RUMP is going to Thailand!

I just received awesome news from my agent that we've sold RUMP to the Thai publisher Tatthata!

 

Tatthata also publishes THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS SERIES  by  Cassandra Clare,  A TALE DARK & GRIMM  and IN A GLASS GRIMMLY by  Adam Gidwitz 

Super cool! I ordered Thai food last night in celebration, and I'll be happy to celebrate in a similar fashion if we sell in any other countries. YUM!

WIFYR: THE Conference to attend this summer!

If you are looking for a writing conference to attend this summer, I highly recommend Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers (WIFYR) in Sandy, Utah. The conference runs June 18-22. Not only is the conference incredible, but the Utah writing community is amazing. I met most of my critique partners at WIFYR. Seriously something in the water there people. Great workshops with amazing instructors, fabulous speakers and panels. You can attend either the full day sessions or just the afternoon. Both are worthwhile. Check it out!

What Potty Training Has Taught Me About Writing Books

I tried to potty train my toddler this month. Tried being the operative word. It did not go well.

Let me just say that this task was not taken on with any lack of experience or understanding. I potty trained my older two at the exact same age using the exact same methods, and wasn't I proud that I potty trained them in a day and we were pretty much accident free in a week? I patted myself on the back. Good mom, Liesl! Give yourself a treat! All those other moms who whine and moan about how they simply can't get their kids to go on the pot are just pathetic losers who don't know how to take charge of their kid's crap. YOU know what you're doing!

Oh, how fate loves to laugh in our face! Now I got THIS kid, who is hilarious and truly one of the highlights of my life, but learning to control his bodily functions is not one of his super-powers. He would pee in the toilet whenever I insisted that he go, but if left to his own devices, he'd simply let the pee run down his legs and go about his business without a second thought.

"Topher, did you pee your pants?"

"No."

"Yes you did. I can see you peed your pants."

"I didn't mom!"

I'll condense the following month. Pee, pee, pee, poop, pee, pee, etc. I am DONE. We'll revisit in the summer.

And now you are asking, what on earth does this have to do with writing? I will tell you.

Our stories can be like children. We love them with equal love, and yet, they are all so different. They give us different joys and different sorrows and different frustrations. You can't approach the next story the same way you did your last, because it will either be boring (a great tragedy, whether in people or books) totally messed up, or it will pee all over you and then LIE (which may be more exciting than boring, but nevertheless undesirable.)

Some people think that once you've written a book or two, you know what you're doing now. Your next book won't give you fits of frustration and the words will flow like milk and honey. You won't encounter plot problems in chapter ten, because you know how to avoid the pitfalls that led you there with your first book. But the truth is, every book, just like every child, will at some point stump you and make you scream, "Why in the world did I ever think I could do this?" If not with the plot, then maybe with some character motivations, or the voice, or point-of-view.

And in some ways, the second book can be even more scary and frustrating. It's amazing how quickly we forget the pains of our past, and so when we struggle with the next book, it's easy to think "I don't remember this. Something's wrong because I didn't have this problem before." And maybe that's true and maybe it isn't, but the effect is just as disastrous. You wonder if you only had one book in you, or if the first was just a fluke, and really you are not a very good writer after all, or maybe this story is just a dud. In my colorful imagination, my first book was a breeze and never gave me any fits or worries. My husband has had to remind me again and again that I did struggle with my first book, that I seriously questioned if I could really do it, and I even have the blog post to prove it. And then I read posts like this from Sara Zarr, and I breath a sigh of relief, because if she can struggle and write as well as she does, then there's still hope for the rest of us.

Anyway, I've come to realize that just because my kid is peeing all over the floor does not mean I'm a failure as a mother, and just because my current WIP is still a little rough, does not mean it can't be every bit as good, and possibly even better, than my first. It simply means I'm working with something altogether different, and I need to find the right methods and tools to bring out its best qualities. This can be difficult, and will take time, patience, and maybe even some radical change. I'll make mistakes. I'll probably make a grand mess, but eventually it will come together.

In the meantime...we're back in diapers, friends.
 

On Seeking Direction and Advice

Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don't much care where.
The Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.
Alice: …so long as I get somewhere.
The Cat: Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.

-Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland

This post is inspired by a friend of mine, who recently told me that she took a new project to a conference for critique. This project was unfinished, in the very early stages, yet she was very excited about it. However, after the conference she lost her passion and set it aside. This was my response. 

"Why on earth did you take an unfinished project to be critiqued!" I screamed into cyberspace.

No seriously. I can't think of a better way to kill the passion of a project than to show it to people too soon. We don't bring out our babies while growing in the womb so people can tell us they're ugly and deformed and how to change them. Likewise our stories need a womb, a small and protective place for those earliest stages of growth and development. That womb is your own imagination.

Like an infant, there has to be a period where that story is just mine, shielded from the harshness of the outside world and all its varying methods and opinions. I go so far as to not even tell anyone what my current WIP is about, not because I'm afraid of people stealing my ideas, but because I'm afraid of killing the magic of it all. I need that magic to swirl inside of me, to expand and grow and take form and meaning in my own private world before I share it with anyone else. Because when I share it with others, it's no longer totally mine. I've let other people in and they also start to take ownership and have an effect on the story. You must do this eventually, but do it too soon, and you can harm the story, or even kill it.

Stephen King said it this way in his memoir On Writing: 

"Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it."

Now, I will say that this isn't a hard and fast rule, of course. It's simply my own rule and I obviously feel strongly about it for several reasons. However, there are some very skilled writers who really do find it helpful to share their work while it's in progress and allow others to help steer them along the way. It probably works fine for those who heavily outline and stick to it, or for those who imagine the story so completely in their imagination, they only need help with the finer details along the way. I'm not much of a planner, and my ideas are certainly not born as fully formed stories, so sharing my work as I draft is totally pointless. Too much changes along the way, and my first drafts are rather wishy-washy and skeletal. The risk I see in sharing too early is that you're not allowing your own instinct to develop how your story should go, but are listening to too many voices and opinions to tell you what to do, the result being a story that could feel somewhat contrived, and possibly lifeless, misleading, or off-key.

I have always thought of writing as an act of faith, and that faith should begin with yourself. Not your critique partners, agent, editor, whoever. You have to develop that faith in your story and your ability to make it grow, and then, when your story has developed a certain amount of shape, you must put faith in the right people to tell you where you took a wrong turn, not necessarily where to go, but at least pointing out where you got off track. When you seek criticism, you must listen especially for what is wrong, certainly take suggestions into consideration, but in the end the answers of where to go must come from you.

In short, it's kind of pointless to stop and ask for directions when you still don't know where you're going. Didn't you listen to the Cheshire Cat? He's mad of course, but we're all mad here. You can't help that.

BIG news for Krista!

It is an amazingly GREAT pleasure to announce that my dear friend and critique partner, Krista Van Dolzer, just signed with literary agent Kate Schafer Testerman of kt literary!

Everybody scream and jump up and down! I did!

I think many of you know Krista already, but if you don't, she's an author to watch, I'm telling you. Her middle-grade novel THE REGENERATED MAN AND ME gave me the chills the first time I read it. I could not put it down! When I finished reading I emailed her right away and said, "This is the one!" Actually I just checked. This is exactly what I said:

"I just finished reading and I can't tell you how excited I am. If someone doesn't pick this up I'm going to scream with anger!"

And I did scream with anger at a few rejections she shared with me, but luckily a couple agents saw the light, and very soon I hope to be announcing her book deal. Krista is now holding an awesome contest in celebration of her success, so hop on over to her blog!

Congratulations Krista! No one deserves this more than you!

The Joys of Copy Edits

I got copy edits for RUMP last week. Cool, huh? I thought so, until I opened the manuscript and stared at the first edit for about twenty minutes, completely baffled. The edit was for one word, which I happened to repeat twice in the first paragraph, which caused the copy editor to change the word to something else in order to avoid repetition, which caused my editor to change it back because she thought the change sounded awkward, but maybe I could come up with a solution, but any solution I came up with also sounded awkward, or caused me to repeat other words, and suddenly I felt like shouting naughty words. Lots of them. 

So I sent an email to my editor and she ended up calling me and we talked for fifteen minutes about this one word. In the end she said, "You can probably just move on and come back to this."(Translation: You're over-analyzing and you're driving me crazy.)

And so I moved on, but I've since found plenty of other words to stress over, and I've decided that copy editing is not my favorite. I think my favorite part of writing lies somewhere in the middle, somewhere in the revision process where I start to see everything really come together, and I have the exhilarating feeling the the book is going to be something wonderful. Copy edits grind that joy to black dust and make you inhale it.

However, I have to appreciate the skill of my copy editor, who has picked out the slightest inconsistencies, like "Five pages ago you said there were two hens, three pages ago you killed one, but now you still say there are two hens." Bless copy editors! I know some fifth grader would call me out on that! No joke!

Your Book's Reviews: To Read or Not to Read

It's still over a year before RUMP will be released, but that hasn't stopped me from thinking ahead about what all that entails, from school visits to online presence to how my book will be received by readers. The subject of authors reading their own reviews is something I have thought about a lot.

Opinions vary widely in the writing community. Some authors argue it's important to develop a tough skin and dive into those reviews and gain insight from both the positive and negative reviews, while other authors choose to avoid their reviews like the plague, not just for the sake of their ego, but their craft as well. 

So where does my opinion fall? For now I lean more toward the camp of not reading reviews of my own book, particularly on social sites like Goodreads. Why? For one, I don't need the neurosis. I can't think of anything more maddening, not to mention pointless, than searching for criticism on something I can't change. The book is published, finished. Even if a reviewer has a valid point, or a good idea about what could have made the book better, I can't make it better. So why torture myself?

Would the negative reviews make me a better writer with future books? Doubtful. There isn't a book under the sun that hasn't fallen under condemnation. Try and find one. You will fail, especially with the advent of Goodreads.* Most of the negative reviews I read are so arbitrary, not to mention vague in their reasoning, any author would be hard-pressed to glean good advice from them.

This isn't to say that I can't take criticism. I can and I do. In fact, I actively seek it out. But choosing whom you will take criticism from is just as important, if not more important, as being open to criticism in the first place. I can't take into account everyone's opinion while writing a book. That's like trying to take all the advice out there on how to raise a perfect child; in the end you will have pleased no one, and in the process you will drive yourself insane, ruin your child, and slaughter your book. Talk about counterproductive.

I have surrounded myself with smart and experienced people whose advice I trust, people who have a solid foundation in literature, who understand my particular genre, who know how to articulate what isn't working and why, and perhaps most importantly, people who believe in my ability as a writer. I open myself up to their feedback and criticism and I do my best to improve my work based on the opinions that resonate with my vision. My goal isn't to please everyone. My goal is to simply say what I mean to say in the clearest, more engaging way possible.

I'm at the tail-end of the editorial process for RUMP. We're doing all we can to make it fun and wonderful and perfect, but when it's done, it's done. We'll release RUMP into the world like a bunch of balloons (preferably with balloons.) Hopefully he'll float far and wide into the hands of eager readers. I can't say that I'll never read any reviews or hear anyone's opinion; it probably can't be entirely avoided, but I don't think I'll actively seek them out. I'll love the people who love RUMP and I hope they'll let me know all the things they love about the story, but for those who don't like him, forgive me if I ignore you. You might as well tell me my kids are ugly.**

How about you? Do you/Will you/Would you read your own reviews? Why or why not? 

*I think Goodreads is great, really. I use it and love it and think it's a wonderful tool for readers. I just think a lot of the reviews to be found there are poison for authors. 
**My kids are freakin' gorgeous!