A little rock-and-roll is good for the soul

Tip of the Day: Browsing the backs of CDs can be a great way to find the perfect title for your book.

On Tuesday, I went to a concert. I saw these guys perform:



I almost didn't go, because the practical side of me says there are more important things to spend my money on. But I've been working so hard lately, I REALLY needed a fun night out. So I did it. I bought the tickets, and took a friend along with me to experience the awesomeness that is Lifehouse.

The thing is, seeing artists perform, like singers or actors, or even admiring great works of art, helps feed my creative soul. I work in a job that doesn't allow for much creativity. After work, I come home, do chores, help with homework, take the dog for a walk, and go to bed. If I'm lucky, I read a little before I go to sleep. When I'm writing, I wake up early and write, and write a lot on the weekends.

It's important to find time in my busy schedule to be inspired. Music inspires me. Theater inspires me. Great books inspire me. Beautiful art inspires me. Sometimes, I have to invest a little time and money to go out and find the inspiration. And I'm finally realizing that it's definitely time and money well spent.

What about you? Are you inspired by seeing other artists perform?

~Lisa, Miss Pinch Me I'm Pubbed

Sixth Annual Children’s Literature Breakfast

Tip of the Day: Don't finish a three-year old's glass of milk. Really. Trust me on this. You could end up with a mouthful of milky peas and carrots.

Last weekend I attended the Sixth Annual Children’s Literature Breakfast hosted by Anderson’s Bookshops and WOW—I had no idea it was such a huge and cool event. First, there were like 600 people there. Authors, librarians, teachers, reading specialists etc. It was an amazing sight. And while I was a bit nervous going by myself to the event that went away within seconds. People were so friendly and fun and I found myself gabbing away with everyone like we were BFFs within minutes of getting there.

There was a HUGE bookstore set up and people were buying like crazy! Me too. I was pretty bad. But they were giving a 20% discount so I made it okay in my mind to splurge. Ann Martin was supposed to be there as one of the big speakers but got snowed in so I was pretty bummed about that. Especially since I bought a couple of her books to get signed. But the rest of the breakfast made up for it.

Here were some of the highlights:

Spatulatta Sisters—

Granted, I never heard of them before that day but apparently they are a big deal. They are these adorable 9 and 11-year old sisters that have been doing cooking shows online and now have a cook book. They did a cooking demonstration for us.

Kevin Henkes—

He’s the super popular children’s author that does all of those cute mouse books like this one:

And he also has YA books. I haven’t read any yet but I picked up this one:

He read from his YA books and gave a nice talk. He’s the tiny spec at the podium in the picture (you can see how packed the place was!)

Richard Peck—

I don’t know how I did not know who he was before the breakfast because he was pretty freaking cool! He’s written 30 books for middle grade and young adult kids and he gives one heck of a speech. He was absolutely fantastic! He had one great one-liner after another—one of my favs: "Being a writer is like being a greeter at Wal-Mart––there are no benefits, but you never have to retire." Here’s a pic of him signing books:

Illinois Authors—

There was an Illinois author stationed at each table and every half an hour or so there would be a switch and a new author would come to the table. What a cool idea! I totally want to do this one day. I met a number of cool authors but one of the coolest was Brenda Ferber—another FSG author! I probably drove her nuts picking her brain about FSG (they are my publisher too) but she didn’t seem to mind. And she had a cool getting published story. She sold her Middle Grade novel to the very first place she queried (FSG). Then sold her second to the same publisher. When she wrote a children’s book she decided it was time to get an agent and e-queried one agent (and a REALLY good one at that) and that agent offered her representation that afternoon. AMAZING isn’t it? She makes the whole thing look like a snap. During one of the switches we were missing our author and my table said “you do the author talk!” You know I was like, “Oh no I couldn't…ok!” :-) And then I blabbed away about getting published. I figured it was good practice for the future.

Bag of Swag—

Free stuff is SO fun! Each seat had a Kevin Henkes designed canvas bag full of things like posters, CDs, buttons, fans and even a spatula (from the Spatulatta Sisters of course). My favorite items from the bags? The little sample books! OMG!! Especially the Meg Cabot one, Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls, Moving Day. It even came with sheets of stickers. Please let me some day be fabulous enough to have pretty colorful sample books to give away!

So as you can see, I had a pretty great time and I learned SO much from all of the great authors! Granted I don’t get out much in the way of writerly things (this being my second writing-related outing) but I totally want to go again next year. If anyone is in the Chicago-land area we’ll have to meet up and go next February!

Kristina, Miss Soon-to-Pub

Tapping Into The Secret (or How to Make a Movie With Really Bad Acting and Still End Up on Oprah)

Tip of the Day: Why belong to the B&N rewards program when the Border's one is FREE and sends you coupons like every day?

In the summer of 2007, I had a plan. I was going to two conferences in the fall where I'd earn "ins" with attending editors -- meaning I could sub to them without an agent bc I'd also attended the conference. So I decided that even though I really wanted an agent, if I didn't get any bites by 1/1/08, I'd use all my conference sub ins and give the agent thing a rest for a while.

And I was OK with this plan.

But just to make sure I had my eye on the prize, I wrote down on a sticky note: "I will be agented by 1/1/08." I stuck it on my cubicle wall at work where I'd be sure to see it every day. Some people had pics of their kids up to motivate them to work, I had ballpoint scrawl on a generic yellow Post-It. To each their own.

Soon after, my friend suggested I read THE SECRET just to see what I thought of it. There were a ton of things in the book that seemed ridiculous to me. I mean, I'm still not convinced that Ludwig van Beethoven would've put his stamp of approval on the DVD.

Well, OK, maybe he would've if they used his Symphony No. 5 as their theme song and he collected royalties.... Nah.

But what I gleaned was that you need to put your intentions "out there" to up the chances of them coming true. Don't be afraid to tell people what your goals are.

It couldn't hurt.

So I told people I was actively looking for an agent, and that I hoped to have one by the end of the year, and I "told the universe" these same intentions while also reading my sticky note every day.

And guess what? After that I was offered rep in November and had the contract signed in December -- I'd made my 1/1/08 date!

Coincidence? The jury's still out on that one -- I mean, I did write a pretty damn good book ;) -- but as I said, "It can't hurt!"

And for the record, if you watch the DVD of THE SECRET, please be prepared for cringe-worthy acting and bad reinactments. Don't say I didn't warn you.... :)

Deena, Miss Recently Repped

Revision Girl

Tip of the Day: Teens will do just about anything if pizza is involved.

For the past few weeks, Emily’s Writing World has had the fortune to entertain Revision Girl.

Revision Girl posing as Wonder Woman

Unlike many writers, I actually love having Revision Girl around, sometimes even more than Writer Girl (but please don’t tell Writer Girl that, because she’s kind of important to the whole operation in Writing World and I like her lots, too). Because Revision Girl gets to karate chop sentences/scenes/chapters, whip a character into shape, and sparkle up the page with fun descriptions and details.

But after much time and work sometimes Revision Girl gets tired and starts to look like this:

And feels like this:

Which makes her want to stop Revising all together. And attempts such as: tricking her by letting her work for one hour then rewards of seeing Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice followed by chocolate begin to no longer work. Nor does a comfy new superhero outfit.

So because Revision Girl is quite shy and afraid to speak up on this blog, I am going to ask a question from her on her behalf. She’d like to know what you guys use to keep your own Revision Girls (or Boys) active and wanting to keep fighting crime one word and sentence at a time.

Is it the old Butt-in-Chair? A simple week off? Reading a Super-Awesome book? Or maybe a simple reminder that Revisions are an important operation?

Revision Girl thanks you dearly in advance for sharing and helping a girl come out of her superhero rut.

--Emily, Miss Awaiting an Agent

The Words of Fear

Tip of the Day: Want to listen to scary stories at work? Search iTunes for Classic Podcasts. Edgar Allen Poe holds up remarkably well over time. But nothing you hear will be as scary as listening to your coworkers explain politics.

I’ve been working to improve a writing weakness of mine: relaying events and dialogue and forgetting to emphasize my main character’s emotional reactions. I think this weakness stems from my lack of experience in describing emotions separated from action. I can write a good, fun angry, with my MC stomping around and busting things up. Fear, though, is harder for me. And I want to write some scenes where my MC is flat out terrified. So I’ve been reading scary stories lately so I can steal … I mean, learn from example.

Here’s something I’ve learned: when my viewpoint character is afraid, he or she acts like I do when I’m afraid. When I’m anxious, my heart rate speeds up and I struggle to catch my breath. So that’s what happens to all my characters, every time they’re afraid. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but it’s getting painfully repetitive. Still, I wouldn’t know the feeling of chills running up my spine. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me. Does that happen to people? I guess it must, huh?

It was a revelation when I was reading my daughter a story the other day and one of the characters in peril was described as sweat soaked. Aha! I thought. That’s what my characters need to do more. Sweat. I need to go back and add more sweat. So my critique partners are in for a pleasant surprise.

More reading reveals that you can get away with a little more in third person than you can in first person. This is from Nighttime: Too Dark to See by Todd Strasser: “Ethan tensed. He gripped the seat … The car door opened. Ethan’s heart was pounding.” Now this is really good, but I don’t think it would work in first person. You’d lose those unconscious actions like tensing and gripping the seat. My internal point-of-view-police would jump in, “Ahem, your MC wouldn’t realize she was doing that. And she certainly wouldn’t know her eyes were widening, so delete that, too.” [Of all the voices in my head, my point-of-view-police annoys me the most. She’s so freaking nitpicky about things nobody in their right minds should notice. She’s a complainer. I’m sure she’d say “Ahem” if she could.]

In a tight third person, you can do practically anything. Even the most internal thoughts still work. This is from the story A Cry in the Night by Nancy Berberick and Greg LaBarbera: “The walls seemed to be closing in on him … Fear … grasped him now and squeezed the breath from his lungs.” Oh, yeah, walls closing in! I need to go back and throw that in somewhere.

A lot of the scary stories I’ve loved most have been in first person, so I think that can be done well, too. But I’m glad I chose to write my “scary” NaNoWriMo book with its many haunted house scenes in third person. I have my main character on the floor curling into fetal position after escaping the coffin-sized spider. I was disappointed to run into “he curled into a tight ball” in someone else’s story, but I still think it works in mine. It would work even better if he didn’t curl into a ball in one or two later chapters. He’s not Armadillo Boy. I’ll fix that on revision.

You know what the best part of this analysis has been? I scheduled a mortgage payment before my vacation, and it didn’t go through. As I realized my mortgage was mistakenly very late, my stomach dropped. And my brain kicked in with: wait, I need to write this down. How does my stomach feel exactly? I almost forgot about the mortgage. Boy, all I need is a good car wreck and I’ll be set for material. I really hope you all know what I mean by that.


-- Kate, Miss Writing Apprentice

Taking a Break after writing THE END

Tip of the Day: Editors may be reading your blog. They like humor. They like wit. They like good writing. I have a friend who has had *two* editors contact her after reading her blog. You could be next! Put your best blog forward!!

I am currently in that in-between book stage.

Yep, I worked on one YA from last summer until about November, then started right in on another one and finished it up this week.

Done.

Finished.

Kaput.

So now, the doubts start creeping in. Will I ever have another halfway decent idea? Will I ever write anything worthy of publishing? Will I ever write again, period?

Even after all this time (seven or so years of serious writing), isn't it interesting that I still wonder if there's another book inside of me? Does that ever go away?

I have some exciting presentation opportunities coming up, so even if I wanted to, I couldn't start in on another project right now. I need to focus my time and energy elsewhere over the next few months.

I'm looking forward to a break. To having more time to read. To just *being*.

Except the problem is, I say that every time, as I wonder if there's another book inside of me. And then, BAM, when I least expect it, a character starts talking to me or an idea falls from the sky and I get cranky if I take too long to put it down on paper.

What about you? Do you jump right in to another project when you finish one, or do you take a breather?

~Lisa, Miss Pinch Me I'm Pubbed

The Mysterious Line Edits

Tip of the Day: Eat lots of left over V-Day chocolate while working on line edits.

That thing you’ve heard about for so long and wondered what it is? Well, I got mine. Last week. And to sum it up in one word—WOW. I’m going to let you in on a little secret that you might not know if you haven’t reached this point in this publishing biz yet or you are just reaching it now—you have to know another language to read the line edits. Seriously! Prepare to understand things like LC/, swirlies, ^, something that looks like the cents sign, things that have three underlines, two horizontal or vertical dashes above a letter, swooshy arrows, big boxes above and below the text and so on.

When I first looked at my line edited manuscript my instinct was to curl up into a little ball and cry. The marks seriously looked like this to me:

(The above comic by Eve Corbel, http://www.geist.com/comix?id=18)

But I am a mature author now so I didn’t do that. Instead I e-mailed my writer friends and whined, “WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN???” This is why writer friends are so great—some of them DID know what this stuff means! They pointed me to great Web sites like—

http://www.merriam-webster.com/mw/table/proofrea.htm

http://www.espressographics.com/text/proofreader.html

http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_proof.html

And would you believe a lot of these swirlies and slashes have meanings to them? Yup. But then I came across a number of them that still didn’t make sense to me. So I studied them and studied them and then finally just e-mailed my editor. I didn’t want to bother her with questions and look like I didn’t know what I was doing but hey—I DIDN’T know what I was doing. She very quickly and nicely explained everything to me and even sent a great example. Whew.

Now I am plowing my way through them and I have to say—at first it kind of feels like when you are in high school and you get back that English paper and it is SO marked up in pen or pencil that you just feel like OMG, what did I do wrong? Except, you know, a couple of hundred pages of this. But I keep reminding myself that every author goes through this, of course the book just can’t be perfect right off, and isn’t it wonderful to have an editor take so much time and work so hard on every little detail of your book? It is. I know this is just part of the process to make the most perfect book we can. So YAY for reaching this stage in the pub process!

Any of you authors that have been through line edits want to share your experiences?

Kristina, Miss Soon-to-Pub