Thanks to Grace Hwang Lynch of HapaMama for inviting me to talk shop. Check out her post here!

 

On Writing

I recently did a Skype author interview with my niece's English class. They asked when I started writing, and I realized I was younger than their 14-year-old selves when my fingers started itching. I began with poetry heavily influenced by Shel Silverstein and progressed to thinly veiled plagiarism short stories in the style of Ray Bradbury. After being published in a chapbook that I think probably published anyone who sent anything in, I had the bug bad, and it really never left. So let's talk about writing. 

 

What am I working on/writing?

 

Right now, I am not writing anything. A few weeks ago, I sent my contemporary new adult novel, THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES, to my agent. He said he would read it. I was happy, though I felt none of the excitement that I felt when people asked to read THE OBVIOUS GAME, because now I know not to drink the water until it's been filtered, or some other terrible metaphor for becoming jaded by the publishing beast. I have a few ideas for my next novel, but for now, I wait to see if my agent will represent PARKER CLEAVES or if I need to go to Plan B. (I do not know what Plan B is yet.)

 

How does my writing/work differ from others in its genre?

 

Well, for one thing, it's in my voice. I know that sounds silly, but it's true. If I find a writer I like, I'll read anything that person writes. I fangirl easily. It's my dream that people will like my voice and then want to read anything I write, and I realize that is totally vain. But it's the truth. So I work hard to make my voice sound different than other people's voices. THE OBVIOUS GAME was turned down by some major publishers because "they already had an anorexia book on their lists." That was frustrating for me, because that makes it sound like the book is all subject and no voice. I get it from a business/catalog perspective, but it also made me want to scream. I think it's clear the same person wrote THE OBVIOUS GAME and THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES even though the subject matter is vastly different. All of my writing tends to be less action/more character development than other books in my genres. I also try to portray strong parent/child relationships, because it seems like every young adult or new adult book I read has a crappy mother in it.

 

Why do I write what I do?

 

Someone super famous but apparently not easily googled once said, "Write the book only you can write." So that's what I try to do. My writing is influenced by my life experiences, my observations of people and events, my politics, my anxiety disorder, my sense of humor. It does no good to try to follow trends, because it takes so long for most of us to get a book published, the trends will change by then. When I'm planning a book, I start with a takeaway I want the reader to have, and I build a story around that. It's kind of like building an outfit around a belt.

 

How does my writing process work?

 

When I wrote THE OBVIOUS GAME, I just wrote in a linear fashion. Then I ended up having all these structural problems and rewrote and moved and rewrote four or five times over two years, and that was really painful. When I started THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES, I used StoryMill software and outlined scenes in three acts. I figured out who all the characters were and when they would appear. I figured out the climax and most of the major events. And THEN I wrote, one scene at a time instead of one chapter at a time like THE OBVIOUS GAME. This time, too, I used my beta readers differently. I wrote a very loose and short rough draft and gave it to beta readers. Then I incorporated their feedback into the second draft and gave it to different beta readers. Finally, I incorporated that feedback and came up with a third draft, which I gave to yet again different beta readers. Then I shined it up and sent it to my agent. It'll probably change again, but I'd reached the point when I hated the whole thing, which is typically a good sign that you're done revising for a bit.

 

Next week, you can read about my friend Kyran Pittman's writing process. She's the author of PLANTING DANDELIONS, which is a really good book that I enjoyed muchly. 

The words have been coming hard lately. I reach for them, and they just blow away.

Sometimes there's no "there" there.

Stories need tension and conflict to survive. Good sentences aren't enough to carry a novel. Strength isn't enough to win a wrestling match.

It's all about the execution.

I practice and practice these sentences, pulling out the equivalent of four sweaters' worth of sentence threads in frustration. I just can't get it right, and that's such an exquisite pain.

I could scream, but everyone would ask why.

I don't know how to explain the pain of havin gna idea but not the talent to get it just right.

I listen to music and wonder how the songwriter knew when to stop.

Of all the things I am, "writer" is such a small part. It barely makes a dent in our financial landscape, at least the extracurricular part. I'm not sure how such a small bit of what the world sees can be such a huge part of my struggle to be here on this planet. The messy paragraphs going nowhere sometimes wake me up at night. Entire plots for stories play out in my dreams, and I wake up thinking how I should write them down, but I don't, because I'm still fighting with the book that is in my now. I have no energy left over for the book that might be in a few years. When I'm fifty. When I'm sixty. When I'm nearly dead.

I know, in my heart of hearts, that more than a quarter million books are published each year. I know I will not be read by even the number of people who buy off-brand milk in one week.

If I were realistic, then, I would not torture myself about getting these sentences right.

But that's not how it works.

If we went through life looking at reality, no one would ever create anything new.

I was born, and I will die, and in the middle of it, I'll write some stuff. I don't have a good reason for that. At the age of forty, I get that now.

But I do it anyway, because it feels fucking good.

My girl and two of her besties are trying out for the school talent show tonight. They're singing Let It Go from Frozen -- the anthem of tween girls everywhere. They sound really good, and their routine rocks. I have no doubt they'll get in.

That doesn't mean there's no stage fright.

This morning, she asked me if I ever have stage fright. I told her of course, and we talked about the wonders of deep breathing.

After she got on the bus, I realized my worst stage fright these days no longer involves a physical stage. I really don't get on physical stages much any more. Every once in a while, I'll speak at a conference, but that's not really a performance, at least not in the way acting or singing or playing an instrument is.

My stage is a page, and I get nervous every time I work on a novel. Last night, I found myself in the grips of intense page fright while typing up my handwritten draft three revisions for PARKER CLEAVES. Sometimes the deep breathing works and sometimes it doesn't, and the anxiety threatens to spill over. Or it does, and I have to do my own deep breathing and I wait to feel better. Last night I had to walk away from the revisions because it was just too much.

And the thing about stage fright? No one can get rid of it for you. It's as intensely personal as the performance itself.

Good luck tonight, baby duck.

Welcome back to my journey through book marketing. THE OBVIOUS GAME is coming up on its one-year birthday, which prompted me to show it a bit of financial love as it blazes onto a backlist and I dive into my second group of beta readers' suggestions for THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES.

I've learned a lot this year. THE OBVIOUS GAME was a different marketing game than SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK because the publishing landscape has changed so much from 2008 to 2013.

If only I had a bunch more money. I know now where I would spend it -- marketing to librarians and booksellers and consumers. I would absolutely make sure I had ARCs six months before the book came out to get a better chance at reviews in industry publications, because (I of course did not know this) many will only accept a book for review at a set amount of time before it is published. THE OBVIOUS GAME went to publication so quickly that I didn't even have a contract that soon before my pub date, let alone an ARC. Which meant I missed out on that chance. It exists one time for each book, and one time only. 

As it stands, I don't have a bunch of money. My efforts initially were focused on getting reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Anything I do now is focused on getting THE OBVIOUS GAME in front of the consumer, particularly the warm-lead, YA-e-reading consumer. (There are several reasons for this, but the two most important are 1) more services exist to promote ebooks for a reasonable amount of money and 2) I make a much higher percentage from ebooks than I do from print books due to margin issues.)

In case you're curious, here are the screenshots from my BookGorilla campaign over the holiday and my Riffle Select campaign that is going on right this minute (in other words, the book is $1.99 again today). Both campaigns involved me negotiating with my publisher to drop the price of THE OBVIOUS GAME ebook to $1.99 from $4.99 for about a two-day period of time to make sure it was that price when the email went out from either service. Both services were fine to work with. Big Five publishers had books on there next to mine. BookGorilla had a Joyce Carol Oates title the day my campaign went out, and today's Riffle Select had THE OBVIOUS GAME right next to John Green's THE FAULT IN OUR STARS. (yay)

Here's what the BookGorilla one looked like:

And here's what Riffle Select looked like:

Finally, I've had a Goodreads ad that I change up every once in a while since January 2013. I ran seven giveaways on Goodreads in 2013, one roughly every two months. You can only run them the year before your publication date and the year of your publication date. When I could, I tied my Goodreads ad to a giveaway. The giveaways were great for getting people to put THE OBVIOUS GAME on their to-read lists on Goodreads. I have no idea if they read it or if they bought it or if they asked their librarian for it -- but I know they at least showed interest in it, which is good. Now that the giveaways are done, my ad looks like this.

Feel free to ask questions. There really isn't enough information out there, in my opinion.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be testing some book marketing services for THE OBVIOUS GAME. It came out in February, and I'm reaching the end of the period when I can do Goodsreads giveaways, which I found were great for boosting the number of people who added my book to their "to read" lists, but it's impossible to tell if it had an impact on sales as there is no direct clickthrough information. 

I'm going to be pretty transparent about my marketing methods, because it's tough out there for a gangsta with a small traditional publisher. So far, I've spent hundreds of dollars buying and mailing my books to book bloggers and reviewers, which resulted in 25 authentic reviews on Amazon and 32 reviews and 68 ratings on Goodreads. In 2013, I attended ALA Midwinter to meet librarians and tell them about my book and RT Booklovers when it came to Kansas City. I also went to the Less Than Three conference in St. Louis. I met readers there, handed out signed bookplates and business cards and met other young adult authors. Meeting the other authors was my favorite part of any of the conferences. I've always found other authors to be approachable and supportive, even Veronica Roth, whose DIVERGENT series took off like a Dauntless train right from the get-go.

I noticed that many of the books that made this year's best-of lists were both well written and well marketed. I started seeing the covers in my industry newsletters over and over and over, to the extent that even though I don't read vampire books, I know THE COLDEST GIRL IN COLD TOWN's cover on sight. That marketing is huge -- I wish I had it. I'd be lying if I said it doesn't make me jealous. But I don't, at least for this book, so I'm doing what I can to break out of the echo chamber of people who know me/of me and into the world of people who just like to read young adult novels. I'm hoping some of the email marketing services I'm trying will help with that. That's the positive thing about jealousy -- you can use it to get the energy you need to get off your ass and do something about it. And also to get you to write your next book, because everything might be easier with the next book. You just never know.

My first experiment with paid online book marketing is BookGorilla. My book will be included in their newsletter on Sunday, December 29, 2013 (in two days). On that day, the price of THE OBVIOUS GAME's ebook will drop from $4.99 to $1.99 for 24 hours everywhere it is sold to coordinate with the deal. You can already get the ebook version for $1.99 if you've bought the paperback version on Amazon as part of their matching service. 

Buying advertising isn't cheap for the average jane like me, an author who is just a normal person with a day job and a mortgage and a kid who needed Christmas presents and still needs new jeans that fit. Since it isn't affordable or easy, it's important to figure out if this advertising is worth it or not. With thousands of books coming out every single day, breaking through the noise and out of your own echo chamber is harder than ever. We'll see if this helps. I've seen a lot of other authors offering a prize if you buy their books, but that doesn't feel right for me, at least not with this book. 

Next month, I'll be doing a similar paid advertising deal with Riffle Select.

---

In other news, you have to check out what my sister gave me for Christmas. It's devine. I'll have pics of Esther the llama in her new series here on Surrender, Dorothy as soon as the little angel and I figure out what to call it.

When she got on the bus, I could see the angry bright red skin between her nose and upper lip from twenty feet away. As she changed into her leotard and tights for ballet, I realized her lips were so chapped they were hours away from splitting. Over a week of rubbing tissues against her little face over and over had taken its toll.

I smeared a little nasal gel on her nose, and immediately she begain shrieking that it burned. I searched all over the house for the good lip stuff and couldn't find anything. Beloved came home early from work and offered to take her to ballet for me, and I nearly jumped up and down at the anticipation of not having to go out in the freezing cold for three hours between the commute and the getting of dinners for the little ballerinas and the sitting on the hard bench in the parent waiting area for ballet. I didn't mind it when I was using the time to work on PARKER CLEAVES revisions, but now that it's out with beta readers, I don't want the benches anymore. She only has two weeks left of ballet, and even though she's danced since she was two, I'm ready for that chapter of our lives to be over, maybe as much as she is.

He left with her still howling about her nose. I drove to the grocery store and bought two tubs of Vaseline and two tubes of medicated Blistex. I drove back home and made myself a huge salad and a tuna sandwich and a tube of biscuits for her so she'd have breakfast in the morning. I burned the homemade croutons. I set off the smoke detector. 

I sat on the couch and finished one book and immediately opened another. Chain reading, binge reading, because sometimes I just can't get enough of someone else's stories, and television has actors who can be bad actors and commercials and a million things that slow down the story. Sometimes reading is the only way to get the story directly in the IV and coursing through my body fast enough. 

She came home and grabbed the purring cat off my lap. I looked at how tall she's grown and how old she looks except for the fiery patch under her nose. She took a shower and washed her hair, then I gave her the Vaseline and the Blistex and told her to put them on. 

She came out of the bathroom to where I was sitting, still reading, propped on a pillow against the linen closet in the hall where I sit when she wants me near but I don't want to be in the bathroom with its heat and humidity and tile floors, and she kissed the tub of Vaseline.

"This is my new best friend," she said.

I laughed. "Why?"

"Because my nose hurt so bad and that other stuff just stung and I was worried about putting this on and I did, and it felt like a nice, warm blanket, and now my nose is comfy."

"Did you put the stuff on your lips?"

"Yes."

"Does it hurt?"

"No. It feels good, too."

Then she took her cough syrup with pretzel chasers and we read our books in her bed, and then she laid her wet head in the crook of my arm and the cat wound himself into the valley between our legs and we turned out the lights. I lay there reminding myself to be grateful that we are not as sick as we were, that the lump in my breast from last month turned out to be just a harmless cyst, that my husband is not traveling this week so it's not so hard to take care of myself, that this ballet business is almost over, that the truck that needs new struts and is over 200,000 miles has not died yet and will perhaps make it through the holidays into the new year when replacing it would be easier for us, that we made it so long before it really got cold. 

I went over the list in my head as I listened to her breathing grow more even, though still snuffly. I reached the point when I have to decide if I'm going to get out of her bed and have an adult evening (which I always do) or just close my eyes and go to sleep hours earlier than I usually do and in the wrong bed.

I got up. I nearly always get up. And I felt almost deliriously happy about how well the Vaseline worked. There is real joy in helping to relieve someone's pain. It makes you feel less stuck.

This week my friend Pauline Campos approached me about participating in her #BodyThanks Twitter party on Monday night at 8 pm CT and donating a copy of THE OBVIOUS GAME, since Diana struggles mightily with body image and anorexia in my novel. I said yes, and I'm excited for the conversation. 

Later this week, someone passed along to me a post a guy wrote about why you should date a girl with eating disorder. Chief among the reasons: Hot and a cheap date because she doesn't eat much.

You know I wrote something, right?

Here's the beginning: 

[Editor's Note: ED trigger alert]

Last week, the misogynist-troll website Return of Kings published 5 Reasons to Date a Girl with an Eating Disorder, by a writer named Tuthmosis. When I first read the post, I thought surely it was written ironically. (Of course, I also thought that the first time I heard the lyrics to Blurred Lines.) The “reasons” included hot thinness, cheapness to date, and wildness in the sack. Ugh. Understandably, the Internet freaked out. Then the site’s publisher posted a response to the freakout, including this paragraph:

I want to make it clear that we at ROK are not promoting eating disorders. These are devastating illnesses on those whom they afflict, and we wish sufferers are able to receive the treatment they need. It is unfortunate that sufferers continue to be stigmatized by society, so it surprises me that Tuthmosis’ article has been angrily received when it attempts to reduce stigma by encouraging our male readership to give women with anorexia and bulimia an opportunity for real intimacy.

I had boyfriends when I had anorexia. And they may have thought they were benefiting from some of the items on Tuthmosis' list. Yes, I was thin in a fashionable way … before I got thin in a starving-person way. Yes, I was an extremely cheap date – for dinner in high school, of course, but also for drinks in college. Someone who ate six hundred calories all day before going out gets wasted on one cocktail. Sweet, right?

Please to read the rest on BlogHer. When I finished writing it, my hands were shaking with anger. 

All I can do, though, is keep repeating that eating disorders aren't cute, they're not just for white girls and they aren't vain or a cry for attention. Eating disorders are serious psycho-social-biological maladies that can be a matter of life and death. Please join us on Twitter on Monday night with the hashtag #BodyThanks as we move into the week of Thanksgiving -- a week very triggering for some -- being thankful for our families, our friends, our lives and the bodies that carry us through them.

Thanksgiving posts have taken over the internet, and everywhere I look I am confronted with pictures of food. 

When I was anorexic, Thanksgiving was my least favorite holiday. My extended family got together, and someone always made pie that not only had half the calories of my daily self-imposed limit, but also came attached with happy childhood memories and the knowledge it was made by someone I loved very much.

Holidays can be hard for any number of reasons, but for anorexics and their people, they contain so many potential landmines. If the anorexic has been hiding out under baggy clothes, her condition might not be noticed as much by those who are with her every day, but it will be glaring to someone who hasn't seen her in six months or a year. When an entire holiday is about eating too much, not eating or eating very little makes everyone else sit up and pay attention. Someone not eating can make someone who has overeating problems feel doubly defensive. Plus, family. Just family. It doesn't take much to set people off who have been forced to leave their own houses and spend an afternoon crowded together being thankful.

Then there's being thankful. It's hard to be thankful when you're depressed or in the grips of anxiety or OCD or an eating disorder. My head was extremely crowded in those years, mostly thinking about food I wouldn't let myself eat. 

I'm thankful every day that those painful Thanksgivings are behind me now. This is the first Thanksgiving I've had something to offer besides a blog post for those who are anorexic or those who are going to find themselves sitting across the table from a very thin person and worrying this holiday season. For less than the price of a turkey, I can offer my novel. 

I haven't done a lot of promotion in the past six months here, but I wanted to share the background of my book again for anyone new. 

“Everyone trusted me back then. Good old, dependable Diana. Which is why most people didn’t notice at first.”

"Your shirt is yellow."

"Your eyes are blue."

"You have to stop running away from your problems." 

"You're too skinny."

Fifteen-year-old Diana Keller accidentally begins teaching The Obvious Game to new kid Jesse on his sixteenth birthday. As she buries her shock about her mother's fresh cancer diagnosis in cookbooks, peach schnapps and Buns of Steel workouts, Diana both seduces athlete Jesse and shoves him away under the guise of her carefully constructed sentences. As their relationship deepens, Diana avoids Jesse's past with her own secrets -- which she'll protect at any cost. Will Diana and Jesse's love survive his wrestling obsession and the Keller family's chaos, or will all their important details stay buried beneath a game? 

Praise for The Obvious Game:

"Lovely, evocative, painful and joyful all  in one ... much like high school." --Jenny Lawson, author of LET'S PRETEND THIS NEVER HAPPENED 

“I couldn’t put down THE OBVIOUS GAME. Arens perfectly captures the hunger, pain and uncertainty of adolescence.” -- Ann Napolitano, author of A GOOD HARD LOOK and WITHIN ARM'S REACH

"THE OBVIOUS GAME is a fearless, honest, and intense look into the psychology of anorexia. The characters—especially Diana--are so natural and emotionally authentic that you’ll find yourself yelling at the page even as you’re compelled to turn it." -- Coert Voorhees, author of LUCKY FOOLS and THE BROTHERS TORRES

"Let’s be clear about one thing: there’s nothing obvious about THE OBVIOUS GAME. Arens has written a moving, sometimes heart-breaking story about one girl’s attempt to control the uncontrollable. You can’t help but relate to Diana and her struggles as you delve into this gem of a novel." -- Risa Green, author of THE SECRET SOCIETY OF THE PINK CRYSTAL BALL

"THE OBVIOUS GAME explores the chasms between conformity and independence, faith and fear, discoveries and secrets, first times and last chances, hunger and satisfaction. The tortured teenage experience is captured triumphantly within the pages of this unflinching, yet utterly relatable, novel. -Erica Rivera, author of INSATIABLE: A YOUNG MOTHER’S STRUGGLE WITH ANOREXIA 

Book Information:

Publisher: Inkspell Publishing

Release Date: Feb 7th, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-9856562-7-0 (ebook), 978-0-9856562-8-7 (Paperback)

Paperback Price: $13.99

Kindle: $4.99

• THE OBVIOUS GAME on AMAZON
• THE OBVIOUS GAME on BARNES & NOBLE
• THE OBVIOUS GAME on INDIEBOUND

Thanksgiving is a time when things start coming to a head for Diana, who started out "normal." The novel follows her thoughts and feelings into the abyss ... and back out. If you're a family member or friend who wants to throttle their anorexic loved one, this book can help you understand the psychology of suffering from this condition. If you're full-blown anorexic yourself, I'm so sorry. This book contains the sentences that helped me break out of the mind-space that could have killed me. If you just have a weird relationship with food, you might find yourself examining why you initiated your set of rules that determine when you can eat, why, with whom and how much. And if you just like contemporary young adult novels that ask really hard questions about growing up, you might like it as a read.

The next few weeks are going to be really hard for a lot of people who struggle with their relationship with food. For some, it's never "just a doughnut." If you're anorexic, taking one bite more than you planned can feel like bungee jumping off a bridge. I remember wondering why these people who loved me kept asking me to put myself through that. So be kind if you see someone staring in misery at her plate on Thanksgiving. Eating disorders are nobody's fault, and recovery takes a village. Take care of each other.

So yesterday I got up on my high horse and rode about not having word count goals. Today, I finally finished transcribing all the handwritten changes I did to THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES after my first round of beta feedback and thought I'd have buried the 40k mark I was at before.

Two hours ago, I exported to Word. 39,879, bitches.

WHAT THE HELL?

I cut a lot, but I added a lot, too. Well, now I have 39,879 better words, but I'm still about 20k short for new adult. Or maybe it's young adult. It's hard to say, because the protagonist is 18/19 and it's not all sexy-sex -- is there new adult non-romance? We'll see. The jury remains out on genre. 

Regardless, as it stands? It's a novella. I don't want a novella. I want to give my second round of beta readers a NOVEL. I want to get feedback on what is close to the end game, not a second version of a rough draft.

*silently raging*

It appears rather than adding Juliet balconies to the house I've created, I need to add a new wing. Perhaps a subplot. Perhaps fill in some plot holes I haven't really explored. Not sure. I'll tell you, though, I'm glad I didn't know how many words I was cutting and filling back in when I made these changes, because if I'd known, I would've cried.

The book is better now. It needs to be better -- and longer -- yet, but we'll get there, one scene at a time.

*breathes into paper bag*

*prints another draft*

*notes need more ink cartridges*