Outline Love

I’m a little in love with my own outline. Is that weird? I am just INTENSELY excited to write, to really really write the rest of this book at long last!

The Downer Post

I don’t know how many posts I’ve deleted instead of publishing them this week. I’m in the part of the downward spiral where you try to explain it to yourself, to others, and then you see there’s no real reason for what you’re feeling, any excuse pathetic, but you’ve got all this motion going and [...]

My Painfully Slow Progress

I am plotting out my book in great detail, scene by scene by scene, a method I’ve only really used for work-for-hire novels (because I had to, under the contract), but I guess for my own stuff it could be helpful, too. I don’t have to stick to it exactly when I’m writing… But as [...]

One Last Bite

My other half, who knows me better than I know myself, has pointed out that I have this quirk while eating—cute? wasteful? just plain annoying?—in which I never finish what is on my plate. I always leave a piece of lettuce, a fallen bit of broccoli, one last bite. It’s just something I do, I [...]

Hooks

I was told by a literary agent (not this one, another) that my short story collection, once finished, would need a bigger hook in order to sell. Story collections do these days, she said sadly, which made me wonder if I needed to be a one-armed orphaned albino circus freak from Macedonia who writes all [...]

Story Salvaged, Workshop Awaits

The story found its way—I feel sure that the revision I ultimately came to is far better than what I lost when my computer died and ate it. Does that mean my computer was meant to die and eat the story so I could write an even better one? Let’s hope not. I don’t want [...]

More About Short Stories? Always

I admitted before to my near-obsession with short stories. Now I just randomly happened upon this thread about stories that “blew you away” on the Poets & Writers Speakeasy (I think you have to sign in to read it). There are so many stories mentioned that I haven’t even read!
But this comment about children’s books [...]

How Many Stories in One Story?

In an hour of desperation, I caved and just wrote a new first paragraph.
It is entirely different from the paragraph I lost. Unrecognizable! It takes the story in a whole other direction, opening up new worlds and possibilities, or at least sentences to have on page 1, which (this is just how I write) will [...]

Payday

I came home today to a check. THE check. The first half of my advance for my tween novel.
Excerpt of running commentary inside my head: Seriously, they paid me? And I haven’t written it all yet? Did the person cutting the check know that? Am I aloud to cash it now? Should I buy a [...]

One Week Later

It’s been a week since I learned I’m actually going to publish a novel. (The delirium can be re-experienced here.) Yes, it’s now a week later, and though my editor asked for my information including social security number and the name I want the copyright to be under for the contract I am still floating [...]

Writers Helping Writers, Assumed Rejections, and Cake!

Good things first: e got me a “Happy Book Deal” cake this weekend and even as I type this I want another slice. (No, really, where is it? I want another slice.) I asked him if I would get a cake for every book deal and he said yes. Isn’t he wonderful? I hope this [...]

Saying Yes to a Yes

I am so flattered and surprised by the outpouring of support from my announcement about my tween novel. How can I say thank you enough? Thank you!
I formally accepted my formal offer from S&S* on Friday, so this whole publishing-a-book fantasy is real. (I think. I’m still in shock about the whole thing.) I never [...]

What HAS Happened: I’m Publishing a Book!

Below I expunged all the things that haven’t come my way lately, and do you know why? Because things were brewing for reals and I am—no joke—about to tell you some good news that I was hinting at before:
I just got a formal offer on my first original tween novel from Simon & Schuster!
It’s not [...]

Stabs at a Writing Life

I’m not thinking about much else but writing these days. Only, I’ve been exhausted—and here I type this with a headache—probably because I’m trying to push myself so hard.
I am under deadline with a freelance writing project—and I am behind, very behind—and the day job is cutting into my time. I try to write every [...]

Now You See Them, Now You Don’t

I’m afraid I might be a lazy writer when it comes to character descriptions. In my own fiction, I usually do the large brushstrokes only: dark hair, dark eyes, the hands in a gesture, the mouth if it matters, just a few telling details are all I need—so I convince myself. Maybe I just don’t [...]

Confessions of an Eavesdropper

I am the person sitting at the table beside you, listening to you talk. I might be gazing down at my plate or into my steaming cup of mint tea, but really I’m committing your words to memory. In a few moments I’ll find an excuse to look up around the room. My gaze will [...]

The Writing Meme

I couldn’t help myself. Here’s the meme seen on Charlotte’s Web and Writing Under a Pseudonym:
What’s the last thing you wrote?
For an assignment: a movie tie-in is keeping me in shape this weekend. Don’t laugh—this thing pays almost twice as much as my raise at work for the entire year, and it will take a [...]

Distract Me

Truth be told, I’ve been depressed. Just a smidge. I’ve got that dull film over my eyes that makes everything seem soggier and uglier than usual—nothing to cause alarm, nothing to write home about. Still, I’m not in the mood to skip down the street or anything.
I remember I’m maybe-depressed when I have nothing much [...]

This Year’s Recycled Wisdom: Writing Is Hard

It’s so close to the end of the year, I can reach out and touch it. I feel like I should update my About Me—there’s something a little giddy about that list, blasé, that doesn’t feel like me any longer as I peer ahead into 2008. Also it’s out-of-date. A decision to rewrite a certain [...]

Appointment

One perk to living in New York City that I’ve just learned about is if a New York agent likes a story you published in a journal and contacts you to see if you’re represented and you say no and then she wants to see more work and you send in more stories and an [...]