Why Do I Write YA?

When I still worked as a teacher and librarian it always saddened me to hear students say they hated to read. This was unimaginable to me. As a kid stories sustained me and were often my only friends during my family‘s frequent moves. Books were my guides to the world, a dialogue in an otherwise empty room. They were a message in a bottle.

It’s no accident I became a school librarian, English teacher, and later, a full time writer of YA. The seeds for our identities in the world are planted during middle grade and high school years. It's the first breath of independence from your parents. They may try to imprint their ideas and values on you, but during this time your personality forms its own framework.  You discover what you’re good at, what you suck at, who your friends will be, and if you’re lucky, what inner passions will drive you toward your life’s work.

I didn’t pay attention to the details of my identity, or perhaps I wanted to erase the Book Nerd stamp etched on my personality, so I wasn’t so lucky. Throughout my late teens and twenties I floundered around trying on a litany of college majors and half-assed jobs, and dating guys who, for the most part, were bad news.

Yet maybe I was lucky. These muddy side roads added layers to my experiences. Writers create alone, often sequestered in a small room in the back of their home or in a corner table in a coffee shop, but in order to create authentic work, writers also need experiences. We need to talk to people, work with our hands, know how it feels when someone breaks your heart.

In the late 80s, after finally earning my Bachelor’s degree with enough credit hours to have a PhD, I started writing. I wrote bad stories, wretched poems, and a really terrible novel. Most of that work is hidden in a file drawer. While my early work will never see daylight, to throw it out would dishonor the progress I have made. All writers start out being bad writers. Our work is derivative, filled with cliché, and often inauthentic. We haven’t learned to trust the process, to slice your heart open and bleed into the work. We get better by writing, reading, writing more, writing deeply, reading, revising, taking workshops, writing, writing, writing….

Good writing is driven by passion. I’m not talking about Harlequin romance lust, though many fine writers write romances. By the time I was thirty I realized books and words were my passions, and in quick succession earned a masters degree in library and another in writing. As a certified Book Nerd (aka school librarian and English teacher), my work opened up a new arena for writing.

Everyone has a story and writers are story magnets. If we listen, people strangers  share their heartbreaking, tender, funny, sad, incredulous, and authentic stories. They are my muses.

As a teacher my heart was further broken to hear students groan and roll their eyes when I broached the subject of poetry. To them, poets are all dead white guys who use too much flowery language and write about things that have nothing to do with their lives.

They had yet to encounter Pablo Neruda.

By teaching Neruda’s poems, my students learned “the word was born in the blood.” They were attracted to the violence in how the knife assassinates the tomato pulp and “how the sun floods the salads of Chile, beds cheerfully with blonde onion, “and parsley flaunts it little flags,” the in Ode to a Tomato.

One can't teach passion, yet my fervor for Neruda’s poems elevated my students’ concept of what poetry is, and opened the door to reading and writing poetry. It’s also no accident Pablo Neruda simmers at the root of my novel.

My characters in BREAKFAST WITH NERUDA aren't real (except to my readers and me,) yet their inception comes from an authentic place. My life experiences inform me, and allow my imaginary friends to channel their stories through me.

Digital publishing and social media have allowed everyone and his brother to easily promote their books, so a recent phenomenon for writers is to promote their ‘platform.’ Initially this concept left a bad taste in my mouth, as if I’m a product like running shoes or a bag of chips.

Platform can be defined as what we stand for or what causes we support. I believe in Pablo Neruda, poetry, books, and stories. Stories are the thread binding us together, peeling back the mysteries of our own existence.

Words are my platform.  Happy Reading!!

Meanwhile, here’s a review
http://www.cleavermagazine.com/breakfast-with-neruda-by-laura-moe/

Found this on the Third Sunday Blog Carnival

http://danasitar.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/bucket-list-infographic1.jpg


Enjoy!

Thirteen and a Half Things Writers Need to Know

I watched a good Indy film this weekend- The Magic of Belle Isle- directed by Rob Reiner, starring Morgan Freeman as a writer who has stopped writing. As Freeman's character, an award winning Western writer named Monte tells his nephew, "drinking is my full time job now, and I can't work two jobs."

I like films where a hollowed out character regains his voice from unexpected sources. In this case, it begins with a nine year old girl named Finn who yearns to write. She is one of three neighbor girls of a single mom who live in the house adjacent to Monte’s. Finn finds out he is a writer, and she stops by to she ask Monte to teach her to create stories. By helping a child discover her inspiration, Monte gradually rekindles his own, which serves to remind me Inspiration cannot be forced. It’s intrinsic.

Incorporate your own life experiences.

This s not the same as the old write what you know. We write to deepen what we already know, yet discover new knowledge as well. " Monte tells Finn to “tell me a story and make me interested.  He instructs her to look outside and tell him a story of what she sees. “I don’t see anything,” she says. “Keep looking. What don't you see? See with your mind’s eye. Look for what you don't see.” Finn looks again, and narrates an imaginary tale of intrigue, but uses details she knows from the island.

Writing takes us outside ourselves

Monte has spent most of his adult life in a wheelchair after a car accident. He tells Finn, "All the things I couldn't do in the real world, Jubal let me do on the page."

Write slowly

National Novel Writing Month is coming up, where the goal is to write 50,000 words in thirty days. I’ve done this several times, and the “books” I created were all terrible. Only one, a mere skeleton of a tale, is salvageable.

In the film, Finn wonders why Monte uses a Typewriter rather than a computer.

“I like that you write a bit slower ,” he says.”I like that letters bite into the paper.”

Writers must connect to their work

At dinner one evening with Finn’s family, Monte narrates a treacherous event about his recurring character,  Jubal McClaws, to the girls. As he describes a part which might give Finn’s 7 year old  sister Flora, nightmares, their mother interjects, " Remember , it's just a story. It didn't really happen."

"It happened to Jubal" "Monte says

The subject finds you

Finn has fallen in love with  Jubal McClaws., and she gets angry at Monte when he writes new stories about an elephant named Tony and a family of mice for her younger sister instead of penning another Jubal McClaws tale.

"But Jubal hasn't come calling in years," Monte tells Finn.

 We can't force inspiration. If the writing is true, and yes, fiction IS true, the story comes from a real place inside the writer. Our characters are real.

Monte says, “Real life doesn't always ensure up to what's in our heads, but every once in awhile it comes close.”

Use the right words

In a scene in belle, Finn parrots something offensive Monte had said, and her mother admonishes by requiring the girl to learn three new words. She learns her words, inspiration,

Read work out loud

The girls’ mother, Cassie O’Neil, with whom Monte harbors a secret crush, reads the Tony stories out loud to Flora, and later to herself. As she reads,  she hears Monte’s voice.

Stories originated in the oral tradition, written work is relatively recent, and all writing has a cadence. Reading one’s work out loud allows a writer to see where syntax might drag, or lines of poetry need to be broken.

Freeman’s character is in a wheelchair, and he tells Finn “Writing gives you legs.”

Stories, essays  and poems take us places  otherwise impossible

 Revision is part of the writing process, and it’s never too late to re-vise a work.

When Finn tells Monte she bought an old copy of his most celebrated book, but the last page is missing, he says “You didn't miss much. I always meant to change that anyway.”

Don't write in order to get a house with a pool

Most writers will never own a house with a pool like the one above. But that does not stop me from imagining  myself sitting poolside, sipping a glass of lemonade, reading the blazing hot reviews of my latest novel. Later, I will be getting dressed for my appearance as an Oscar nominated writer of an Oscar nominated film. starring Meryl Streep, Harrison Ford….but I digress..

Don't give up. In Belle Isle, Morgan Freeman's Monte believes his writing career is over, and Virginia Madsen’s Cassie O’Neil has given up on love.

Always have a deadline Monte tells Finn

There are no guarantees

Writing is a gift, unwrap it wisely.

Happy Writing.

Five Writing Rules According To High School Students

Earlier this year, I asked my students what’s important to them about writing. Since teenagers are the authority on all things cool, I expected negative comments and complaints about such staid topics as writing and English, but the kids surprised me;. their responses were astute and thoughtful.

Victoria said, "If I try to add things to sound smart, it ends up making me look ignorant." Novice writers are tempted to sound writerly. In the early days of my own writing, I front-loaded stories and essays to reveal my large vocabulary. No wonder nobody wanted my work. It was pretentious.

Sure, in grad school I used ten dollar words for essays, but my reader was usually an erudite professor who ate such words for breakfast.  When I first started teaching students occasionally handed in papers with sentences like “Such cartulary  extrapolated its theophenia to provide a history of said diety.” When asked what did you mean here, the response was always a red face and a shrug.

Say what you mean in words you understand. Clarity is priority one.

2. Kayla remarked, "I never want to repeat myself so many times to where I become uninteresting or sound stupid."

Early drafts are often loaded with repetitive mantra-like words and phrases and words and phrases and words and phrases, as if the writer needs to warm up the engines, and remind themselves of the point of the essay, poem, or story. I call these false starts. For me they come in three’s: the first three lines or stanzi of a poem, the first three paragraphs of a story, and the first three pages of a novel. The holy trinity of crap.

Ok I repeated my syntactical structure there. You get what I mean in those words and phrases.

3. “Vocabulary ...can turn a bland sentence into a memorable one with relative ease," Mallory wrote. "Large words, small words, it doesn't matter, I'm happy to use them all." Words are the foundation of good writing, and fluency with them makes us better writers. I tell my students to take a foreign language. "It will enhance your English. "

Mallory is a good writer, largely because she always has her nose in a book. Readers are exposed to multiple words, and it shows in their work. Read a lot.

4. According to Katie, "Books allow a person to see the world and know things they didn't know before."

If we are doing the hard work, we aren’t relying solely on what we know; we write to explore what we don't know as if excavating for a new spin on a truth.

5.  “Writing is hard,” Tosha said. “I wish there was a handout that told me how not to make mistakes."

I hate to tell you this, kid, but there ain’t no such thing. The only way to learn how to write better is write, make mistakes, write even more failed manuscripts, screw up more of them, and eventually write something good. Next time you will write something bad, but maybe not as often, and eventually your good writing will outweigh the putrid pages. But there will be days, always, when some of your writing stinks a big one.

Exercise: I stole this from my Friend Cindy Sterling. Whenever her students were stuck, she had them remove a shoe, set it on a piece of white paper, draw an outline, then write a first person narrative through the viewpoint of the shoe. The shoe can belong to anyone famous (Madonna, the president, Clark Gable), or not ( your own shoe,) cartoon characters (Scooby Doo, Charlie Brown) etc. . What what the shoe's life like? What have they seen? Where has it been? What happens when it rains? What happens on the basketball court if you are Michael Jordan's shoe? What would the Dalai Lama's footwear know?

Happy Writing

What Happened Last Time

I have sent so many query letters you’d think I’d get better at this. My capacity for rejection has improved, along with the rejection letters themselves, but the querying process still gives me the heebie jeebies.

What I have enjoyed is researching the hundreds of agents out there. Many of them are people I’d like to meet. The best guide for finding out an agent’s interests, besides, his/her blog (especially if the blog or web page includes video,) is Jeff Herman’s Guide Book to Publishers , Editors and Literary Agents. I have developed warm feelings for many of these literary representatives, even folks who have rejected me. (Okay, not me personally, my manuscript. But are my works and my persona separate entities ?)Some share my interest in jewelry making, a few had sketchy educations like mine (I went to three different high schools in three different states) and many agents are former librarians and booksellers (otherwise known as confirmed firm book nerds).

I picture myself at a cocktail party or in a café bantering with one of my favorites in my ever growing spreadsheet of potential agents. When I get rejected from one of my beloveds, part of my disappointment is in knowing I will never engage in clever dialogue with this person. And of course the obvious blighted hope.

So how does one find that ever elusive agent? Heck if I know. I’m still looking. But the best agent for me is not necessarily the best one for you. It’s partly based on personality, but it is mainly about the work. Does he or she believe in your work?

For more on the best literary agent, read As Mark Malatesta’s blog.
http://literaryagentny.com/best-literary-agent/

Sigh.

I have to remember that finding an agent is like dating; not every man on the planet is a suitable mate, nor is every agent.

Here is a writing exercise. My friend Cindy overheard a tidbit of dialogue between a mother and her toddler son. The boy reached down and picked up some rocks in the flower bed outside a restaurant. The mother told him, "No, no, put those down. You remember what happened last time." The boy protested, but the mother repeated,"just rememeber what happened last time." Cindy followed the pair inside the restaurant to see if she could find out what happened, but nothing more was said about it.

Wouldn't YOU like to know what happened? Write the story of What Happened Last Time....


BONUS: See Midnight in Paris on DVD. It's a writer's movie.
Happy Writing. (and marketing your work.)

Plan A, B and C

The Sunday Scintilla bonus prompt this weekend says to write about an outrageous idea.

It was a perfect plan; I’d buy a horse and ride it to Hollywood and get discovered. (I was oly ten, too young to drive.) I wanted to become a famous Hollywood actress, and with my additional equestrian skills, maybe I could star in a remake of National Velvet.
there were only a couple of problems with this plan:
How and Where would I buy a horse? I’d only ridden once at summer camp under supervision.)

I wasn’t nearly as attractive as Elizabeth taylor. I was pudgy, blonde, and had just gotten blue cat eye glasses.
I had no acting. This fact was later confirmed my Junior year oif high school when I played Joan of Arc’s mother. Every time I said opne of my lines the audience erupted in laughter.

So much for my dreams of getting an Academy Award.

Plan B- write a movie!

I’d written and performed plays for the neighborhood kids. Okay, so I had to bribe them to watch by passing out candy and popcorn.)

The closest I had ever come to writing a movie is again in my junior year I put together a three act play. After getting laughed off stage I still had a burning interest in theatre, so I concentrated on reading and writing plays. The problem with this plan was I didn’t have enough direction in life to enable me to create compelling characters. I’d had plenty of interesting, and even traumatic events happen, but not at sixteen I lacked the perspective to write a serious piece.
That play, along with most of high school scribbling, ended up in the trash. I kind of wish I could see how my mind worked. Maybe I had more talent than I imagined.

You’ve never heard of me, so it’s apparent my plans for stardom and fame fell through. But I still have shelf space reserved for that Oscar. I have written three YA novels,(Under the Veil, Chasing the Dragon, and Parallel Lines) and who knows? Maybe one of them will become the next Hunger Games or The Lightning Thief. I can always dream.

Writing prompt: What was your childhood dream? Write a short narrative on how that dream did or did not get realized.


Happy Writing.

If I had Any Sense I’d have Scriptophobia

I felt disappointed and adrift without a Scintilla prompt. It’s like crack for writers. Then I saw a twitter feed for a bonus prompt to write about the time you left home. My family moved a lot, so leaving home was not a new experience for me. I looked forward to new adventures, locations and people. I was a fairly easy going kid, and usually made friends quickly with each move.

One summer I flew to London, England to spend a few weeks in England and Kenya with a British family Caroline, a Brit, was in my class at school, and her mother, a college professor, was journeying to Kenya for some anthropological research. Caroline and her brother each invited a friend to go along for summer. Caroline chose me because I’d had overseas travel experience and we were good enough friends to spend long stretches of time together. We’d be staying three weeks in England before jetting off to Nairobi.

This trip occurred only a few months after my mother passed away, and I had not yet exhibited residual effects of this trauma. Within a week of her dying, my brother Paul and I moved across the country to live with our dad, who had just started a new job. My oldest brother stayed behind because he was in college. When kids at my new asked where my mother was, I lied and said my parents were divorced and she stayed on the west coast. I couldn’t say the words, “my mother died.” My brother appeared to adjust well to the move, attending school each day, making new friends. With Mom gone, I cooked diner each night and the rest of us shared in housekeeping. We all kept busy and never talked about my mother.

A few weeks before the England trip, Memorial Day weekend, my father and I went boating on Lake Erie with some friends. I’d enjoyed boating since I was a kid, but as soon as we pulled away from shore I experienced ineffable dread. I clung to the side of the sailboat and did not want to keep my father out of my sight.

A few weeks later I flew over to England with another friend (who was going on to Germany after the rest of us left for Africa.) The three of us bunked together in Caroline’s room, and there were others in the flat; but the first night, after the lights went out and we settled down to sleep, I was engulfed in deep sadness.

I stood at the window, rain pelting on the window, and felt tears on my own face. I had been away from home countless times: summer camp, and sleepovers. By the time I was thirteen I’d been around the world twice. But never this far from my now fractured family before.

I think this is the first time I realized the weight of the past few months. My mother was always eager to hear stories from my adventures. She would not be hearing about this trip.

Teenagers resemble adults physically, but they lack the skill and development to process life changing events without consequences. This trip ignited seeds for phobias I developed in the ensuing years. I didn’t seek therapy because, other than my new fears of flying, boating and riding in a car, I was highly functional. (When I got my driver’s license I was afraid to drive on freeways.) The things that scare normal people like public speaking, snakes and heights have never bothered me.

Oddly enough, I credit Cosmopolitan magazine with helping me a few years later manage my irrational behavior. I read an article about fears and phobias and using behavior modification to get over tem. It took me forever to get to school and work because I refused to drive the freeways, so as a way to cure myself of this, I got in the car and drove to Oregon from Ohio to see my brother. Those first few miles I screamed and cried. By the time I reached Dayton the rhythm of the road calmed me down, and spent the next five days driving alone to Portland, Oregon.

I still have lurches of fear when friends and family go on journeys, either flying or driving. But these days that concern is rational; the world has gotten scarier. And reasons to hate flying go beyond fear.

I don’t like this prompt. It’s hard to “go there.” And remember that freakishly phobic girl. I didn’t HAVE to write this, but real writing comes from those dark corners we don’t want to visit.

So here is your prompt: What are you afraid to revisit? Go back there. Write about it.



Happy Writing.

“Stay Drunk on Writing" Ray Bradbury

I’m baaack! Here is my blackout log.

Day one of the blackout. Since I am still using my phone I see numbers in red next to my Facebook app icon that tell me I HAVE ALERTS. It’s a bit like having Christmas presents under the tree. I want to know what’s in them, but I have to wait a week.

Okay, there are no more dispatches because I didn’t write any. I found I didn’t really get much more writing done during my enforced blackout. Various reasons: work, grading papers, social life, and overall, other things I let distract me. What did my partial blackout teach me? I can’t blame my unproductiveness on Facebook. It’s MY fault.
Here it is National Poetry Month and I have yet to write a poem. Lots of lines that might be found in poems, or possible titles, but no poems.
But I digress.
Is it possible for someone who is ADD to write? Yes, but it takes discipline and motivation, and, hey, that cloud looks like a giant blue fish.
Oh yeah, writing.
I am re reading Ray Bradbury’s Zen in The Art of Writing because I may use it as summer reading text for my AP class. I had been having my kids read On Writing by Stephen King, but I like to mix things up. When one teaches a long time it’s best to change things so as not to get bored. Anyway, I have been writing down some lovely tidbits. He asks,” What does writing teach us?”
“… it reminds us we are alive ….and writing is survival.” He reminds us “while art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.” What Bradbury confirms is that writing reminds us we are alive, and as humans each story has importance because it IS the human story. YOUR (seemingly) benign life is a magnificent tale, and if you have the gift of storytelling or word crafting, it is your responsibility to do so because “not to write, for many of us, is to die.”
Exercise:
Find an old picture of yourself and write an ode about the event surrounding the picture, the people in the picture with you, or what happened right after the photo was taken.

Here is the beginning of an ode I am working on:
Ode to Other People’s Clothes

When I see her wearing my castoff clothing
I feel momentary giver’s remorse.
The black leather jacket that once hugged
My body two sizes and several years ago.


Happy Writing.