false stops and starts. And those weren't such a big deal.

Anyway, I knew the solution to slow/bad writing days: keep writing.

And then I came down with the affliction. Yes, Virginia, I am here to tell you that Writer's Block is real and I have been suffering from it, acutely, for the past six months.

The past six months I have also been promoting the heck out of my first book. Coincidence? Probably not.

Here's what my writing life was like BEFORE I had a book on the bookstore shelves:

• I wrote, nearly every day, 1500 words, when I was writing a first draft, or a chapter or two, when I was revising. 
• The majority of those days I had a hard time sitting down and beginning, opening my file, and getting to work. 
• The majority of those days I doubted what I was doing. I realized almost at the same time that the words were spilling out of my head and onto the page that they were kind of sucky but I told myself that I would try to fix them later. 
• I worried as I was writing a book that I would never finish and if I did ever finish, no one would ever read it. 
• Some days I felt like my words were glorious and brilliant and hilarious and heartbreaking. It was easy to slip into my story. The empty page would magically transform into a dark pool and I would fall under the surface and disappear from myself. The story would spool out like it had always been there and I would watch and take dictation. 
• But most days the empty page was an empty page. There was no dark pool. Or there was a dark pool but it was frozen over and I was shuffling around on the surface and slamming an axe at the ice and only chipping up a few words here and there but mostly just chunks of stupid ice and my hands would hurt and I'd want to throw the axe down and kick it.
• Later, when I went back to read over my pages, there would be no difference between the output that came from the lovely dark pool days and from the painful frozen ice days. Which I thought was freaking weird. But whatever. I didn't question it. I had just enough of those dark pool days to keep me slugging through the difficult days. 

I know it was like this for me because I can look over old blog posts--the first two years especially. The posts are a string of wondering and worrying and whining and complaining. Figuring out my process. Absorbing rejections. Making peace, finally, with the idea that I might never be a published writer.

In the meantime I went to writers' conferences and retreats and I heard other writers talking about similar struggles, and the common denominator, the mantra, in so many words, seemed to come down to: Keep writing. Trust the process. 

I believed it even though I hadn't actually seen it work. I trusted the process--trusted that I would get better at writing if I kept at it, trusted that plotholes would work themselves out if I fiddled with them, trusted that if I kept submitting, eventually something would click.

And it worked.

In that very long time between when I finished my "first" book Thin Space, I wrote four other books. I had my mostly bad writing days and my rare good ones. I had my tricks for getting started and sticking with it and checking off goals, and I patted myself on the back that I was getting better, that I knew what I was doing.

Here's what happens now when I write:

It's EXACTLY the same as the list above. It's hard to sit down and begin. The initial words come out sucky. Doubts churn around in my head. But everything is amped up exponentially. Instead of worrying that no one will ever read what I'm working on (which I DO worry about, obsessively) I also worry about future readers comparing this new thing to Thin Space. I imagine meh Goodreads reviews and weirdly jouncing around Amazon ratings. And a whole bunch of other stuff that I have no control over.

I keep writing, but I feel like a fraud. This isn't a frozen pool I'm chipping away at. No, it's a mucky swamp and all I can do is descend into it each day and try not to suffocate.

Writer's Block--at least as I have come to understand it--is not the inability to write--I can always string sentences together, I assure you--it is the inability to fall into that lovely deep dark pool and lose yourself in a story. It's the fear that you've lost whatever it is that you don't even understand you have. It's staring at a blank page and seeing that frozen pool and holding your axe and not having the energy to swing it anymore. It's the terror that you will never see the dark pool again.

But before I depress whoever happens to be reading this (and myself), I want to remind you (and myself!) that I know the solution.

You write.

On the days you want to and on the days you don't. On the good days and on the bad days. You write when you are travelling and when you have a head cold and when you have ten million emails to answer and when your house is a laughable pigsty.

You keep writing. You trust the process.

So that's what I've been doing for the past few months. I wrote and worried and flailed around in the swamp. Until finally I had a few days of chopping ice. And yesterday, for a glorious moment, it happened.

I forgot about twitter and Goodreads ratings and emails and hilariously dirty bathrooms, and the page disappeared. It was only for a little while, but there it was--the dark pool shimmering and gorgeous and right in front of me.

Under the surface was the story, waiting for me to shut up and let go, waiting for me to lose myself so I could find it.

And I did.