Times like these, when I am determined to stay glued to the laptop until I finish this chapter, and the free pretzels and M&Ms at the writing spot have lost their luster, and it’s cold out, and the chair is comfortable and I don’t want to get out of it, and I have so much work left to do on the end of the book that I wake up some mornings and think it’s impossible and everyone knows it’s impossible and they’re all out there laughing at me, and it’s almost four o’clock, and I didn’t bring anything to eat with me today, I think about how it would be really cool if there were a special delivery/motivational service for writers—you wouldn’t have to stop writing to call them. You could just email in your order, and they’d swing by and sit beside your desk and feed you bites of food while you typed. And when you were done, they’d wipe the crumbs off your face, massage your stiff neck, and then slip away quietly. They’d leave a note beside your laptop: YOUR SCENE IS BRILLIANT, YOU ARE WONDERFUL, I LOVE EVERY WORD YOU’VE WRITTEN TODAY. And, when you weren’t looking, you’d find they’ve answered all your outstanding emails for you and left a nice, refreshing mint on your keyboard.

If such a service existed, I would like someone to tell me my chapter is shaping up okay today. And, also, I’d like a cheese and tomato sandwich. Thank you.

I am taking a break from my regularly scheduled angsting and deadline-driven antisocial behavior to join in Agent Appreciation Day and say a public thank-you to the person who’s making my dreams come true!

About seven-and-a-half months ago I found an agent. That whirlwind day was captured in this breathless blog post where I was initially so in shock over what happened that I was afraid to even type his name… for fear he’d take it back or something.

The agent in question? The awesome Michael Bourret at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management.

Since May 1, the day I like to say I “picked” Michael, he put me to work writing more pages for my manuscript, made me revise my synopsis multiple times, and got me to push myself till it was in fighting shape. Then, when it was ready, he went off and—in a whole new whirlwind you wouldn’t believe if I told you—sold my novel based on four chapters… at an auction… to my dream publisher… in a two-book deal, which almost made me faint in shock. Looking back, I’m surprised that I stayed conscious. And all of that is the reason I’m working like crazy right now and I’ve sworn off* social networking till the New Year—because my deadline is fast approaching and I don’t want to let my agent or my new publisher down!

Here are five reasons why I love my agent:

1. He saw something in me I couldn’t see in myself. And his belief in me makes me work harder than ever to prove it true.

2. He “gets” me and he “gets” my novel. He also knows exactly how to handle the sensitive writer type because, Hi, I am Exhibit A.

3. He has vision and he thinks ahead—with my career, with new technologies, with the publishing industry… I feel well-prepared to face the future with him on my side.

4. He is a fighter. And he’s proven this time and again.

5. He makes me feel important. He’s always approachable, he speedily answers every inane question I have, and I know he’s there when I need him.

I have to add another reason, because:

6. Oh and yeah, there’s that little part I should mention about how he’s making my dreams come true. Seriously, who does that? Oh I know: Michael Bourret.

I know I got lucky, and reading all these other Agent Appreciation Day posts makes me see that so many other writers did too! The agent’s job is something I didn’t fully understand before I had one (and I even assisted in a literary agency once). Maybe it’s so hard to explain because a good agent can do so much for you. Michael Bourret is one of the good ones. I hope he knows he’s appreciated!

For a list of all the authors appreciating their agents today, see Lisa and Laura’s blog post. And props to Kody Keplinger for coming up with this great idea!

______

* Haha. Breaking my own rules to tweet this post.

Right now, my novel looks like this:

A long dark tunnel, courtesy of Jon Shave via Flickr

I know, soon, there will be that exciting moment where my middle connects with my end, and the light floods in, and I’ll be able to see my feet before my face, and I’m itching for that because I can barely see a thing now.

Are we there yet?

No?

OK, back to it.

In the meantime, I write, and I write, and I write. Some of it is good. Some of it is not good but is salvageable. Some of it will be buried in the back courtyard where our building keeps the garbage pails and where, at night, it’s best to throw your garbage at the pail from a great distance to avoid the rats.

I’m still off Twitter and Facebook, but I can’t hide away from the world for the whole month. I witnessed a friend’s beautiful wedding this weekend (yes, I got teary!), and I’m starting this new thing where I try (*try*) every week to do something out of my comfort zone that’s somehow related to writing and books—because, so you know, my comfort zone involves a pair of pajamas, a Toblerone, a book I already know I like, and reality TV in the background… and the only person allowed in the zone is E. (More so if he brings me a Toblerone.)

I’m shy. But last night I went to the SCBWI Metro professional series panel where I heard two great YA editors give presentations—and though I do know already about voice and plot, I do get amped up hearing talks and tips about it. I believe you can never learn too much; you can always push yourself to become a better writer, MFA and book in hand or not. At the same time, I wonder if maybe I should be doing something else not also geared toward new writers. Where is that post-MFA, post-book#1, pre-book#2 place for writers to, I dunno, be writers and talk about writing without the focus on submission procedures and agents in there too?

I haven’t found it. And if it exists I have a feeling I can’t go there in pajamas.

It’s important to not ever forget how hard this writing-and-publishing thing is.

My struggles right now on this cool December morning may feel frustrating: I’m writing the big climactic sequence in Act III of my novel and it’s dark in here and I can’t see my own hand before my face and sometimes I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing, and sometimes I feel like I won’t make it, and sometimes I question everything, but I’ll figure it out, I’ll write my way through it, I will.

Fact is: No matter how hard I may think this is when I’m deep in it, it was far harder before—when I didn’t have the permission, and the opportunity, to write this novel. Nothing was harder than that.

I think of the other writer friends I know. I have writer friends out on submission with agents. I have writer friends out on submission with editors. I have writer friends on endless submission with editors. Writer friends starting over. Writer friends paused and not sure if they should start over.

Here’s a beautiful post from a writer friend of mine, Jade Park, about rejection. I agree with her when she says:

[R]ejection is like heartbreak. There is only so much you can do, like running and commiserating with friends, to stave off the devastation of heartbreak…but in the end, you have to let the devastation wash over you and run its course. The more in love you were, the greater the heartbreak. The more hope you had in a writing opportunity, the greater the impact of rejection.

But I also have faith in her perseverance and her talent, and I know she’ll make it through.

This weekend another writer friend told me her theory that you should try for things for one year—if you’ve actively tried for one year and haven’t gotten any closer, then it means you should stop. She said it far more eloquently than I did, so please accept my paraphrasing.

I think she was reaching the end of a year of trying for something and was thinking it would soon be time to stop. So I said if I’d followed that theory I would have stopped writing years ago. I wouldn’t have had my first book published or gotten the chance to write this new one.

But then when I admitted I’d gone through years of rejections when I was trying to write for adults… and it was only after I reinvented myself and started writing for young adults that things started happening, she said that didn’t exactly disprove her theory. Because, true, once I started anew, it didn’t take a year.

So maybe it is a matter of reinventing yourself. Or trying—but with something new. A new story? A new manuscript? A new outlook on life? I don’t know. I do know that I don’t think the person who wrote this post in the summer of 2007, less than a year before her first book deal, and less than two years away from her agent and her second book deal, would have heard a word I said. I needed to let the rejection run its course. Maybe I needed to get my heart broken to gain the strength to start over. Maybe it couldn’t have happened any other way.

No one can tell you to keep trying. But I think the main reason I didn’t stop was because I kept asking myself… What if?

How can you ever know the answer to that question unless you try?

In preparing for a formal event, it is very wise to assume you still have those old “black shoes with the straps” somewhere in your bedroom, probably under the loft where it looks like a bomb has gone off because you’re constantly in the midst of “organizing” or “purging” or getting ready to start “packing” so you can “move,” and decide no worries, the shoes must be there, you can wait to look for them.

I have spent an hour looking for the shoes and am resting now. I will now calmly look everywhere I haven’t—living room closet, kitchen cabinets, stray corners, on top of the fridge—and then I will calmly take stock of my shoe situation, which oddly does not include a normal pair of black dress shoes to wear in cold weather (EXCEPT FOR THE ONES WITH THE STRAPS!) and I will love myself for not having done this a day sooner, seeing as the wedding is, oh you know, TODAY.

At least my sister picked me out a dress. (On Black Friday night, at Macy’s, no less. She’s talented.)

Am I like this with writing deadlines too? Don’t answer that.

I underestimated my love of diversions and misdirections, so much so that I’ve come to realize I have to eliminate more of them. Twitter and Facebook aren’t enough. Soon I’ll have to padlock myself to a wheelie chair while wearing blinders and earplugs in a windowless room with only a blank screen and a keyboard for company. To reach me you’ll have to tap out e-mails in Morse code from the other side of the wall.

In other words, the writing is going really well, thank you. At least, I think it is. It’s hard to tell with these blinders on.

Those who read this blog know that I am on high alert, actively pursuing my manuscript deadline, and getting concerned at the quickly passing days. Over the months, I’ve tried many things to get myself there. I’ve tried new schedules. I’ve blocked myself from Twitter for short bursts (some of you may remember the Twitter Break of Nov. 1-7). I’ve banned myself from Facebook for more short bursts. I’ve made a new personality on my Macbook called “Nova the Writer” who has no access to any websites except Pandora and blip.fm. I’ve even made great sacrifices to write full-time because I knew I couldn’t make this deadline otherwise…

And then I’ve cheated. And made excuses.

I’m afraid to say that the above concessions may not be enough. My mind feels crowded. My insecurities flare. And that deadline is only getting closer. I began thinking that maybe I should do another Twitter and Facebook break for the month of December.

Then, today, I saw Sara Zarr’s announcement that she’ll be taking a hiatus from social-networking sites starting tomorrow, Sunday, Nov. 29 through January 6. Laurel Snyder is in too. And they’re not the only ones.

Listen, I don’t want to do this. I want to be one of those strong people who can balance everything and handle the world and write brilliantly at the same time. I’m not that person.

So I’ll be staying off Twitter and Facebook starting tomorrow and ending in the New Year. I will be trying. Making a solid attempt—and here I’ve announced it publicly, so you know now. You know.

I’ll still be:

• Blogging here about writing when the mood hits, just not obsessively
• Updating DaniNoir.com and my main website if there is any news
• Checking and sending email. You can reach me at: nova [at] novaren [dot] com

I will still be sending out the DANI NOIR postcards, as I teased on Twitter, and I plan to do that this week. If you want one, email me your mailing address. I have a few left.

I wish you a calm, productive end to 2009. When I see you next on Twitter and Facebook, I hope to have the full first draft in the hands of my agent, as promised, and a new drive to get it ready for my editor on Feb. 1, as promised, and contracted, which is scarier than a promise, and—most of all—I hope to talk to you again with a clear, unjumbled head.

Now… is anyone else taking the plunge?

Two things.

First, check out the interview of me on Buzzine.com, all about DANI NOIR, what it is about the Hudson Valley that inspires my author’s imagination, what’s so healing about the alternate reality of the movies, and more. I was so excited to be interviewed by the talented writer and blogger Charlotte Otter! Thank you, Charlotte!

Second, if you want to know how my first solo book signing went, see my post about it. Photos included!

It’s the most amazing thing in the world to meet tweens who’ve read the book and loved it. That’s why I wrote the book, and it’s why I want to keep writing. I was very, very inspired by some girls I met at the signing yesterday, and it’s motivating me to work hard on my next tween proposal. My new novel-in-progress is YA, but I want to keep writing for tweens too. That’s the age that I fell in love with books. It’s the age I knew I wanted to be a writer. It was a significant time in this girl’s life and I won’t forget it.

Don’t you love motivating days like this?

I had a wonderful, inspiring time at the Tin House Workshop in the summer of 2008. So much so, that I considered applying again for this summer. Then I read the application guidelines. They say: “Please do not send newspaper articles, genre fiction, or children’s or young adult literature.” Funny, because the story I workshopped the summer I was at Tin House became the YA novel chapters that got me an agent and then sold at auction months afterward. No one called it YA in the workshop. Why the distinction on their application? I don’t think YA literary fiction is easily distinguished from adult literary fiction, do you?

So then I think, wow, I’d really like to go to Bread Loaf, and I wonder if I qualify for a scholarship since I have a book out and another coming out in 2011. Guess what their guidelines say? “Please do not send children’s or young adult literature, newspaper journalism, co-authored work, or self-help literature.”

Clearly, I am looking in the wrong places. But all these closed doors to YA make me wonder what will happen when I land at Yaddo this spring. What the admissions committee read and accepted was an excerpt from the novel Dutton will publish as YA in hopefully* 2011.

I think the question is why would I want to go to an adult workshop and conference when I am now writing YA. I talked a little about why I’m writing YA for now and for the foreseeable future, and probably forever, in this interview on the B&N Book Club blogs. Here’s an excerpt that speaks to it:

JD: How do you switch gears between YA and adult fiction?

NRS: I used to write only adult fiction, but switching gears to YA was far easier than I expected—and felt so natural. For me it’s two things: Being true to the voice, and the point from which the story is being told. If I’m writing an adult character, I’m writing an adult story. If I’m writing a teenager, it’s likely I’m writing YA. I always write in first person—it’s my favorite voice to try to capture as a writer, and also my favorite voice to read—so it’s my characters who decide what I’m writing more than I do.

But there’s more to it than the voice. For me, when I’m writing for adults I feel more removed—I tend to write those stories as if looking back from a distance. I think I could set out to write the same coming-of-age story about the same girl, but if I decided to write it as an adult story it would have a far different flavor than writing it as YA.

Dani Noir, for example—which is technically tween, not YA—was so in the moment, it came out in present tense. There’s no sense of the future, no perspective, and I think that speaks to my character more than anything else. You watch her make her mistakes as she makes them; only later does she gather any wisdom about what she’s done.

Right now, I’m still all about writing in the moment. The novel I’m in the midst of writing, called Imaginary Girls, is YA and it feels so alive, so exhilarating to put down on the page, that sometimes I think I’ll never go back to writing adult fiction. Not to mention that the YA community is so phenomenal, I can’t imagine living without it. So we’ll see. I’m happy here, so I think I’ll keep my gears where they are for a while.

Knowing that I have a whole new audience now feels freeing to me, more honest, more clear. I’m not writing with any message in mind, I’m writing for the 16-year-old me, from that point in time, from that moment, which is more real to me now than the moment I happen to be sitting in at an age I won’t mention.

But I have to say, I think the craft of writing fiction translates whether you are writing for teens or for adults. Characters are characters. Story is story. Pacing and scene development and dialogue and subtext and all that—it’s in my writing now, just as it was before. It’s fiction, same as before. At Tin House what I learned and absorbed has carried over into my writing in general—Aimee Bender on the different shapes of stories; Peter Rock on character development; Dorothy Allison on setting—and does it matter if my story is YA? I still have a plot, I still have characters, I still have a setting. I actually feel like I have more flexibility now than I would have before. Doors opened to me that didn’t before. And, of course, my audience is different, and as I said above my sense of “writing in the moment” feels different, but my interest in the craft of writing my story hasn’t changed. I am not dumbing down my writing. I’m just writing and being true to my character’s voice.

So why can’t I go to Tin House? Sure, a YA author wouldn’t find an agent there, but that’s not why I’d go. And a YA author wouldn’t be as interested in publishing short stories in litmags, but that’s not why I’d go. What I loved was the weeklong writing workshop and especially the week of craft classes and lectures and readings.

Am I wrong in thinking this way? There must be another place for me that I’m just not seeing. So, please, tell me: Where is the Tin House or Bread Loaf or Sewanee for YA authors? Because I’d love to go.

[ETA: Just to clarify, I'm not seeking an MFA program—I already have an MFA in fiction and I don't want another. I just want a summer conference that's the YA equivalent to the ones I mentioned above. Does that exist? SCBWI NYC excluded; I'm already headed there this January.]

__________________

* I say “hopefully” 2011 because I am still writing the manuscript and it all depends on if I make my deadline and how I do with revisions and how good it is and no pressure or anything, right?

The Golden Notebook bookstore in Woodstock, NY. Photo courtesy of shoutingthomas.typepad.com.

When I was a tween and a teenager I was obsessed with a few things (particular music, particular poets, particular boys), but the biggest obsession had to be books. I never left home without one. In my household, being between books and not sure what to read next was called being “bookless,” and this affliction was to be avoided at all costs. My mother was, still is, a voracious reader, too—we’d often share books or, more likely, I’d “borrow” hers after she was done with it and then lose it in the landfill known as my bedroom. Wherever we were, wherever we were headed, if a bookstore was in our path, we had to slip inside and browse a little.

When I started earning my own money—and, so you know, my very first job was as an ice-cream scooper, just like one of the characters in Dani Noir—I’d sometimes buy myself a treat. Sure, I had a deep love for shoes, but first before anything else could be bought I had to get myself a book. During high school, the main place I bought these coveted and well-loved books was an independent bookstore called the Golden Notebook. You’ll find it on the main drag of Woodstock, New York, the town where I lived during tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade. I spent numerous hours going through those shelves, sitting on that floor reading, wondering what book could cure my booklessness next.

The Children's Annex of the Golden Notebook. Photo courtesy of shoutingthomas.typepad.com.

Well, something really cool is happening next week: I’ll be doing a book signing at that very store. I’ll be upstate for Thanksgiving weekend, so if you’d like to get Dani Noir signed and you’re in the Hudson Valley for the holiday, come visit me at 12 noon on Friday, November 27 at the Golden Notebook on Tinker Street in Woodstock. I’ll be in the children’s annex, which is right next door to the main bookstore. And even better? Just a few doors down from that on Tinker Street you will find none other than a little place called Taco Juan’s, which has a guest-starring spot in the book. Coincidence? You tell me.

For more info about the book signing, see the bookstore’s website.

For more about the book in question, see the official Dani Noir website.

Taco Juan's in Woodstock, NY. Photo courtesy of shoutingthomas.typepad.com.