Writing updates - useful or painful?

One of the things I enjoy most about reading my friend Christina's blog are her writing updates. She always has a ton of projects going at once and she has the ability to flip from one to the other depending on which muse is visiting her (or which type of chocolate she has consumed!). Reading about her progress or how she's gotten stymied by a certain chapter or character or plot point reminds me that writing is not always a naturally linear process.

Just because I have written all of my books that way doesn't mean that this book or that story will follow the same path. Every book, every story is unique and sometimes you find the kernels of it in different ways or at different times. Let's face it, novels take a long time to write and you have to love your characters and story enough to spend a lot of time with them. Sometimes you fall out of love and sometimes you find someone new and sometimes you simply lose interest. The best surprises are those that make you re-imagine your story or character in a new way. Those are exciting moments that I live for, that I write for.

Now, on the flip side...Facebook/Twitter writing updates depress me. When I read that someone has hit a particular mark of X number of words for that day or he or she has finished X draft or X copy edits or what have you, I feel my shoulders slump. Why is that, I wonder. It's not a competitive issue at all. I have completed 8 novels and 10 short stories and I typically write between 1K and 2K words per day.

I think it's contextual. Reading Christina's progress, because she goes into greater depth and reveals her own personal feelings about her writing, her ups and downs, her happiness and disappointment, connects me more to her writing than a simple Facebook status update.

And this in turn reminds me that, more than anything else, we need a personal connection to character and story.

Guest blog: Sean McCartney

Hi everyone! Sean McCartney is a debut novelist whose book, "The Treasure Hunters Club: Secrets of the Magical Medallions" released July 6. He's on a blog tour to promote the novel and to introduce himself to the blogging/reading world. His website, by the way, is terrific so do check that out! And be sure to take a look at his book's trailer which is at the bottom of this post! Looks like fun...

Without further ado, here is Sean to tell us all about himself and his book:

First off I would like to thank Leigh for allowing me to talk with all of you. This is my first blog so it is quite exciting for me.

My name is Sean McCartney and I’m currently on a blog tour to promote my new young adult action adventure novel entitled THE TREASURE HUNTERS CLUB: SECRETS OF THE MAGICAL MEDALLIONS. It’s being released on July 6^th, 2010 from Mountainland Publishing.

The story is about Tommy Reed and his treasure hunting friends Shannon McDougal, Jackson Miller and Chris Henderson. One day Tommy receives a rather ordinary looking medallion from his very famous treasure-hunting uncle “Diamond” Jack Reed and finds himself the object of an evil treasure collector named Manuel de la Ernesto. Now Tommy and his friends must find the secret behind the medallion before Manuel can get to them and the medallion.

When I set out to write The Treasure Hunters Club: Secrets of the Magical Medallions I wanted to pull together all the things from books and movies that I liked. The mystery of the Hardy Boys and Encyclopedia Brown, the adventure of Percy Jackson, a little magic from Harry Potter and the action and history of the movies Indiana Jones and National Treasure.

Though this is the first book in the Treasure Hunters Club series, with your help to make it a success, the next books will follow. I have planned six treasure hunting books as they follow the club through the 8^th grade and into high school. Of course, as they get older their treasure hunts get more dangerous and more exciting.

I have been asked why I created a series around treasure hunting. The truth is I believe treasure hunting is something everyone can do. You don’t need super powers just a desire to do research and find where to look. Also treasure hunting touches on the sidebars of history, the stuff not in the textbooks. That is usually the most interesting and provides a solid building block for the series.

My goal has always been to be published and have a series that kids can enjoy and have a lot of fun reading. I was lucky to find a publisher who believes in the series as much as I do. What I was surprised to find out was how much the publishing world has changed since I started this journey toward “being published.” The emergence of ebooks has shaken the publishing world like never before and I believe we have only scratched the surface of what this new technology can do to help promote reading.

In the meantime, I hope you take a moment to check out my website www.treasurehuntersclubbook.com and learn more about the series and read some short stories about the characters.

Thank you again for this opportunity and allowing me to be here and I hope you enjoy the book and the series.

Thanks,

Sean

And thank you, Sean! I am a huge fan of the National Treasure movies so this sounds right up my alley. I hope you all enjoyed reading a bit about Sean and his book and that you'll jump right over to his website to learn more. And check out the trailer below to inspire you to read (or hunt for some treasure yourself!):

An actual post about writing

I never write about writing, primarily because it seems redundant and time-consuming. Why write about your work-in-progress when you could be writing it?

Currently, though, I've become stuck. I was coasting along for about 150 pages or so (a slow beginning but I am building a world that has lots of rules) and then I hit a rut. Instead of cranking out the pages like I usually do, I started slowing down. 1K words a day, then 500, then a paragraph tweak and I was finished. The weird thing about it was that I still loved the story! I do! I love it and I can't wait to write some of the really cool things that happen. When I'm away from the story, driving in my car or walking or otherwise not engaged in writing, I feel excited and I can't wait to get back to it. But then, with the computer in front of me, I...get...stuck.

I think I finally figured out the problem(s).

First of all, my book is in 3 sections. I love most of the first. The second must be dramatically different- darker and edgier and less optimistic. Right now, it's not. It's too much like the first section. This is why I'm finding it drag, because it's more of the same and it shouldn't be.

Second, this means rewriting before I finish. I *never* do this. Like never ever EVER. I always finish a draft before rewriting anything. Unless I can do a search-and-replace easily, I keep notes and then make changes in the next draft. But I know I can't do this. I have to get in there and change some things before I can move forward. This also prevents me from writing full out.

Third, I have a structural issue. As I said, the book is in 3 parts BUT there is also information that must be revealed and I can't figure out how to do it. I hate prologues. They're usually just info dumps. And in my book, I am using a first person POV - whose POV would the prologue be from? So I need to parse out these bits but how? In what form?

And fourth, although this is a fairly simple story, it has complex themes and lots of backstory that informs what happens (see above structural issue). Even I, the creator, don't have a complete handle on all of it. I'm finding it's a little too complicated right now and I think I might need to pare down some of it to make it easier to understand. Um, okay. How do I do that?

If you can't tell, I'm working on a story that is very different from my previously-published books, something I hope will be darker and edgier and appeal to a wider audience, maybe even guys! So it's slow-going. And lots of work.

And now that I've identified the problems, I have even more work to do.

Random Thoughts on a Friday

I'm no Luddite but...I think it's a bad sign that my Bluetooth software doesn't recognize my voice when I'm sick. What if it dials "pizza" in an emergency instead of "police"?

I'm no rocket scientist but...I think they should be able to invent a new plastic bag for cereal boxes so it won't explode when you open it. It never rips along the right seam and then little bits of cereal get stuck outside the bag and get stale.

I'm no activist but...I think those whalers who are skirting international law by fishing for whales in the Antarctic by claiming to be doing "research" on them when really they are selling the meat commercially in Japan should be brought up on charges. It's a shameful action.

In case you were wondering...

I got a Google alert not long ago that my name/book title/website were mentioned/linked/taken in vain and it turned out to be a book review blog called "Slightly Bookish." The blogger, a girl named Maddz, posted a super nice review of LOVE, MEG (thank you very much!) on her blog along with a photo of the title page with some scribbles on it.

Click here to see the photo.

She wanted to know what it said. So I wrote to her and I told her that was my signature. Somehow she had gotten a signed copy of my book at Books-A-Million. Now, when you're an author and you have a book in stores, you visit a lot of them and you sign stock if they have yours there so they can slap the "Signed Copy!" stickers on them and place them in a prominent location (you hope). I certainly did when my books came out - more so when MEG came out than when VEE did.

But here's the weird thing: I've never been in a Books-A-Million so I have *no* idea where Maddz' store got that copy. Any thoughts from anyone?

So there you go...a lesson for all of us: keep an eye out for signed copies of books even in chain stores. You just never know!

And if you're reading this, Maddz, thanks for that awesome review of my book. That was such a wonderful thing to read. It really lifted my spirits!

Reading while writing

I would venture to say most writers will acknowledge that they don't read when they are in the midst of a project. That is, they won't read something similar to what they're working on or in the same genre. But it seems like we are always in the middle of a project, aren't we? And when we aren't, we may be in a lull for another reason, like perhaps we're choreographing the ballet, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" so we don't even have the brainpower or time to get a book from the library or store.

When I recently returned to my WIP, a dystopian YA, it had been months since I'd read a book. I was consciously avoiding anything similar, which is incredibly hard because dystopian novels are ones I am particularly drawn to read. Some of my very favorites are Susan Beth Pfeffer's "Life As We Knew It" and Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games." Both of those books have sequels I'm dying to read but as I am in the middle of this book, I can't distract myself (or depress myself because, let's face it, those books are wonderful and if I can't get mine in shape like that, I'll be really unhappy) . But neither do I want to read any happy-go-lucky sunshine-y books. First of all, those books are not my cup of tea but second of all, I don't want to be taken out of a mood that might help me write.

So I guess I need to stay depressed.

Who else to turn to but Stephen King? In his book "On Writing," King reminds us that if we want to write, we must read. MUST. That's like, rule number one: Writers Must Read. You should never trust a writer who says he never reads. Bad writer, bad, bad writer. So I gave myself permission to read. In a used bookstore, I picked up a copy of "Duma Key," a novel of King's from a couple years back. I have on my home bookshelf some other unread King novels but "Duma Key" called to me from the store shelf and it was only a quarter.

It sat on my table for a week before I picked it up. And of course I couldn't put it down. King is a master storyteller, that goes without saying, and this book drew me in from the first page. Within a day or two I was already past the halfway mark. But beyond the enjoyment of the novel as a story, I was surprised to find the book had resonance in my writing. Not because it influenced my writing per se but it made me passionate about my story again. I had taken some time away from the manuscript for various reasons, not the least of which was the show I was working on, but also because I had started to lose my thread. I was wandering around picking at a sentence here and there but I couldn't fall back into it - and that's exactly what I wanted to do, what I needed to do.

I was stalled and King's book started the engine. This has been revelatory to me because I had steadfastly refused to read other people's work while writing my own - now I realize I can read to reignite my own passion.

Birthdays and milestones

But I don't want to grow up yet!

Recently, two items surfaced that are making me question my own concept of adulthood: my friend Rachel blogged today about milestones and a CNN article listed 10 things that mark you as having become an adult.

I glibly commented to Rachel that I hadn't grown up yet because I wasn't a parent, nor did I own a home or an IRA. As for that CNN article, I certainly haven't yet "made peace with my body" nor have I "learned how to handle the tough times." Really? Does mastery of those 2 things seriously identify us as grownups?

Last week was my birthday and I pushed aside any celebration of it because I was too busy with a new teaching schedule and a show I was producing but now that's over and I have time to think about it. It was kind of a big birthday or could be considered one, I suppose, but I don't know how or if I will celebrate it. I'm a big fan of Disneyland which isn't far from me but does an adult with no kids celebrate that way? How should grownups celebrate birthdays? Or should they at all?

I believe the definition of being an adult needs to be more fluid. For those of us who do not have traditional 9-5 jobs or traditional families or lifestyles, we need our own way to mark passages, or milestones, as Rachel says. We need a more flexible accounting of our achievements so we don't feel like we are still kids.