Turning Points: Guest Post by Kim Purcell (+Giveaway)

Posted on February 24, 2012

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 Kim Purcell reveals how she removed the distance between her and her character and found a way to love her novel again…

GIVEAWAY INCLUDED: Kim is giving away a signed copy of her book with this post!

My big turning point came at a time when I hated my main character. Even worse, I hated myself for creating her. My debut novel, Trafficked, is about a girl named Hannah who comes from Moldova to LA to be a nanny and ends up a modern-day domestic slave. When I first started writing the novel, I really liked Hannah. She came to me as this sarcastic, funny, kind soul, but then, even though I thought she was pretty neat, I decided this just wouldn’t do.

She was a victim. Any person who’d been trafficked and enslaved would have to be weak, right? I wanted to be “realistic.” So I made her into this frightened, weepy character, and then I sent her down a path of misery during which one thing after another would befall her. Oh, your life doesn’t suck enough, yet? How about this? I felt like I was beating an injured horse.

After a few years of writing, I no longer liked her at all and I didn’t know what to do. I’d made her into this person that made you cringe. When I brought her to my writing group, they said, well, it’s good writing, but will readers want to stick with this miserable story for three hundred pages?

I felt defensive. There were plenty of miserable stories out there. People loved them. Some of my favorite stories were miserable stories: Angela’s Ashes, Invisible Man, The Lovely Bones. There was nothing wrong with a miserable story.

But then, I sat down with my miserable story and I felt miserable. I thought it was shit. I didn’t know why. I’m not normally overly critical about my writing. I generally believe that if I keep writing, it will get better. The problem was that after two, three, four years, I still wasn’t feeling the magic.

Writing became a chore. It was an important story, I told myself. I had to keep going. But every time I sat down with my character, it just felt like a bummer. Her life was so awful, I couldn’t stand it.

So, I decided I was going to quit the book. I switched to another novel-in-progress, but I kept thinking about Hannah and how I’d abandoned her and not just her— by not telling this story, I’d abandoned all the people who are enslaved around the world. That made me feel even shittier. What kind of person does that?

I talked to my husband and my writing group. They told me to keep going with it, that they liked the story and they believed I could do it. So I returned to the story, rewrote it a couple more times, and somehow, miraculously landed a fabulous literary agent. I could not believe it. That was it, I thought. I’d sell it and be done with the miserable thing.

The thing that I didn’t know was that I was far from done with it. My agent and I went through a couple rewrites and she sent it out to the first round of editors. They found it too bleak. A couple of the editors didn’t like my main character. I felt ill. I didn’t like her either. I mean, she was okay, but I wouldn’t want to be her friend. It was a dark night of the soul. Either I had to admit defeat, or I had to rewrite from scratch. After five years of working on the novel, which I was sick of, rewriting it from scratch sounded like hell.

And then, a little voice in my head chirped, “But what if you put more of yourself into her?” What if she was someone who could be a friend? What if she was not weak, but strong? What if I let her be that sarcastic, funny, kind soul she started out as? And then terrible things happened to her? How much of her humor would she hold on to? How much of her kindness?

This was the big turning point for me. The novel became interesting to me again. I decided if I was going to rewrite Hannah, I had to get rid of the distance between my character and myself. I couldn’t be safe. I had to be able to inhabit the character in order to care for her and make readers care for her. I had to de-victimize her and make her a survivor.

Over the next year, I rewrote the novel from scratch, keeping the basic plot, but changing the character and her reactions to everything that happened. While I wrote, I thought of all the girls and women I met in Moldova. I thought of the nannies and housekeepers and immigrants I’d interviewed here in America. They were smart, funny, and determined to live in a vibrant way, despite everything that had happened to them, and I put their collective spirit into Hannah.

Not once was I bored, depressed, or disheartened. I was on a journey and when it was finished, at last, I felt proud of the work I’d done. My agent and I were ready to send it out again. I felt like I was at last linking arms with Hannah and walking with her to her next destination, instead of tossing her at the first editor who’d take her off my hands and relieve me of the burden.

A few days later, I was on the F train, heading to Brooklyn from Manhattan. I was talking about the book with some friends. I spoke passionately about Hannah and her story, and while I talked, I noticed a woman watching me a few seats over. I had no idea, but this woman was an editor at Penguin. She got off the train at my stop—we lived close to one another at the time—and she said, “Excuse me.” She said she was sorry for eavesdropping, but she was an editor and she’d love to read my novel. She handed me her card. I looked down at the card, which read Penguin. I couldn’t believe it. I sent it to her and Viking bought it a few days later.

Now, just this month, the book has come out. Hannah’s story will be heard. The story of slaves across America will be heard. And none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been willing to rewrite from scratch and allow Hannah to be strong in order for her story to come alive.

—Kim Purcell

Kim Purcell is a novelist, journalist and teacher. As a radio beat reporter, she interviewed drug dealers, prostitutes, and murderers and became interested in the trauma many of them experienced as children and teenagers. She wanted to tell their stories in a more complex way, and decided to focus on writing novels while teaching English as a Second Language. She wrote two novels before Trafficked. After hearing the painful stories some of her immigrant students shared with her, she became interested in the subject of human trafficking and modern-day slavery. She traveled to Moldova, the poorest country in Europe, to research this book. She had two babies and wrote it mostly when her two wonderful daughters were napping. She loves to run, do yoga, and dance in random places, like elevators. Sometimes her husband and kids stop her and sometimes they join in. They all live in Westchester County, near New York City, with their rescue dog, Lola.

Visit Kim at www.kimpurcell.com.

Follow @kimberlypurcell on Twitter.

ENTER TO WIN A SIGNED COPY OF TRAFFICKED:

If you fill out the below entry form, you will be ENTERED TO WIN a signed copy of Trafficked by Kim Purcell, which just came out this month! And if you’re a librarian or a teacher with a classroom library, you get extra chances to win!

GIVEAWAY RULES:

You must fill out the entry form to enter.
If you comment on this post, you get +1 extra entry and an extra chance to win!
If you tweet about this giveaway or share it online, you get +1 extra entry and an extra chance to win!
Librarians and teachers with classroom libraries! If you are a librarian or a teacher who would share the prize with your teens, you also get extra chances to win… just note that in the form.
This giveaway is open in the US and Canada only. You must have a mailing address in the US or Canada to enter.
This giveaway closes at 5pm EST on Friday, March 2.

ENTER HERE:

Thank you, Kim, for donating your book for a giveaway!

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:

Intro to the Turning Points blog series
Gayle Forman: on overcoming bitterness
Sean Ferrell: on the Writer who never arrives
Eileen Cook: on a “nasty” book and a teacher’s advice that inspired her
Christopher Barzak: on how short stories changed his vision for his novel
Saundra Mitchell: on deciding to quit and walk away
Eric Luper: on not writing for trends
Gretchen McNeil: on how “everything happens for a reason”
Julia DeVillers on the life-changing fan letter she wrote when she was ten
Daisy Whitney on the book that opened her eyes to writing YA
Brandy Colbert on the book that inspired her to find her voice
Courtney Summers on redefining failure
Sarah Darer Littman on turning off the noise
Léna Roy on how she came to call herself a “writer”
Megan Crewe on not choosing the “right” path
Jennifer Echols on her eighth anniversary of not being stupid
Blythe Woolston on how she accidentally became a writer
Karen Mahoney on the discouraging moment that kept her from showing her writing for years (giveaway open through Feb. 24!)
Steve Brezenoff on how facing both death and birth became a turning point for his writing (giveaway open through Feb. 27!)
Christine Lee Zilka on how she fought to keep writing after a stroke at age 33 (giveaway open through Feb. 29!)

You can keep up with all the open giveaways on the giveaways page!

Series images by Robert Roxby.

Turning Points: Guest Post by Christine Lee Zilka (+Giveaway)

Posted on February 22, 2012

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 Christine Lee Zilka reveals how she fought to keep writing after a stroke at age 33…

GIVEAWAY INCLUDED: Christine is giving away a copy of the anthology in which her novel excerpt appears!

I have had many turning points as a writer, some more dramatic than others, each bringing a unique encouraging message.

I remember my first litmag acceptance from ZYZZYVA for the first piece of fiction I’d ever written; it was a sign for me to pursue this long-subjugated dream.

I remember my first novel workshop with VL, the one in which I began writing my novel. I wasn’t sure I had a novel in me, but by the end of the semester, I had 100 fresh pages. I’ve thrown out all 100 pages since, but the core of the idea remains and flourishes years later.

I remember JD who doesn’t pull punches telling me, “You should be proud. You’re almost there” after reading the opening chapters of my novel-in-progress this past summer. The ensuing discussion made it so I could see the light at the end of the novel-in-progress tunnel. I was so inspired. I got my second wind.

But no turning point has been so life-changing and incredible as the time during which I had zero writing achievements, when I was unable to write fiction, let alone read a novel for two years. It was then that I knew I would do everything in my being to be able to write again, and that I would never give up on my novel.

I had a stroke on December 31, 2006, at the age of 33. Amidst the festivities of New Year’s Eve, no one thought much of the fact that I appeared quiet and spacey. I’d had the weirdest migraine of my life earlier that day in the parking lot of a South Lake Tahoe shopping center; the world tilted 90 degrees and every object doubled. If I were to write an imagist poem about that moment, I’d write about the twinned red snow blowers lined up in the snow outside a hardware store.

My husband says I complained of an enormous migraine-level headache, but I don’t remember pain. I remember disorientation and wonder and sudden exhaustion. What was happening? I should say something, but what is it I could say? What were words? What was language? I felt like my Self was buried under a thousand layers of cotton blankets.

It wasn’t until we got back down from the mountains a day later that we realized that something was seriously wrong. I couldn’t remember my way home from the neighborhood grocery store and I couldn’t process the labels on the shelves of the store and I couldn’t remember my husband’s phone number when I decided that perhaps I needed to go to the hospital. I wondered what the phone number for 911 might be.

At the hospital lying in bed my neurologist told me that I had had a stroke.

My stroke didn’t affect my body—I didn’t limp and my face didn’t slide like melted wax. I looked completely normal. My stroke had occurred in the left thalamus, the mysterious “hub” of the brain, and it among other things, the stroke affected my short-term memory, my coping mechanisms, and it affected my ability to retrieve memories, spin language, and weave stories.

In short, I was Dory the Fish in Finding Nemo.

My doctors told me to keep a journal as my memory bank—to write every happening inside the journal and to timestamp each entry. It was my physical short-term memory repository (and it worked a lot better than tattooing things on my body a la “Memento Mori”).

That Moleskine journal saved my life.

I was determined to “come back like Lance (Armstrong)” and I wrote my feelings and happenings in my Moleskine every single day. I often slept 20 hours a day. My waking hours felt like what healthy people feel like in the first few minutes after waking up in the morning; hazy and not quite present. In the first months, it took me two of my four waking hours to compose three paragraphs. But I wrote them.

I was convinced that if I kept writing, my brain would heal and make me a stronger writer. That I’d come out of this better than before. That somehow the synapses in my brain would synthesize a new and better writer. (Cue Six Million Dollar Man theme music).

Several months into my recovery, I was well enough to comprehend my situation. And yes, I cried. Yes, I got depressed. I would pick up books, and find myself reading the same paragraph over and over and over because by the end of the paragraph, I’d forgotten what had happened, so I’d keep reading and forgetting.

At around the year mark, my doctors told me “I was cured.” I was not cured, I told them. I couldn’t write fiction. How was this cured? Most of my doctors and therapists shrugged with a shadow of pity behind their eyes. My neurologist said I would keep improving, but this was, he said, as far as most doctors would go.

I was functional. I could hold a conversation. I couldn’t balance a checkbook, but I could get money out of the ATM and I could pay for my purchases. I could read People magazine, and I could even read a short story by then. I could go on drives and remember where I’d parked my car and find my way back home, but I couldn’t yet read a novel.

My stroke helped me to realize that the one thing I wanted to do more than anything else, was to write. My marker for “being cured,” was not what the doctors designated. It was not being able to function in life. It was not what my friends designated, which was to appear normal and be able to participate in discussions. My marker for being alive was to be able to write fiction again. To write my novel.

It took two years before I could look at my novel, and imagine worlds again. Two years before I stopped flipping homonyms in my writing. Two years before my prose became more than pedestrian.

I’m not sure if my brain, as I’d hoped, formed new synapses such that they made me a better writer—but I’m most certainly a more determined writer. And that has made all the difference. There is a black spot in my brain now, and it will always be there, near the center of my brain. And I consider that my writing birthmark.

Christine, about to read an excerpt from her novel at the Sunday Salon reading series this past November. (I was there! She was fantastic!)

It took years before I could remember this experience as a cohesive narrative. And while most writers don’t have strokes at the age of 33, I don’t think my experience is all too unique, because many of us have been kept from our writing in one way or another in our crazy writing lives. It could be a year away from writing as you raise a new baby, or a year away from writing as you immerse yourself in financially-necessary work, or a year away from writing because your writing just breaks your heart and you just can’t look at it anymore. Maybe you were really sick and couldn’t write. But sometimes, it is that very time away that forms the negative space around your identity and determination and your writing. When you come back, you know who you are, more than ever. And who you are is a writer to the core.

—Christine Lee Zilka

Christine Lee Zilka is the Editor-at-Large at Kartika Review. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies such as ZYZZYVA, Verbsap, Yomimono, and Men Undressed: Women Authors Write About Male Sexual Experience. She was awarded a residency at Hedgebrook in 2006, placed as a finalist in Poets and Writers Magazine’s Writers Exchange Contest in 2007, and received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s Fiction Open in 2009. She has a novel-in-progress.

Read Christine’s blog 80,000 Words at czilka.wordpress.com.

Follow @czilka on Twitter.

ENTER TO WIN THE ANTHOLOGY WHERE CHRISTINE’S NOVEL EXCERPT APPEARED!

If you fill out the below entry form, you will be ENTERED TO WIN the anthology Men Undressed: Women Writers on the Male Sexual Experience, edited by Gina Frangello, Stacy Bierlein, Cris Mazza and Kat Meads, with a foreword by Steve Almond, and featuring writers Aimee Bender, Jennifer Egan, Susan Minot, A.M. Homes, Christine Lee Zilka, and more. The novel Christine talks about in this post is excerpted in this anthology!

(This is probably obvious from the title, but this is not a YA anthology. The content is very sexy!)

GIVEAWAY RULES:

You must fill out the entry form to enter.
If you comment on this post, you get +1 extra entry and an extra chance to win!
If you tweet about this giveaway or share it online, you get +1 extra entry and an extra chance to win!
This giveaway is open in the US only. You must have a mailing address in the US to enter.
This giveaway closes at 5pm EST on Wednesday, February 29.

ENTER HERE:

Thank you, Christine, for donating the anthology for a giveaway!

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:

Intro to the Turning Points blog series
Gayle Forman: on overcoming bitterness
Sean Ferrell: on the Writer who never arrives
Eileen Cook: on a “nasty” book and a teacher’s advice that inspired her
Christopher Barzak: on how short stories changed his vision for his novel
Saundra Mitchell: on deciding to quit and walk away
Eric Luper: on not writing for trends
Gretchen McNeil: on how “everything happens for a reason”
Julia DeVillers on the life-changing fan letter she wrote when she was ten
Daisy Whitney on the book that opened her eyes to writing YA
Brandy Colbert on the book that inspired her to find her voice
Courtney Summers on redefining failure
Sarah Darer Littman on turning off the noise
Léna Roy on how she came to call herself a “writer”
Megan Crewe on not choosing the “right” path
Jennifer Echols on her eighth anniversary of not being stupid
Blythe Woolston on how she accidentally became a writer (giveaway open through Feb. 23!)
Karen Mahoney on the discouraging moment that kept her from showing her writing for years (giveaway open through Feb. 24!)
Steve Brezenoff on how facing both death and birth became a turning point for his writing (giveaway open through Feb. 27!)

You can keep up with all the open giveaways on the giveaways page!

Series images by Robert Roxby.

Turning Points: Guest Post by Steve Brezenoff (+Giveaway)

Posted on February 20, 2012

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 Steve Brezenoff reveals the two big turning points in his life—death and birth—that also proved to be turning points in his writing…

GIVEAWAY INCLUDED: Steve is giving away a paperback edition of his debut YA novel to one winner!

My first novel was a long time coming. I’ve often said it took fourteen years to finish, but that’s mildly disingenuous. I didn’t labor over the thing for all those years. Instead I attacked it in fits and starts, driven not by some urge to finish a novel, but instead by an urge to get some scenes on paper—catharsis. In the fourteen years in question, I started many short stories and several other novels. I even finished one novel, a derivative middle-grade fantasy. The truth is I always fancied myself a middle-grade writer. I looked up to Lloyd Alexander, C. S. Lewis, and Susan Cooper. The novel I’d been fooling with since college—the one that would become The Absolute Value of -1—was a diversion.

Two turning points changed that, and they’re the Big Two: death and birth. If one was a creative impetus, the other was the great pragmatic motivator.

The Absolute Value of -1 was based on a short story I’d written in college. It was about a boy obsessed with two things: death and family, particularly his older sister, off at college. Whenever I approached the novel-in-progress (or whatever you’d call a collection of random scenes with no plot or end in sight), I’d stab out another scene in a violent fit. The sum was definitely not greater than the parts at this point, so I’d retreat again to think about some or other middle-grade project I thought I should be focusing on instead.

Then my father died. Suddenly the boy in my story, who’d often dwelled on his grandfather’s death, was about to get hit with the most difficult event of his fifteen years: his father would get cancer and die. It had to be. After all, this novel was my diversion. Where better to deal with the emotional destruction I was facing in real life? Certainly not a derivative middle-grade fantasy novel. (Full disclosure: my middle-grade work betrayed my real-life crisis at this point as well, with the protagonists in two distinct works-in-progress dealing with missing or otherwise suffering fathers.)

The protagonist of The Absolute Value of -1, Simon, tore through the rest of his story, with a little help from me, and before long I had a tidy little novella. One editor I worked with enjoyed the voice and liked what I had down. She even gave me an editor letter. It was a big deal. Even so, the not-a-novel-yet sat in a digital drawer, stagnant, because while Simon and his story had finally found their thrust, I still didn’t have mine. And that’s where the second turning point comes in.

I didn’t touch Simon’s story again for some time. I had no big ideas on how to make it a real novel, and no good reason to do so. After all, though I now saw that YA was a viable format for me, I still favored middle-grade. I dabbled over the next couple of years with one middle-grade trilogy in particular, outlining it, writing scenes, sketching characters—both in words and drawings. In those couple of years, I’d also started writing work-for-hire chapter books. They weren’t quite middle-grade, but they were damn close. Things seemed to be moving along, albeit slowly and without a lot of passion in the work.

Then my son was born. Here was this new little person. He would come to depend on me, look up to me, ask me for things like food and a home. If I didn’t begin to take my writing career seriously right then and there, it was never going to happen at all.

In the same way the death of my father had lent gravity to my story, and therefore to Simon’s story, my son’s birth added urgency to my goals and gave me a sound kick in the rear. I joined a professional organization, met another editor who liked Simon’s novella, and—most importantly—found the time and did the work necessary to turn that novella into a full-fledged novel.

—Steve Brezenoff

Steve Brezenoff has written dozens of chapter books for young readers, and The Absolute Value of -1 is his first novel for teens. His second, Brooklyn, Burning, came out in fall of 2011. Though Steve grew up in a suburb on Long Island, he now lives with his wife, their son, and their terrier in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Visit Steve at www.stevebrezenoff.com.

Follow @sbrezenoff on Twitter.

ENTER TO WIN STEVE’S DEBUT YA NOVEL!

If you fill out the below entry form, you will be ENTERED TO WIN a signed paperback edition of Steve Brezenoff’s debut YA novel, The Absolute Value of -1. And if you’re a librarian or a teacher with a classroom library, you get extra chances to win!

GIVEAWAY RULES:

You must fill out the entry form to enter.
If you comment on this post, you get +1 extra entry and an extra chance to win!
If you tweet about this giveaway or share it online, you get +1 extra entry and an extra chance to win!
Librarians and teachers with classroom libraries! If you are a librarian or a teacher who would share the prize with your teens, you also get extra chances to win… just note that in the form.
This giveaway is open in the US and Canada only. You must have a mailing address in the US or Canada to enter.
This giveaway closes at 5pm EST on Monday, February 27.

ENTER HERE:

Thank you, Steve, for donating your book for a giveaway!

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:

Intro to the Turning Points blog series
Gayle Forman: on overcoming bitterness
Sean Ferrell: on the Writer who never arrives
Eileen Cook: on a “nasty” book and a teacher’s advice that inspired her
Christopher Barzak: on how short stories changed his vision for his novel
Saundra Mitchell: on deciding to quit and walk away
Eric Luper: on not writing for trends
Gretchen McNeil: on how “everything happens for a reason”
Julia DeVillers on the life-changing fan letter she wrote when she was ten
Daisy Whitney on the book that opened her eyes to writing YA
Brandy Colbert on the book that inspired her to find her voice
Courtney Summers on redefining failure
Sarah Darer Littman on turning off the noise
Léna Roy on how she came to call herself a “writer”
Megan Crewe on not choosing the “right” path
Jennifer Echols on her eighth anniversary of not being stupid
Blythe Woolston on how she accidentally became a writer (giveaway open through Feb. 23!)
Karen Mahoney on the discouraging moment that kept her from showing her writing for years (giveaway open through Feb. 24!)

You can keep up with all the open giveaways on the giveaways page!

Series images by Robert Roxby.

Turning Points: Guest Post by Karen Mahoney (+Giveaway)

Posted on February 17, 2012

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 Karen Mahoney reveals the hurtful moment that kept her from showing her writing to anyone for years…

GIVEAWAY INCLUDED: Karen is giving away the book of your choice to one winner!

I am going to talk about two turning points in my writing life.

The first was when I was about twelve. I knew, even then, that I wanted to be an author. I wanted to write books, just like the books I read by the many writers that I loved. I had no idea how I would go about this seemingly impossible task, but I figured that it would involve hard work, determination, lots of reading, and lots of writing. I also hoped there would be some encouragement along the way—perhaps somebody could take me under their wing and tell me that I wasn’t crazy to want this. Maybe I’d find someone who would nurture the tiny spark of talent that I hoped I possessed.

So at twelve years old, I sat in my form room (like the US homeroom) surrounded by my classmates and took part in a Q&A session the teacher was running. We were talking “Careers.” You know, like… What do you want to be when you grow up? There were a few questions, but that was the biggie.

My turn came around too quickly, and I had to push back my chair and stand to answer the miniature questionnaire. My legs were shaking, and even now I remember how nervous I felt being looked at by so many people. (I still feel this way, and am not a natural public speaker.) My teacher came to the question: “So, Karen, what would you like to do when you finally leave school and education behind? What do you want to be?”

I replied: “A writer!” I was very enthusiastic about this, despite my nerves.

My teacher frowned. “You mean, like a reporter? A journalist?”

“No, no.” I shook my head. “Someone who writes books. A fantasy author, actually.”

The entire class (or that’s how it felt to me at the time) burst out laughing.

My teacher joined in. She laughed at my deepest, most cherished dream.

I felt hot and sick. My stomach flipped over and I wondered if I might faint. I remember wishing that the ground really could do that thing where it swallows you up, just so you don’t have to face the people laughing at you for saying something that you can’t even see the humor in. I was stunned. What was so funny? I didn’t get it. To be honest, I still don’t understand what my teacher found so funny about my aspirations. Children will be children, and I don’t blame them for laughing. They probably forgot all about it by the end of the day.

I, on the other hand, had just had my first ever panic attack. The first of many.

Whether I understood the laughter or not, that didn’t really matter. Instead of holding more tightly to my dream, I let it crawl into a dark space and hide away for fear of being mocked by my peers—and by the authority figure who I was supposed to respect.

I did write, throughout my teens, but it was always in secret. I never showed my work to anybody. I didn’t tell people that I was seriously writing stories.

In my twenties I wrote quietly for myself and I started many things, but I never actually finished them. Especially not the longer pieces of work. At the age of 27, I decided that I couldn’t be a writer if I was never willing to share my writing with others. It sounds silly now, perhaps, but I was afraid of being laughed at. I know that’s a big part of what held me back, even 15 years after that stomach-turning morning at school. I asked myself: If I can never talk about this—really talk about it—and I’m never going to show my work, how can I ever be a published writer?

So I gave up. I stopped writing for five years. Well, apart from keeping a journal about my “inner world.” I still have those journals, and most of them talk about my frustration due to my seeming inability to write fiction. Here’s an actual sample (from 2002—please forgive how totally emo I was!):

It is not enough to merely dream about expressing myself without fear, or shame, or limits. It’s not enough to want to find grace and beauty in this chaotic world. I must actually do it, or all this means nothing. There are enough censors in the world, without me joining them and censoring myself. Fear has always been my greatest enemy, but it is a terror that must not be allowed to stop me from being creative.

Being creative is one of the only true freedoms we possess in life. Well, in our society, anyway. It is both a privilege and a freedom. No other person can have quite the same view of things as me. We are individuals, and that fact can be celebrated when we create something that belongs to us. Surely that is something worth pursuing?

Honestly, I have volumes of this stuff! (*grin*)

Five years of this was enough to lead me into a state of total despair that I would ever write fiction again—let along get published. By this time, I’d met someone who I was sort of living with (on and off), and who was getting fed up with my often proclaimed: “Woe! I have wasted my life! I am 32 years old and I work in crappy jobs that don’t make me happy. Whatever shall I dooo?!”

Luckily for me, he (let’s call him “V” for the purpose of this post) didn’t let my whining put him off. Nor did he let it stop him from digging deep and trying to help me pull myself out of my Endless Cycle of Creative Doom. In January 2007, he marched me to the nearest cafe—with my notebook and pen—and sat me down with a coffee. He searched my bag for anything that might distract me (seriously), confiscating a couple of novels and my phone. V told me that I must sit and write for two hours before coming home again.

He left me there to face the blank page—and a ton of fear.

But he was right. He’d been telling me for weeks: “Don’t just cry over spilt milk. So what that you didn’t write for so many years? Who cares? Will continuing to not write help in any way? You have to put that behind you and move forward. Are you going to let your fear hold you back forever?”

I didn’t know what to say, but I wrote for the next two hours. Let that be my answer, I thought.

I scribbled the opening pages to an adult urban fantasy novel (that I never actually completed, but still) and I enjoyed the process. I bounced home and typed up what I had written into my laptop. I started a blog and began making connections in the growing urban fantasy community, and also in the wider YA writing world. My next attempt at a novel was YA—because that’s just the way it came out—and it became The Iron Witch, the book that eventually got me an agent and my first book deal. I had stopped myself from writing for so many years that now I couldn’t stop writing. The floodgates had opened.

It took someone close to me, twenty years after that teacher and my classmates had laughed at me, to bring me to my second turning point: Are you going to let your fear hold you back forever?

I’m so glad he asked me that question—and that my writing provided an answer to it.

—Karen Mahoney

Karen Mahoney is the author of The Iron Witch, the first book in a trilogy that continues in February 2012 with The Wood Queen. She has also published stories about a kick-ass teen vampire called Moth in various anthologies, and there is a Moth novel coming in September 2012 called Falling to Ash. Karen is British and currently lives near London with way too many books and comics, though she dreams of one day living in Boston. She doesn’t mind if you call her Kaz.

Visit Kaz at www.kazmahoney.com.

Follow @kazmahoney on Twitter.

ENTER TO WIN ONE OF KAZ’S BOOKS—YOUR CHOICE!

If you fill out the below entry form, you will be ENTERED TO WIN a signed copy of one of Karen Mahoney’s novels—your choice, depending on if you’ve read book #1 yet, either The Iron Witch or The Wood Queen. And if you’re a librarian or a teacher with a classroom library, you get extra chances to win!

GIVEAWAY RULES:

You must fill out the entry form to enter.
If you comment on this post, you get +1 extra entry and an extra chance to win!
If you tweet about this giveaway or share it online, you get +1 extra entry and an extra chance to win!
Librarians and teachers with classroom libraries! If you are a librarian or a teacher who would share the prize with your teens, you also get extra chances to win… just note that in the form.
This giveaway is international!
This giveaway closes at 5pm EST on Friday, February 24.

ENTER HERE:

Thank you, Kaz, for donating a book for the giveaway!

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:

Intro to the Turning Points blog series
Gayle Forman: on overcoming bitterness
Sean Ferrell: on the Writer who never arrives
Eileen Cook: on a “nasty” book and a teacher’s advice that inspired her
Christopher Barzak: on how short stories changed his vision for his novel
Saundra Mitchell: on deciding to quit and walk away
Eric Luper: on not writing for trends
Gretchen McNeil: on how “everything happens for a reason”
Julia DeVillers on the life-changing fan letter she wrote when she was ten
Daisy Whitney on the book that opened her eyes to writing YA
Brandy Colbert on the book that inspired her to find her voice
Courtney Summers on redefining failure
Sarah Darer Littman on turning off the noise
Léna Roy on how she came to call herself a “writer”
Megan Crewe on not choosing the “right” path
Jennifer Echols on her eighth anniversary of not being stupid
Blythe Woolston on how she accidentally became a writer

You can keep up with all the open giveaways on the giveaways page!

Series images by Robert Roxby.

Turning Points: Odd Duck by Blythe Woolston (+Giveaway)

Posted on February 16, 2012

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 Blythe Woolston tells us how she became a writer by accident…

GIVEAWAY INCLUDED: Blythe is giving away two bundles containing her novels to two winners!

Paper fortune teller for creative people made by my friend Ken Bova, a jewelist and teacher. Folding directions can be found here. —Blythe

This is a tool, a paper fortune teller. It might be helpful when you get lost and don’t know which way to turn. I’m an expert on that sort of confusion. Let me explain…

The falcated duck has an iridescent green head, slightly fancier than a common mallard’s. The crescent-shaped wing feathers sweep down like a calligrapher’s grace note. It’s a nice duck. It’s also an odd duck to see in California. The rest of the migrating ducks and Canada geese, even the monarch butterflies hanging from the tree branches in clumps, they all arrived on purpose. Not this duck. The lone falcated duck is what the birders call extralimital; its native range extends from the fringes of Siberia to India, with occasional visits to Vietnam. But it has no natural business being in California. If you ask the duck how it came to be there, it might reply with a gruff “quack” or low whistle or total silence. All of these things can be translated in the same way: “I have no idea.“

I am that duck.

I’m that confused about how I became a writer.

Writers often want to be writers from the time they are children. I gather this from the statements they make about themselves and also from my encounters with young writers. I have met 13-year-olds at library workshops who have already written several books. And I met many aspiring writers when I was a university teacher. It was a shy promise students were making to themselves: they would write books one day. When they shared that goal with me, I said things like, “Well then, it will be handy to know the difference between ‘of’ and ‘have.’ While we’re at it, apostrophes are both interesting and useful; we should talk about apostrophes.” I didn’t teach creative writing—I was there to help them drag their skinny butts through Civil Engineering or Comparative Anatomy.

When I told my students that I had been planning to study nursing until I switched my major to English at the last moment, they laughed. Imagine bloody-minded me providing care and comfort to the suffering sick instead of throwing chalk and spreading gossip about the mutant-hybrid nature of the semicolon. My existence as a teacher, their teacher, seemed as inevitable as the weather. I knew different. I zigged when I might have zagged. That’s all.

I spent more than ten years teaching writing. Then I walked away. I’m not at all sure what came of my time as a teacher. There may be some roads in the Himalayas that are marginally better engineered. There may be fewer beagles with hip dysplasia. I haven’t noticed any general improvement in the use of apostrophes, however. I was good, but not that good.

I didn’t leave teaching to become a writer. If anyone had asked me what my career plans were, I would have said I hoped to become a cowboy or an astronaut. That has been my answer since I was six. It’s a good dodge. Truth is, I’ve never had any career plans. That’s why I was a Dumpster diver. It’s also why I spent time in a cubicle, herding computer manuals through the publication process. Then I stumbled into indexing and became a squirrely recluse who paws through nonfiction for a living. So, I had no intention of becoming a writer just as that falcated duck had no flight plan that led to California.

One day I didn’t have any indexing to do, so I began writing to fill the time chinks. It was crazy fun. Slowly the crumbs of story accumulated into a weird fable full of talking foxes and footnotes. One word led to another and pretty soon there were seventy-thousand-some. I had written a book.

I didn’t know what to do next, but it seemed like I ought to do something. I took the first chapter with me to a retreat hosted by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Linda Sue Park was encouraging. Alexandra Penfold introduced me to the concept of “edgy” YA, with the helpful clarification that “It’s not bestiality.” A couple of weeks later I started writing another book, The Freak Observer, which was actually publishable.

I do not recommend becoming a writer by accident. I imagine a lot of falcated ducks end up dead instead of in California. They are eaten by sharks while they bob along during a mid-Pacific nap or they just starve, beating their little pointed wings against the wind until their hearts stop. I was a very lucky duck. Editor Andrew Karre fished The Freak Observer out of the slush and bought it and its sister book, Catch and Release. The YALSA librarians noticed TFO and found it worthy of the Morris Award. Sarah Davies liked the look of my third book and became my agent. All of those events are significant turning points. Without them, I’d be a dead duck in the writing world.

If you look carefully at the paper fortune teller, you will see that it provides very solid advice for creative people—advice about mentoring, playing, and being grateful. If you turn in those directions, I think you will be just fine. Consult it as required while you migrate from here to there or now to tomorrow.

—Blythe Woolston

Blythe Woolston’s The Freak Observer won YALSA’s 2011 William C. Morris Award for a debut YA novel. Her second book, Catch and Release, was published in February 2012. She lives in Montana with her family.

Visit Blythe at www.blythewoolston.net.

Follow @blythewoolston on Twitter.

ENTER TO WIN BOTH THE FREAK OBSERVER AND CATCH AND RELEASE!

If you fill out the below entry form, you will be ENTERED TO WIN a bundle containing signed copies of both of Blythe Woolston’s novels: The Freak Observer and Catch and Release, which just came out this month! TWO WINNERS will be chosen. And if you’re a librarian or a teacher with a classroom library, you get extra chances to win!

GIVEAWAY RULES:

You must fill out the entry form to enter. TWO WINNERS will be chosen and both will win both books.
If you comment on this post, you get +1 extra entry and an extra chance to win!
If you tweet about this giveaway or share it online, you get +1 extra entry and an extra chance to win!
Librarians and teachers with classroom libraries! If you are a librarian or a teacher who would share the prize with your teens, you also get extra chances to win… just note that in the form.
This giveaway is international!
This giveaway closes at 5pm EST on Thursday, February 23.

ENTER HERE:

Thank you, Blythe, for donating copies of your books for the giveaway!

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:

Intro to the Turning Points blog series
Gayle Forman: on overcoming bitterness
Sean Ferrell: on the Writer who never arrives
Eileen Cook: on a “nasty” book and a teacher’s advice that inspired her
Christopher Barzak: on how short stories changed his vision for his novel
Saundra Mitchell: on deciding to quit and walk away
Eric Luper: on not writing for trends
Gretchen McNeil: on how “everything happens for a reason”
Julia DeVillers on the life-changing fan letter she wrote when she was ten
Daisy Whitney on the book that opened her eyes to writing YA
Brandy Colbert on the book that inspired her to find her voice
Courtney Summers on redefining failure
Sarah Darer Littman on turning off the noise
Léna Roy on how she came to call herself a “writer”
Megan Crewe on not choosing the “right” path
Jennifer Echols on her eighth anniversary of not being stupid

You can keep up with all the open giveaways on the giveaways page!

Series images by Robert Roxby.

Turning Points: My Eighth Anniversary of Not Being Stupid by Jennifer Echols

Posted on February 14, 2012

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 Jennifer Echols reveals how she went through her turning point on February 14, eight years ago…

In 2001, I received a “good rejection” from a major YA publisher for my seventh manuscript. A good rejection is one in which the editor writes you a personal letter rather than sending you a form letter and praises your work before dashing your hopes into tiny, sharp pieces. This particular good rejection said that the YA market was abysmal, but if the market had been better, the publisher would have bought my novel. The manuscript had made it all the way to the editorial board meeting, the last step in saying yes, before they said no.

A good rejection hurts because a real person is turning you down, not an uninhabited address in New York. A near miss hurts because you were almost there, but now, you’re not. Again. And everything hurts a million times worse when you’re pregnant. Normally I would have taken a deep breath, rewritten my query letter, and sent manuscripts out again—or started a new book. Not this time. I didn’t think I could take this heartache anymore on top of starting a new job as a freelance copyeditor, buying and renovating my first house, and most importantly, taking care of the baby.

So I quit writing, cold turkey. Not for good. I never thought I was walking away permanently. But after so many years of trying (I’d finished my first manuscript and sent it to agents and publishers in 1990, when I was twenty years old) and so many near misses (I’d had two agents in the ensuing years who had almost sold my books) and so many words written and mostly unread, I needed a break.

I got one. I copyedited. I bought my house and renovated it. I had my beautiful baby. My husband was laid off in the recession after 9/11. I became the sole breadwinner for our new family. We sold the house, moved to Atlanta where my husband finally found another job, and bought another house. The baby grew. He wouldn’t take a bottle at night unless he was distracted by music, so we started watching a new sort of TV show called a “reality show”—specifically, a brand-new hit called American Idol.

I loved this show. I had been a music major in college before I was an English major, and I had expected this show to be a joke of bad singers publicly exposing themselves, but I was wrong. The singers were great, and I was astonished at their grace under the pressure of competition on national television, especially when many of them were so young. I was especially taken with the story of winner Kelly Clarkson and runner-up Justin Guarini. They were not lovers, but in my mind, they should have been. Their movie together bombed, but huge success for the two of them, with lots of drama along the way, would have made a better story. I couldn’t get this idea out of my head. It dogged me every day on the long drive to my son’s Montessori school.

So I wrote this story down. Before I finished, I had a great idea for another novel. But the stakes were so much higher now. I had a great job and the responsibility of motherhood, and I couldn’t invest time in my own personal dream if success was so unlikely and the consequences were so emotionally devastating. I made myself a promise. I would finish this reality show book and send it off. And after that, I would make a change in my wanna-be writing career.

The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. For fourteen years I had written manuscripts by myself, revised them by myself, looked up agents and publishers in a huge reference book in the library, and sent my novels into the abyss. But now there was a wonderful invention called the internet. There still was no Facebook, no Twitter, and I had never heard of a blog. But there were websites with great information, and there were e-mail listserves. I vowed that the day I sent this manuscript off, I would go straight to the computer, join Romance Writers of America, interact with people, and network. I would make friends, even if they were only internet friends. I would figure out how the baffling publishing industry worked and get the business end of my career off the ground.

February 14, 2004.

It turns out that great minds think alike, and publishers had been flooded with reality show novels, most of which were rejected, including mine. But through RWA, I found my two critique partners, Catherine Chant and Victoria Dahl, who have helped me improve every one of my subsequent novels. I learned how to watch the sales reports and target the literary agents who were most likely to represent—and sell—my manuscripts. One year later, in February 2005, I had a new agent with a high-powered literary agency. Six months after that, she sold Major Crush to Simon & Schuster.

Today, Catherine Chant has been a finalist in the Golden Heart, RWA’s most prestigious award for unpublished writers, which means she’s getting very close to selling. Victoria Dahl is a three-time USA Today bestseller and my best friend, even though we live two thousand miles apart. I have sold a total of twelve books to Simon & Schuster, including The One That I Want in stores February 7, my hardcover debut Such a Rush in stores July 10, and my first two adult novels coming in 2013. Finding friends in other writers has made all the difference in my career, and knowing that they have the same aspirations and doubts as me makes me feel at least fifty percent less insane. I am living my dream—making a living as a novelist—because eight years ago, I decided not to do this alone.

—Jennifer Echols

Jennifer Echols was born in Atlanta and grew up in a small town on a beautiful lake in Alabama—a setting that has inspired many of her books. She has written eight romantic novels for young adults, including the comedy Major Crush, which won the National Readers’ Choice Award, and the drama Going Too Far, which was a finalist in the RITA, the National Readers’ Choice Award, and the Book Buyer’s Best, and was nominated by the American Library Association as a Best Book for Young Adults. Her next two teen dramas, including Such a Rush, will appear in 2012 and 2013, with her adult romance novels debuting in 2013, all published by Simon & Schuster. She lives in Birmingham with her husband and her son.

Visit Jennifer at jennifer-echols.com.

Follow @JenniferEchols on Twitter.

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:

Intro to the Turning Points blog series
Gayle Forman: on overcoming bitterness
Sean Ferrell: on the Writer who never arrives
Eileen Cook: on a “nasty” book and a teacher’s advice that inspired her
Christopher Barzak: on how short stories changed his vision for his novel
Saundra Mitchell: on deciding to quit and walk away
Eric Luper: on not writing for trends
Gretchen McNeil: on how “everything happens for a reason”
Julia DeVillers on the fan letter she wrote when she was ten years old that changed her writing career years later
Daisy Whitney on the book that opened her eyes to writing YA
Brandy Colbert on the book that inspired her to find her voice
Courtney Summers on redefining failure
Sarah Darer Littman on turning off the noise
Léna Roy on how she came to call herself a “writer” (giveaway open through February 15)
Megan Crewe on not choosing the “right” path

You can keep up with all the open giveaways on the giveaways page!

Series images by Robert Roxby.

Turning Points: Guest Post by Megan Crewe

Posted on February 10, 2012

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 Megan Crewe reveals how she found the courage to transform her life…

The biggest turning point in my life was something that on the surface might not seem to have anything to do with writing at all, but would have completely changed the course of my writing career if I’d decided differently.

For you to understand why the decision was so difficult, you’ll need to know a little about me.

All my life, I’ve adored stories. As a preschooler, I’d dictate stories to my mom for her to write down in stapled “books” I’d then illustrate. By the time I was in my teens, I was writing one or two novels (which while great practice will thankfully never see the light of day) every year, amid academics and various extracurricular activities.

I applied the same self-discipline to school. I did my homework without being reminded, spent library time researching projects while other kids were goofing off. I knew I could do well if I tried, and I’d have felt ashamed to turn in work that wasn’t up to my own standards.

My parents encouraged both sides of my personality: the creative and the studious. They made sure I kept in mind that most authors held down a second job to make ends meet. I grew up accepting that I’d better get the best education I could, so I’d have the most possible options while I kept writing on the side.

In the same way, I accepted that I was obviously going to go to university. I was near the top of my class, and got into a BA program on full scholarship. When I picked psychology as my major, I knew I’d also be doing grad school. There were very few jobs in the field for anyone with less than a master’s degree. It was the only option that made sense.

Now, I’d loved school as a kid. By high school, my enthusiasm was waning: too much busy work, and too many other things I wanted to be doing. University turned out to be better, because I had so much more choice when it came to classes—and because I realized I could skip many of the parts I disliked without it hurting my marks. If a professor who bored me always taught straight from the textbook, I started leaving during the breaks in the middle of lectures. If I found a tutorial leader unengaging and there weren’t participation marks, I rarely went to that class’s tutorials. I still enjoyed hearing lectures from enthusiastic professors who clearly knew their subjects. I still took pride in handing in essays I’d thought long and hard about. But my tolerance for all the less-enjoyable parts of the educational experience was dropping rapidly.

I should have recognized this as a warning sign, but since I was still getting good marks, it didn’t occur to me that anything was wrong. I was just adapting to my situation, that was all. In my fourth year, I became depressed to the point that I started taking medication, but I attributed it to other causes. Even when I had to attend monthly meetings with a psychology professor’s grad students and left each one so frustrated with how little actually got done I was ready to scream, I accepted them as a necessary evil.

During my last year, I applied for the grad program I was most interested in, and was turned down.

Since I was confident in my marks and references, I figured the issue was that the program was geared toward working with teenagers, when almost all of my experience was with younger children. (I’d wanted to switch focus, and hoped I could get away with it.) Obviously I just had to build some more experience, and then apply again next year, to programs more suited to my work history. No problem.

I’d been too busy or too exhausted to write much when I was juggling university and a part-time job. Now, suddenly, I had time. I was working, but it was still part-time, and it didn’t leave me with readings and assignments I had to complete after I left. Before long, I finished the first book I had enough confidence in to query agents with, and got several requests, though no offer. I started writing and sending out short stories regularly, and within a few months made my first major sale. It was an amazing feeling, to know that people who didn’t know me actually wanted to read—and pay for!—my writing.

But as the deadline for reapplying to grad school approached, I couldn’t help noticing my happiness fading. I felt increasingly apathetic about everything, including my writing, like when I’d first become depressed. Whenever I focused on anything related to the applications, I felt sick to my stomach. I told myself that was normal, that I’d get used to being in school again, that I needed this in order to get the right kind of job. That it was something I just had to do.

I let things go on like that for several weeks before I finally asked myself, Is it really?

Just allowing myself to consider that question gave me the most incredible sense of release. That, more than anything else, told me I’d been going about this all wrong. I’d been assuming I’d go to grad school for so long that I’d seen anything else as failure. The fact that I knew my family expected me to continue my education was an additional pressure. But when I let myself be honest about it, I knew the last thing I wanted was to give up at least two more years of my life on something that would clearly make me miserable.

Did it mean my job situation was going to be more shaky? Well, yes, but I knew I could make enough money to get by. I could always reconsider in the future, if my writing hadn’t started providing more income. What was really important to me was giving that writing a chance. Giving myself a chance to keep living a life that was making me happy.

Once I’d come to terms with my change in thinking, the hardest part was telling my parents. My dad got angry with me for the first time in at least a decade, and ranted about how I was ruining my future before stomping off because he couldn’t even handle talking to me anymore. (To my surprise, my mom, who’d always seemed more concerned about issues like education and money, took the news a lot more calmly.) But the decision felt so right I didn’t waver. By the next time I went to see them, he’d started to come around.

About six months later, I started working on a new novel. That book, which came to be titled Give Up the Ghost, got me my first agent a year later, and my first publishing deal a year after that.

I can’t say what would have happened instead if I’d gone back to school like I originally intended. All I know for sure is that Ghost would not have been written then, which means it quite possibly would not have been written at all. I might have sacrificed my dream for a little extra security that I didn’t even need.

It’s a decision I’ve never once regretted.

—Megan Crewe

Like many authors, Megan Crewe finds writing about herself much more difficult than making things up. A few definite facts: she lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband and three cats, she works as a behavioral therapist for children and teens with special needs, and she’s spent the last five years studying kung fu, so you should probably be nice to her. Her debut novel, the YA paranormal Give Up the Ghost, was released in 2009. Her YA post-apocalyptic novel The Way We Fall (the first in a trilogy) has just come out.

Visit her at www.megancrewe.com.

Follow @megancrewe on Twitter.

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:

Intro to the Turning Points blog series
Gayle Forman: on overcoming bitterness
Sean Ferrell: on the Writer who never arrives
Eileen Cook: on a “nasty” book and a teacher’s advice that inspired her
Christopher Barzak: on how short stories changed his vision for his novel
Saundra Mitchell: on deciding to quit and walk away
Eric Luper: on not writing for trends
Gretchen McNeil: on how “everything happens for a reason”
Julia DeVillers on the fan letter she wrote when she was ten years old that changed her writing career years later
Daisy Whitney on the book that opened her eyes to writing YA
Brandy Colbert on the book that inspired her to find her voice
Courtney Summers on redefining failure (TWO giveaways open through February 10)
Sarah Darer Littman on turning off the noise (giveaway open through February 13!)
Léna Roy on how she came to call herself a “writer” (giveaway open through February 15)

You can keep up with all the open giveaways on the giveaways page!

Series images by Robert Roxby.

Turning Points: Guest Post by Léna Roy (+Giveaway)

Posted on February 8, 2012

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 Léna Roy honors the 50th Anniversary of her grandmother Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time by revealing how she came to call herself a “writer”…

I didn’t call myself a “writer” in 2004 when at the tender age of 35, I finally allowed myself to start working on a novel that had been marinating in my head for years. It is the story that developed into Edges.

I didn’t call myself a “writer” until after September 2007, when I really had to make a choice about who I was and what I was made of—when I embraced writing as a vocation.

Yes, I am a veritable late bloomer. What took me so darn long? In my early 20s I wasn’t a stranger to putting myself out there, singing and performing in nightclubs. But my Gran, Madeleine L’Engle—yes, the creator of one of the most beloved books, A Wrinkle in Time—was the writer. Me? As a kid, tween, teen, I always wrote. Then as an adult, I was the actress who wrote, the bartender who wrote, the therapist who wrote, the mom who wrote.

Just never the writer. I would listen to my Gran talk about craft and she would say: “You’re a writer if you write.” Somehow I thought that this dictum applied to everybody else except me. I wrote in secret.

My early 20s were arty and wild. I lived with my grandmother off and on, I did performance art, I wrote, and of course, I would talk about my dreams as if they were already a reality.

When I made up my mind to leave the arts to go to school to be a therapist at the age of 25, I felt I needed to be serious and useful—I had used up my quota of “castles in the air.”

I could never make a living at performing, or writing like Madeleine L’Engle—to attempt to do so past a certain age would be hubris. We all know writing takes discipline, talent, and luck: I wasn’t very disciplined, I was unsure about my own talents, and luck—well, that’s not something we can count on, can we?

I worked in a psychiatric hospital in the Bronx. I moved to Moab, Utah (where I met my husband), and started an out-patient program for teens who had substance abuse problems, I worked as a counselor in a Dual Diagnosis treatment facility in San Francisco. But by far my favorite job was as a high school counselor downtown in NYC: teenagers were my people.

Then in the beginning of 2000, I started having babies and my grandmother needed caring for. My life revolved around the babies and the grandmother. Watching her decline was very painful; she wasn’t herself anymore. It was as if all of her ailments had trapped her spirit.

It’s strange that the death of one of my best beloveds was my turning point.

Early September 2007, I was standing outside of her house in Northwestern Connecticut with my husband, looking at the stars in her honor. Who are you?

My husband asked me the hard-hitting questions: Do you want to be a writer? Are you a writer?

Yes I do, and yes I am.

I had been trying to write that novel for the past four years. I wrote the first draft in three months: a teen runs away from an alcoholic father in New York City and finds himself at a youth hostel in Moab, Utah.

I rewrote it and then sent it out to one agent who rejected it. It went back in the drawer.

It came out again.

More rejection. More time in the drawer.

What then, was my vocation? Should I get another Master’s degree? Become a nurse?

But looking up at the stars on that warm September night, I felt my grandmother speak to me for the first time in years. Yes, it’s hokey, but I’ll say it: it was as if her energy had been released into the atmosphere and she was telling me to accept my calling, that it was time to find my own voice.

That night both my husband and my grandmother were telling me to embrace my true self, to stop fooling around, to take my writing seriously. Stop dabbling! So what if most writers don’t make a living at it. It would be a leap of faith. I would have to live, breathe, eat the writing world. I would have to commit to it 150%. I would have to follow in the road map Madeleine L’Engle had already created for me: create community, be around other writers, open myself up . . . teach.

I did another rewrite and I was finally able to secure an agent, the wonderful Edward Necarsulmer, who opened my eyes to the world of young adult literature, for that is where I found my voice. He recommended that I read Ellen Hopkins, Chris Crutcher, and Laurie Halse Anderson. John Green. It was a joy and a revelation to discover a whole world of wonderful authors and story-telling that wasn’t preachy yet refused to be cynical.

I started teaching and leading writing workshops. First at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine and NYC bookstores, then with Writopia Lab in NYC and Westchester, with kids, tweens, and teens who inspire me every day.

Edges was finally published in December 2010.

Now I write no matter what. No matter the reviews, positive or negative, no matter if my work is rejected. I keep reminding myself that my job is to serve the story and to tell the story in the best possible way that I can.

And I learned that I need to own what I write. People will ask me what my book is about, and even after one year, I still have a hard time narrowing it down to a sexy sound byte. Because truthfully, it’s about spirituality and addiction, and that’s not very sexy, is it? There are no vampires (unless you see addiction as a metaphor), and there’s no bodice ripping, but there is grittiness mashed with sweetness and hope.

People say that an author’s first novel is the most autobiographical, and that is also true in my case. Ava, one of the protagonists, is certainly a version of my younger self. And like all of the characters, I have certainly struggled with the nature of truth and reality, and what to believe.

This week we celebrate the 50th anniversary of my grandmother’s Newbery Award–winning opus, A Wrinkle in Time, which is perhaps my favorite book of all time. Help me honor my grandmother with your promise of being true to yourself as well—if you are a writer, find your voice, because the world needs you. I may not be Madeleine L’Engle, but I am Léna Roy, and I have learned from her that art comes from serving the story: nothing more, and nothing less.

—Léna Roy

Léna Roy was raised in New York City, in the cloistered environs of a theological seminary, with extracurricular education provided by Manhattan’s club scene. She’s worked as a bartender, an actor, and with at-risk adolescents in Utah, California, and NYC. She now lives with her husband, two sons, daughter, cat, and four African water frogs in Katonah, New York, and is the Program Manager for Writopia Lab in Westchester. Edges is her first novel.

You can find her on her blog, www.lenaroy.com.

Follow @lenaroy on Twitter.

EDITED FEB. 19… GIVEAWAY WINNER ANNOUNCED!

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:

Kristen Aigeldinger won a signed copy of Edges!

Congrats! I’ll email the winner for her mailing addresses. 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:

Intro to the Turning Points blog series
Gayle Forman: on overcoming bitterness
Sean Ferrell: on the Writer who never arrives
Eileen Cook: on a “nasty” book and a teacher’s advice that inspired her
Christopher Barzak: on how short stories changed his vision for his novel
Saundra Mitchell: on deciding to quit and walk away
Eric Luper: on not writing for trends
Gretchen McNeil: on how “everything happens for a reason”
Julia DeVillers on the fan letter she wrote when she was ten years old that changed her writing career years later
Daisy Whitney on the book that opened her eyes to writing YA
Brandy Colbert on the book that inspired her to find her voice (giveaway open through February 8!)
Courtney Summers on redefining failure (TWO giveaways open through February 10)
Sarah Darer Littman on turning off the noise (giveaway open through February 13!)

You can keep up with all the open giveaways on the giveaways page!

Series images by Robert Roxby.

Turning Points: Guest Post by Sarah Darer Littman (+Giveaway)

Posted on February 6, 2012

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 Sarah Darer Littman reveals how she had to “turn off the noise” in order to find the way to write her next book…

Sometimes, you just have to take a few steps backwards and turn off the noise.

That’s a hard lesson to absorb when you’re an “overachiever” type personality. The kind of girl who tries to “Climb Every Mountain,” then immediately thinks about scaling the next peak before taking the time to enjoy the view.

But all the most important lessons I’ve learned in life haven’t come easily, so why should the ones in my writing life be any different?

Maybe this lesson was so hard because my first book came too easily. When, at age 38, I finally gave myself the permission to pursue writing, the passion I was discouraged from following because it wouldn’t lead to a lucrative career, I made a promise to myself that I would get a book contract for my 40th birthday present to myself. I achieved that goal two months after my birthday. Close enough. My first book, Confessions of a Closet Catholic, came out to good reviews and won the 2006 Sydney Taylor book award for Older Readers. But in the background, my marriage was falling apart, and with it, my confidence in the future—and my writing. After all, isn’t marriage supposed to be for life? And after writing a book that earned out in the first royalty period, aren’t you supposed to be able to sell your next book on proposal?

Maybe in theory, but in practice I’ve learned the hard way that your mileage may vary. And both of those lessons—about marriage and writing—came at the same time, during what I refer to as my “Second Book Blues” period.

Confessions was a middle grade, and both my then editor and agent were telling me to write more middle grade because I “didn’t have a YA voice.”

My editor wanted me to write even younger—as a nine-year-old, something that I had no interest in doing at that point. In the future, maybe. But the stories inside me at that very moment, the ones waiting to be told, had to be young adult, because of their subject matter.

My reaction to being told I can’t do something tells you exactly why I am a young adult author—because the more they told me I couldn’t write YA, the more determined I was to do it. Because I would show them, damn it! *

And thus the Dark Years commenced. I would work on an idea for three months, produce a synopsis and three sample chapters, and… “Sorry it’s not working.” Rejection. I started to wonder if my first book was a fluke. I couldn’t understand what was the matter with me, what was the matter with my writing. I was on a listserv for published YA writers, and it seemed like every week someone was getting a two-book deal based on a paragraph. It tapped into all my high school angst about being a Loser with a Capital L.

Winning the Sydney Taylor award in early January 2006 was a double-edged sword—incredibly validating because it was awarded by librarians, but terrifying at the same time because inside I felt undeserving, a fraud. Did they realize I was such a failure at producing a second book? That if VH-1 had One-Hit Wonders for authors, I’d be on that show—except I’d be a One “Not Exactly a New York Times Best Seller Kind of Hit” Wonder?

When I turned up for my first ever-writing retreat, Kindling Words, in Vermont in January 2006, I was desperate and demoralized. I was in year three of the Never Ending Divorce and it was also coming up on three years since I’d sold Confessions and without another book deal on the horizon.

I was sweating on an exercise machine at 6:30 am with Nancy Werlin and Sarah Aronson in the tiny little workout room at the Inn, whingeing about my career woes. Nancy, who is one of the smartest people I know in the writing world, said, “You’re showing your writing too early.” Sarah agreed. We got into a discussion about selling on proposal vs. writing the whole book first and it hit me that published authors don’t always have to sell on proposal. Okay we hear about all the people who get two-book deals on a paragraph, but that isn’t everyone. And maybe, just maybe, I am not that kind of author. Does that suck cash-flow wise? Yes, it does. Is it more risky? Totally, unless you have an editor that you trust and can touch base with while you’re writing. But what is more soul destroying? Trying to work against type and beating your head up against the wall, or accepting your process and working with it?

I left Kindling Words with the beginning of my new project, which became my second book, Purge. I told my agent I was going to write most of the book before I showed her any of it. I turned off the noise, all the voices that made me feel inadequate and Loser-like (things like unsubscribing to the listserv I was on for a while) and started to listen instead to the voice inside. The one that loved writing for the sake of it, not because she was worried about selling another book. The one who had stories inside that were bursting to be told, if only I would listen.

Do you want to know the biggest irony? After we sold Purge and I’d convinced myself that I was an author who had to write the whole book, my next two books were sold on proposal in a two-book deal. Go figure.

But after Want to Go Private? I needed to do the retreat and turn off the noise tactic again. For a variety of reasons, I chose to write the entire book—I’m now about to start revising my crummy first draft.

In some ways it’s nerve-wracking. But in other ways, it’s allowing me to push myself and explore.

One thing I’ve learned over the course of writing five books (and abandoning countless others) is that every book has a slightly different process. While we all want to keep moving forward, sometimes taking a few steps back helps us figure it out.

*Are you glad you aren’t my mother? Now that I’m the mom of teenagers, I start so many conversations with, “Mom, I know I was a really awful teenager but…” To my mother’s eternal credit, she has only said, “What goes around comes around” once, even though I’m sure she has wanted to waaaaaay more often!

—Sarah Darer Littman

Sarah Darer Littman’s first novel, Confessions of a Closet Catholic, won the 2006 Sydney Taylor Book Award for Older Readers. Her novel Life, After was a 2011 Sydney Taylor Honor Book. She is also the author of Purge and Want to Go Private?, which Entertainment Weekly called “scary and engrossing.”

In addition to writing for teens, Sarah is an award-winning columnist for Hearst Newspapers (CT) and CTNewsJunkie.com.

Sarah lives in Connecticut with her family. Visit her online at sarahdarerlittman.com, wanttogoprivate.com, and on Twitter as @sarahdarerlitt.

EDITED FEB. 19… GIVEAWAY WINNERS ANNOUNCED:

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

Annika won a signed copy of Confessions of a Closet Catholic!

Heather Perkinson won a signed copy of Purge!

Zara D. Garcia-Alvarez won a signed copy of Life, After!

Robin Willis won a signed copy of Want to Go Private?

And there was one winner of the grand prize of signed copies of ALL FOUR of Sarah Darer Littman’s books… and that lucky person is:

Haley won the grand prize of signed copies of all four books!

Congrats to all five of the winners! I’ll email the winners for their mailing addresses. 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:

Intro to the Turning Points blog series
Gayle Forman: on overcoming bitterness
Sean Ferrell: on the Writer who never arrives
Eileen Cook: on a “nasty” book and a teacher’s advice that inspired her
Christopher Barzak: on how short stories changed his vision for his novel
Saundra Mitchell: on deciding to quit and walk away
Eric Luper: on not writing for trends
Gretchen McNeil: on how “everything happens for a reason”
Julia DeVillers on the fan letter she wrote when she was ten years old that changed her writing career years later
Daisy Whitney on the book that opened her eyes to writing YA (giveaway open through February 6!)
Brandy Colbert on the book that inspired her to find her voice (giveaway open through February 8!)
Courtney Summers on redefining failure (TWO giveaways open through February 10)

You can keep up with all the open giveaways on the giveaways page!

Series images by Robert Roxby.

Turning Points: Guest Post by Courtney Summers (+Giveaway)

Posted on February 3, 2012

This post is part of the Turning Points 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.

If you’ve read this week’s posts, you’ve seen how a certain book—Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers—served as the turning point for two separate writers: Daisy Whitney and Brandy Colbert. Now we get to hear from that influential book’s author, Courtney Summers, on her own turning point as a writer…

I have one very vivid memory of the time I was trying to get published and it’s this: I am sitting in a car, in the passenger’s side, and I’m trying not to cry. Sufjan Stevens’s “The Mistress Witch from McClure” is playing and all I can think is, this is not going to happen for me. This is never, ever going to happen for me. My dream is bigger than my reality. I will never be published and I am a total failure. Whenever I hear that song, I think about that moment. At the time, I felt this complete and utter helplessness in knowing that just because I worked really hard and wanted something really badly didn’t mean I should have it. This is a lesson people learn a lot in their lives, but I think the first time you realize it is something else, especially if there are a lot of emotional stakes involved. Because then you have to decide what you’re going to do with that information. Are you going to let it defeat you or are you going to move forward in the face of it?

I’d been playing the optimist from book to book, thinking each one would be The One. I’d just shelved my third, a high-concept YA novel that brought me the closest I’d ever gotten; an agent talked revisions with me, said she’d send the paperwork along to make representation official, and then dropped off the face of the earth only to reappear to tell me she was leaving for another part of the business. I think close calls can be the hardest. When it doesn’t happen but it almost does, you feel like you’re farther back from where you started. That’s certainly how it felt to me and I didn’t know if I could continue this journey because my time was running out…

[cue dramatic music]

To understand what I mean by that, I have to tell you this: I dropped out of high school when I was fourteen because I hated it (let us pause and contemplate the fact I now write about people in high school). My family wholeheartedly supported that decision, but there were some vocal naysayers who insisted I was screwing up my life and making things harder for myself and because of that, I would never achieve what I set out to achieve. I was told that to drop out is to set yourself up for a life of mediocrity. So what I did was I promised myself the year I would’ve spent in high school, had I not dropped out, would be devoted to figuring out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Tall order for a fourteen-year-old, but get this, it actually happened—I realized I wanted to be a writer. That was my graduation, in a way.

And now it was time for the next phase. College. Except I wasn’t going there either, so I decided I had to be a published author by the time all of my friends graduated college or leaving school was for nothing and I’d be a failure. Wait. I need to emphasize that better. I’d be a FAILURE.

It was a very inflexible goal. It wasn’t I have to be a published author by the time my friends graduate college, if not, I’ll keep trucking it had to be BY THEN or I failed at life. And that’s ridiculous, but I was so worried about having something to show for a decision as dramatic as leaving high school, that was how I viewed it. And the pressure I put on myself was intense. I worked and worked and worked against my own self-imposed timeline, learning about the industry, writing novels and short stories, submitting novels and short stories, shelving them and starting new ones—I never took a break. I know there are A LOT of people out there who put more time in and get loads more rejections than I have, but when I reached the point where my third book had to be shelved, my “time” was, like I said, running out and I didn’t know what I was going to do. It felt like my journey had to stop there because I hadn’t achieved what I’d set out to do. I’d FAILED! I really felt like this lack of being where I wanted to be at that particular point in my life was unforgivable on my part. And that made me very sad.

I usually don’t tell people this part of my road to publication! But eventually, my sadness got so great, a member of my family suggested I stop for a while. Stop the whole thing. It was a fair suggestion. Nothing about what I was doing was making me happy. And yet while all this was happening, I should tell you I somehow managed to find the time to be annoyed about the rejections of my third book. Most readers found the protagonist really unlikeable and I liked her and—whether or not this was ultimately true—I decided they didn’t like her because she was an unlikeable GIRL and girls are always expected to be nice. In the back of my head, an idea about a girl nobody liked was brewing, but I was scared to start it because what was the point when the whole process made me feel this bad? But the idea was an insistent thing, it kept poking at my brain until finally, I thought, okay, one more book and then I’ll stop for a while.

But there was no way I could start my new book without taking a good, hard look at my ideas of success and failure and redefining them. My love for this idea (and indignation about girls not being allowed to be unlikeable!) was so loud I had to make a choice. I still wanted to be published, more than anything I’d ever wanted in my life. What happened here, my turning point, was I decided to define my success in terms of TRYING and accepting I had no control of the outcome. (And then I proceeded to write about a girl who was obsessed with perfection and outcomes.) As soon as I did this, the joy came back into my life. I got lost in this mean girl’s story and I looked forward to working on it and I loved working on it. I loved writing. It was what I was meant to do, and I was pretty sure I’d always do it regardless of whether or not I saw myself traditionally published.

I’d truly forgotten.

So that was a nice, eye-opening moment. It was a bit scary too—but it was a relief.

The book I wrote did end up being published. Cracked Up to Be. Everyone who writes and tries to get published knows how hard it is, how high the highs are and how low the lows. It would be very disingenuous to say letting go of the idea of being published helped me TO get published. I don’t believe that’s what happened. Really it was work and luck and timing. I was fortunate enough to get the manuscript into the hands of people who liked the story as much as I did. But letting go of my arbitrary self-imposed deadline to be published and letting go of the belief that being published determined my success or failure as a person reminded me why I tried for it in the first place: I love to write.

And on the harder days in this business, I miggght put on that Sufjan song to remind myself that all of my stories start and end with that.

—Courtney Summers

Courtney Summers lives and writes in Canada. She is the author of Cracked Up to Be, Some Girls Are, Fall for Anything, and This is Not a Test (June 2012).

Visit Courtney at courtneysummers.ca.

Follow @courtney_s on Twitter.

EDITED FEB. 11: THE GRAND-PRIZE WINNER OF THREE (3!) OF COURTNEY SUMMERS’S BOOKS, PLUS THE WINNER OF TWO AUDIO EDITIONS ANNOUNCED…!

Thank you to everyone who entered the two giveaways via the entry forms—and thank you to the author for donating the prizes—and to Damon for donating the audio editions as an extra added surprise! I’m happy to announce the winners:

Andrea Benvenuto won the grand prize of three of Courtney Summers’s books: a signed copy of Some Girls Are, a signed copy of Fall for Anything, and a pre-order of This Is Not a Test. And melannie lara luna won two audio editions of Courtney Summer’s books: Cracked Up to Be and Some Girls Are (both donated by Damon Ford). Congrats! I’ll email the winners for their mailing addresses. 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:

Intro to the Turning Points blog series
Gayle Forman: on overcoming bitterness
Sean Ferrell: on the Writer who never arrives
Eileen Cook: on a “nasty” book and a teacher’s advice that inspired her
Christopher Barzak: on how short stories changed his vision for his novel
Saundra Mitchell: on deciding to quit and walk away
Eric Luper: on not writing for trends
Gretchen McNeil: on how “everything happens for a reason”
Julia DeVillers on the fan letter she wrote when she was ten years old that changed her writing career years later
Daisy Whitney on the book that opened her eyes to writing YA (giveaway open through February 6!)
Brandy Colbert on the book that inspired her to find her voice (giveaway open through February 8!)

You can keep up with all the open giveaways on the giveaways page!

Series images by Robert Roxby.

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