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. 

Almost a month ago, all my stat counters started telling me there were zero pageviews at this blog. Zero. Typepad finally blamed it on Goodreads and their widget code (you'll notice I temporarily removed all my Goodreads widgets) spitting out faulty HTML or something like that. Both Typepad and Goodreads responded very nicely as they are good people, and I'm sure I'll have my widgets back soon, but it sure was weird during the very month I'm celebrating my ten-year anniversary of blogging here that ALL THE TRAFFIC DIED. It was like someone just came along and flipped a switch.

Goodbye, Surrender, Dorothy. Thanks for the memories.

I spent one evening contemplating if I should just shutter the blog. I figured there was something legitimately wrong and not just that everyone had disappeared, but it crossed my mind that the people who told me they had totally been here in the past month were lying to protect my ego. (It's not necessary. I am not kidding when I say I have no ego left over this blog. I have it for my books, but not my blog.) I wondered if I should keep writing even if no one was reading. 

It's a good question, isn't it? 

Ultimately, though, even before I removed the Goodreads widget and the statcounters started ticking again, I decided I would keep writing ... even if nobody read it. I don't write here as much as I did before I started working for BlogHer and writing novels, but this is where I come when I have that thought while staring off into space at the school pick-up line. Surrender, Dorothy is the junk drawer of my mind. It has a copy of my resume, sure, and links to my books and some posts I liked highlighted in a list that needs a massive update (although that wouldn't matter if no one was reading, see how we create this unnecessary busyness for ourselves?), but it also has a series of pictures I thought were funny when my daughter was four and some missives about politics and current events that didn't end up changing any policies but made me feel better in the moment. I like going through junk drawers, and I like having this blog. 

Someday life will slow down enough for me to poke through my own archives and look at all my junk, and here it will all be. And won't that be amazing?

Y'all, I'm having a blogiversary this year, the big ten. I even started this blog in May 2004. I got all sappy and made a big slideshow of ten years of my daughter and me and this blog over on BlogHer today. Please check it out!

The other day on the radio I heard that song from Pretty in Pink. You know the one. 

I touch you once.

I touch you twice.

And the kill shot: You always said we'd meet again, someday.

I'm back to revising THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES and nineteen years old again in my head, and that line might summarize eighteen, nineteen, twenty and twenty-one for me. A series of leavings. Wondering if we'd stay friends, stay in love, stay in fucking touch. 

Watching people on whom we hung the future smile and wave and wander off until the phone calls and letters became memories and "do you remember" conversations and awkward introductions of people who were now our new everything. 

And feeling -- or at least I felt -- so betrayed by others and my own self that feelings that were once so intense could flame out so quickly without daily fuel. Surely there must be something wrong with her or him or them or me that we could have nothing left to share but the past? Something that maybe should be punished?

You always said we'd meet again, someday.

But after the first leaving of high school and the second, third, fourth and fifth leavings of each successive college class graduating and then all the leavings of friends picking up their bags and loading up their cars and moving on with their lives in different cities or states or countries, after the stay-at-home leavings of friends getting married, getting divorced, having children, changing jobs and moving away, after all of these leavings, each one gets less personal. 

I learned to say "goodbye" without having to say "see you again soon." Sometimes it's just "goodbye," and that's okay. It doesn't mean there was a betrayal.

Maybe that's why when I hear that one song from Pretty in Pink, I'm nineteen years old and hurt again by those words that I no longer attach to any one person but maybe all of them, all of those  people who left, even me.

You always said we'd meet again, someday.

I spent this week growing increasingly shocked at how really not nice the world is. I know, I know, I'm forty, but I really AM SHOCKED at Joan Rivers. And I'm not shocked but was sort of surprised how annoyed people can get over slowness. 

Humanity did get redeemed in my mind last night, though. Last night I was a Giver for World Book Night, and everything about that was totally awesome, including the look on the homeless guy's face in the Plaza after my daughter and I handed him a book he'd never read before. He looked interested.

Hope you're all having a great week!

Beloved informed me this past week that he will only be gone three of the four weeks in May. 

He is home for one week and two weekdays in April. He was home for two weeks in March, one of which was our vacation and the other of which his father died. He was home for no weeks in February. I wrote about it on BlogHer when I was really in the abyss, then the sun came out, and the time changed, and the days got longer, and the little angel started to play with the neighbor kids after school again and it seemed a little better. 

It is better, but it's not. Yes, he's home on weekends, but when half the family unit is gone five out of seven days, the two days he's home becomes crammed with yard work and housecleaning and laundry and errands and thinking gosh, I really like this person and everything is better when he's home and oh, shit, he's leaving again tomorrow. It's nice to see him, but it doesn't make it all better to have him home on the weekends. And the worst part is that I don't really know when this will end. The little angel doesn't have childcare the week of BlogHer, and he doesn't know if he will be home or not. I throw my hands in the air like I don't care because I am so tired of thinking through all the scenarios and how I will address them on my own. (He would say it's not on my own, and he would sometimes be right, but sometimes he would be wrong, because only the person in the situation knows the myriad things that come up and must be dealt with over the course of the week, most of which I don't even tell him about because pfffft.)

My friends ask if this is normal for his job, but he's only had it for a little over a year. The first project only had him gone for one month, not this never-ending cycle of early Monday flights and late Thursday or Friday flights, of trying to squeeze in Facetime twenty minutes after I wished the little angel had already gone to bed, of trying to explain why he's gone again and remembering to do everything that needs to be done to keep the house running after a full day of my own job and sitting down with my novel at 10 pm and crying because I don't have the mental energy to do anything I want to do by 10 pm and there is no other time in my day because all the things take twice as long when there is one person doing them and that person doing them is also the person explaining to the ten-year-old why she can't have four desserts and how to convert things to the metric system.

I try to do little things to make up for him being gone on these weeks alone with my daughter. It sucks most for her. She adores her father and by the third night is always in tears over why he can't be there to put her to bed instead of me. So I try.

Yesterday, for instance, she asked me to make her pancakes. Wednesdays are late-start days at her school, so the bus comes an hour later than usual. I didn't know where the pancake mix was, so she showed it to me. I added the water. I found the skillet. I greased the skillet. I tried to remember what temperature the skillet should be at. Super hot sounded good to me. (queue ominous music)

The first pancake ended up in the sink after I couldn't flip it at all. I remembered you are supposed to flip them when they bubble, but my pancakes bubbled instantly. I ended up scorching a spatula trying to flip my bubbling masses of chocolate-chipped destruction. 

On the third pancake, I turned down the temperature, but it was too late. I started using the scorched flipper plus a second flipper to try to get the burning even on both sides of the pancakes, adding extra chocolate chips because, you know, as long as there is enough chocolate involved, my kid will eat anything. I flung the unsalvagable pancakes in the sink or really just anywhere on the stove that was not white-hot because time was of essence. I could melt polar icecaps with these pancakes, but at least they weren't burning. At last I had a plate of four kind of normal-looking pancakes, which I served my daughter.

"Um, Mama? These aren't cooked in the middle."

"Well, yeah. Maybe I should microwave them."

"Maybe."

*ding*

"Better?"

"Yeah."

(chewing)

"I'm not very good at pancakes, am I?"

"Maybe we should leave that to Daddy."

Oh, well. I'm trying.

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.

In the past week or so I've written on BlogHer about Gwyneth Paltrow telling us it's harder to be a movie-star parent than an office-worker parent, things you'll miss while spring cleaning, why I really didn't like The Muppets Most Wanted, whether I'd save Beloved or the little angel if they were both hanging off a cliff, and what Fred Phelps saw when he died -- but by far the best comment I got this week was on a post I wrote about struggling with Beloved's travel.

The post was shared on BlogHer's Facebook page and the comment appeared there and got pulled over to BlogHer via Livefyre. When I went to read it, I realized the commenter probably didn't realize I've worked full-time for BlogHer since 2009. But still. Hilarious. Scroll down. 

Fred Phelps, Sr., former leader of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, is dead. He died on Wednesday night in hospice care. Phelps hit the international news scene when he and his church protested Matthew Shepherd's funeral in 1998 bearing signs that reflect their website's URL: God Hates Fags.

 I live in Kansas City. I had never heard of Fred Phelps until I went to a Lipizzaner horse show in Topeka with a friend and was shocked to see a group of people holding up signs saying in ten or twelve different ways that God, and they, hate homosexual people. What that had to do with horses, I have no idea. I asked my friend what was going on, and she sighed and explained who they were, what they stood for, what they'd been doing, what they continued to do and still continue to do on and on for years after I drove past them, my mouth hanging open in shock and my skin tingling with rage.

Please read the rest on BlogHer.