You Are What You Read (or You Read What You Are?)

Tip of the Day: It's time to take the Christmas decorations down (note to self).

Blog readers who follow my LiveJournal book reivews may see that my favorite books tend to be, in no particular order:
1. realistic contemporary
2. super well done historical fiction, especially based on true events,
3. some creepy ghost stories, and
4. funny books

That doesn't mean that I don't enjoy the occassional paranormal, dystopian, or historical fantasy, but it is kind of interesting that the books I've written (those that are WIPs and those from my past days of learning) are:
1. realistic fiction (6)
2. historical (1, but not super well done or based on true events)
3. creepy ghost stories (1)
4. funny (hopefully 2)

Only one of my 8 manuscripts has been paranormal, and that one I actually rewrote into realistic historical (see above), removing the paranormal aspects. I've never attempted a dystopian and don't have any ideas for one.

Dare I mention that what is selling right now is paranormal and dystopian? :-p

Still, I love realistic books and always have, from Lurlene McDaniel as a teen; to Sarah Dessen, Ellen Wittlinger, and Laurie Halse Anderson in my learning-to-write days; to C. K. Kelly Martin, April Henry, and Eric Luper today.

I'll continue to write realistic YAs and MGs, no matter what the market, until overwhelming ideas drawn me otherwise. I hope you all will get to read my next YA!

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

Reading Like a Grown-up (or Can I Handle the Truth?)

Tip of the Day: Even if you don't usually read adult books or non-fiction books, I highly recommend THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS by Rebecca Skloot. You can learn about science while seeing how real people are often the best characters.


I am a huge reader of YA fiction. Some may say I am obsessed with the genre. They may be right -- but let me explain WHY:
1. Part of my YA Librarian job is to buy all the library's YA titles so I'm constantly reading reviews of these books.
2. Part of my YA Librarian job is to recommend YA titles to teens so I have to keep up on reading them.
3. The YA Librarians in my county lib system put together a Best Of list of teen fiction every year, so I have to keep up on my reading.
4. Because I read so many reviews of YA fiction for my job, I'm enticed into reading some of the titles based on good reviews.
5. As a YA writer, I read a lot of YA writer blogs and industry news, which entice me into reading even more YA titles.
6. To keep up on the YA fiction industry and to see what is selling, I skim the jacket flaps of many YA titles at the lib and am enticed into reading them.
7. I love the immediacy, the pace, the voice, the relatability of just "growing up" and learning about yourself and others of YA fiction and will never stop reading it.

In slightly lesser amounts I read MG fiction, and in even lesser amounts, adult fiction and non-fiction. But the proportion of adult books I start to finish is higher than that of YA or MG bc there are just a ton of great adult titles out right now. And no matter what genre of kidlit you are writing, it is important to read books for adults.

Why?

In addition to just hitting on some great stories, often trends that hit in kidlit are trickle-downs from popular or notable adult works. There are also substantial adult non-fiction titles that can get your wheels turning for kidlit fiction ideas.

I loved THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS, and am also really enjoying Elizabeth Gilbert's latest, COMMITTED. On deck I have Peter Lovenheim's IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. When I'm feeling the glut of YA paranormal romance and dead sibling books, I need to remember to kick up the adult lit.


What recent adult novels or non-fiction are you reading and loving right now?

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

Juggling multiple projects

Tip of the day: If you want to read three EXTRAORDINARY blog posts about plot, you must check out Laini Taylor's blog. But make sure you have a good hour to read, digest, take notes, etc. Seriously, it is GOOD STUFF.

I am not a very good juggler, at least when it comes to writing projects.

I like to work on one, see it through to the end, set it aside, let it rest, and while it's resting, if I have something else I need to work on, then get to it while the other one is out of my hair for the moment.

So, it's a little strange to be in a place where I have two things pulling for my attention.

One of them is a book I worked on most of last year. It ended up being more of a tween or young YA book, and although my agent loved it, it's been rejected more than a few times now, and many of the editors have said the same thing - the main premise of the novel will be more interesting to middle grade readers.

Well, that's fine except suddenly my character is 12 instead of 17 and can't drive or work or be getting into a steamy romance and and and... So yeah. It's pretty much a total rewrite. But I love the concept and I think it *is* a premise that middle grade kids might like. So I'm starting completely over. Oh joy.

The other project is also a middle grade, and for that one, I may not have to write the entire thing, which will be nice. I hope to get 3-4 chapters done, write a synopsis, and see if that might be all we need at this point. So hopefully that one will be done and out of the way in a couple of weeks. But we'll see. The best laid intentions and all of that...

The good thing about two projects is that when I'm trying to figure out something in one of them and need that time to just let my brain perculate, I can be actively working on the other one. The challenge, of course, is to keep the voice true in each story.

What about you - do you like working on multiple projects at a time?

~Lisa, Miss Crafting a Career

The Name Game!

Tip of the Day: Are you watching the Olympics? If not, you are missing out!

When I wrote I HEART YOU, YOU HAUNT ME, I sat down with these characters in my head and a story to tell. Only problem was, they didn't have names.

Ava came out of nowhere. It was weird. But I loved the name. I don't really remember how I came up with Jackson. But once I had their first names, I had to think of last names. I think I knew a lady named Ava Bender at one time, a long time ago. So I borrowed her name. Jackson's last name popped into my head as I tried to think of something that went well with it - Jackson Montgomery.

Later, I discovered why that name sounded so pleasant to my ears. There's a character on All My Children named Jackson, and guess what HIS last name is? I think Tina mentioned that to me shortly after the book came out. At first I was horrified. Then, I laughed about it. I certainly didn't copy the name on PURPOSE!

Interestingly enough, a couple of years after my book came out, both the names Ava and Jackson showed up on the "most popular baby names" lists. I'd like to think it's because of my book, but I'm pretty sure it's just a weird coincidence.

Like others have said, either names come really easily to me, or they don't, and it is pure agony trying to think of a name that fits and I haven't used before. I mostly use baby name web sites. I'll google what I'm looking for in a name - unique boy name or cool girl name and surprisingly, something usually comes up.

HOW did writers survive before the internet is what I want to know!?

~Lisa, Miss Crafting a Career

Character Names. Sigh.

Tip of the Day: Want a chance at winning a signed copy of A MATCH MADE IN HIGH SCHOOL? Hop over to my blog. Tip #2: In the IL area and want to go to an awesome kid lit event this weekend? Anderon's is having their annual Children's Literature Breakfast this Saturday. Deena, Em and I will be there!


Coming up with my characters' names is getting really. Freaking. Hard. I recently started writing my eighth book and I don't think I've repeated a name yet. That's a lot of names. At first it was fun and cute and I was going through all the names I loved and wouldn't get to use for future kids (had to stop having babies at some point right?). But as I've kept going it's just getting frustrating. My notes have been reduced to main girl, main guy, BFF, jerky dude and the like. All because I've been resisting naming the characters. I'm like one of those parents that lets their kid be named Baby Girl for the first couple of weeks after she is born all because mama can't commit to a name. It's like, once they have a name they're stuck with it even if it's sucky because I just don't want to come up with something else. One of the guys in my current WIP is named Nate. I'm not sure if it's a good name. Might be a terrible name. There's probably an online poll somewhere that says 87% of people hate the name Nate. But now he's stuck with it because I just can't go there again. And last names? Wow. That's even worse for me. Want to know what I do? I mentally go through the last names of every person I've gone to school with from kindergarten through college and I use their names. For real. I'm also fond of old teacher's last names. And when I get really desperate I look through sites like this one. And that helps. One fun thing I've been doing with names is having my kids' names make an appearance in each book. Not as a main character but as one of the characters that only has few lines. Like a walk-on role. In THE ESPRESSOLOGIST there is a customer names Gavin. In MY FAKE BOYFRIEND IS BETTER THAN YOURS there is a girl at the lunch table named Maya. And in PUMPKIN PRINCESS there is a patch worker named Teegan. I'm going to have to slip London into my new book. :-)

Kristina, Miss See Me on the Shelves

(How do you like the new name? I'm trying it on and walking around the store in it to see if it squeezes my toes. Does it look ok?)

What about last names? (or OMG ENGAGED!)

Tip of the day: If you are going to travel south for a winter vacation, be prepared with many books for the inevitable airport delays. My vacation reading this past week? FALLEN by Lauren Kate; BOYS, GIRLS & OTHER DANGEROUS MATERIALS by Rosalind Wiseman; SHANGHAI GIRLS by Lisa See; and ALL UNQUIET THINGS by Anna Jarzab.

To come up with a character's first name, I mainly go with my first instinct of whatever name jumps into my head. When I'm "forced" to change it bc it ends up being too similar to another character's name, then it is hard for me but I'm usually not that committed to a name. I just have to remember to keep using the new name.

But for last names, I have more trouble. A last name can signify a family heritage, which can then imply a certain look, attitude, family, and friends for your character. I tend to stay away from last names for my main characters that sound Italian bc I don't want them to be character versions of me. I seem to pick "generic" sounding last names bc I honestly don't refer to a character's last name that often.

For my current WIP, I realized that I needed a last name for my MC that would be used more often than in my other books, and something that could sound a bit more "fancy" for her TV stint. So she is now Lilly Aubendale. Her best friend is Marisha. And yes, I stole the first names from my coworkers who I think are partly flattered and partly like "OK, my boss is weird."

But going back to last names, um, I may be changing mine.... My manpanion bequeathed me with a diamond while on vacation! Woo hoo! His last name is still very Italian so I feel like my "heritage" and Sicilian identity would still be intact. But it's kind of like changing a character's name when you hit page 200 of a book. Can you re-identify yourself with a new name like you can with a character?

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

Writing Styles: a look at three authors

Tip of the Day: If you are going to SCBWI conference in NYC this weekend have a FAB time!! I'm so jealous!

The Saturday before last I did a YA Panel at The Book Stall in Winnetka, IL with two awesome YA authors-- Julie Halpern, author of:

and Beverly Patt, author of:




















and it was A LOT of fun! Hopefully fun for the audience but lots of fun for me too. I love learning about other authors and how they write. Someone asked us how we knew when our book was finished and ready to send to the editor. And we all had totally different answers. Take me for example, when I think a book is as awesome as I can make it, I send it to my individual critique partners. They'll read and mark up the manuscript and then send it back to me. I'll go through their notes and make changes that I agree with and then send it to my agents. My agents will send me back notes, I'll make changes again, and then send it back to them. At this point, if they think it's cool, it goes to my editor. That's me.

Now take Beverly Patt. She meets with an in-person critique group. Before their meeting she'll send out what she wants the group to review and then at the meeting they'll discuss it. Eeeek! I'm not sure I could do this. There is something about having everyone talk about my work in-person that freaks me out a little. It's much less stressful (to me) to read an e-mail from an individual. It sounds like it works for Bev though and she even made it sound fun. Bev told a story about how she once killed off a character in one of her books and how when she got to her meeting the whole group was wearing SAVE LATONYA stickers. Too cute.

Last was Julie Halpern. Wow, I'm AMAZED at her process! It sounds awesome and works great for her as her books rock. Julie said she writes out the entire book by hand in a notebook. Then she types it into a word document. Then she sends it to her editor. That's it. Are you amazed too? She doesn't go back and stress and freak out and revise like a crazy person over and over again! No outside feedback! Just her and her editor! Whoa. Too cool.

So what's your process? What's your next step once you've finished writing your book?

Kristina, Miss Delighted to Debut















(Me, Julie Halpern, and Beverley Patt. Photo by Julie's nice hubby)

How I write, or don't write, dialogue

Tip of the day: A really nice librarian has made a book trailer of my book FAR FROM YOU. Check it out HERE.

Okay, here's the funny thing. As a person who writes novels in verse, my challenge is to try and NOT write much dialogue. I know. It sucks. And the thing is, there are times I have to. And when I have to, I feel like I'm a terrible writer and should be thrown to the sharks to be eaten alive. Or something.

Novels in verse are supposed to be poetic. And dialogue, if we're talking realistic dialogue anyway, just isn't going to be poetic. But sometimes you need it, right? Well, I do anyway. The thing that's great about trying not to write it, however, is it forces me to cut to the chase. When I'm writing a book in prose, I'll find myself writing paragraph after paragraph with one person speaking. Okay, realistically, no one talks that much all at once. No one! But oh, this character has a lot to say, and I must, I MUST let her say it!

But in verse, I have to keep it short. Maybe I can't make it as poetic as I'd like, but I can keep it short. If I try really hard, that is. So I ask myself, what's the point here? What NEEDS to be said? Dialogue is so important for showing how characters get along. Or don't get along. Dialogue shows us how close two characters are. Strangers talk more formerly than two people who are intimate, for example.

Besides getting to the point, I have to ask, how can I say it so it sounds real to that character? One of the hardest things about dialogue is having characters sound differently. I like how Deena said she'll give one character a slang term or phrase to use that distinguishes her. I also think your character's personality should be reflected in the dialogue. For instance, a shy character is going to talk differently than an outgoing character. That's why realistic dialogue doesn't just mean how kids talk today. It means how a particular character should sound.  

When you have a cast of colorful characters, each with their own distinct personality, there is nothing better than a good conversation between some of them. Think of BECAUSE OF WINN DIXIE by Kate DiCamillo and all of the wonderful conversations Opal has with her friends around town.

As I wrote my mid-grade novel last spring, IT'S RAINING CUPCAKES, I had SO much fun writing the dialogue. Finally, I could spread my wings and have my characters talk. Really talk. It was wonderful. And as I finish up my current verse novel, I'm ready for some more of that conversation.

So, characters in my next book, get ready. Have glasses of water nearby. Because you'll be doing a LOT of talking. 

~Lisa, Miss Crafting a Career

Dialogue, How I Love You <3

Tip of the Day: Just sharing some things I love about March. Irish beer on sale. Winter clothes on clearance racks. More daylight!

This week is How I Write Dialogue week at Author2Author. What a great week for me. I love writing dialogue. It's one of my favorite parts of the writing process. I love giving each of my characters a unique way of speaking. I love deciding who uses "gonna" and who uses ten dollar words. I love revising dialogue to make my first-attempt jokes funnier. I love overheard dialogue, interrupted dialogue and straight-up-lying dialogue. In fact, I love it so much that my biggest problem with dialogue is knowing how much to delete.

"Dialogue should have conflict" isn't a good guideline for me because it doesn't go far enough. Really, I could write dialogue for pages, and it will crackle with conflict. But it will still be too long.

So, in keeping with my 2009 theme of improving my pacing, here are some guidelines for those of us who love to write dialogue too much:

1. You only get one joke per exchange. Nooo, this is terrible! But doesn't humor build? Aren't multiple punchlines funnier than a single punchline? It's hard, really hard to cut something that made a beta reader mark "LOL." But it's a pacing issue. When you're stopping to be funny, the reader is stopping to laugh. And losing the plotline. I'm still going to write too many LOL lines in my first drafts, I'm sure. But then I have to figure out which ones are worth keeping. Maybe I'll cut them in half. (Ow. Ow. Why is cutting funny stuff the hardest?)

2. Stage directions are not dialogue. Sometimes I write dialogue because it's the easy way out. I'm not doing exposition in dialogue ("As you know, Bob, the elevator goes up and down.") ... or am I? What about an exchange like this?

Rocky: "I'm tired. Let's take the elevator."

Bob: "Don't be a wimp. The stairs are right there."

Conflict, right? Characterization, right? And yet still totally unneeded. How about "Bob took the stairs and, after a wistful glance at the elevator, Rocky followed."

Sometimes Deena and I call the actions that move characters from one place to the next stage directions. I need to resist the temptation to have my characters argue about stage directions. Because, man, do my characters love to argue with each other. About everything.

3. Dialogue slows things down. Do you want to slow things down here? Yes, most of the time, dialogue slows the pace. It stretches out a scene and makes things longer. Sometimes scenes need to be long. The most important scenes, the height of the emotional conflicts, can use some great dialogue. But if a scene reads too long, for me, dialogue is probably the culprit and should be treated as the usual suspect. It needs to get in and out, bam, like a guerrilla warrior. Two, three lines, done. Back to action and internal dialogue, which should be carrying the meat of the story.

Okay, what about scripts? I'm working on a script for a graphic novel. I thought it would be playing to my strength, as I love dialogue so much. Believe it or not, I'm still writing too much dialogue! I'm forgetting to rely on narration boxes and artwork. So what I learned is that even in a script, the temptation to rely on dialogue to carry a story must be resisted.

One day, I'll have to write a blog post all in dialogue. Maybe then I'll finally learn my lesson. Too much dialogue is too much dialogue Kate! In the meantime, I'll be taking advice this week from my blog peeps. Feel free to school me, everyone.

ETA: I apologize for the lack of paragraph breaks in this post. Blogger seems unable to recognize them today. I'll keep trying to fix.

-- Kate, Miss Perfecting the Pages

How I Write...Setting (or Think about the place where you live, wonder why you haven't before*)

*With apologies to REM


Tip of the Day: To get your JanNoWriMo count up, don't let yourself have a caffeine break til you reach 500 more words. My current JanNoWriMo count: 10000 words

Welcome to Day 3 of How I Write...SETTING! After pondering this for some time, I can say this about my procedure and thought process...

1. I wonder what kind of place would make my MC act the way she does,

2. Then I picture myself in that place almost like I'm following the character around her world. [Note: More often than not, this place is very similar to the city I currently live in or he small town I grew up in. Varying up my settings is something I'm working on.]

3. Next I pick out which details of the MC's world are unique and interesting,

4. And as I start writing, I integrate these details into the characters' actions to avoid info-dumping of setting details. [Note: Sometimes I don't give as many details as my reader wants. Adding the right amount of setting details is something I'm working on.]

5. I also try to switch up the settings of each chapter to keep things interesting (move the MC from her house to the diner to the bus)

6. And to keep cliched/tired settings almost completely out of the book (convos in front of lockers are OK for a very brief period only).

7. As I revise, I keep an eye out for places where my MC is "floating in space"

8. And as I get feedback from my CPs, I make sure to address the areas that they say need some more setting details.

That's about it! Here's a sample from my MG, SOMETHING STRANGE ON STAFF ROAD that has a quality bit of setting for your perusal:

The house was freshly painted white. In fact, all eight houses were bright white, like rows of teeth pushing out of the bright green grass. I’d asked Dad if we could repaint our whole house pink, and he said no, Dr. Meyer had made it clear that there were to be no changes to our houses or yards. They were all to look the same.

To be honest, setting is not one of my strong points -- though I didn't know that til about 18 months ago. Yeah, I thought I was putting the right details and cues on paper without bogging the reader down with mundane details that didn't move the story forward. I mean, I could see the setting SO CLEARLY in my head as I wrote, of COURSE I was conveying it perfectly on the page.

Then I had a fantastic 15-minute critique session with the fantastic Laurie Halse Anderson at an SCBWI conference last fall. She'd read the first chapter or so of this MG novel and said that while she could tell that I knew the setting exactly in my head, she wasn't seeing it in hers.

What?

To make it more clear to me, she put notes in my pages indicating places where she wanted to see/smell/hear/touch more of what was around the MC. Again, not a big info-dump of a description, but just a few more gems sprinkled throughout to give the whole chapter a more tangible feel.

Oh. OH!

The revision I did of my MG after that critique helped me land my agent and I know LHA's wise words helped me out. (She also pointed it out to me in the most gracious of ways. Thank you, Laurie!)

Setting is something I'm hyper-aware of now -- if not during my first drafts than definitely during revisions -- and I'm glad! I love losing myself in the worlds created in others' work and want people to do the same when reading mine. So I will continue to add more details than I find necessary in the hopes that they will be just enough to satisfy my readers.

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

How Emily Writes Settings

Tip of the Day: For those that are fast drafting sometimes it’s okay to give yourself permission to think about setting last. But just don’t forget to add it in eventually!

Kate talking more about the overall setting of the book yesterday, but today I’d like to talk about writing the setting for each individual scene.

For some people setting might come naturally. They might instantly write down descriptions like: the moss colored tree echoed in the moon light with a bird perched on the hallow branch ready to break with one peck.

But setting doesn’t come to me naturally (as I’m sure you can tell by the sentence above).

My novels tend to come in what I liked to call Around the Corner Movie Form. In that I can often hear them and see the scene blurred in the distance, but I can’t make out the setting until I listen first.

So in writing a book I almost always start each chapter with a series of dialogue exchanges. Most of it is rubbish and doesn’t make sense, but it allows me to play out the scene as I’m hearing it in my head.

After it’s out, I can make sense of it and then find a location that fits the book to place it.

Often once I’ve figure out the setting the entire dialogue no longer is usable and needs changed. Adding in the description to the setting is really hard for me. I have to take it one line at a time and think about what would be happening at this exact dialogue exchange. And even then I have to do some field work with the setting before I can picture it enough to describe it in book form.

This step involves some fieldwork and one of my favorite parts where I get to pretend I’m a police investigator, journalist, or archivist and searching through dusty old microfilms to find just the right clue (Don’t you guys love those scenes in movies? Or is that just me?) At this stage, I borrow a ton of books from the library. Stuff on the city, location, state, or a certain scene (such as a theme park, camp, etc). I also go through images online (Wikipedia is my BFF), in magazines, and then combine images to form the one I want, until I get an idea of what things look like.

After I have an image only then can I add in description, almost like adding setting cues to a screenplay.

And unfortunately I’m still not quite done. This is the stage where I curse the writing gods for not blessing me with the ability to combine setting, dialogue, and characters into something more cohesive in a first draft.

Not until I do another draft does the setting cues and dialogue really shape into Book Form, when I take out all the Stage Cues (as Deena likes to call them and has to remind me constantly to take out even when the draft is to a stage I feel critique partners can look at) of I did A, then B, then C, then D (which hello, she is correct that’s really boring). So after that I fix and try to make the setting flow more naturally instead of feeling as if it’s a scrapbook project gone wrong with bits and pieces pasted in crooked and upside down.

So as you can see setting really is not easy for me. So I advise you listen to the other A2A Misses for much better advice.

But if you are like me and trying to find a way to work, I guess the layered version works for me. And with each book I write, I find I’m better and better at writing setting and description into the first draft. So I guess practice really does make it easier.

Additional Setting Tips:

• Try to incorporate setting into the dialogue. Don’t make it obvious it’s for the reader, but incorporating the setting into the dialogue helps to show it with more impact and in with the action, which in turn makes it come alive more.

• I once read a quote that said something like back in the 1800s books had to have a lot of descriptions because people didn’t travel much and didn’t know a lot about the places outside where they lived and wanted details. But now a days, a few carefully, placed descriptions will give your readers all they need to know. I love to think about that when doing settings.

--Emily, Miss Querylicious

JaNoWriMo Writing Challenge:

10423 / 50000 words. 21% done!

A2A Presents How I Write

Tip of the Day: My computer's in the shop and my thumb drives are saving my (writing) life. Have you made a New Year's Resolution to keep up with your backups? And if you're doing January Fast Draft with us, stop by the comments and share your word counts and other JFD experiences.

Today I'm unveiling a new Author2Author feature we call "How I Write." During a "How I Write" week, the five of us agree on a writing topic and we each blog about how we approach it. This week the topic is Setting. Let us know what you think of our newest feature!

So ... how do I write Setting? Well, I'm one of those "on the ground" people. I have a hard time writing about places I've never been. I mean, sure, every book has settings where the author has never been, and I've written lots of scenes that take place somewhere unfamiliar to me, like the basement of an abandoned house or an icy rooftop. But for the location of an entire book, I need familiarity.

My first novel took place in California and even though I've actually been to California and seen it with my own eyes, I still had problems. What kind of trees grow in people's yards? Do they have squirrels? I was losing sleep over the squirrel question. Finally I emailed a librarian in Central California and asked. (I got a prompt answer too. Librarians rock!)

After this experience, I decided that my next novel would take place in my home state of New York, where I don't have to worry about what kinds of trees there are. I don't even have to think about it. It's not just trees, of course. How long do summer storms last, for example? Something like that is crucial to plot. What does hail sound like? Here's a piece of something I'm working on that really draws on the local scene:

Eddie ran into the living room. Migs and T.J. were already staring out the picture window at the hail. It hit Eddie’s father’s car in the driveway with loud pocka pocka noises; it fell against the window like gravel. Eddie followed Migs’s gaze up to the ridge, where his father had recently installed expensive hail netting. They couldn’t see the gauzy nets from here to know whether the hail was being caught by them. Eddie took in the view of the cultivated land around the hills. Most farms couldn’t afford netting, and small, doll-like figures spread all over the vineyards and orchards, heaving tarps over stakes.

I actually had to do a little research to find out what vineyard and orchard farmers do when it hails, but as an Upstate New Yorker, at least I knew it was something to be researched and written about.

Now if I were writing about a moon colony, I probably wouldn't feel this lack of confidence. I could make things up as I went along. But you know, I understand people actually live in Central California. I couldn't screw up the details and it caused me a lot of stress. But someday maybe I'll have the confidence as a writer to write about Mexico or London or India. Still, when writers say they have to travel abroad to complete their novels ... yeah, I totally get it.

What about you? Do you have to have that everyday familiarity with a place in order to write about it, or are you able to overlook the details and fill them in later?

-- Kate, Miss Perfecting the Pages