Category Archives: confessions

Between Turning Points

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Hi there. I admit I’ve been off-screen, where you can’t see, having a rough week or two. I’m not going to go into it.

My revision is due at the end of next month. Also, next month is my birthday (I am not a fan of my birthday). I may not want to talk to anyone at all for the entirety of February!

But here are some good things:

My revision for 17 & Gone may not be done yet, and I may have an enormous amount of work to do by February 29, but I’m very into the book. Very, very, very into it. So there’s that.

I also found a photograph that goes with the book in my mind—no, authors can’t choose their own covers, but in my imagination this is it. I love this photo so much that I’m arranging to buy a print from the photographer, who happens to live in my hometown of Woodstock, New York, and is a high school friend of my sister’s.

And next month one of my Favorite Books of 2012 comes out… The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour. I’m interviewing the author and I’ll be giving away a copy of her gorgeous, thrilling, sexy new novel. Believe me, you want to read this book.

And I got good news this week, at a moment when I really needed it. And it made me think of how colony news always comes at just the moment I need that one thing to push me forward (like that time I found out about Yaddo after I’d just been moved to a cubicle at work and how that felt like a door had been opened).

Thank you, Millay Colony acceptance, for coming at the moment you did.

(Yes, I think I will be living with other artists and writers in that barn!)

I accepted the residency, and I’ll be there in the fall, even though I have no idea what my future holds for me in terms of upcoming book contracts, or day jobs, or anything really.

And yeah, this is going to be an interesting year. Because I’ll have two four-week-long writing retreats in 2012… I leave for Djerassi in just six weeks:

And while there I might be writing something you don’t know about yet. And I might be finding out that the Turning Point I thought I had a few years ago was only the first one. Because life takes you on many turns, doesn’t it?

Everything these other writers have said has resonated with me in one way or another: Gayle Forman telling me not to be bitter. Sean Ferrell telling me to stop making excuses. Eileen Cook on how you can’t know until you try. Christopher Barzak reminding me how much I used to love writing short stories. Saundra Mitchell telling me it is okay to walk away if I want to walk away. Eric Luper on not writing what I think the industry wants me to write. Gretchen McNeil on how everything happens for a reason. Julia DeVillers on taking the chance to write something uncomfortable because it just might be the right thing. I know these Turning Points guest blogs aren’t written only for my benefit… but some days it sure feels like they are.

A Moment of Feeling Free

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First off, thank you to everyone who’s come here for the launch of the Turning Points blog series this week! Thank you for making Gayle Forman and Sean Ferrell feel welcome and commenting on their amazing, inspiring, and brilliant posts. (If you missed these two opening posts—oh but you can’t miss them!—please just ignore my own boring blog o’ the day and go read Gayle’s guest post on overcoming bitterness and finding gratitude and Sean’s guest post on realizing the Writer never shows up.) The Turning Points series will be back next week. I’m taking the day off for MLK day, so look for a new post on Tuesday, and three posts in total next week! I love each of these posts and can’t wait for you to read them.

But if you’re still here, I’ll tell you a strange thing: Last night I had a delicious dinner (gnocchi!) with an editor friend, and I was talking about my publishing junk and I realized how light I felt about it all. Like… anything I used to worry about and strain myself over really didn’t matter so much anymore because I couldn’t control it, so there was no point in worrying. Even like some of the things I’d taken so seriously before were not really so important. Like things were fine. Like I was perfectly content and okay.

Yeah… strange moment, right?

Now why am I feeling this way? No idea. Maybe it’s that I love the novel I’m revising and the writing went exceptionally well yesterday. Maybe it’s that I finished a new draft of a proposal for a new novel and I’m proud of myself for turning that in. Maybe it’s that I have ideas for future novels and I just want to focus on getting to the place where I can write them. Maybe it’s my writer friends, who help more than they know. Maybe part of it is even how I’m spending time focusing on these new features on my blog: thinking about other writers and their books instead of mine. I love doing that. Maybe it’s simply that it’s a new year and feels like a fresh start.

So I woke up this morning feeling lighter than I have in a long time. As I said on Twitter, I feel like this:

Yes, that’s the morning Angela Chase woke up and discovered she was inexplicably “over” Jordan Catalano.

Now, in this analogy does that make the publishing industry my Jordan Catalano? That makes a terrible kind of sense.

I don’t know how long my good feeling will last. But it’s nice while I have it.

Come back next week for more authors revealing their Turning Points! (And I’m still giving away Imaginary Girls… you can enter here.)

New Blog Series: Turning Points (+ Opening Giveaway!)

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It’s a new year, and time for a new blog series here on distraction no. 99.

The theme of the new blog series is a meaty* one: Turning Points


I asked various authors this question: What was your turning point as a writer? And, I have to say, from the posts that have been sent in to me so far, I am humbled, thrilled, surprised, and most of all inspired by the great response that came from the asking of this question.

There are some truly incredible posts coming up—all about writing struggles, writing breakthroughs, the low points, the high points, the shocking points that changed everything… and much more. I can’t wait for you to read them.

Now, where did the theme of “turning points” first surface in my head? Sort of accidentally, when, in March 2011 before Imaginary Girls was published, I blogged a story about how I gave up writing adult fiction and began writing YA.

I said things like:

Not so many years ago, I had a turning point in my writing career. An “Aha!” moment. Something made me remember it yesterday and I wanted to share it here—to show how you might think you’re going one way down a certain path you’ve carved for yourself, but in fact there’s another path carved for you. There it is, waiting, glimmering in the near distance. It was your true path all along.

And:

…I remember very clearly looking up, straight into the sun shining through the office window, lighting up my new glossy wooden desk and the bright white proof pages, thinking, I didn’t know a YA novel could be like this! Thinking, What if—and this would be the first moment I’d consciously think this—what if I wrote a YA novel, too?

I’d only meant to tell my blog readers how I ended up writing YA, but that post seemed to resonate with a lot of people—and was featured on the WordPress “fully pressed” page, so more people than my usual audience here saw it and began flooding the piece with comments on their own turning points. Which I thought was pretty amazing.

[Click here to read the full post on my turning point as a writer.] 

So this got me thinking that many of us have these stories. Setting out to write and publish our books isn’t such an easy, well-lit path, is it? Not everyone knows exactly what they’re doing when they begin, and things very rarely—if ever—go as planned. In my case, things fall apart and stitch themselves back together in better, more brilliant ways than I’d originally intended. And once one turning point has been maneuvered, another comes around when it’s least expected. (I may be in the midst of one now, but I’ll need some distance to know for sure.)

The Turning Points blog series will be an ongoing feature on this blog, with about three posts a week, for as long as I have authors’ stories to share. There will be quite a few giveaways included with these posts, so keep an eye out for ways to win books, generously donated by their authors. [Keep checking back on the giveaways page to see all open giveaways on this site.]

The series is starting this week—on Wednesday, January 11 with a wonderful, inspiring guest blog by one of my favorite YA authors. Those of you who’ve been longtime readers of this blog may remember me posting about how much I love this author’s books. Who could it be? And what turning point might this author be revealing to us?

I think you’ll really want to come back on Wednesday to find out.

* I felt so weird typing that word, as a vegetarian. 

If you’d like to keep up with the Turning Points blog series, please add distraction no. 99’s feed to your RSS reader, or scroll down to the bottom of this site, on the left, and you will see a button to subscribe to this blog by email, so you’ll be notified whenever a new post goes up.

BUT WAIT.

I want to say this:

Hey, you. Yes, YOU. If you are an author—published or on your way to being published; YA or adult or children’s or nonfiction or comics or screenplays or poems; or even a person who worked toward becoming a writer and has since gone on to become something else—and this theme of Turning Points deeply resonates with you, I’d love to include your guest blog in this series. Just email me.

A note about the artwork: All the Turning Points blog series illustrations, like the one at the top of this post, will be by Robert Roxby. You can contact him directly for more information about his design work and illustrations (and check out both the “What Scares You?” and the “What Inspires You” blog series to see more of his amazing illustrations!). 

The giveaway is now closed. Thank you for entering!

 

 

 

 

 

See you back here Wednesday for the start of the series—with guest blogs, and more giveaways, and stories of perseverance, reinvention, and inspiration.

Time Travel, a New Year, and No Apologies

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Happy New Year! I spent the first part of 2012 going back in time, rereading and making edits to a book I first conceived in 2007, and wrote in 2008, and saw published in 2009. Fade Out (aka Dani Noir with a new face and new changes to the insides) will be coming out this year, in June, and I have the opportunity to make minor updates to it before it does. Now, I should say that I am restraining myself, I am. But there are some line edits I’m making and a new layer to the character that I’m lifting up into the light (it was there from the start, but buried for a middle-grade audience; it wasn’t difficult at all to bring it out now that the book is being reissued on the YA shelves, since, for me, this piece to my character was always there), and as I’m working this morning in my café it occurs to me just how strange this is:

I never reread my work once it’s published—except when I read pieces aloud to you, at readings.

I let go and I don’t look back.

So it’s a peculiar thing to be looking back. I remember writing Dani Noir, watching all those noir movies to get in the mood, and how much fun it was. I just finished rereading and editing the whole book, and I think it’s really cute. I like this book. It’s what I meant it to be. I’m happy that Simon Pulse is giving it a second chance as Fade Out.

Now, to return to 2012—our new year!—and into the deep, dark trenches of 17 & Gone. I’m already working through my New Year’s Resolutions, and part of that is living the life I’m living, being the writer I am instead of what I think anyone else wants me to be. I can’t be.

17 & Gone is exactly what I mean by this, so you’ll see soon enough once revisions are done.

This is the year I write solely for myself and no apologies. How freeing.

What’s different for you this year? Let’s make it happen.

And the Year Ends and I’m Still Writing

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The year is ending on a good note. Not that there’s any great news to report—I have no news, actually, I am utterly and entirely between bouts of news, since this is a quiet period of simply working hard and writing—but I’m ending the year with the knowledge that I’ve found it again. It­-it. My love of writing.

After a tough grumble of a year, most of which occurred behind the curtain, a year that included a faceoff with writer’s block the likes of which I’ve never had before (and, honestly, I never before truly believed “writer’s block” existed) and such a furnace of doubt raging inside me I’m surprised my hair didn’t catch fire, I have it back. The pleasure in writing again. That’s why I’m here in the first place. It’s all because writing—the act itself—brought me such great pleasure all those years ago before publication was even a possibility and I wanted to find a way to continue to do it for the rest of my life. With 2011’s writing struggles and hiccupping sense of inspiration, I found myself holding this small, urgent question inside me for a long time: Do I really want to be an author, now that I know what it’s like? Which led to another more urgent question: What am I if I don’t write? Which led to an answer: I can’t not write. Which circled back to tell me: I have to write because I love it, and I’ll always write books, no matter what.

It seems so obvious now.

So the end of the year is here, and I pulled through, and I’m in a wonderful place, revising 17 & Gone thanks to my editor, and tweaking my new book proposal for what could be my next YA novel thanks to my agent, and simply feeling better in general thanks to the generous people in my life (hi, Mom! hi, E!). All is well. My writing is going well, and I love that feeling.

If you’ve been struggling, I hope it passes. I hope you look back in your rearview once we speed ahead into this new year and see your struggles are long gone.

Happy New Year, writers and creative people! May we make good things in 2012.

2012 Writing Resolutions Photographed

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I’ve made my writing resolutions for 2012. I wanted them to be attainable goals, and by that I mean goals I could actually meet—without needing to rely on (or wait on, or hope on, or plead with) any other person outside myself. I do have dream-worthy things I wish would happen to my writing career next year, but they are just that: dreams. I have no control over if they’ll come true or not. Instead, I want to walk into this new year with actual things I can make an effort to accomplish, change, and pursue. I want to look back and see I moved forward on my own two feet.

So.

Some of my resolutions are very realistic goals.

Some will be very difficult.

One scares me.

Another is going to be really fun.

But here they are anyway—the seven writing resolutions I have for 2012, photographed as evidence!

What? Did you think I’d actually show you the resolutions before they’ve had a chance at coming true? There’s a little magic in keeping things close and giving them a chance to happen. So I’m doing just that.

I have seven unpublished photographs of the resolutions opened up so you can read them. I’ll show you each one and reveal what my resolutions were at the end of 2012. And by then I can tell you if I kept my word to myself…

…I don’t know if I can, but I’ll try!

Will you share your writing resolutions with me, even if I haven’t shared mine (yet) with you? I’ll wait a year if I have to!

All the Surprising Things That Happened in 2011

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At the end of every year I look back at this blog to see what happened to me—what I made happen, and what I had no idea was even coming. I tend to forget things, and confuse time and reorder events in my memory, and often the novels I’m writing seem more real than the life I’m existing in, so having a blog helps to remind me that I did do things. Things did happen. There were twelve months that just went by and, after this year especially, I’ve been changed as a person.

I ended 2010 having worked very hard to complete the very last of my revisions for my debut YA novel Imaginary Girls.

Here’s what happens next in 2011…

January:

I vanish into the woods… literally.

February:

I faint from blurbs.

March:

I recall my turning point as a writer—and why I began writing YA fiction.

April:

I feel exposed.

May:

I let go of old books.

June:

My book comes out and I interview a real girl behind Imaginary Girls.

July:

I admit how close I am to my book.

August:

I crawl out of my cave into the sun for the big SCBWI summer conference.

September:

I (finally) finish my first draft.

October:

I tell you what scares me. (And ask others to tell you, too.)

November:

I tell you what inspires me. (And ask others to tell you, too.)

December:

I revise, and I revise, and I revise 17 & Gone. (And I get the above fortune at a fancy dinner.)

There’s so much more that happened beyond the public sphere of this blog—and that’s one important lesson I learned in 2011: I can’t share everything with the world anymore, now that I’m living this parallel life as an author. I’ve had to start keeping a private journal again. And I need to thank a few of my writer friends for listening during some of the more dramatic moments. Thank you, CS, CZ, LB, MO.

I know a little about what will be coming in 2012. I’ll be finishing my revision of 17 & Gone, and revising some more after that. I’ll be asking other authors to write about their own turning points—come back for those guest blogs in a new series starting this January. I know I’ll also be vanishing for a little while. I’ll be writing on a mountain in California for a whole month this spring. By summer I’ll be celebrating the paperback release of two books with new faces: Imaginary Girls in paperback and Fade Out, aka Dani Noir. I’ll be seeing what happens with this new novel proposal I’m working on, fingers crossed. And maybe in 2012 I’ll hear some yeses, maybe I’ll hear some nos, but I’ll be hoping for the yeses—for me, and for you.

So how was your 2011? What happened to YOU?

Saturday Randoms: the YA Debuts, the Resolution, the Artist Colony, the New Blog Series, and the You’ll-Have-to-Tear-These-Pages-from-My-Cold-Dead-Hands

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It’s Saturday, and we just had a week’s worth of debut interviews and giveaways!

Maybe I should clarify something while I have you here: Since this new series of YA debut interviews began this week, I’ve had many people contact me asking how to be a part of the next round of interviews (next come the Summer 2012 YA debuts, and then Fall 2012). Thank you so much for being interested! But I should tell you, I have one criteria and one criteria only for the debuts I’ve picked to interview: They’re simply books I want to read. That’s it! I combed through publishers’ seasonal catalogs and Goodreads debut lists and debut blogs and read about these books and picked ones I wanted to read. Then I reached out to each of these authors asking if I could interview them because I was excited about their books. So… there’s nowhere to sign up, sorry. I haven’t read any of the books yet, but I can’t wait to. I guess what I’m saying is, basically, this 2012 Debut Interview series is just me… celebrating new books ’cause I like to.

If you are excited about any 2012 debuts, tell me in the comments. I absolutely love discovering new voices.

So! What are the Winter/Spring 2012 debuts I’m excited about so far? Slide by Jill Hathaway, Fracture by Megan Miranda, Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi, Where It Began by Ann Stampler, and Croak by Gina Damico.

[Click on each of the covers to go to the author interview—and enter the giveaways to win their books! All of the giveaways are still open, and you only need to leave a comment on the post to enter.]

Starting Monday, I’m featuring five more YA debut authors. So come back to find out who they are, read their interviews, and enter the giveaways.

What else?

If you visit this link on the Modge Podge Bookshelf, you can get a peek at my writing resolution for next year—and also the best book I read in 2011 and more.

Now you’ll know where in California I’ll be writing for a whole month this spring—I just noticed that the list of 2012 artists is up on the Djerassi Resident Artists Program site. It’s really happening!

Thank you for voting in my poll to help me choose the theme for the next blog series I’ll be hosting here. I’ve chosen the theme with the most votes: “What was your turning point as a writer?” (A theme inspired by a blog I wrote about just that last year—about deciding to write YA after reading Laura Kasischke during my day job at the children’s book publisher.)

I’ve already started soliciting some wonderful authors to take part in the new blog series… and many have said yes! I can’t wait to read their guest blogs. Expect the Turning Points blog series to begin in January 2012! (If you’ve already guest-blogged for me and are wondering why I haven’t asked you again—it’s simply an attempt at not being annoying. But if this theme really inspires you, please email me.)

And last but not least, I’m about to finish a draft of the proposal for my next YA novel. This is the novel that will (?? if it gets bought) come after 17 & Gone. I’m not telling you the title or anything about it yet, but I have over 65 pages and I’m close to letting go and being a mature, professional writer and showing my agent to see if he thinks it has legs. Very close. I need to finish it this weekend.

It’s just that there’s a part of me that never ever wants to let go of my writing and gets all scary possessive like it’s mine! I’m going to revise this forever! you’ll have to claw my pages out of my cold, dead hands! grr!

Or something.

Ever get like that?

The Title of My New Novel Revealed

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For some time, if you’ve been reading this blog, you may have noticed that I’ve been hard at work on a secretive new novel. This was a novel that first started coming out of me when I was away from home, outside my real life. I still vividly remember writing its very first words (then pounding out its first 50 pages in a mad spree of inspiration never matched since) while I was away in the spring of 2010 at Yaddo. When I got home after my four-week stay up in Saratoga Springs, I put the novel aside to revise Imaginary Girls. I didn’t return to it again until I was away from home for another residency, this time at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire in the winter of 2011. It was there, in my little house in the woods, where I wrote some more dark and darkly inspired pieces of this new book. It wasn’t until I came home in February of 2011 that I started to work on this book in the harsh light of day. By that I mean reality. By that I mean in my overly distracted and scattered life here in New York City. This is where I stalled. The first draft wouldn’t come easily. It threatened my sanity. It forced me to relearn everything I thought I knew about writing novels. Let’s just say that it took a lot out of me.

Even once I finished the first draft and turned it in to my editor, I was knotted with doubt and fear. I was feeling very low and was beginning to worry that I’d written an unpublishable thing that couldn’t be salvaged. But I’d forgotten something. THE REJUVENATING POWERS OF REVISION*! (Cue the choir, the birds chirping, the foil-covered chocolates raining from the sky, the bubbling fountain of pomegranate** margaritas.) I still have work to do, but I can see what the novel will become now. And I’m here to tell you it can be salvaged. It will be a book. I can’t wait.

So, to celebrate, I am going to tell you the title of this new novel! I got permission to reveal it and everything.

My new novel is called…

17 & GONE

…and it’s forthcoming from Dutton in 2013!

I will reveal

  1. the season
  2. the hook
  3. the summary
  4. the voice
  5. the genre
  6. the inspirations
  7. the girls
  8. the significance of 17
  9. the moment this book title was first uttered in the cramped kitchen of my tiny apartment
  10. and by who
  11. the real-life experiences from the artist colonies that entered the book, including
  12. the girl on the bicycle
  13. the tick bite
  14. the ice storm
  15. the dark road in the dark night
  16. the knock on the door
  17. and more…

when I can!

17 & GONE is like nothing I’ve ever written before… and yet it is so completely, deeply me. You’ll see.

* My editor is made of magic.

** In my land, the perfect drinks are always made with pomegranate.

My Slow Yet Serious Attempt at NaNoWriMo (or Why I Rewrite as I Go)

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My attempt at NaNoWriMo has been slow-going so far this month, but I don’t see that as a failure yet—and I won’t let myself see it as a failure if I (when I) reach November 30 without 50,000 words. (Remind me I said that.)

It’s the determination and the push to get out more words that’s worth it to me… and I’m excited about the words I do have. I’m just not one of those writers who can shove herself ahead to simply get words, any words whatsoever, down on the page so they count in my total for the day. I’ve been told again and again on Twitter that I should keep writing and not look back until next month, but I do look back and here’s why:

For me, writing is rewriting. The first words I slap down are not always the words that stay… they are often very close… but I can feel other words, better words, itching underneath them. I can’t move on when I feel that itch. While my thought is fresh, I want to keep at it until I can bring the other words—the true words—to light.

So I circle in, recasting and revamping and reordering and changing and cutting and expanding and shaping… and then I have a paragraph. A good and worthy paragraph. Many times, if the carving went very well, a paragraph could stay virtually intact into the final draft of my manuscript. I do force myself to let go and move on, or else I’d never finish more than a page. But after years of writing fiction—and after an actual, solid attempt at NaNoWriMo for real, one that ended with about 40,000 words trashed forever into the abyss where bad, ugly novel drafts go—I’ve realized that this is how I write…

In circles.

It’s annoying, sure. It’s not the fastest way, I realize. But it feels good to write this way—it feels right.

So that’s why, as of this blog post, I have only logged 3,463 words for my new novel in the first five days of this month. (In truth, I’ve typed many more words than that… I just cut a lot, too.)

Do I sound defensive? I don’t mean to. I just wanted to explain.

* Why then am I signed up for NaNoWriMo if I refuse to write the way I’m supposed to, you ask? For motivation mainly. Also for fun. Besides, I like connecting with other writers who are also buried in novels this month, as, like I said before, writing a book can be a lonely pursuit and it’s nice to know I’m not all alone in this. That’s part of why I’ve enjoyed writing dates lately… writing with other writers tends to motivate me… which is a whole other blog post.

Before I go, I don’t know if you’ve been following my blog this month, but if you’re a writer I hope you will. The theme is “What Inspires You?” and I’ve asked writers to guest blog on their writing inspirations. So far you can read about what inspires Lisa Schroeder, Tara Altebrando, and Bryan Bliss—and there are more posts coming next week.

One last thing: My “What Scares You?” book giveaway—you could win prize packs of books, some donated from Penguin and some signed by authors—closes on Monday. You still have time to enter the giveaway RIGHT HERE.