Category Archives: inspirations

Turning Points: Guest Post by Stephanie Burgis (+Giveaway)

Posted on by
25

This guest post is part of the Turning Points blog series here on distraction no. 99—in which I asked authors the question: What was your turning point as a writer? Here is author Stephanie Burgis revealing hers…

GIVEAWAY INCLUDED: Keep reading for a chance to win Stephanie’s newest middle-grade novel Renegade Magic!

Guest post by Stephanie Burgis

When I first sat down to write this entry, I froze up. Too many choices were tumbling around my head. Which turning point do I talk about?

Here’s my first major turning point: the moment in 2001 when I made the absolutely illogical choice to attend Clarion West, a writing workshop I knew I most definitely could not afford. Against the advice of many smart people, I put $2,000 on my credit card and flew into the unknown for six weeks, acting as if I were a real writer whose work deserved the investment—as if my writing could ever be worth a $2,000 expense!

As if. I was physically shaking as I stepped onto that plane from Pittsburgh to Seattle. I couldn’t believe what I was doing. I was so terrified that night at our first group dinner, I actually felt like I was floating above my own body as other workshop members asked me respectfully about my writing.

I smiled and I came up with answers somehow, but inside I was thinking: Can’t they tell I’m just an impostor?

Yes, I had known since I was seven years old that I wanted to be a writer—but that was just a crazy fantasy, a pipe dream! Yes, I’d won my acceptance to the competitive workshop—but that was a fluke. It had to be! Couldn’t they tell just by looking at me that I didn’t belong with Real Writers like them?

They couldn’t…and by the end of those six weeks, neither could I. By the end of the workshop, I was calling myself a writer out loud for the first time in my adult life. Those six weeks changed everything for me—not just my writing (which improved so much there), but my whole life, as well.

Less than a year later, I was flying into the unknown again, getting onto another plane—and this time, it wasn’t just for a six-week trip. This time, I was moving to England to live with the amazing man I’d met at Clarion West, one of my favorite writers in the world, and the single reader whose opinion matters most to me.

Even beyond that, I was part of an active critique group I’d joined because of Clarion West. I was writing and submitting stories to professional magazines, coping with rejections and sending those rejected stories right out again. Everything about the way I treated my own writing had gone through a massive shift—I was finally turning my crazy dream into a practical plan, and that made all the difference.

Without having attended Clarion West…well, I would still be a writer. I’ve been a writer ever since I was seven years old. But I wouldn’t be where I am right now, not physically, emotionally, or professionally.

But that’s not the only major turning point for me and my writing. Four years later, I had to choose between finishing my PhD in music history or making another, even scarier commitment to my writing.

I was halfway through my PhD thesis when my funding ran out and I had to take a full-time day job. I knew by then that I didn’t want to be a professor, but after spending three years in a PhD program, it seemed crazy not to finish the PhD, just to put a cap on all that work. Moreover, I come from a family of academics: three of my close relatives have PhDs, and a fourth is in a PhD program now. Education, and degrees, mean a lot in my family.

“No problem!” I told everybody I knew—especially myself.

I just planned to do it all: work the day job during the day, write my fiction at lunchtime, and write my PhD thesis at night. I could finish the thesis within a year, and have that PhD diploma to make me officially a success. Easy-peasy!

Well. Guess how long that plan worked out?

I think it was on the second night of my new schedule that I started crying helplessly when I sat down at my computer, completely overwhelmed. That was when I realized that I’d made a fatal error in my planning: I’d forgotten to schedule any time with my husband, or, in fact, any time to decompress at all.

That was not a livable schedule for me. So, something had to go.

The obvious answer? Fiction writing. After all, although I’d finally published a couple of stories by then, my career certainly hadn’t taken off in any way. No one in the literary world would miss me if I just stopped writing for a year. I could always pick it up again after a year, once the PhD thesis was finished…

…Except that I couldn’t. I genuinely could not do it.

Ever since I was seven years old, I’ve known I wanted to be a writer more than anything else in the world. Writing is like eating to me; it’s like breathing.

No one in the literary world would have missed me that year…but I would have missed myself.

Because without writing, I am not myself. It comes right down to that.

Giving up the PhD was hard. It was hard to admit that I was not going to be the super achiever I had planned to be. It was hard to admit to my wonderful supervisor and advisor that their hopes for me were not going to pan out. It was hard to admit to everyone I really wanted to impress that I was not, in fact, as impressive as I had hoped.

But I have never, ever regretted making that choice—any more than I’ve regretted the fact that, a year later, I chose to finally change literary streams, switching from the darker, adult fantasy novels that had won me my first agent to write the book of my heart instead: a lighthearted, funny MG fantasy adventure set in Regency England, which has since been published as Kat, Incorrigible. I’d been writing darker, adult books because I thought that was what a Serious, Important Writer would do—and surely I had to be impressive in some way, right? Right?

Wrong. It turned out that I wasn’t Serious or Important after all…but what I really wanted to write was so much fun, I couldn’t bring myself to care anymore about what other people thought. And that was the real reward, in itself.

In the end, all of my most important turning points have come down to those moments when I had to step forward and make the choice to believe in my own (quirky! implausible! embarrassing!) dreams…

…Which really means believing in myself, the person behind all the social masks, the person I really am: not Serious, not Important, not capital-I Impressive. Quirky. Human. Me.

I don’t know a scarier step to take—but I don’t know a better one, either.

Stephanie Burgis grew up in East Lansing, Michigan, but now she lives in Wales, surrounded by mountains and castles. The first book in her MG Regency fantasy trilogy, KAT, INCORRIGIBLE, was chosen by VOYA as a Top Shelf pick for Middle School Readers. Her second book, RENEGADE MAGIC, was published on April 3, 2012. You can read the first three chapters of both books on her website: www.stephanieburgis.com

GIVEAWAY:
WIN A COPY OF RENEGADE MAGIC!

Stephanie is giving away a *signed* hardcover of her new middle-grade novel Renegade Magic to one lucky winner! You can enter this giveaway either by:

  1. Leaving a comment on this post, or
  2. Filling out this entry form.

And if you do both, you will be entered twice and have two chances to win! (Also, if you tweet about this guest post and/or share it online and tell me so, I will give you a third entry. So share away.)

This giveaway is open INTERNATIONALLY! And it will close on Friday, May 25, at 8pm EST. Good luck!

There’s more in the Turning Points series. Catch up with any posts you may have missed here.

Turning Points: And Now for Something Completely Different by Bethany Griffin (+Giveaway)

Posted on by
19

This guest post is part of the Turning Points blog series here on distraction no. 99—in which I asked authors the question: What was your turning point as a writer? Here is Bethany Griffin revealing hers…

GIVEAWAY INCLUDED: Keep reading for a chance to win Bethany’s new novel Masque of the Red Death!

Guest post by Bethany Griffin

I once sent my former agent an email with that subject…And Now For Something Completely Different. It didn’t turn out very well. But, since we are discussing turning points, it seemed a good place to start! My first agent signed me for a book called Handcuffs, and she loved that book very much.

It was a book about this horrific place called high school, and this blog post is about the meandering path—as I’m not sure there was one clearly defined turning point—that took me from writing a book set in high school to writing a post-apocalyptic slightly steampunk (or at least speculative historical) retelling of a classic Poe story.

I still love my first book in the whole slightly-cringing doting-parent sort of way. It was like trying out a hairstyle that, while flattering, didn’t really work out. And while I’ve moved on, and grown as an author, there were parts of that book that were so honest, and so me, that they still make me uncomfortable. Like this passage:

That’s how shyness works. You want to talk but you can’t. People look at you with scorn. Being an ice princess is infinitely better, even if some people think you’re a total bitch. A snob. Reserved. Those are choices a person makes, to be reserved, to be quiet, or to be a snob. Shy isn’t a choice.

I will never be able to read that passage and deny that this book is a reflection of middle/high school me, perhaps more so than fiction should be (though the plot is purely 100% fiction). But what was I doing writing a realistic contemporary novel, anyway?

As a kid, I read any and everything, but my first love was fantasy. LOTR, The Prydain Chronicles, The Chronicles of Narnia, A Wrinkle in Time, so many awesome books. In middle school I veered off into reading historical novels for several years, and then something weird and wonderful happened: My mom started giving me all these gothic…romances? By authors like Victoria Holt. I won’t argue that these were great literature, and I think my mom gave them to me because I was reading above grade level and those books never had any sex in them, but they also had all these dark haunted manor houses and moors, and secret passages, and mysterious deaths. In middle school I also read Poe for the first time, and his work obviously had an impact on me, but my love has always been the novel, which may be why I took it upon myself to take the essence of Poe and try to make it into a novel, who knows?

In early high school I read everything ever written by VC Andrews, twice, and everything by Stephen King, and then I restarted with fantasy, science fiction, and every other weird bit of speculative fiction that I could get my hands on.

What this history of my childhood reading habits is meant to show is that if there is a particular type of book that I am well-suited to writing, that type of book is NOT realistic contemporary.

So that crazy weird dark mix of genres that I mentioned in the first paragraph? My post-apocalyptic steampunk reimagining of the world created in Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death? Add in speculative history, and maybe a dash of dystopia (since there is an evil dictator) and maybe that’s what I was meant to write. Or at least what I believe I am best suited to writing. And I guess figuring that out is the turning point that this post is meandering toward.

At the time when I composed the email to my former agent, gave it a lovely Monty Python–inspired title, and hit send, I hadn’t quite figured out what I wanted to write.

But I simply wasn’t that excited about doing another realistic book, so I sent her this other manuscript that I’d written during this dreamy state that I’d drifted through during my first pregnancy. It was a weird little fairy tale that I still sort of love. But, I mean, you can’t really spring a surprise like that on a person who is expecting a book about high school and expect anything good to come from it. My former agent said the voice was fantastic, but the rest was vague (it was) and that if I wanted to write fantasy I’d need to start from scratch and define all the rules of my world before I even started writing.

So, I never mentioned that manuscript again. Not to anyone. Not until right this minute. I didn’t respond to that email, I didn’t ask questions. I mentally shelved it forever.

And I went on to write a realistic contemporary manuscript that was probably as good as my first book, but wasn’t really where my heart was, and it didn’t sell.

At that point I didn’t really feel like a writer at all. Certainly not a successful one. And I had an idea for my next story that was huge and awe-inspiring and daunting, and I wasn’t sure I could do it. But that’s the sort of thing that speaks to me (huge and daunting, very dark and quite disturbing), so I jumped in.

My former agent had left the business, and I was agentless, making it a good time for reinventing myself, though the process, for me, was never that deliberate. I was still me, just a me who had become daring enough to create the sorts of settings and characters and stories that I was more qualified, and possibly uniquely qualified, to write.

I’m sure my current agent, Michael Bourret, will be reading this, since he’s also Nova’s agent, and if I wanted to be all sentimental (I don’t) I could say that signing with him was also a turning point, because he really got what I was trying to write, and I really needed someone to get it. These words from an early email, describing my writing—It’s dark, and sexy, and just the slightest bit wrong, but all in such a delicious way—expressed exactly what I was trying to do!

And I needed that validation.

So, I set out to write something different and unique, and what I came up with was Masque of the Red Death. The voice, the world, the setting, the characters, they were all exactly what I was meant to write. The sort of story that came naturally and felt right, and happily, I think it’s the sort of thing some people will enjoy very much. At least I hope so, because I’m going to leave realistic novels to the authors who have so much more to say in that genre. I’ll stick to weird dark gothic stories, with horror, adventure, and secret passageways. And scary crocodiles.

And just maybe, the occasional love triangle.

Bethany Griffin spends her days coaxing teenagers to read, and her evenings writing books that someone else can coax teenagers to read. She spends too much time reading and on the internet, and not enough time doing anything else, but rationalizes that everything else is overrated, anyway. Masque of the Red Death was just released on April 24, by GreenWillow Books.

Visit her online at www.bethanygriffin.com.

GIVEAWAY:
WIN A SIGNED COPY OF MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH

Bethany is giving away a *signed and personalized* hardcover of her new YA novel Masque of the Red Death to one lucky winner! You can enter this giveaway either by:

  1. Leaving a comment on this post, or
  2. Filling out this entry form.

And if you do both, you will be entered twice and have two chances to win! (Also, if you tweet about this guest post and/or share it online and tell me so, I will give you a third entry. So share away.)

This giveaway is open in the US ONLY. Please make sure you have a mailing address in the US if you enter. And the giveaway will close on Wednesday, May 23, at 8pm EST. Good luck!

There’s more in the Turning Points series. Catch up with any posts you may have missed here.

When You Wish You Were Another Writer

Posted on by
5

Why can’t I write ________?

  • faster?
  • sexier?
  • shorter?
  • BIGGER?
  • better?

Why can’t I write books like the ones _______ writes?

  • Libba Bray?
  • Gayle Forman?
  • John Green?
  • Sara Zarr?
  • Holly Black?
  • Karen Russell?

Those are just a few of my fill-in-the-blanks, and I’m sure you can slip in your own words or author names to finish those sentences.

This is just a little writer public-service announcement that we are all only ourselves—and our best writing comes out when we recognize this and embrace it. My stories are my stories, and my way of writing them is simply… how I write. Yes, I spend a lot of time admonishing myself to seek out bigger plot points and shove out larger word counts, but I’d much rather look at a manuscript I’ve finished and know it’s wholly mine. That I didn’t hide who I was. That I didn’t try to be anyone other than this flawed, over-wordy, flighty, weird, cryptic writer whose body I happen to be in. Thankfully, 17 & Gone is this manuscript—and that’s not for lack of insulting myself and telling myself to do something else.

But also there’s this: We can be inspired by these other writers and methods of writing. We can admire their world-building and their important, beautiful, memorable, thrilling stories. They can help us stretch and grow to be stronger writers.

Thus ends my lecture to myself as I revise the novel I happened to write… which is mine as much as anything could be, for good and bad and worse and better, till death do us part.

Turning Points: Guest Post by Claire Legrand (+Giveaway)

Posted on by
45

The Turning Points blog series is back with more guest posts! I’ve asked authors the question: What was your turning point as a writer? Here is debut author Claire Legrand revealing hers…

GIVEAWAY INCLUDED: Keep reading for a chance to win an ARC of Claire’s debut middle-grade novel The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls!

Guest post by Claire Legrand

My turning point didn’t come when I wrote the book that got me a publishing contract.

It came with the book I had to let go.

First of all, I have to say as a disclaimer that I’ve already told this story in bits and pieces on my blog. But the more I talk about it, the stronger I feel, the more encouraged, the more determined. So, here it is again:

I still remember how the idea for that story—the one I had to let go—came to me. The summer after I graduated from high school, I visited Washington, D.C., with my family. On the flight home, while staring out the window and daydreaming, I had a vision. Calling it that makes me want to roll my eyes, but it happened. An image popped into my head, one I had to explore.

It would later become one of the final scenes in the final book of a trilogy that I have yet to write.

Two years later, halfway through my undergraduate degree, I changed my major and left music behind, at least in a professional sense. Part of the impetus behind this decision was that vision that wouldn’t leave me. The story of it haunted me, begging for existence. I changed my major rather listlessly to English literature. I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself, at that point. But I knew I was going to write this book.

I spent the next two years brainstorming. I scribbled aimlessly in notebooks and wrote fan-fiction for characters that have yet to see the light of day. I composed glossaries and encyclopedic essays, designed clothing, and dreamed up spectacularly elaborate fictional histories, maps, wars.

In 2008, I finally started writing. I still remember the feeling of sitting down that first day and typing the word “Prologue,” my fingers shaking. (Yes, prologue! Haters to the left.)

This was the beginning of the book that would get me published. I just knew it.

Funny how things so seldom work out the way we thought they would.

I finished that first bloated, ridiculous, beautiful first draft about a year and a half later, in the summer of 2009. Immediately, I started querying this book that was approximately 200,000 words too long. (Yes.)

Part of me was very practical about this whole process, this dream of being a published author. I was in graduate school, after all; I would earn my librarian degree, I would have a back-up plan. Not that I would need it. This mammoth book would be my ticket to the big time.

How could I have possibly thought such a thing?

I think a lot of it stemmed from fear. It was like I knew, somewhere deep and unacknowledged in my gut, that this wasn’t going to work like I hoped. That I needed to do more research, take time to learn the craft. I scorned words like “craft” and “process” because I was confident that I somehow knew it all innately. That sounds like arrogance, but really, truly, it was fear. Fear that, if I took that extra time to research and plan and hone, the window of opportunity would close for some reason. Fear that, at any moment, someone would pop up, point and jeer, and say that I wasn’t good enough.

I therefore rushed into things way too fast, before my poor, bursting book was even halfway ready.

I queried, and queried, and queried. My original query letter was two pages long. Two pages long! I didn’t include the word count. I didn’t do anything that I was supposed to. Somehow, miraculously, I still managed to get requests, and my rejections were always kind (bless the hearts of those nice agents who could have laughed me into smithereens, but didn’t). However, they were still rejections. These requests never panned out.

Until this one, about six months after I started querying. They say it only takes one.

They’re right. Well, sort of.

I don’t remember how I stumbled upon Diana Fox, exactly, but somehow I ended up at her blog in November 2009. She was going to attend a conference near me in the spring, and I thought, “How fortuitous!” I sent her my query and the first few pages of my prologue. A couple of weeks later, she requested my full manuscript.

And it was a fortuitous thing that I didn’t say how long my book was in that query, and that Diana requested it anyway. That she didn’t open up the Word document, curse, laugh, and send it back to me with a standard rejection.

In February 2010, I checked in with her. In response, I received the longest, most thoughtful email I had yet received from any agent. She had read my book. She liked many things about it, she said, but lots of things still needed work. Perhaps we could talk about it over coffee at the conference in April? I agreed. I probably danced a happy dance of some kind.

April 2010. I went to the conference, all dressed up and sweating profusely. God, I was nervous. This would be, I was convinced, The Day. Sure, Diana had some reservations about my book, but if she saw me in person, if she heard my passion firsthand, she would change her mind. Maybe we could talk revisions, with the promise of representation afterward. Maybe! Maybe!

But a voice kept whispering in the back of my mind, “You know that’s not going to happen, Claire.”

The voice was right. That didn’t happen.

What did happen was that Diana and I sat on the poolside patio of her hotel and chatted about—well, everything: writing, books, my book in particular, life—for three or four hours. I nodded and smiled and said, “Uh-huh” and admitted numbly that no, I hadn’t read that book . . . or that book . . . or that book. I took notes. More sweating.

She did not offer me representation. She did, however, tell me to stay in touch.

“Stay in touch.” The three most evil words since “It’s not you . . . ”

Later, when I got home, I cried as hard as I did when my parents told me they were getting a divorce, as hard as I did the first time someone broke my heart.

I cried because it had finally hit me: how much work I needed to do, how much time I had wasted, how this was the end. I would have to stick my characters in a drawer somewhere until neglect eradicated them.

I cried because Diana had been so ruthlessly honest, and yet so kind. She loved it, but not enough. I had been so close.

A couple of days later, I started revisions, struggling to incorporate everything Diana had suggested, not pausing for one second to think that rushing into this wasn’t a good idea. Instead, I plowed through, revising and re-writing and re-thinking.

It still wasn’t good enough, though. I wasn’t good enough. Not only was I not living up to my own standards, I was also letting my characters down. I wanted to be good enough for them because the feeling of them in my chest was like solid, warm little knots, made up of me and embedded in me and breathing through me.

But I wasn’t. Every query ultimately led to a rejection. So, I put my first book away—and that right there, that decision—changed everything. I put one book away, and I started another one.

This book was something different. This was not a story requiring glossaries, prologues, and an encyclopedia. It was fun, it was creepy, and it cleansed me. For so long, I had been stuck stubbornly trying to hammer out this story that was too big for me. I had focused on it at the expense of all else—reading, researching the industry I so desperately longed to be a part of, developing relationships with other authors.

My turning point came when I realized all this, and took steps to fix it.

When I said good-bye to the book of my heart and started a new book, a step I had never imagined I could stomach taking.

When I admitted that I had work to do, and did it.

That’s when everything changed.

I finished this book, The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls, and sent it to Diana, with whom I had stayed in casual contact. She requested it, and by the time all was said and done, she had offered me representation, as had two other agents.

I chose to sign with Diana. A couple of weeks later, we started submitting to editors. A couple of days later, we had our first offer, and we ended up selling the book to my brilliant editor Zareen Jaffery at Simon & Schuster.

I like to think that that first book, the book of my heart, was the hand scrabbling resolutely at the door to the publishing industry. It left behind some blood, some fingernail splinters. But it wedged that door open a smidge, just enough for my Cavendish-shaped foot to slip in and open it fully.

What will happen to that first book? I honestly don’t know. I know that I think about it often. I know that I’ve re-written the prologue, that I’ve re-tooled much of my world-building. I know that, when Diana speaks of it, it is with genuine enthusiasm, and I know what couple she ’ships (an aside: there are many awesome pairings to choose from; I’m just saying). I know that I will return to it, someday.

I also know that, without that first book, without the vision on that plane, I might not have started writing again. You know, I might not even have changed my major. My ambition in life might still be to play in the New York Philharmonic, and I might be spending money on mouthpieces and piccolo trumpets instead of books and printer cartridges and BEA.

We all need that first book, that book of the heart. This isn’t to say that all the books we write aren’t from the heart. But there is always that one book that gets us started, that inspires and propels us. We all need that book—to write it, to slave over it, to get it out of our systems.

Sometimes we even need to let that book go. I know I did.

But whether that book gets published or sits in a drawer, whether it becomes a best-seller or not, whether people love it or hate it, it is the book that made me dream.

And that, the dreaming, is what makes all the difference.

Claire Legrand is a full-time writer and former librarian living in New York City (although she will always be a Texan at heart!). Her first novel, The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls, will release on August 28, 2012, from Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers. Her second novel, The Year of Shadows, is due out August 2013, and her third novel, a re-telling of The Nutcracker called Winterspell, is due out the following year, both from S&S BFYR.

Links: blog | twitter | facebook | goodreads | tumblr

GIVEAWAY:
WIN A COPY OF THE CAVENDISH HOME FOR BOYS AND GIRLS!

Claire is giving away a *signed* ARC (advance reading copy) of her middle-grade debut, The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls, to one lucky winner! You can enter this giveaway either by:

  1. Leaving a comment on this post, or
  2. Filling out this entry form.

And if you do both, you will be entered twice and have two chances to win! (Also, if you tweet about this guest post and/or share it online and tell me so, I will give you a third entry. So share away.)

This giveaway is open internationally and will close on Monday, May 21, at 8pm EST. Good luck!

There’s more in the Turning Points series. Catch up with any posts you may have missed here.

I Walked with My Sister… and Raised $1,158!

Posted on by
1

Thank you to all the generous people who donated to support my walk for my sister in Walk MS: Philadelphia this weekend! I was surprised and so touched by all the people who reached out and donated, and I hope you know much much it meant to me.

My fund-raising goal started out small… but when I quickly reached it within an hour, I raised it. Then raised it again. I’m astounded at how much I raised.

My sister Laurel Rose and me. I love her so much.

I can hardly believe my eyes, but I raised a total of $1,158, all to help my sister’s local chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, which assists local people living with MS and funds research for a cure. Because I’d raised so much, I was a VIP walker!

And in total my sister’s team—Rose’s Team—raised $4,175! Wow!

Rose’s Team! My sister and the family and friends who love her.

I’m happy to have raised so much, but what meant the most to me was to be on my sister’s side during this walk. She means everything to me, and all I want is for there to someday be a cure for her. On the day of the walk, she was surrounded by family and friends—including our adorable blond mom and her wonderful boyfriend (who I approve of) Dan—and she has so many people who love her!

My sister and her boyfriend during a Fig Newton break on the Walk.

And I know there were even more who couldn’t be there at the walk but who were there in spirit. Thank you to every single person who donated to support me and especially my little sister.

Here are some of us at the finish line. (My sister’s boyfriend makes the best faces in photos! Hilarious. And my mom and sister and are so cute together here.)

When a Novelist Wishes She Could Write Short Stories

Posted on by
3

File this under: Current Distractions.

"Yield to Whim" by Frank Foreman, 1983, on the road leading to the Djerassi Resident Artists Program

I know I’m working on a new novel proposal right now, quite possibly two, and I know I just revised a novel and will be revising said novel again soon enough—did you see that 17 & Gone has a season? It does! Spring 2013! Plus, I’ve been gobbling up a strange array of novels since I landed at the artist colony, but I can’t seem to quit my attachment to short stories.

I adore short stories.

In fact, I wrote a story just a couple of weeks ago, and it was a wild, familiar experience I’d forgotten, and all I can think is how I want to write more. What is it about a short story that calls to me so much? I really don’t think it’s all about the length… though how nice to write something under 300 pages, right? (I won’t tell you the current page count of 17 & Gone.) I think it’s more about the experience of reading short stories: intense, exquisite bursts of attention. And then it’s over. I like that feeling. I also like how, in a story, every moment is there for a reason, every single word is significant. For someone who loves a good sentence as much as I do, it’s the perfect form.

And yet, for someone who can’t seem to shut up, the way I do, a novel really is more suited to my writing… but I can cheat a little, can’t I? Not to mention that, often, a short story for me can be the jumping-off point for a new novel. Imaginary Girls was first conceived as a short story, after all.

I want to write some more stories this year, and I want to start sending out to journals again like I haven’t in years. Maybe I’ll somehow get myself to a summer workshop so I can work on this.

…After I finish those novel drafts, of course.

Do you love short stories, too? Tell me why!

Inside an Artist Colony

Posted on by
2

What happens at an artist colony? I keep getting asked this, and each one is different, but here at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in the northern California mountains I’ll give you a small peek of what happens:

I would just like to take a moment and say the trees in California are REALLY tall!

You must apply to get in, and international artists of many disciplines can apply, so right now I am here with seven other artists: another fiction writer, a playwright, a choreographer, a composer, a media artist, and two visual artists. We live together in two shared spaces (an Artists’ House that holds mostly writers and an Artists’ Barn that holds special studios for dancers and composers and visual artists). We don’t pay to be here and we’re not given a cash prize: The award is the time and space itself. It’s the month of being here, doing our work. We eat dinner together at night and share presentations with one another. In fact, my presentation is tonight! (Nervous.) We talk. We crave cake and pounce on it when the amazing chef provides a dark chocolate Guinness cake with cream cheese frosting (oh my!). And during the workdays and late at night we wander the house in our pajamas, deep in our creative stupors, going back again and again for more coffee or more tea.

You’re here to do your work, at your own pace, for yourself, in any way you want. No one is policing your time—or your internet usage. If tomorrow I want to lie on the porch outside my sliding glass door with my notebook on my face and “write” in my head, I can do that. If I want to stay in pajamas all day and have a strawberry breakfast and write as much as my fingers will spit out, I can do that also—in fact, I might just do that.

We’ve also been: amusing ourselves with poems and scary stories; trading books; laughing; sharing chores; baking sweet potatoes over a wood stove; admiring the amazing view of the land and the Pacific Ocean in the distance; eating the delicious food the chef makes us for weeknight dinners; not watching TV; and working, tons.

The on-site staff members who live and eat with us are also artists—so you’re surrounded at all times by creative people. Oh and animals. So far I’ve seen: one snake, two bunnies, multiple deer, one hummingbird, and Neil Young’s cows.

The Pacific Ocean sometimes looks like a part of the sky. And on the property, in the woods, are a series of sculptures made by artists who’ve been residents here. They’re like treasures, peppered throughout the trees, made to last as long as they will and then weather away and become a part of the forest.

"Vanishing Ship" by John Roloff

Faery by Derek Johnson

"Orpheus Coyote and Friends" by William King

(someone forgot to write down what this sculpture was)

Feel free to ask me questions, but I hope this explains it!

To find out more about Djerassi artist residencies and sculpture tours open to the public, visit www.djerassi.org. 

____

A tiny note about the world outside the artist colony: Yes yes, I know The Hunger Games opens tomorrow. Yes, I am in mourning that I don’t have a way to see it. Please don’t tell me how awesome it is. I won’t be able to contain my jealousy. Just please go and make the movie very, very popular so it is still in theaters when I get back to New York City on April 13!

Here I Am

Posted on by
8

A misty road between the house I'm staying in and the barn

Part of me wants to stay silent while I’m here at the artist colony in the misty northern California mountains, but another part of me wants to acknowledge where I am, in this moment, and that part of me has won out. I’m here to write. I’ve learned it’s important to keep yourself open when you go away on a writing residency: Whatever you are inspired to do, you should absolutely do. You don’t know what could happen. Follow your whims like you can’t always do so at home—and also write as much as you can, absorbing the scenery and the silence and the distance from reality. Of course, I currently have a deadline for a small piece due in to my publisher, but once I turn that in, my path is wide open and there are a few things I could find myself working on. No rules. No limits.

I am living here with other artists (most are not writers, which I find fascinating!) and I’m writing a special something I will share with you one day soon, and eating some very delicious food. My first few days here have been all the more magical because of the rain—my most favorite sound in the universe—and the pale mist that surrounds our house makes it seem as if I’ve entered another dimension. When it clears and the rain stops this weekend, I’ll be able to see all around us to where we are… and in the near distance the Pacific Ocean.

The view from my writing desk... when the mist clears, what will I see?

I have a notebook with butterflies on it and new pages written already. And I do miss E, but he’ll be reading everything I write while I’m here. I can’t wait to show him.

My writing desk

Turning Points: “How Michael Jackson Helped Me Love Writing Again” Guest Post by Aimee Phan (+Giveaway)

Posted on by
14

Dear Readers: Thank you so much for stopping by to take in the Turning Points series here on distraction no. 99, in which I asked authors the question: What was your turning point as a writer? Today’s guest post is the last before I take a short hiatus at a writers colony—but the Turning Points series will return in May, with more inspiring guest posts from more wonderful writers, I promise.

In the meantime, I’d like to leave you with this Turning Point from Aimee Phan, in which she struggles in the face of the recession to find a good reason to keep writing…

When my then boyfriend and I left graduate school in our early twenties, all we wanted to do was write. We had no responsibilities but to take care of ourselves. Our parents were healthy and financially independent. My parents often lent me money during the lean months when my checking account was low. Although it took some convincing, my parents were willing to see me through this writing dream to see if I could actually make it work. Matt’s parents were even more encouraging and supportive of his ambitions to write poetry. Everything about our upper-middle-class suburban background had fooled us into believing that if we worked hard, we could have it all: literary success and a cushy, comfortable first-world lifestyle.

The Reeeducation of Cherry Truong

It is that short, but blissful, bubble of time that most writers probably never have. And for the few who do, they will never appreciate it enough while they are in it, and will always want it back: the absolute freedom to write without much concern about anything else. The beginning felt promising: within a few years, I had sold my first book as part of a two-book deal and landed a tenure-track creative writing position. My boyfriend was awarded a prestigious post-MFA fellowship to pursue his PhD in literature. I realized how incredibly fortunate we were, and felt thankful for the opportunity to have this support to continue to write.

A few years later, still in the bloom of our teaching and writing careers, freshly married and now relocated to the San Francisco bay area and its thriving literary community, we watched as the economy crashed. The condo we had purchased transformed from nest egg into a money pit. We lost two of our beloved cars to random car accidents, which the insurance companies deemed better to total rather than repair, even though we could not afford to replace them. My parents started coping with serious health issues that required my brother and I to rotate regular visits to Southern California. Our bills were mounting, while our savings dwindled. As the great recession took its toll on our neighbors, family, and friends, and as we read about many others who were experiencing even worse financial circumstances, I struggled to find a good reason to continue writing. While I still loved my manuscript and its potential, it felt somehow inappropriate to commit myself to an imaginary world, when the current world I lived in was imploding. Recently laid-off or underemployed people surrounded me in coffee shops, crouched over their laptops, searching the Craigslist want ads or refining their résumés. I felt incredibly guilty—they all wanted hourly jobs to make ends meet and support their families, while I thought nursing my mocha and playing with words was worthwhile.

When I became pregnant, my writing anxiety grew worse. With the impending birth of our first child, and her amazing arrival and adorable companionship afterward, I began feeling like the inadequate parent. While our friends and siblings were able to provide spacious nurseries, safe neighborhoods, and luxurious grass lawns for their progeny, we were squeezing Amelie’s crib into our office space between bookshelves and our writing desk. I would look at our cramped condo with increasing concern: How we were going to provide for her? Didn’t she deserve better than two parents who were still dreaming of their own successes? I started to believe that our choice to become writers was selfish, indulgent, and irresponsible. I already had a day job as a professor, and started concentrating more on these administrative duties, which had been steadily piling up. I encouraged my husband to consider looking for 9-5 jobs so that we could have a bigger income that could keep us afloat in the expensive Bay Area. Essentially, I betrayed everything I held precious about the writing life. I devalued, deprioritized, and marginalized it. And I fooled myself into believing I was growing up.

I wasn’t the only one questioning my livelihood. Our classmates from writing school were doing the same thing. Many had moved on to other jobs to pay for rent and health insurance, or returned to school for law or psychology degrees. On the phone and in our Facebook updates, talk of writing projects dissipated, gradually replaced by more realistic, yet mundane, objectives of real life, such as the best 401K plans or the safest neighborhood schools for our children. It was…absolutely depressing.

But perhaps this was what was supposed to happen. Our twenties was our time to be hopeful, dreamy, ambitious, while our thirties was about realizing the limitations of our abilities, and taking up the responsibilities we owed to our families. My novel felt very far away from me. I wondered if I could ever finish, if it was worth it, if anyone would even care. I worried about my daughter, Amelie, a child of two writers, and how very likely it was that she’d have the same unrealistic expectations her parents currently harbored, and face a life of financial uncertainty.

So what pulled me out of my slump? It wasn’t an amazing work of literature, or a poem, or even a great film or addictive television show. It was a dance move. By the Jackson Five.

Michael Jackson had just died and the television was awash in tributes and flashbacks of his musical glory. One evening, they re-aired clips from the Jackson Five Reunion Motown 25 special, so I left it on the television as background while I finished up some work emails. Michael and his brothers had run onto the stage to perform one of their greatest hits, “Stop, the Love You Save.”

The moment for me occurred near the end of the song: a choreographed series of dance steps between all the brothers that came together in several seconds of pure inspiration and beauty. My heart grew full and I nearly burst into tears. The irresistible combination of their singing, dancing, and beleaguered history transfixed and fascinated me. This, I thought, is why art—literary, visual, performative—is transcendent, and worth all the years of heartache and frustration. I tried to explain to my husband, who had barely been watching, why this was so fantastic. I could even try to tell you (if you go to this youtube video, it occurs in minute 3:50 to the end of the song), but I would not be surprised if its specialness does not translate to anyone else but me. The Jackson Five probably has many other song and dance highlights that surpass this one. But for me, this was my turning point.

This is why I write, in absolute pursuit of that emotional, heart-stopping moment. And I know in my writing, I am not chasing after the lyrical sentence or an evocative expression of a physical act, but instead the intersection of human connection, of both tragedy and hope—when I feel as full and joyous and sad as I did watching Michael reunite with his brothers.

So I found myself reinvesting in my writing and realizing that these years of efforts and hard work are worthwhile and important. Because if Michael and his brothers could achieve that musical epiphany so many years later, then I could certainly try to find my own apex, though admittedly on a much smaller scale. It is worth trying. It is why I started writing in the first place.

Every year that passes, I know it will be harder to write. There are too many moments when it is simply easier to just close the laptop and concentrate on the solid tasks that I know will make my daughter happy, give us more security, and assure us a place to live and an income to depend on. Our financial troubles and concerns for the future have not gone away, but we’ve grown more comfortable with its unpredictability. We can prepare, without blaming our youthful choices. I only have to look around me now to realize that the harder it gets, the more important it becomes to prioritize my writing. No one else is going to do that for me.

Recently, Amelie has begun inventing narratives. She will open a book—any book, whether it’s a cookbook in the kitchen or one of Matt’s theory books lying in the car, and in her most articulate, teacherly imitation, she will mash up the stories she remembers us reading to her the previous night. Her memory and imagination astonish me. She is entertaining herself with these made-up, rather nonsensical, deconstructed tales. She takes delight in the creation, just as we probably had when we were small children.

I do not know what Amelie will choose to be when she grows up. But I cannot in good conscience ever discourage her from wanting to create something beautiful, not when her mother is still trying to accomplish the same goal.

—Aimee Phan

Aimee Phan is the author of the forthcoming novel The Reeducation of Cherry Truong, which will be published tomorrow, March 13, by St. Martin’s Press. She is also the author of the story collection We Should Never Meet. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, and The Oregonian, among others. She teaches at California College of the Arts.

Visit Aimee at www.aimeephan.com. 

Follow @aimeephan on Twitter and visit her on Facebook.

EDITED MARCH 20: WINNER OF A SIGNED COPY OF THE REEDUCATION OF CHERRY TRUONG ANNOUNCED! 

The Reeeducation of Cherry Truong

Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway via the entry form—and thank you to the author for donating the prize! I’m happy to announce the winner:

Lisa Kalner Williams won a signed copy of Aimee Phan’s debut novel, The Reeducation of Cherry Truong! Congrats! I’ll email the winner to ask for a mailing address. Thank you again to everyone who entered!

And thank you again, blog readers, for reading the Turning Points series. If you missed any of the guest blogs, you’ll find them listed below—and come back for more writers’ Turning Points starting again in May!

Here are the posts in the series:

Series images by Robert Roxby.

Turning Points: Guest Post by Andrea Cremer (+Giveaway)

Posted on by
34

This guest post is part of the Turning Points blog series here on distraction no. 99—in which I asked authors the question: What was your turning point as a writer? I’m honored and excited to host their stories. Read on as Andrea Cremer reveals the accident that led her to writing her first novel, and the choice she had to make to keep writing more…

My turning point has been both sudden and slow. It began with a horse and ended by turning everything in my life upside down.

I’ve always been a writer. Since I first could hold a crayon I’ve drawn pictures and created stories about those pictures. The picture to written story ratio reversed as the years went by, but the creation of worlds and characters never ceased.

Despite my love of writing, I didn’t see a career as an author as a viable option. To strive to be a writer was akin to hitchhiking to New York in the hopes of making it on Broadway. Sticking with the sensible road, I pursued graduate education until there was none left to pursue and set out into the working world with a Ph.D. in early modern history. I landed a dream job at Macalester College, a wonderful liberal arts college in St. Paul, Minnesota. Work was both close to my family and introduced me to an abundance of smart colleagues and incredible students.

Though I was thrilled at the job and enjoying the start of my ‘real’ adult life following so many years of studenthood, the summer after I finished my first year of teaching I felt that something had been missed. Having given over so much time to study, I decided that some time off was in order and went in search of the those things that I’d left behind when I dedicated my life to the study of history almost exclusively.

Like many girls (and boys) I was obsessed with any and all things horse, and benefited from summers working on a local horse ranch. Once I went to college both time and money kept me from riding. With a job secured and the summer free I thought it no better time than to return to my love of horseback riding.

In June 2008 I had my horse all tacked up and ready to go on our first trail ride. As I led him from the stable, he was startled by another horse, jumped, and came down on top of my right foot. With two broken bones in my foot, the summer of riding came to an end before it began.

Not only would I not be riding, I had doctor’s orders to stay off my foot for the entire summer. My days would be spent on the couch, rather than on the trail.

I consoled myself for a time with my go-to comfort activity—watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But even Buffy couldn’t offer a full reprieve from my sense of a summer lost. In Minnesota, where winter goes on forever, a lost summer is something to truly grieve.

Wanting to salvage my days before school began again I wracked my brain for something that would give me a sense of accomplishment. Something couch friendly. As I mulled over the possibilities, a long-time dream came to mind. I’d always wanted to write a novel. My journals, notebooks, and computer hard drive were already filled with scenes, thoughts, and scribbles accumulated over the course of my life, but I’d never given myself the space or time to write a book from start to finish.

Still on the couch, but armed with my laptop, I began to write.

That was the beginning of my turning point.

My love of writing was not only confirmed, it was transformed: into an obsession. I had never felt so alive, or complete, as when I put words to the page. The experience was thrilling and terrifying. It reminded me of falling in love—I was afraid to let go of the experience, thinking I might never capture the magic again and at the same time the thought of trying to make writing more than a sideshow in the carnival that was my working and personal life seemed an impossible task.

But I couldn’t stop writing.

And I began to live a double life. Professor by day, writer by night (and morning, and any time I could snatch for myself). In addition to writing, I did research. I  consumed every piece of information I could about the publishing industry. I taught myself about literary agents and query letters. And after writing two “practice” novels, I wrote Nightshade. And I knew I’d reached the point where I wanted to take my work into the world.

I began to query.

There were rejections.

I continued to query.

My (would soon be) agent requested the manuscript.

I waited.

My (almost) agent offered to represent me.

I signed with the agency.

We revised the manuscript.

Nightshade went on submission.

Nightshade

Michael Green purchased Nightshade in August 2009, a little more than a year from the accident that started it all.

This is halfway through my turning point.

By phone and email I met my editor, Jill Santopolo, who turned out to be (and still is) one of the most talented and amazing people I’ve ever met. Not only did Jill understand my writing, she understood how to make it better.

I learned much more about writing and revising through working with Jill. Nightshade went into copyedits. I wrote Wolfsbane and began Bloodrose while Nightshade was in the run-up to release.

Nightshade was published in October 2010 and hit the NYT bestseller list. I cried and danced. I kept writing. I kept teaching.

Wolfsbane

Writing and teaching managed to be both complementary to and at odds with one another. My students always inspired and energized me, but the time of preparation, instruction, office hours, recommendations, and meetings sapped the time I needed to write. When I’m drafting a novel, I want to immerse myself in it—an aspect of my process that required compromise in the face of my “real” job obligations.

Wolfsbane debuted on the NYT list. I finished writing Bloodrose and embarked on multiple new projects. I requested and received a reduction in my teaching load to part-time. For a year I thought I could do it all.

I discovered I could not.

The time and energy required not only by writing, but also in promotion, answering email, touring, was draining my enthusiasm for teaching. Not because I didn’t love being in the classroom, but simply because I was exhausted. I’d been stretched thin by my schedule and while those sacrifices were reasonable when I was trying to get my foot in the publishing door, I seemed to have landed in a room of my own and I wanted to live in it instead of feeling like a sub-letter.

I had a choice to make. To maintain my academic career and continue to write would mean I’d have to scale back my life as an author by a long-shot. I’d have to travel less and write fewer books. I would have to take time off from writing to focus on my academic work.

Bloodrose

I could have made that choice, but my turning point had set me on another path. What I wanted was to be a full-time writer. A writer who could lose herself in her books without apology. Admitting that the writing life was the one I wanted was as frightening as beginning to write my first novel. It meant leaving a life of comfort and security, for one that is more unpredictable. It meant that my Ph.D. would still be put to use, but in an unconventional way that might draw questioning gazes from more than a few people.

But my life had turned, opening a new road that I wanted to walk. Turning back would only feel like defeat.

I write this piece amid the last semester I’ll teach at Macalester. When classes end, I’ll pack my bags and head to New York to chase a dream. And life will begin again, until the next turning point.

—Andrea Cremer

Andrea Cremer

Andrea Cremer lives in Minnesota and teaches history at Macalester College in St. Paul. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling Nightshade series. She wants you to know that history is not boring and dreams are best lived.

Visit Andrea at www.andreacremer.com.

Follow @andreacremer on Twitter.

EDITED MARCH 17: WINNER OF A SIGNED COPY OF BLOODROSE ANNOUNCED…

Bloodrose

Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway via the entry form—and thank you to the author for donating the prize! I’m happy to announce the winner:

Kel Vorhis won a signed copy of Bloodrose! Congrats! I’ll email the winner to ask for a mailing address. Thank you again to everyone who entered!

Want more in this blog series?

The Turning Points series will continue with new guest posts three times a week. Subscribe to distraction no. 99 to keep up with the series, or read all the posts with this tag.

Here are the posts in the series so far:

Series images by Robert Roxby.