November 28, 2008

With the economic downturn, news from the publishing world has been pretty grim this past week. A major publisher has told its acquisitions editors to stop acquiring new manuscripts for the time being. Publishing lists are being slashed. Down-sizing and reshuffling have hit editors too. So, during this Thanksgiving week, is there anything to be thankful for if you’re a writer? YES!

Most Thankful For…

I’ve been writing seriously for 28 years, and there are many things I’ve loved about writing. I’ve been thankful for being able to work at home, make a living at something I love to do, spending my days immersed in words, having a job requiring lots of reading, not having to drive in traffic to my office down the hall, wearing fuzzy slippers to work, not dealing with office bullies, and the list goes on. But the one thing over the years that has been a consistent HUGE asset about the writing life is its flexibility.

Only Pretzels Need Apply

Why has flexibility won the contest for the thing I’m most thankful for about the writing life? Because, like the photo shows, life has a way of twisting itself into a pretzel. Your well-planned life (and those of loved ones) take many unexpected twists and turns. It happens to everyone sooner or later. And the writing life allows you to be flexible as well, so you can keep your career and your sanity both.

Over the years, I’ve needed to be flexible in many areas:

• children, from infancy to adulthood, plus grandchildren now
• moving, from farm to various towns and across the country
• finances, from flush to broke (several cycles of this!)
• health changes, including multiple surgeries, a chronic pain condition, and aging issues

Children: I wrote longhand in doctors’ waiting rooms, bleachers during basketball practice, and while nursing babies. I wrote early morning before toddlers woke up,  while preschoolers watched “Sesame Street,” during school hours, late night waiting for teens on dates, while traveling to see grown children, while grandkids nap, and when I couldn’t sleep during my daughter’s Iraq deployments. Challenges changed every year with the children, but the flexibility of writing let me keep on being an author.

Moving: We lived on a peaceful, isolated Iowa farm when I started writing. Moving to town was a shock, both in the noise level and dealing with neighbors and neighbors’ kids. Later, moving across country to be near kids and grandkids meant living in an apartment for several years, and learning to write in the middle of the night because I had two teenage girls living above me who had reverted to infancy and had their days and nights turned around. But my office was open all hours, so during those years I could continue being an author.

Finances: For various reasons (more kids, surgeries, single parenting years) there were times when the money coming in was less than the money needing to go out. Flexibility with the writing life counted there too. Some years I took on more writing than I “comfortably” wanted to do, including articles for online publications and work-for-hire series writing. I also said “yes” to more school visits per year than I ever hope to do again. Was it fun working those 60-hour weeks? No, but it turned the cash flow from red to black. A traditional employer doesn’t let you decide when you’re going to work overtime and when you’re not. Writing does.

Health Changes: Starting in my twenties, when the kids were small, I had more than a dozen total surgeries on my neck, face and jaw, ending with nerve damage and a chronic pain condition that saps a lot of energy. For many years, I could not have held down a traditional job. Even today, I need the flexibility of working when I feel well, whether it’s in the middle of the night or on Saturday or holidays. Writing has allowed me to keep my job when sick. Yes, I might write for three hours in the middle of the night, but later in the day when I fold up, I can take a long nap. It’s a rare employer who allows a two-hour nap mid-day.

Turning Pain into Gain

People ask why I wrote the book for writers, Writer’s First Aid: Getting Organized, Getting Inspired, and Sticking to It. I realized today that it could also be subtitled “how to stay flexible in order to keep writing.” My writing students weren’t abandoning their writing dreams because they couldn’t learn to plot or punctuate dialogue. They were quitting because of day jobs, divorces, caring for babies/kids/aging parents, and other life issues. Writing allows you to be flexible in all these life situations.

And don’t forget: surviving life’s pretzel times always give you something to write about!

November 26, 2008

I won’t be commenting on my NaNoWriMo status until next Monday when it’s officially over, but I’ve received a few emails from NaNo people who are writing their first novels. As the month draws to a close, they’ve realized with horror that December is coming–with revisions!

“What do I do with this mess?” I was asked. Your rambling rough draft needs to be reworked, but where do you start? “Is there a checklist somewhere I can follow?” another writer asked. I came across such a checklist last week in James Cross Giblin’s The Giblin Guide to Writing Children’s Books.

Jim Giblin spent 30 years as a children’s book editor and publisher (the last 22 as Editor-in-Chief and Publisher at Clarion Books.) He has also written 25+ highly acclaimed books of his own. In his book for writers, the sixth chapter lays it all out for you: “Common Failings in Juvenile Fiction–and How to Correct Them.”

The chapter talks about ten different things to look for, both the problems to spot and how to fix them. The topics to revise range from dull openings and unvarying mood to holes in the plot, many dialogue issues, and weak entrances/exits. If you take your messy rough draft and apply Giblin’s 10-point checklist for fiction, you’ll have an organized and methodical way to tackle each area.

Yesterday I also read a great blog article on what to do if your scene seems trivial (besides giving it the ax, that is.) I found help here with a chapter of my own that had some sagging scenes. It’s called “Away with the Trivial Scene.”

We all have favorite ways to create rough drafts, and we all revise differently as well. What ways work best for you when tackling a first revision?

November 24, 2008

I love writers’ conferences, but let’s face it. They’re expensive: the travel (often including plane tickets, shuttles), hotel rooms, and food. (Plus child care, if you have small children.) Even if money isn’t an issue, you might not be physically able to handle a conference away from home.

Have I got great news for you!

If you don’t delay, you can sign up to attend the week-long Muse Online Writers Conference in 2009 for FREE. The conference isn’t until October 14-18, but I encourage you to sign up now. I waited too long last year, and it was full when I tried to register.

Lea Schizas and Carolyn Howard-Johnson are co-founders of the Muse Online Writer’s Conference. They wanted to create a FREE conference, designed to help writers get together to mingle and network with some of the professionals in this business. Their first conference was in 2006, with nearly 1,300 attendees from around the world.

You attend from the comfort of your own home. No need to worry about conference clothes, finding a sitter for the kids or coming up with the extra money to travel. Just settle in at your computer and enjoy.

The conference is geared to anyone, from mystery, poetry, and children’s writing, to romance, suspense, and nonfiction. They also have workshops that are specifically geared for promotion, writing media releases, scheduling, making time to write, handling rejections, and more.

This free conference also allows attendees to get to know some of their favorite authors by chatting with them either during their scheduled real time chats or all week in their private forum.

Next year’s The Muse Online Writers Conference will be held October 12 - 18, 2009. Remember, it’s one week of FREE workshops and FREE chats with their presenters, along with FREE handouts to be given out before the conference begins so everyone can read and begin preparing their questions for the presenters.

For more information, check out these links that tell about last month’s conference. This is what could be available to you next October for free-if you act now.

*Seven pages of presenters for the 2008 October conference

*The week’s worth of workshops in 2008

*Here’s the page where you find the yahoo registration link:

The deadline to register is August 1, 2009, but I urge you not to wait to register. I waited last year, and it was full. I expect this year it will fill up even faster. I’m hoping to encourage my critique group to “attend” this conference with me.

(After you register, you will get a free sample copy of Lea Schizas’ Monthly Links Newsletter.)

November 21, 2008

The third week of NaNoWriMo is generally filled with doubts-about your ability as a writer, about the work in progress, about whether you should even be a writer at all! We were warned in an email not to jump ship or switch to another project that looked more promising. (In the middle of a rough draft, almost any other project looks more enticing than what you’re working on.) Was my own NaNoWriMo Week Three filled with doubts? Plenty of them!

Heather Sellers talks about doubt in her wonderful book Page after Page: Discover the confidence & passion you need to start writing & keep writing (no matter what!) It says, “Are you a fool? Should you really be taking four hours away from your family on the weekends in order to do this selfish writing thing? What is the point of all this writing? Why do it at all? Do you suck horribly? Can you write? You will never know the answers. Every single writer I know has either some doubt or enormous paralyzing doubt.“

Did I handle the doubts in a grown-up, professional way this week? Not really. I tried various things to coerce myself to just get the words down. One day I bribed myself with leftover biscuits and gravy if I would finish a chapter. Another day I convinced myself I was too sleepy to write, so I lay down for a snooze and just before dropping off, got a good idea for a way to fix the plot problem. I skipped the nap and wrote. One particularly bad writing day took some big bribes. I wrote for 45 minutes, then allowed myself 45 minutes of a movie set in Scotland (then writing, then watching, until both were finished.) A couple days, though, the writing flowed well, and no bribes were required at all. (Which is good, as I’ve gained five pounds this month while bribing myself. Could be that I need to use food less frequently as a reward!)

Every writer I asked-including a much-published author whose book was on the NY Times bestseller list for a year-feels the same way in the middle of a first draft. All writers question their calling, or the boring plot, or their shallow characters, or the worn-out theme they see unfolding before them day after day. You feel like a fraud; you’re sure that this time the horrible truth will come out: you can’t write!

What do you do? One prolific writer said he had to tell himself during the writing of every single book: Your feelings about this work-in-progress are just emotions. Feelings are not reality. And like many of us, he found when he later read his draft, he couldn’t tell the days he felt inspired from the days his feelings screamed at him to quit.

Heather Sellers also made this key point in her book: “There have now been many studies of elite performers-concert violinists, chess grand masters, professional ice-skaters, mathematicians, and so forth-and the biggest difference researchers find between them and lesser performers is the amount of deliberate practice they’ve accumulated. The most important talent might be the talent for practice itself.” The same studies show that performers at the top of their field-any field-hate practicing and must deal with doubts as much as anyone else. They simply practice anyway.

I remind myself that all this writing practice during NaNoWriMo has to be making me a better writer. I just need to keep on keeping on for ten more days! I will carry that thought into the final ten days of NaNoWriMo to slay the doubts that dare to rear their ugly heads.

Do you have special ways of dealing with writing doubts? If so, please share!

November 19, 2008

For you, what is the hardest part of writing? Getting started? Making time? Finding ideas, or maybe dealing with rejection?

Perhaps the hardest part is the endless waiting that goes with this profession. You wait for word from a critique partner, then an editor or agent. When a book comes out, you wait for reviews and reader reaction and sales figures.

The question isn’t whether you will have to wait during the publishing process. You will. It’s a fact, no matter who you are. The question is how you will wait. Waiting involves more than entertaining yourself (with blogging, reading, watching movies, talking on the phone, or eating out) to make the time pass with less stress.

Ingredients of Waiting

If you want to survive in this thing we call the writing life, your waiting has to be different. While it’s a difficult skill to learn, you need to wait patiently, productively, and expectantly. Here’s what Webster’s has to say…so think about these traits in connection to your writing life.

Patiently: bearing pains, suffering, and trials without complaint; manifesting forbearance under provocation or strain; not hasty or impetuous; steadfast despite opposition, difficulty, or adversity.

Productively: having the quality or power of producing, especially in abundance; yielding results; continuing to be used in the formation of new words or constructions.

Expectantly: looking forward to something with a high degree of certainty; usually involves the idea of preparing or envisioning; much more than wishful thinking

Honest Self-Assessment

Is that how you wait to hear from an agent or editor? Are you uncomplaining (to yourself, your critique group, your family, your blog readers)? Are you steadfast, not making hasty decisions (like sending angry emails or posting nasty comments in discussion groups)? Do you show forbearance under the strain? Then you wait patiently.

Do you work on other projects while you wait? Do you continue to study and go to your critique group? Do you refuse to sit and not write until you hear the fate of your current manuscript? Do you focus on the current work-in-progress, giving it your undivided attention? Then you wait productively.

Do you have a clear vision of where you want to be as a writer five years from now? A year? A month? Do you work hard and work consistently on your craft, expecting to improve steadily over time? Even while you wait, are you preparing yourself physically and mentally to be the writer you’ve always wanted to be? Then you wait expectantly.

Be a Professional

Wannabe writers complain when editors and agents don’t respond within a week. Wannabe writers won’t write another word until they sell their current manuscript. Wannabe writers continually tell themselves and others that the odds are terrible and they’ll never sell anything.

Professional writers don’t like waiting either-nor do they always like the answer that comes. But they don’t waste the waiting time. They use it to write and grow and move ahead.

Waiting well is a skill you can acquire. You (and everyone in your environment) will be happier if you learn this skill. Don’t let waiting times-no matter how long they drag on-cause a setback in your writing.

If waiting well is a problem for you, don’t just read this post, agree mentally, and move on with your day. Stop and make a list of specific changes you can make to wait patiently, productively, and expectantly. Then incorporate those changes into your daily writing life.

Be steadfast and don’t complain. Continue to work. Expect and prepare for success. When it comes, it will have been worth the wait.

November 17, 2008

A phone call came yesterday that I’d been waiting for all year.

Was it an editor, saying they were buying my new series? Was it an award committee saying my book had made the short list?

No, it was my middle daughter returning from her second year-long deployment in Iraq. She said the magic words, “Mom, it’s Laurie. I’m on American soil!” They had flown home a good ten days before we expected it, and the thrill was indescribable.

Seasons in a Writing Life

Later in the day I was thinking about the seasons of her life I’d written through. Laurie was there at the very beginning! I was at the doctor’s office, pregnant with her, when I first read an advertisement for a correspondence course from the Institute of Children’s Literature. Laurie was ten days old when I took their Aptitude Test.

I took the course, finishing before Laurie turned one. Three of those lessons eventually sold during her diaper years, thus starting my writing career. I sold my first book when she was two, the potty training era. Later I wrote books while waiting for Laurie at basketball practice or cross country meets. In high school, I couldn’t sleep till she got home, so I wrote books late at night while others in the family slept.

Writing-or more specifically, concentrating-was harder when she was a teen. Anyone with teens-even responsible ones-knows how hard it is when they’re old enough to make their own decisions. You sometimes worry about their choice of friends, activities or life work.

Laurie’s decision to join the military (first a medical unit and then military police) was the scariest, whether being deployed overseas or working in the aftermath of Katrina or doing border patrol at night. Sometimes I have longed for the days when I thought concentrating on writing was difficult because of teething or the Terrible Twos. And yet, my pride in her is immense. (Not to mention my awe. I avoid, if at all possible, doing anything scary!)

Combing Writing with Family Life

If you love your kids, you never stop being a parent. If you’re a parent and a writer, you’ll always search for ways to combine the roles effectively.

Katherine Paterson said in A Sense of Wonder: “Success might have come sooner if I’d had a room of my own and fewer children, but I doubt it. For as I look at my writing, it seems to me that the very persons who took away my time and space are the ones who have given me something to say.” How very true!

Twenty-nine years ago in a tiny hospital, we welcomed Laurie’s delivery into the world with great joy. Now her family welcomes her home with (if possible) even greater joy and gratitude to God for her delivery from harm’s way. We love you, Laurie!

November 14, 2008

Although Week Two on NaNoWriMo is generally more difficult, I found it much easier than last week. Both computers functioned without a hitch, so other than residual pains in the neck (literally), it was a smooth week. My sleep cycles are still haphazard, leftover from the marathon computer-fixing weekend, so most days I was awake before 3:30 a.m.

Since I had committed to writing my NaNo words first each day, I have finished my writing before breakfast all week. Talk about a high! After writing 2,700 new words this morning, breakfast was fun. At 6:30 I dawdled with muffins and a new Charles Todd English mystery, while most of the world was still asleep. (Of course, I’m asleep by 8 p.m. these days, which makes me even more of a party pooper than usual. I’m hoping to correct that in Week Three.) As of this moment, I have logged in 22,692 words for November.

Part of NaNoWriMo’s encouragement comes through email letters from veteran writers during the week. I want to share excerpts from two such letters below. These are words of writing wisdom useful for your entire writing life.

First is an excerpt from Philip Pullman. (Pullman is the award-winning author of the His Dark Materials trilogy. You can learn more about him and his work at his website.)

“The second thing you need to remember is that if you want to finish this journey you’ve begun, you have to keep going. One of the hardest things to do with a novel is to stop writing it for a while, do something else, fulfill this engagement or that commitment or whatever, and pick it up exactly where you left it and carry on as if nothing had happened. You will have changed; the story will have drifted off course, like a ship when the engines stop and there’s no anchor to keep it in place; when you get back on board, you have to warm the engines up, start the great bulk of the ship moving through the water again, work out your position, check the compass bearing, steer carefully to bring it back on track … all that energy wasted on doing something that wouldn’t have been necessary at all if you’d just kept going!

“But if you’re not a lover of stories, a passionate and devoted reader, don’t expect your novel to please many readers…On the other hand, if you do love reading, if you cannot imagine going on a journey without a book in your pocket or your bag, if you fret and fidget and become uncomfortable if you’re kept away from your reading for too long, if your worst nightmare is to be marooned on a desert island without a book—then take heart: there are plenty of us like you. And if you tell a story that really engages you, we are all potential readers.”

Second is an excerpt from Katherine Paterson. Katherine is the author of Bridge to Terabithia, Jacob Have I Loved, and The Great Gilly Hopkins. You can learn more about her and her work by visiting her website.

“I live in Barre, Vermont which calls itself the “Granite Capital of the World.” Outside our town are enormous quarries, so when I speak in local schools every child has a mental picture of a granite quarry. “You know how hard it is to get granite out of the quarry,” I say. “You have to carefully score the rock and put the explosive in to make the great granite block break loose from the face of the stone. Then you have to attach the block to the chains so that the cranes can lift it slowly out of the hole and put it on the waiting truck. That’s the first draft. It’s hard, dangerous work, and when you’ve finished, all you’ve really got is a block of stone. But now you have something to work on. Now you can take your block down to the shed to carve and polish it and turn it into something of beauty. That’s revision.”

Where do you find YOUR encouragement to keep on keepin’ on?

November 12, 2008

When you try to settle down to write, are you plagued by time pressure, distractions, interruptions, conflicts with your spouse or kids, or other agitating problems? What if I told you that you could cure each writing problem with something called “mindfulness”?

On my computer is a clipping from a magazine. I wish I had noted the source so I could give the writer credit. But the quote says:

“Mindfulness is …the practice of learning to pay attention to what is happening to you from moment to moment. To be mindful, you must slow down, do one activity at a time and bring your full awareness to both the activity at hand and to your inner experience of it. Mindfulness provides a potentially powerful antidote to the common causes of daily stress, such as time pressure, distraction, agitation and interpersonal conflicts.”

Basically, mindfulness is the exact opposite of multi-tasking, the skill most of us survive with and are secretly (or not so secretly) proud of. We women especially are smug about our ability to juggle ten balls in the air at one time while our male counterparts move methodically from one box to the next, and never the boxes do overlap. I hate to admit it, but as far as writing goes, men may have something on us there.

Mindfulness is really another word for focus, the ability to place your mental energies in one place, not scattered to the four winds. Mindfulness is like using a magnifying glass to focus a sunbeam onto the pavement. Scattered, the sunlight is pleasantly warm. Focused? You can fry an egg.

My “to do” list grew last week while I dealt with computer problems and wrote for NaNoWriMo. So when I made out my work schedule this week, it was a bit overwhelming. But today I read and re-read that quote about mindfulness, then decided to concentrate on one item at a time.

I focused, like a horse wearing blinders, and it worked. Yes, during the first half hour, I had to continually bring my mind back to the task. But after that, my multi-tasking brain got the hint and settled down.

What kinds of tricks do YOU use to be “mindful”?

November 10, 2008

Most of us, especially those who write for children, would say that we hope our writing is inspiring. We want our readers to see the choices open to them—whether in nonfiction or through the lives of fictional heroes—and be inspired to make choices that will bring good results in their lives.

But what exactly constitutes inspirational writing that has the potential to change lives? According to an excellent article called “Keep It Real: Writing to Inspire” in the brand new Magazine Markets for Children’s Writers 2009, it says:

“Fiction and nonfiction—whether faith-based or not—help young readers to overcome difficulties; to grow in beliefs, hope, or self-confidence; examine their place in the world; and carve their futures or build their morality.”

That’s a great definition. Early in my career I sold 30+ short stories and articles for children, both to general interest magazines and faith-based magazines. Later, when I turned to writing books, the split was about 50/50 as well, with 18 books for faith-based publishers like Zondervan and Thomas Nelson plus 16 books for general interest publishers like Atheneum/Simon & Schuster. My intent in all the stories and articles and books was to inspire hope and change and courage, to enable readers to use whatever they read to help make good choices in their lives. In other words, to inspire.

Yes, you have to be careful not to preach or be didactic. None of this “and the moral of the story is” or little miniature preachers being moralistic and annoying. Let’s be honest—we don’t like real people like that. Everyday issues being handled by real people usually work best. And as one editor in the article said, “If you have to spell out the point of the story for the reader, it probably isn’t well written and likely wouldn’t be accepted for publication.”

I used to pre-read or at least skim the books my kids brought home from school. Some of it I loved—some of it appalled me. I feel the same way when I see what’s available to my granddaughter. Whether something is inspiring or not usually depends on how the subject matter is treated, not the subject itself. (e.g. Humor can be degrading, or it can teach a life lesson on how to lighten up and laugh at yourself!)

Whenever you write—for children or adults, fiction or nonfiction—you have a chance to either elevate the reader (or bring him lower.) I hope you will always make it your aim to raise the bar—to write to inspire.

November 7, 2008

According to Chris Baty, the founder of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), Week One tended to include giddy feelings of anticipation. (Was this going to be the best book I ever wrote?) Shortly into the week, he cautioned that I might be plagued with an equally compelling, but opposite, question. (Was this going to be worst book ever written?)

My week, unfortunately, was plagued by a third question… “Can I write the chapters on four hours or less sleep per night?”

Before the first week of NaNo, I had alerted all family members that I would be going to bed early, getting up early to run, eating healthy, and then heading to the computer. Did that happen? No.

Some editing work I do requires an Internet connection. The day before NaNo started, the Internet on both computers went bad. Sluggish doesn’t describe it. It took four HOURS to load my blog on Friday. (I did reading and NaNo writing on another computer while waiting.)

I talked to DSL/phone tech guys, Microsoft tech guys, anti-virus tech guys… It took nearly twenty hours to clean out both computers, re-install programs, update software, and change from Internet Explorer to Foxfire. I managed to write in fits and spurts, but was denied the pleasure for several days of being able to log on and record my numbers at the NaNo site or read any badly needed pep talks from the message boards.

I had planned to write 2,000 words each day M-Sat, and then rest on Sundays. There are five Sundays in November! We’ve had one so far. Was it restful? Not so you’d notice.

I worked on Internet problems from 4 a.m. till we left at 7 a.m. to go teach Sunday school to the basic trainees. At noon we went to the air show, where I dozed in my lounge chair despite the ear-splitting noise of the Blue Angels and Tora! Tora! Tora! directly overhead. That night, hubby ate his frozen pizza while I again tackled the Internet issues till midnight.

Monday morning I summoned everything I could remember that I’d ever read about persistence and not giving up. Was I tempted? You bet. Was I sorry I’d announced in the blog that I was doing NaNoWriMo this year? YES. But I was also glad because I knew I’d keep going rather than face quitting publicly. The power of accountability! I was thankful that this year I had created a novel outline. Even when I am creatively brain dead, I can read an outline.

Did I get any writing done this week? YES—11,674 words. Was it the fun, creative, restful, energetic week I had pictured? NO. But the writing got done. And from what I can tell, it’s not bad for a rough draft.

As Chris Baty warned us, we aren’t supposed to judge our NaNo novel by the “sparkle of our prose” or the “rock-solid genius” of our plot. No, we simply write, getting the words down on the screen, leaving the judgmental inner editor snoozing on the sidelines.

The computers are now both functioning. The kinks in my neck are working out. I’m looking forward to Week Two.

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