A very well-known author told me the other day that the “new normal” is three novels a year.  She didn’t mean that the new normal is to read three novels a year.  No, no, it was to write three novels a year.

As a person who took fifty years to write her first novel, the idea of three in one year made my head spin.  This, from a woman whose motto is “write like your fingers are on fire.”  Let me be the first to say, that’s not at all what I meant.

Write fast, yes.  I especially write fast when I’m trying to get a story down.  Otherwise I tend to muck about over every sentence, toying with them until they’re “perfect”—whatever that means.  In that regard, writing fast allows me to get out of my own way. 

Writing fast also gets me down the road, it gets me to write long and wide so that I have the rough material to wade into and work with.  (Okay, I admit it, sometimes I write myself right off the cliff.  It happens.)

But let me be the first to say that for me writing fast is not the same as writing good.  I think of all that fast writing as the dough.  Once it’s in the bowl, it needs to be poked and prodded and rolled and then left alone to rise.  

I’m not saying this to knock those of you who have the ability to write three novels in a year.  WOW.  I’m in awe of you.  And I certainly understand the financial pressure to produce.   I also know that some of you speedy types are doing excellent work—speed doesn’t necessarily mean lesser work.  Not at all. 

However, for me, one of the pleasures of writing a novel is the world that I get to inhabit, the world of the novel itself.  I rather like to wallow around in it.  I enjoy getting to know the characters, even the villains, and I love the fictional places—largely because they tend to be places I don’t normally knock about in: swamps and sandbars.  I’m not always ready to abandon that, even when my editor is tugging on my sleeve. 

I don’t think I could write three novels in a year, even if I had to.  Maybe?  So far, I haven’t been pressed to go there, which makes me feel lucky.  But I guess I want to know how you do it—those of you who write so fast that your fingers must be smoking?  What does it take to get those novels written?  What is lost, if anything?  And what is gained?

Inquiring minds want to know…   

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 Where the Wild Things Are is a perfect picture book. There aren’t many. Not only is it perfect, but it was revolutionary—and still is. It’s not too much to say this one book changed the world of children’s literature and even our idea of children. I have traveled to see Sendak’s original art and marveled over his genius, his line, his characters, and his imagination. Though printing and production have vastly improved, it is and always will be different and better to see the work itself, the texture of the paper, and to know that a real person created the art you see before you.

Maurice Sendak was one of my heroes. I met him twice, only long enough to shake his hand and tell him how much I admired him and his work, but I know people who knew him well, and he had many friends who loved him dearly. What was in Sendak’s work, though, made me feel deeply connected, and sometimes I felt as if I did know him.  Those Wild Things he claimed derived from his relatives? I had those relatives too.

What he loved he loved passionately, and he was not afraid of putting those passions on the page. He had great courage. He was honest. I can pay him no greater tribute than closing with his own words from that Terry Gross interview.

             “I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and Ilove them more.”

Thank you, Maurice Sendak.

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Coe says, in her wonderful post:

The kind of self-talk that goes on during the fragile stage has so much power over the course of our writing.  Positive self-talk can be inspiring, keeping us motivated as we find our way with a new story. 

But negative self-talk can be debilitating.  It can stop us before we put a word on the page, keeping us in an endless cycle of wanting to write but holding ourselves back, time after time after time.

And that is so true--or at least it is when you're at (or is it on?) that fragile stage.

I know all about fragile stages. I was the klutzy kid who, at 11, stepped on the only loose floorboard in a wooden stage during a dress rehearsal--and fell right through, perfectly in time to the high tumbling notes of Ariel's song from The Tempest.

Oh, how I wish that I had possessed a smart, knowledgeable inner critic at the time! A voice of caution. A voice that might have warned, "Hear that creak? Step away. Fast." Instead I stayed and fidgeted. Made the board creak louder and louder, until the fateful crash.

You may gather from this that I'm all for inner critics.

Coe's right, of course. You can't let the critic loose when you're creating that first, fragile stage. That's a structure you want to get across with quick, light steps, just barely managing to lay the planks down as you go. Pay no attention to the creaking. That's normal.

It will be flimsy, of course. You want it to be. If you nailed it all down it would be secured way too soon. You want it changeable, with moveable parts many of which will need replacing.

But what comes next is the part of writing I love the most. Revision. Which is where I urge you, revive your inner critic. Tame him. Give her tools. Then put that critic to work.

When I have that first clumsy construction done, my inner critic and I can stroll around its edges, studying it, figuring out what fits, what doesn't, and what was very definitely a misstep. I have to train my critic. She can't go crashing all over that fragile stage. But I do need her to raise questions. Does that character belong? Do those two others need to be a single person? Does that motivation work? Is that premise too clever? Too neat? Too slight? What's this really about? Whose story is it? Who should tell it and to whom?

Only my inner critic would dare raise such questions.

My creative self certainly couldn't do this work. She's so tired from having flung floorboards around that she thinks she's done.

So...sure, challenge your critic when the drafty winds are blowing through those loose boards. But crush? Drown? Hmm, I'm not so sure. Put her on a plane, maybe. Send him away on vacation while you play with the puzzle pieces. But when you have a working version, bring that critic back, rested, refreshed, and ready to ask the tough questions.

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My friend and I were writing together in a cute little Paris cafe the other day (which, of course, means we were doing a lot more talking and croissant eating than anything else!), and the conversation turned to our novels-in-progress and why we're both feeling so slumpy about our writing lately.  We're excited about our ideas, but we haven't hit that stage in the writing process where we can see the path to the end.  We're still trying to figure out where we’re going, if our choices will make sense on the page, and if anyone will even want to read these novels when they're finished.  

I call this the "fragile stage."

Oh, the fragile stage... when everything you write is so delicate, when your finger seems to hover over the DELETE key, when your own self-talk can make "That's a good idea!" into "Ugh, that sucks" so fast your head doesn't have time to spin.

The kind of self-talk that goes on during the fragile stage has so much power over the course of our writing.  Positive self-talk can be inspiring, keeping us motivated as we find our way with a new story.  

But negative self-talk can be debilitating.  It can stop us before we put a word on the page, keeping us in an endless cycle of wanting to write but holding ourselves back, time after time after time.

Think about what you tell yourself as you begin a creative project.  Do you ever hear your inner voice say anything like this?

— It's not going to be good, so why bother?

— I know it won't come out the way I see it in my head.

— I've tried writing this story a million times and it's never worked.

— I should have started writing years ago; it's too late now.

— I'm not good enough, and now everybody else will find out.

Without a doubt, a mind like this is not the optimal environment for creativity to flourish!  

For today, try to listen to your self-talk.  When you're facing the blank page and the blinking cursor, listen to what you're telling yourself.  And when you hear the inner critic start to speak up, analyze it, challenge it... crush it! 

As writers, we need to protect the fragile stage — even from ourselves!  All that internal chatter has the power to knock down an idea before it's old enough to walk on its own.  It takes a lot of practice, but we need to find ways to drown out the voice of that inner critic while it's still just a whisper.  

Because we have a lot of writing to do!

~Coe

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I’ve been asked to do a guest blog on writing and dreams. So, being a little efficient and a lot lazy, I thought I’d ask for your help with this project. I plan, of course, to share my own experiences with dreaming in my post, but how much more exciting to add others’ dreamy reports to the mix! 

Okay, I’ll go first: I’ve kept a dream journal for over thirty years, participated in dream groups for a decade, and have always been amazed at the way both dreams and writing can be universal and particular at once. (Folks in my dream group, as in my writing workshops, get as much out of analyzing others' dreams as they do out of looking at their own.) And anyone who's ever woken from a dream with a spoken dialogue in their head, knows how similar the profound, unconscious source of dreams feels to the "suspension of disbelief" or waking dream in which we read and write stories. All of which may explain why so many of my characters have been born from both free writes and dreams. 

John the Baptist is a good example: last year, a short but powerful man with wild dark hair and a nervous, animal energy started visiting my dreams. He was suspicious of civilization and preferred the company of a small red bird he carried close to his heart, over interaction with me or anyone else. But as reclusive as he was, he kept coming back -- it was as if he wanted me to find out where he fit in my personal mythology. I didn’t recognize him as John the Baptist the first time I met him in a dream (I was raised Episcopalian, but have been more Buddhist than High Church since I turned twelve!). Still, I “knew” that’s who he was when I woke, and he has since confirmed his identity in free writes. 

It’s because of this newest dream figure that I recently began a novel about Salomé, the young girl whose dance is supposed to have triggered his execution. My first free writes were with John, however, not the Roman dancer, and it is the shaggy prophet’s peculiar magnetism that keeps me writing, despite the challenge of researching this two-thousand year-old story. Yes, I’m sure my inner “dream director” wants to show me something about myself via this isolated, blundering, strongly intuitive character. I’m equally sure, though, that the Baptist has gifts for all of us. He’s canny and innocent, wary and courageous, and I’ll be a long, sweet time finding out why he’s chosen me. 

How about you?  Who or what have dreams brought to your writing? Ever written about your character's dreams in a book? Ever woken from a dream that HAD to be turned into fiction? Do you enjoy reading dream sequences in others' work? Or do you tend to skip over them to get to the "real stuff?" I'd love to share your thoughts about this...and your dreams!

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Here's a lovely video about how a printed book - and it looks like a book with heft - is made. The link was passed along to me by Tom Birdseye, a fellow advisor at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Thanks, Tom!

Hope everyone reading this enjoys it as much as I did.

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I was happy to read in a magazine a while ago that I'm probably not losing my marbles.

Not all of them, anyway. Those times when I've stood in the middle of a room, thinking, "I'm sure I came in here for a reason, but what was it?"

Turns out, it's nothing to worry about. It's only an "event boundary."

A Time article quotes researcher Gabriel Radvansky of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana: "Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an 'event boundary' in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away."

So the actual physical doorway's to blame! The moment you cross the threshold, your brain shuts the file for the room you've just left and opens a new file for the next room. Goes back to square one. Hits the reset button. Shakes the Etch-a-Sketch.

Anyway, that's essentially what Radvansky claims. And he's got research to back it up.

This got me to thinking about revision. Possibly because that's what I'm doing right now. I think book chapters can be event boundaries as well. As in: Hey, Renzo learns the name of the youngest bird-child here in Chapter 32, but he already knew it back in Chapter 27! How could you possibly have missed that?

Because I crossed an event boundary, okay?

Have you ever read a published book where, say, the protagonist's beloved uncle dies suddenly in Chapter 8, but in Chapter 9, which takes place the following day, she seems to have forgotten all about her crippling grief and is deliriously pursuing a romantic entanglement with the dashing undertaker? l have. Well, not quite that book, but a few just like it. Apparently, the author wrote "Chapter 9," crossed the event boundary, and closed the file on the uncle's tragic demise.

So, while I'm delighted to learn that I haven't completely lost it, I think I might just check the event boundaries in my novel not only for continuity of action and detail, but for echoing chapter-to-chapter emotional resonance as well.

I know, it sounds so obvious. But, like all too many things in life, it's easy to forget.

--Susan Fletcher

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We've all felt that way. And will feel that way again. It's hard to know when to try to create the space that will let the ideas flow. When to do the writer's work that requires a different part of the brain. The rewriting. The PR. The Everything Else.

There is a fascinating new book out, Imagine: How Creativity Works by Johan Lehrer. He covers a lot of territory, including what conditions may help increase creativity. One aspect of the book that really fascinated me was the link between depression and creativity. "People who are successful creators — especially writers — " said Lehrer in an interview on NPR, "are anywhere between 8 and 40 times more likely to suffer from bipolar depression than the general public."

Wow. I've always known that creative people had brains wired differently -- after all, I grew up in a family of photographers who mixed with painters, furniture makers, musicians, and an array of San Francisco bohemians. They were different. More exciting. More likely to be enthusiastic one day, down in the dumps another. But us writers... 8 to 40 times?

Could it be that when we feel flattened out, we just need to wait for our brains to cycle back to some mysterious sort of manic state? That it mostly depends on catching the rhythm of creativity that we are hard-wired for?

Here's the NPR interview with Jonathan Lehrer.

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by Tim Wynne-Jones

I missed the deadline for my blog! Completely forgot it. Sorry, one and all, but I have about the best excuse a writer could ever have: I’m writing. After a seven-month dry spell (see my blog about empty wells from last fall) March roared in like a lion. It didn’t hurt that we’d taken a beautiful house in Salcombe, Devon for the month that provided that most crucial properties for writing: a room of one’s own. Woolf got that one right. The second morning we were there, I woke up at 4:00 and, taking a big shaky, frightened breath, reread the 36 pages of a novel I’d started almost exactly a year ago and not touched since. It was all there; all the passion I’d felt at the time and not been able to find while travelling.

By the time we left Devon on March 30th, I’d written 180 new pages. I was worried about returning to our cramped quarters in London, but there was enough momentum to keep the thing going. Two weeks later, I’m at 350 pages.

I’ve even figured out how to write in coffee shops.

I had always disdained that idea as being a Natalie Goldberg kind of dilettantism, but as long as you know what the scene is you’re writing before you get to the café, and as long as the words are already lining up in your head, the squalling babies and mobile ring tones fade into white noise. The barista even knows my drink of choice!

            But the room.

I had never realized just how unportable my job was. I guess Hemmingway could write in cafes because he travelled light – no adjectives! I couldn’t until I got the thing – the story -- snowballing down the hill to the point where I have to hustle just to keep up with it. Lunching with Philip Pullman in February he said that ideas don’t come to him, they come to his desk. There is truth in that. But it’s good to know the desk can be somewhere else, as long as it’s in a room where all your notes are spread out, a room you don’t have to pack up whenever you leave it, a room of one’s own.    

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Here is "Je Suis Belle," the poems-in-stone by Anne Dykers mentioned in my previous post.  It is on exhibit with other amazing artist books from April 9 to 26, at the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Silver Spring, Md.  www.pyramidatlanticartcenter.org  

~Mary Quattlebaum

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This visitor is a stone-and-handmade-paper display of poems. It was created by a dear poet friend, Anne Dykers, over a period of more than ten years.

Ten years to write the poems (300 pages, finally culled to a few lines on each of about 100 pages). Ten years to learn how to make the paper. Ten years to decide how to share the poems (traditional print book? long strips of paper? stone and paper?). Ten years to learn how to print on handmade paper. Ten years to determine the type and cut of the stone, and more time to find the right craftsman to carve it. Ten years to find the right title, "Je Suis Belle" (I am beautiful), a title that refers to a Rodin sculpture first called "The Rape" and later renamed by the artist.

Ten years.

And now here it is. Calm, weighty, resonant. The work, well served.

~Mary Quattlebaum

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I spent four days in Mount Vernon, WA, last week, speaking to students at a Young Authors Conference; three talks a day, a hundred second- through sixth-graders plus their adult group leaders per talk. This allowed me to gather almost one thousand tiny writing samples, one thousand opening sentences of personal narratives.

 Before we brainstormed, I talked about how we connect to our readers through the emotion of a story. I encouraged kids to write about a memory that held strong emotion and they responded with an emotional rainbow: sad stories about lost or dying pets, or, saddest of all, a dad in jail; the thrill of a trip to Disneyland, making a new friend, getting a new sibling, sailing down a ski slope.

 There were openers that tugged at my heart, like: “One summer day, my dad left for Afghanistan because he was in the Navy.” Or, in a very cramped printing, “The path I’ve gone through is unbearable. But the path only makes me stronger.” I always admire a writer who can put his truth on the page, but I hate that kids have such hard stuff to deal with.

On a lighter note, despite drizzling rain all week, more than 15 percent of these Northwest kids included the sun or a warm day in their opening sentence.

 Here are some of my favorites, with attribution when available.

• It all started with the Batman pajamas.
• Having bloody noses is not the best way to spend a whole summer.
• There was a time, there was a time where everything was perfect in my life.
• “You get the shovel, I have the rake,” said Chuck. “We will meet in the woods.” – Ethan
• “Molly! Look!” I whipped my head around and saw five dorsal fins poking out of the water.
• Chris liked birds. He liked robins, ducks, swans and bluejays.
• It was cold but I still took hold of the K.G.M.I. banner for St. Paddy’s Day. – Maddie
• Over the gleaming river, it seemed that nothing would ever happen that could be bad.
• Me and Grandma was sitting still in a boat fishing. – Tessa
• Rose was lying on the trampoline staring at the blue sky when she heard some giggles. – Lilly
• The rain pounded down on the backs of the weary travelers.
• My name is Larry and I am a tornado watcher.  – Keaton
• The happiest day of my life was when I knew about dinosaurs. The first dino I knew about was triceratops.
• My dad drove up to a house and two people walked out wearing Groucho Marx glasses. I didn’t know they would become my two favorite relatives.
• “No! I don’t want to take a bath,” I yelled.
• “What was the last thing you said to Grandma?” asked Mom.
• “Dad, Dad. No not that. I told you to play a music video, not home videos. You are the most embarrassing dad in the history of embarrassing dads.” – Carsin
• The bell sounded. Everyone ran. I lined up. I saw the smoke flying off the top of the school.
• I looked about the room. I hadn’t seen so many boxes since Christmas.
• “You are going to have a brother,” Da said. “But I want a kitten,” Kyra cried.
• I cannot believe my hamster teddy – a grey dwarf hamster with a white stripe down his back – died.
• How can I get out of this cage thought Chewy?
• I was looking at the thousands of sad-seeming cats at the shelter, when I saw an almost familiar looking, smokey-grey cat. – Gilly
• Really, only Alexa was going through the Young Authors conference since Juliya had been snoring most of the time. – Alexa

I want to end this post with a shout out to Marie Weltz who has worked on this conference for each of its 20 years. She celebrated her 80th birthday Thursday. Think of all the young writers who have been inspired by her efforts. The conference is sponsored by the NW Educational Service District and Skagit Valley College. The kids come from 40 elementary schools, including public and parochial, private and home schools. Each attended a workshop with an author and a workshop with an illustrator and my presentation. They also had an hour where they met with students from other schools and shared the manuscripts they’d brought along. Though Marie is stepping down this year as head, her legacy will live on.

Meanwhile, when I need an idea for a new beginning, I know where to look.

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            When I began this journey of writing for children, oh so many years ago, I had no idea that one of the business aspects of the field included travel and speaking.  I had an image of me at my desk, with my cats and my children playing together within eyesight of my typewriter (yes, I used an electric Olympic typewriter back then). 

            I never dreamed that my work as a writer would take me to every single state in the Union (except for West Virginia and Maine), not to mention a handful of foreign countries, nor could I have imagined that I would stand in front of thousands of school children and talk about “my life as a writer.” 

            I estimate that I have now shared the multiple drafts of Watermelon Day at least a gazillion times over the past twenty years, maybe more.  In addition, I have a very dark and fuzzy seven-second video of a cat who jumps backwards that I show the kids right at the end. 

            Tell me, which do you think the kids remember?  The drafts or the cat?  That’s a no-brainer if there ever was one. 

            Why the back-flipping cat? The easy answer is that it’s just fun.  But that’s also the best answer.  What I want my young audience to know is that writing needn’t be the laborious task that we are so often told it has to be. In fact, I tell them, any task that is worthy, despite the inevitable frustrations, also includes moments of pure joy.  After showing them the 25 drafts that it took to get Watermelon Day to a point where a publisher would buy it, with its message of persistence, doggedness, all those –nesses that are part of the process of creating a story, I want to leave them with a feeling of exuberance.  What is more exuberant than a cat who throws himself backwards over his own head and lives to meow about it?  Well, finishing a story for one. 

            I could grumble for hours about school visits, and in fact I often do.  There is much to complain about.  But there is also much to enjoy, and one of them is watching the stupid cat. 

            Of course, I could watch the cat all by myself.  I don’t really need to pack my suitcase, get on yet another airplane and cross a time zone or two to do that.  I could watch it without staying at a hotel that looks like every other hotel in the universe and serves the same hardboiled eggs at the continental breakfast.  It would be easy enough to just open my computer and hit “play.” 

            But what would be lost?  I’ll tell you what.  The sound of surprise from a hundred second-graders when the cat hurls himself through space and time, and the peals of laughter that encircle every single one of us—writer, teachers, librarian, parents, second-graders—on the very split second that he lands.  Because for a brief moment, we’re all surprised, we’re all in the room together, all wrapped in the spontaneous joy of joy. 

            I do school visits for a number of reasons.  There’s the obvious income part of it.  I can’t deny that.  There’s also the obvious promotion of my books.  As well, there’s the obvious opportunity to be in a place I’ve never been before.  (Someday, I’m going to find myself in West Virginia and Maine.  I just know I will).  Also, because writing is a rather solitary act, getting out of the house and talking to others of my same species is obviously a healthy thing to do.  My tendency is to cocoon myself in my little nook of an office and stay there. Human interaction is good for the brain. 

            But more and more, I’ve begun to see that one of the reasons for taking a turn as a visiting author is to remind my readers to make room for surprise in our lives.  It turns out that I need that reminder too.  And none of us can get there by ourselves.  We need each other and our shared stories. We need back-flipping cats.   

            We need the joy of joy.

P1010034.MOV Watch on Posterous

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The work of the writer is to write. The work of the writer has not necessarily been—until recently-- to blog, tweet, post, or travel about the world promoting the work of the writer (though even Dickens went on author tours--and I seem to be posting at this very second). We live in a culture driven by celebrity and personality. But why is it that we write? When I ask this question of writers I respect, the answers vary, but many reduce to something like this: we write because we can’t not write. We are driven by mysterious forces.

  It is, of course, wonderful to meet readers. Glorious, rewarding, and fun. When I was younger and first met the creators of the books I loved, I was too shy to open my mouth. Later, I stood in corners trying to get up the nerve to tell someone how much I loved a book of hers.I felt I had to do it—I owed it to the book. Now, on the occasion when a child or adult has approached me for a similar reason, I can’t actually believe it. Who, me? My book? Really? So let me impart this wisdom: no writer gets tired of hearing that her book has been loved.

 Nevertheless, the work of the writer is to write. I have never met or emailed or talked to the vast majority of my favorite writers. To begin with, lots of them are dead, which is a problem. Yet I continue to seek out their books. What I really want as a reader are superb books, and those don’t get written when writers are doing other things.

 Which brings me in a roundabout way to today’s topic: rules for writers. There are none for how to write a great book. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to check off ingredients one by one and bake at 350 until done?  Lots of great writers have taken a stab at creating rules. For your general enjoyment, I’ve gathered a few from here and there that I found appealing.  I’m including links  to keep this post at a manageable size. At the end, I’ve added the one rule that I know has the greatest potential for actually working—for me, anyway.

 First are ten rules from Michael Morpurgo, who writes for children (most of the list-makers don’t) and was the Children’s Laureate of Great Britain:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/23/michael-morpurgo-rules-for-writers

 Next: ten rules from Elmore Leonard, which got wide attention. They are quite specific.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/24/elmore-leonard-rules-for-writers

 Ten from Zadie Smith:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/22/zadie-smith-rules-for-writers

 Six from George Orwell (which are part of a longer essay well worth reading: http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit )

1.      Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2.      Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3.      If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4.      Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5.      Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6.      Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Six from John Steinbeck:

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/03/12/john-steinbeck-six-tips-on-writing/

 And, while we might not look to Henry Miller for advice on writing books for children, he has his own helpful commandments:

1.      Work on one thing at a time until finished.

2.      Start no more new books.[… add no more new material to ‘Black Spring.’]

3.      Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.

4.      Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!

5.      When you can’t create you can work.

6.      Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.

7.      Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.

8.      Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.

9.      Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.

10.  Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.

11.  Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

And my own? I am slightly famous among a very small group of people (can I qualify this any more?) for this statement, originally applied to playing music. “The less you play, the less you play; the more you play, the more you play.” So for writing: do the work. The more you write, the more you write, and vice versa. Whatever it takes to get you to sit down in front of that blank screen or page, that’s what you need to do.

            Back to work.

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I will admit it. I am in love with stuff. Things. Objects. I envy visual artists for what they get to do with tactility and color. When I was a kid I could not bring myself to throw away the last sharpened-down stubs of my colored pencils, because, well, there they were. Things to have and hold. And now here I am in the business of putting words on a page, the ultimate abstraction, trying to create shadowplay out of ideas.

The other day someone asked me how I get through a draft. As in push through, even when I don't know how things are going to turn out, which is, let's face it, most of the time. Here's how.

For many years I foolishly expected that writing would get easier. That if I could just find the perfect combination of tools and techniques, I'd be able to nail it every time. You know, by the third draft or so. No suffering, no panic, no rude midnight awakening by the Demon of Doubt. Kept waiting. It never happened.

I've come to the sad conclusion that No panic for me = No story.

So I pop my work in progress up on my screen, and in between nibbling away at the story, and scribbling notes to myself on the side, I knit. It doesn't keep me from missteps and missed opportunities, from voices that jar or characters who fall off the page. But it does keep me working. And in the end, that's the only sure-fire system I know.

1. Keep working.
2. Don't rush the row or the scene.
3. If you pick the right yarn, the flaws are part of the work.

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Books are important.  They change lives.  They validate people's experiences.

Here's an excerpt:

Like the lead character, Danny, Ana is a Mexican-American whose family does not have much, is being raised by her mother and has a father who spent time in jail.

Like Sofia, the lead female character, Ana, a high school junior, is hoping to go to community college, where she wants to study accounting. “Most books I read, I don’t know the people,” Ana said. “This book is the truth."

Read the rest of the article here.

Way to go, Matt!  

:-)

--Coe

Photo by Joshua Lott from The New York Times

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Last month, I did author visits in Abu Dhabi, and on my day off, I visited a sumptuous golden palace that has a machine in its lobby that dispenses gold.  (The amount one pays for an ounce of gold is updated every 60 seconds.)

Dignitaries from all over the region stay in some of the more elegant rooms, and we got to poke our plebian heads in and imagine what it would be like to be a guest.  Fresh flowers are arranged each day just in case someone does check in to the room--and their sad, wilted selves are taken out, unseen except by whomever did the arranging, most days.  No one loved their brief beauty.  No one knew they were there.

Our fellow visitor on the tour was from Kuwait.  She was eager to have her picture taken everywhere.  I got so fascinated with all this that I wanted to take pictures of her having her picture taken.

Is it one of the reasons we write?  Does something in us long to say I WAS HERE?

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Last Wednesday, flying home after 2.5 weeks of school visits in Arkansas, Alabama, and North Carolina, it occurred to me that it had been months since I'd made any real progress with my writing. Sure, I'd spent time at the computer working on the new novel, but it had been in fits and starts, and the results were just so-so, at best. Crammed into row 20, seat C, I raked myself over the coals. What was it with me? Why the sluggish pace? Did I call that being a writer? Writers write, no matter what. Get with it, Birdseye! Or are you an impostor, a fake, conning yourself and others? Whack! Blam! It was beat-up-on-Tom time. 

Fortunately, at that moment the crackle of speakers overhead interrupted my self abuse. "We are now beginning our descent into Portland," the pilot announced. "If you'll look out the left side of the plane you'll see Mt. Hood, elevation 11, 235 feet." Sure enough, there was the crown jewel of the Oregon Cascades, its dramatic, snow covered summit jutting up out of the clouds. At the sight of the highest point in my home state, one I have climbed multiple times, I eased back in my seat and took a deep breath.

Mountain climbing is a complex combination of challenges -- weather, altitude, snow and rock conditions, the route chosen -- that must be met in order to achieve the goal of reaching the top. Sometimes it seems as if the mountain is throwing everything its got at you to get you to give up. It's hard. You have to narrow your focus on the here and how -- climber’s mind -- and dig deep in order to push on. It's in that process that you not only climb higher, but also learn and grow the most. 

So it is with writing. Life sometimes gets in the way, throwing complex challenges in the path of creative goals. In my case it was the cumulative weight of too much on my plate. I was overwhelmed, my popcorn mind flitting from this to that, trying desperately to keep up. Instead I’d fallen farther and farther behind, and finally ground to a halt, ironically at 35,000 feet and 500 miles per hour. It was time for climber’s mind. “Don’t obsess on finishing the novel,” I told myself. “Just the next step. And the step after that. And the step after that. Keep plodding away.”

Which is what I was up to this past weekend -- plodding away. I'm happy to report that it paid off. No dramatic breakthroughs, no whirlwind rushes to the summit of a finished book. I'm still figuring out who my main character, Keats, really is, and how his complicated world view is going to drive the plot. And where my story settles on thematic, conceptual, and structural levels. Lots to do. But I'm moving steadily upward again, making progress one step at a time. And boy, does it feels good.

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March 6, 2012

Unhand me, thou churlish varlet!

As a fiction writer I sometimes find it refreshing to remind myself of the artificiality of what I do, to remind myself that I have as much in common with the conjurer pulling a rabbit out of a hat as with the farmer digging a potato out of the ground. (http://www.wussu.com/poems/shdigg.htm). ; I thought of this the other day when my friend and fellow writer Marthe Jocelyn (www.marthejocelyn.com) alerted me to a piece by David Mitchell (Black Swan Green, Cloud Atlas, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet) on historical fiction.  In this piece he tackles the question of language in books set in the past.  This is a sticky issue, particularly in writing for the young.  On the one hand, we fear falling into anachronism.  On the other hand, we risk being obscure.  I've heard various theories on this challenge:  "Just write very plainly and clearly." "Give a sense, through the cadence, of another time."  Such theories are often expressed in hushed and respectful tones.  Have they been useful to me?  Not so much.  Mitchell cuts through it all.  He shows how an actual replication of the language of mid-eighteenth century Scotland, for example, "Eat on the nonce, My Boy, lest no later opportunity presents itself," would be unreadable over the long run of a novel, and would seem phony.  (Or, as he puts it, "It smacks of Blackadder.")  However, a phrase that sticks out as too modern ("not so much") kicks the reader out of the narrative.  His solution?  Make it up!  He even has a name for this literary conjuring trick.  Bygone-ese.  It is inaccurate but plausible.  "Like a coat of antique-effect varnish on a new pine dresser, it is both synthetic and the least-worst solution."  Phew.  It's a magic trick and like all feats of conjuring it takes skill, practice, dexterity, confidence and charm, but at least we can admit what we're doing.  

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/7685510/David-Mitchell-o...

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Five years ago next month, one of my generation's foremost spokesmen died. Often angry and sarcastic, always brilliant, Kurt Vonnegut wrote Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, and a host of other novels that helped voice our post-war confusion and defiance. Like Mark Twain before him, Vonnegut captured the dilemna of finding ourselves in a world not made for us, a mad siren that woos us with its dazzling mix of delights, terrors, beauty and pain. 

So I'll hug my signed copy of Bluebeard (which the Times obit didn't even mention!) a bit closer on April 11. I haven't told many people the story of its signing, because it's not a moment I'm proud of. But now feels like the time to fess up: years ago, my teenage daughter and I took our respective favorite Vonnegut titles (she was clutching Cat's Cradle) to his reading at the Ethical Culture Society in New York City. After he finished, we rushed toward the aisle to get our books signed, but Vonnegut (who'd looked and acted pretty inebriated during the reading) had vanished! 

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