Care Of Magical Creatures

DRAGONS. My first draft suddenly has dragons.

I knew I liked stream-of-consciousness writing for a reason.

Of Writing & Blogging

First this Pearls Before Swine strip made me giggle. Then it made me cringe in potential recognition. Then, because life is more fun when you’re laughing, it made me giggle again.

Pawgress Report

I have a brand-new writing partner. He encourages me to get up early and work, gives me kisses when I take breaks, and agrees that a couple bites of a snack can make for excellent motivation.

Okay, so he’s a 4-month-old sheepdog mix — but that shouldn’t stop him from getting a co-writing credit, right?

His name is Pushkin (clearly a writer’s puppy to the core), and we are so in love. As a matter of fact, he’s currently behaving better than my characters are! My word count is still growing quite nicely — I just seem to have lost all control over a couple key personalities. I’m trying not to think about the decisions I’ll have to make when I go back and edit, because right now I’m actually rather enjoying the surprises. The character I intentionally set out to craft as the dashing, intellectual romantic hero is becoming rapidly less and less appealing, while the dark horse of Garrity’s love life is proving ever more worthwhile. These unexpected shifts may or may not hold up in the long run, but they’re certainly keeping the process interesting!

Friday Fan-Girling

Because I had a super-cute dream about Alan Rickman last night, and because I’m trying so hard not to analyze my writing for the next several days that I don’t have any particularly profound insights to offer, I present the following adorable (and presumably out-of character) HP moment:



I can’t decide which one of them is cuter in the second frame.

[Image courtesy of the "F-- Yeah Harry Potter" tumblr.]

The Little Writer That Could

I think I can, I think I can…

My harebrained scheme is actually going rather well. Although it’s still counterintuitive for me to avoid editing as I go, I must admit that it’s freeing. Missing a smooth scene-to-scene transition? I’ll add it in later! Unsure how to articulate the passage of time? I’ll articulate it later!

Sleeping is also evidently something that’s going to wait until later, but I suppose you can’t win them all…

First Draft Haiku

every few seconds
another check of word count
as it creeps along

for my background noise:
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
good for laughter breaks

I am sleep-deprived
but must keep chugging onward
will not surrender!

Interview With Steph Bowe!

The lovely and talented Steph Bowe, who’s recently been the subject of entries both here and over at Jezebel, was kind enough to make time for a few of my questions. Steph is a 16-year-old author and blogger who lives in Victoria, Australia. Her debut novel, Girl Saves Boy, comes out in Australia and New Zealand this September and in the US in 2011. “Life, death, love…and garden gnomes”? Sign me up!

I was delighted to have the chance to interview Steph — so without further ado, here’s what she had to say!

1. Your age has obviously become a fairly significant topic of discussion, starting with your “Does age matter in publishing?” entry, continuing on to Jezebel’s article about “teen phenoms,” and coming full circle with your post in response to Jezebel. When you began heading down the road to publication, did you expect your age to be such a talking point? Does it bother you to have it brought up so frequently?
I knew it would be such a talking point, and it only bothers me occasionally – like when people tell me I was only published because of my age. But this is the sort of stuff you have to deal with as a young person doing anything – people will make a lot of assumptions, and you just have to ignore most of them. Personally, I’ve never really felt like a teenager or a sixteen-year-old or anything – I’m just Steph Bowe, an individual like everybody else is. My age is not the most important part of my identity.

2. In your entry responding to Jezebel’s article, you describe the experience of being published as “massively stressful.” Can you expand on that a bit?
Well, a lot of people seem to be under the impression that the hard part is writing the book and getting the book deal, and then you hand over the book and that’s that. Well, that’s not it at all. There are months and months of revisions, meetings with editors and publicists, a lot of pressure to write the next book, appearances and scheduling of tours when the book comes out. And there’s no guarantee the book will sell or that you’ll ever be published again, and everyone you know starts to resent you because you’ve got a bit of success. I totally wasn’t prepared for the stress of it, because no one told me there’d be so much involved! I don’t really have time for a life anymore, between writing and schoolwork.

3. As you mention on your blog, young writers are often particularly pressed for time, as they’re still tackling schoolwork on top of everything else. How do you balance being a student, an author, and a blogger? (i.e. do you drink some sort of super-powered soda that the rest of us should be made aware of?)
Well, studying, writing and the related responsibilities, and blogging are pretty much the only things I do. I’m not sure how I manage it either. There’s a lot of late-night schoolwork, crazy bursts of writing and blogging is just something I do to keep me sane. I’m hoping soon I’ll figure out how to also fit in sleeping, eating and a social life. I think adult writers are pretty pressed for time, too, though – I’ve no idea how people manage to work full-time jobs or raise children and still write.

4. I’d love to know more about your book-writing process as compared to your blogging process. Do you find yourself brainstorming/crafting blog entries the same way you do your other writing?
I tend to just think of a topic for a blog post that’s on my mind at that moment, and then write out a few hundred words on the topic. Most of my book-writing tends to be a lot more involved – I don’t write a whole ton of short stories, either – so it requires a lot moe planning before I can dive right into writing. The ideas need a while to percolate in my head. I’d liken blogging more to writing articles for a newspaper or magazine, but maybe a little more informal. I can just write about what I want to write about at that moment. Writing a novel is something where you have to sit down and think, what do I want to write for the next six months? I find blogging a whole lot easier than novel writing!

5. Girl Saves Boy comes out excitingly soon! Do you have plans for your next project?
I’m revising book two at the moment, and have ideas burbling for book three. But I can’t talk about either, just in case I jinx them!

Thanks so much, Steph!

A Beloved Blogger’s Beautiful Book

(Not really sure why I went so alliteration crazy. Just roll with it.)



Isn’t that a fantastic cover? It’s for Paranormalcy, by Kiersten White — one of my favorite writer-bloggers! It comes out in September and promises to be all kinds of awesome. The best part? You can win a copy of it! The bonus-best part? If you win, you’ll also get a copy of Laini Taylor‘s Lips Touch, which I assure you is one of the most beautiful books EVER.

What are you waiting for?

Assembling The Troops

Caffeine, Pirateology, and a Shakespeare action figure — what more could a writer attempting to finish a draft in two weeks need?

Bird By Turbo-Charged Bird

I’m sure I’m not the only writer who’s read Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird dozens of times. One of her most memorable pieces of advice has to do with, as she succinctly labels them, “Shitty First Drafts.” Here’s some of what she has to say on the subject:

“The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page…Just get it all down on paper, because there may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would never have gotten to by more rational, grown-up means.”

Sounds great, right? Except that I happen to be nigh incapable of writing Shitty First Drafts. This is not to say that I sit down at my computer and release magic and rainbows from my fingertips, that in mere days I effortlessly produce prize-worthy prose. Quite the opposite, in fact. I edit as I go. I labor and scrutinize and delete and re-type and delete again. (And then maybe re-type again.) As frequently as I tell myself to just go with the first-draft flow — and as many mind games as I play with myself — I find it very hard to “just get it all down on paper.”

There has been one notable exception to this. A few summers ago, while rehearsing for a production of Les Mis, I sprained my ankle. I then proceeded to perform the entire run of said production on said sprained ankle, which was perhaps not the most medically advisable thing to do. (My devotion to Les Mis is unwavering.) I was told to stay off my feet for a week straight, at which point my mother dared me to do my own version of NaNoWriMo…in seven days. When you’re writing more than 7,000 words a day, it gets pretty tricky to stop and edit. It was an exhausting, exhilarating, wrist-cramping exercise in busting through those mental blocks and putting words on the page.

In an odd sort of echo, I currently have a torn tendon in my foot and two weeks off of work to recuperate. I love my WIP, and I don’t want it to get bogged down by my self-correcting and over-analyzing. At this point, I think I’d rather have a big mess of pages that need editing than a handful of them that don’t. So this time, I’m going to dare myself.

Two weeks. One Shitty First Draft.

Starting tomorrow, let the madness begin!

(Pssst, God? I realize I’m writing a book filled with characters who don’t believe in you, but if you felt inclined to help me out with this — like, on the down-low? In some super-secret way that neither of us would have to be embarrassed about? That’d be GREAT.)