Say nay to naysayers

In her post yesterday on Writer Unboxed, Ann Aguirre exhorted her readers to think big, to believe in six impossible things before breakfast. An uplifting message.

What stayed with me the most, however, was this list:

(1) Graduated college
(2) Moved to a foreign country
(3) Got an agent
(4) Sold a debut SF novel written in first person, present tense, that one agent called unsellable
(5) Became a national bestselling author
(6) Sold nearly 20 books in three years

These were the things she was told she couldn't do, that she'd gone on to achieve.

That shows courage and confidence and determination.

Why did the list make such an impression on me? Because these qualities:

• courage
• confidence
• determination

don't come easily to me. I am much more incline to:

• fear rather than to brave the unknown;
• discount and second-guess my abilities and decisions;
• refrain from committing to anything I am not absolutely sure of.

I look back and remember one dream that I'd given up because I'd believed in naysayers. When I was fourteen and was completely captivated by the orchestra, my desire to become an orchestral conductor met with "girls can't be conductors" and "if you're not a highly-trained string player by this age, you'd never be a conductor." I was devastated and no longer dared to dream that dream. *

These people were not necessarily trying to be discouraging. They were probably just throwing out considerations. And most likely they didn't expect someone to falter so easily.

I've given up on a few other dreams such as this and still cannot think about them without that twinge of regret in my gut. Even though I am committed to living a life without regret, and objectively I know that my life is good, I do allow that twinge to surface as a reminder not to step on the well-worn, much smoother path of giving up, but to take out my machete and cleavers and chop my way through the brambles and thorn bushes of the path I need to travel on.

Now I write fiction. This pursuit is understood only by those others who are engaged in similar activities--artists, musicians, authors. To the pragmatic and uninterested, what I do is pure foolishness. But the post yesterday helped me realize that I've come a long way, baby; I've learn to say "nay" to the naysayers, especially the one from within myself.

So, I invite you to join me in standing tall, holding strong to your beliefs, and say a loud, NAY (don't you think its old-fashioned quality makes it even more effective?) to the naysayers who assault you from without and within.

*I chose these two conductors because the first one, Alondra de la Pana, formed her orchestra single-handedly and the second one, Shi-Yeon Sung, broke into the all-male ranks of conductors of the Boston Symphony, one of the most prestigious of orchestras. And oh, she started her music career as a pianist, as did so many other conductors. Read the story of de la Pana's Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas. From the story of Sung's debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, I find the following passage particularly inspiring:

...she admitted the difficulty of the situation, pointing out that 50 years ago there were almost no women playing in orchestras. "Nowadays, nobody says 'a woman musician' in an orchestra. And the situation [with conductors] is changing," she wrote, noting not only [Marin} Alsop but the Australian opera conductor Simone Young and JoAnn Falletta, music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.

"I really hope that soon I won't get this question [of being a woman conductor] any more," she added.

Grab-A-Line Monday: An announcement

Have you been bowled over or gobsmacked or stunned or awed or amazed by a sentence? Isn't that the most OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD feeling?

I thought I'd start a new tradition here at my blog, with the uber-catchy title of

Grab-A-Line Monday

Each Monday I'll post a sentence that made me glad I love reading.

And what's more, if you call now, I'll send you a set of ginsu knives free, absolutely free. Wait. Wrong channel.

Let's try that again. And what's more, I'd like to invite you to join me by posting a sentence that made you stop and think and wonder. And if you want to link it to your blog and invite your readers to join in, we'd all have a blast.

Celebrate language!
Celebrate communication!
Celebrate expression!
Celebrate writers!

[I promise I will not bombard you with the over-abundance of exclamation points and centering and colors and all-capss after this post. Unless, of course, I am so overwhelmed by the responses that I absolutely must jump up and down and yell and dance.]

Revise, rewrite, revamp, torture

...whatever you want to call that process: that's what my writing time is all about these days. To help keep me planted firmly in my chair, fingers on the keyboard (instead of the mouse). and mind on the book, I've joined the Summer Revision Smackdown hosted at the Brimstone Soup by YA author Holly Cupala. I am easily persuaded and influenced; put a word like "smackdown"in the title of an event, and I get scared immediately into doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

My goals are not lofty; it's summer and the kids are out of school, remember? But I do want to get this book polished before I send it out. Soon.

I am almost to the end of this arduous task. Now if only those new passages will stop having that new-car smell, and fit more smoothly into the rest of the book, I'll be good to go.

If the word "smackdown" isn't scary and you need some straightforward questions to ask yourself as you revise, The Most Helpful And Polite Agent Nathan Bransford has put together a list. Ever democratic, he's even included suggestions by his legions of fans.

[Resistance by Mesaj]

Now back to our regularly scheduled program. The above was brought to you by Revision XMA 3000, a new generation of persuasion equipment developed by the Borg Company.

a certain type of novel

Family reunions are like novels written from multiple POVs, each narrator unreliable and sympathetic.

A quote from a new book I am reading: Natalie Goldberg's Old Friend From Far Away, about writing and remembering:

Let your mind first believe you are dedicated, that you sincerely want the truth, are willing to take what comes through. Keep moving the pen. Keep practicing.

Till the next time, when I will return with more observations about how family reunions relate to writing, and quotes from Goldberg.

Queries, queries, and yet more queires II

First there was QueryFail, then came AgentFail, events that touched tender spots in many people and stunned many others with their fury. If you wade through them (I only managed to read snippets) you may agree that we can learn from them if we can find a way to manage the negativity.

In comes Nathan Bransford, ever helpful and positive, with Agent for a Day. He invited readers to submit queries, 50 of which were randomly chosen and posted on his blog on Monday, April 13. His readers chimed in to comment on these queries and to choose the five queries that interested them.

There is still some negativity in the comments but if we ever wonder how our queries compare to the others, this is a fabulous opportunity to find out. I discovered that I couldn't read more than seven to ten queries at a time, and even then I skim, a lot. A few of them piqued my interest: voice, plot, possibilities. I plan to re read those to see if I can pinpoint just what attracted me to them.

You want more real-life examples, you say? Well, another uber-agent, Kristen Nelson, posts examples of the queries that caught her eye, with comments by her, as well as letters she sends to editors. Check them out.

Queries, queries, and yet more queires

I spent the last few months reworking my Middle Grade novel, changing not only the POV but also the central theme. It's been a slow-going, hair-pulling, occasionally gut-wrenching experience.

[frustration by sara.atkins at Flikr Creative Commons]

The revision is on its way, so I thought I should work on a new query.

[Yikes! by photojenni at Flickr Creative Commons]

Isn't it funny how when your mind is on something, you see it everywhere? Well, I discovered the QueryFail event on Twitter, in which agents and editors Twitter on queries they receive in real time, for all the twitter-following world to read. *shudder*

Lots of reaction. Lots and LOTS of reactions. Loud ones. Rude ones. Loudly rude ones. Read some over here at the comments section at agent Nathan Bransford's blog.

Or. Don't read any of it. Instead, if you're in the midst of writing your three-paragraph letter that tells all about your book while allowing your unique voice to shine through, you may want to read these instead:

Associate Editor and writer Jill Corcoran's compilation of agents' and editors' guides on how to write a query

The article on AgentQuery on How to Write a Query.

Time to revisit mine. ("Query: I command thee, gel! Be brilliant! Knock the socks off some agents!" Um. I need a magic wand. Anyone?)

More lists!

So the manic gift-purchasing season is almost over, but lest you think lists are a thing of the past, the year-end is upon us, and we all know the end of a year is a time when list-making takes on epic proportions.

So for those who hunger for more suggestions on what juvenile books to read, here are two highly-respected book people who weigh in on the subjects:

Cynthia Letich Smith and her Cynsational Books of 2008 and Editorial Anonymous with her Enormous Can of Worms. This second list comes with a bonus of readers' comments, always entertaining.


(Can of worms by "No Matter" Project.)

On a more upbeat note

To counter the negative vibes of my last post, I'd like to get back to the conclusion I had arrived at before getting sidetracked, and that is:

despite all the bad news and the mounting difficulties in getting published, as a writer, I will continue to write. And improve and learn and grow and live.

One of the things that helps me hone my writing is to read a lot; to compare and figure out what works and what doesn't. There is subjectivity involved, obviously, but great writing, in the end, will stand out.

The super-generous agent, Nathan Bransford, ran a contest recently, in which he invites writers to submit their first paragraphs. From the 1000+ entries, he selected 6 finalists and readers voted their favorites.

These posts offer an immense resource. First, we get to read the first paragraphs of so many writers. Second, we get to hear different people's opinions (ignore the snarks) of the chosen paragraphs. Third, we get to see the ones who stand out and why.

I haven't yet read through all the entries. But having read just the ones I have, I can understand a little better what agents and editors mean when they discuss the queries and submission they receive.

So there you go, a bit of a silver lining.

writers and genres

Since becoming a writer, I've noticed a lot more about the writing in the books I read. Often, the writing functions well in telling a story. Occasionally some writing draws too much attention to itself. And then there are those incredible voices, which liven up story, dig deep into emotions, and create memorable moments, all the while staying un-intrusive.

Recently I came across two such writers: Jennifer Allison and Laura Ruby. Their genres are different from what I write, but the writing will definitely go under my microscope to detect patterns and principles that will help polish my writing.

Do you have authors like that? Let me know so I can steal, I mean learn, from them.

Promoting your book

Nathan Bransford's blog is one that I read frequently. Recently, guest blogger Michelle Moran, acclaimed and bestselling author of NEFERTITI, and THE HERETIC QUEEN, wrote two posts on ways to promote a book.

After reading her posts, I want to go out and do some of her suggestions: I'll produce a book trailer! I'll write music to go with the book! I'll check out AuthorBuzz! But wait, I don't have a book published yet.

Guess it's time to go back to writing and editing and pulling teeth and checking in with my imagination and shushing / pleading for help from my inner editor and rejoicing and puzzling and wondering...

Pusillanimous, anyone?

You may think I'm just a Slubberdegullion, or Rodomontade, or worse, Omphaloskepsis. But after reading this post, you may go through Metanoia, and realize I have that certain Chatoyant, and that I'm merely trying to prevent the Chthonic of some very useful words. I know I'm being Panglossian to think that one obscure post is going to do anything, but I have to try. After all, I can't just sit around and be a Scrimshanker.

For more multi-syllabic obscure words, you can read this article from the BBC News Magazine.

Free Download

Donald Maass is offering his book, The Career Novelist: A Literary Agent Offers Strategies for Success, as a free download. You may want to check it out.

And speaking of hooks

On this page, you'll find an author's take on the query letter. More than that, you'll find links to other authors who either post their query letters that got them their agents, or talk about how they did it without one.

If you're like me, you've read so many articles about how to write a query you can quote what they say in your sleep. But I find reading the actual queries very interesting. On the one hand, I can see some "rules" being broken, but on the other, these queries did do their jobs. So, have a look. See what you think.

Effective openings in MG and YA part 4

The combination of attending the Read and Critique Xtreme at the Pikes Peak Conference and reading Hooked has made me hyper-aware of story openings. One of the criteria for a great hook, according to Les Edgerton, the author of Hooked, is that the first sentence should encompass the entire story. This is a lofty goal, and I don't think I've come across many books that fulfill it. But I read one recently that does that.

Homeless Bird
by Gloria Whelan

"Koly, you are thirteen and growing every day," Maa said to me. "it's time for you to have a husband."

Thirteen and she has to find a husband! That certainly makes us sit up; we know we're not in Kansas anymore. The name, Koly, and how Maa is spelt confirms that this story takes place in a different place.

But beyond telling us that the story doesn't take place in our society, this first sentence does, in fact, encompass the whole story. Koly's experiences from having to be married off at the age of thirteen, and everything else that resulted from it: that is the story.

This book, which won the National Book Award in 2000, is much more than its hook, of course. I get transported to Koly's world, feeling her despair and holding on to her hope. Because my first novel takes place within a different culture, I have wrestled with problems of how to put readers in my world, to provide authenticity without pretending to be a social studies text, and to find universality in the experiences of the characters. Homeless Bird does all that. It's definitely a book I'll be re-reading and studying.

Agents' pet peeves

I haven't been querying for the last couple of months, focusing mainly on re-writing, and summer stuff. This morning, I went over to check out the guide to literary agents blog and found this post. In it, different agents explain what turns them off in a first chapter. Quite a few of them are familiar: too much exposition/world building/telling, clichés, dream scenes, but I found a few that are new to me, such as characters named Isabelle who go by Izzy.

Might be fun to see if any of the pet peeves mentioned are in your first chapters.

Research resource

A member of my critique group sent me this link to a blog on research for writers. Looks helpful. Check it out.

http://lisagoldresearch.wordpress.com/

Hooked

In my current obsession, er, focus, on story openings, I've been scouring everywhere that writing advice exists, and came across a little book, about 5x7 and bright cerulean blue, titled Hooked. Despite my gimmick-o-meter flashing (danger, author resorting to non-standard size and blinding colors, stay away!) I picked it up. I read a whole chapter standing in the "writing and publishing" aisle and was, yes, hooked. (Insert groan or drum beat as appropriate.)

Besides being an entertaining read, this little book offers advice that is up-to-date and direct. The gimmick is really in the presentation only. Here are a few things I like about it:

• The author gives a list of opening essentials, ordered according to the importance of each. This is tricky. On the one hand, how does one distill art into a list? On the other hand, a writer who doesn't take a stand or define the hard-to-define will only offer advice that drifts into obvious platitudes.
• He tells it straight. Of prologues, he says it is "...a section of backstory or setup relabeled as prologue. It' ain't foolin' nobody, chum."
• Yet he never says never. As strongly as he recommends against prologues, he actually has a section on frame-story (stories that begin with a prologue and ends with an epilogue) openings. Once again, he manages to maneuver the tricky waters between not waffling and recognizing that exceptions exist for every rule.
• He references movies, and not n a disparaging manner either. Thelma and Louise is used several times as an example to explain inciting incidents and story-worthy verses initial surface problems. Even more interesting is that he attributes the current state of fiction-writing as partially indebted to movie-making. Imagine that, one of the oldest forms of story-telling being indebted to the new kid on the block!
• He gives lots of examples and explains why he likes each one, usually enthusiastically, with exclamation points! It's so refreshing to have a sense of the person and his passion behind the words, especially in writing-advice books where all the sentences are trimmed of excess words and exclamation marks are nowhere to be found.
• For a book ostensibly about openings, he manages to touch on the writing of the whole novel/story. To write a strong opening, he says, we need to figure out the story-worthy problem.

I believe this last point is where the crux of the matter lies. Lots of story openings don't work because the stories don't work. It’s easy to belly ache about the injustice of having our thousands of words judged on the merit of a mere few hundred, but this little book about story openings has sneaked in a new question in my mind not only about my story beginnings, but my stories period.

Fear

Recently, my children and I each went through an experience that caused fear: my son started Tae Kwon Do class, my daughter had sealant put on a tooth, and I had a root canal. Now you may wonder why any of these is scary at all.

OK, maybe "root canal" is understandably scary, but if you think about it, the worst thing about dental work is the pain. In a root canal, the nerves are all dead, and so theoretically there should be no pain. Well. One of the three canals in my molar had some leftover, very un-dead nerves. The discovery of those nerves made sure I was on edge the entire time. To add to the fear factor, a rubber dam--a pink plastic sheet attached to a metal contraption attached to my teeth--was stretched tautly over my lips, flossed into the space between teeth, and almost drowning me. That last bit wasn't an intended consequence. It just happened that my sinuses were completely congested and I could only breath through my mouth, which was no easy feat when an airtight rubber sheet covered most of it. But the worst was when sudden gushes of water escaped from the dam down my throat. It was a good thing the brain knew to shut down the air canal to let water pass through.

My fear of anything dental turned out to be nothing compared to the fear of drowning or suffocating.

Even though the causes of my children's fears seemed puzzling, I could identify with their emotions. My five-year-old son was afraid he wouldn't be able to do the moves in class and everyone would laugh at him. My seven-year-old daughter didn't feel any pain, but she'd had enough dental work done in her young life that she was afraid pain would be just around the corner. The unknown future and the possibilities of pain and humiliation, not the actual events they experienced, were what struck fear in their hearts.

Lajos Egri, author of "The Art of Creative Writing" (Citadel Press 1965) puts forth the notion that fear is the underlying drive for human behavior and survival. That thought stopped me. Fear is indeed a powerful emotion and motivator, but the most basic? He argues even the positive emotions such as love and philanthropy, are based on fear.

This idea may take me a while to chew on. But in the mean time, it's given me new eyes to look at conflict, the engine that drives a story. If I buy this theory, my characters would base all their decisions,consciously or not, on fear and its cousin, insecurity. We'll find out how that works.

Love, revenge, greed, power lust: move out of the way!

Hooks

I've been mulling over the subject of "hooks", that hard-to-describe quality that catches the attention of an agent, editor or a reader. Here are what a few people--an author, two agents, and an editor--have to say about it. Initially I wanted to separate the hook in a query, which usually is one or two sentences long, from a hook on a first page, but I realized that it's the same thing: the way to pique interest.

http://www.anitraweb.org/write/exercises/hook.html

The headings are well-put and the examples, especially Hole in the Corner, are not your run-of-the mills ones. I also like how her emphasis is on the readers, on how we need to be "charitable" and not be "unfair." Sometimes my focus on the publishing process: writing queries and synopses, noting which agent liked what, what new imprints are created, that I lose sight of reaching actual readers. This is a good reminder.

http://misssnark.blogspot.com/2006_12_17_archive.html

No question Miss Snark knows what she wants, and spares no snarkiness in getting her point across. The sheer number of examples makes this a great tool. And if you have time to read the comments from her readers, it can tell you even more. No generalities, no cuteness, no trying to pass off an idea/list of characters as a hook: these are some overall impressions I got from this.

http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-to-craft-great-hook.html

If you scroll down to the comments section, Nathan Bransford says something comforting (or disturbing if you really like things to be structured and well organized with clear Standard Operating Procedures for everything) about how people in publishing can differ on their ideas about queries and hooks and other mandatory, getting-your-book-published steps.

http://editorialanonymous.blogspot.com/search/label/hooks

The word "snark" may not be in this person's name but she uses her sharp wit and sharper words to good use. These are her posts labeled "hooks" and she talks about the differences and similarities between hooks and gimmicks: which I don't think I completely get. I guess the word "gimmick" has such a strong turn-off factor for me that it is hard for me to consider some of them as "good." Interesting to read her comments on specific books, such as Speak and Fancy Nancy.