First Drafts and Winter

2013: My Year of Less Dysfunction

It occurred to me a few years ago that if I detest winter, and I DO, that means I’m detesting a quarter of my life. Just like a pig parade, that’s a terrible idea.

So I asked those who liked winter what they liked about it:

Cozy blankets.

Warm drinks on a chilly day.

Hunkering down at home.

I prefer mojitos poolside, but yeah, okay. If there has to be winter, blankets and warm slippers and chai lattes could probably help.

Meanwhile, in the writing side of my life, I finished up my second novel, the first draft of which was written years ago. And while I wait to hear from my agent about whether I need to keep working on it or if it’s ready to go, I started work on a new novel.

Healthy, right?

But I realized that I’ve been feeling kind of wintery about first drafts. I dread writing them. My favorite part of the novel process is probably the last 20 percent—the cleaning, refining, drawing subtle connections between related parts. I LOVE that work. But the stuff that comes before? Not so much.

I’m not sure if it’s brilliant or inane to be writing a first draft in winter. But with my determination to be NOT dysfunctionl as my guiding force, it’s going pretty well.

I think the key to all of this may be the fact that I changed where I write. My first two books were written in the kitchen of my house. And then my husband started working from home. And using the kitchen more frequently than you’d think a person could.

I moved upstairs. I cleaned my office. Cleared everything off my desk.

Yet where I find myself most writing days is sitting the big arm chair in my bedroom. This is the key: I sit beneath an electric throw blanket. I’m toasty. In fact, one day last week, after meeting my goal of writing a thousand words, I decided I’d rather write a second thousand than get up and exercise, which had been the next scheduled act in my planned not-dysfunctional day.

Next year, I’ll figure out adding a healthy attitude about exercise into the first-drafting and winter plan. For now, being toasty in the corner of my bedroom is working pretty well.

Healthy Writing 101

I have been known to moan loudly while working on novels. I mostly laugh out loud while working on picture books. Sane perspective: Why do I keep writing novels?

I’m not sure I know the answer. But it might be that nothing in this world is as satisfying, to reader-me, as connecting with a novel. I love thinking about the book I’m reading all day, finding moments here and there to read five pages, curling up in that imagined world at night.

This year I came to the table determined to be a healthy writer. So far, so good. (And yes. I am well aware that it is the first double-digit day in the very first month of the year. Shhhh.)

I’m working on my third novel. The first one was, amazingly, published! The second one is awaiting a reading by my agent. Those two were written in the most half-assed way imaginable. I can’t even describe it. I don’t want to remember it.

Looking back, I wish I’d paid more attention in grad school. I believed then I’d always be a short story writer and didn’t listen closely enough on the day that my professors must have shared their magic words about how to write a novel. It goes a long way toward explaining my recurring dream about attending graduate school again.

I have one resolution this year: to not drive myself crazy when writing a novel. So far, so good. Which is not to say that each day’s writing is good writing. Far from it.

But I no longer have to come up with convoluted ways to get myself in that chair, writing. I used to send my family away and write eight thousand words a day for a three-day weekend (see earlier paragraph re/dysfunction). Now I’m working at an even pace, writing almost every weekday.

I always said outlines were not for me. But when I read about the Snowflake Method, I thought, some of that works for me. It makes more sense for me to think about the manuscript I’m writing in terms of sentences and paragraphs than Roman numerals. I’m not an outline girl (apologies to Mr. Scher, 9^th grade social studies teacher, who really, really loved outlines), but that doesn’t mean I can’t pre-plan in a different way.

It’s been so long since I started a novel—both my first and second sat in a drawer for years before undergoing intensive revision. I remember this driving, desperate feeling of MUST INCREASE WORD COUNT. I was unhappy about the pace of my progress until I reached what I thought would be the halfway mark.

But this time around, I’ve been enjoying some of the things that happen early in the process, like the way my story surprised me by not being entirely about what I thought it was entirely about. It makes me fall in love, a little bit, with my subconscious.

And I’m proud, so far, of being not dysfunctional.

Do you have any writing resolutions or goals?

December Peace

So apparently you’re supposed to actually post on your blog every now and then.

I’ve finally finished (almost) working on my next middle-grade novel, which has the working title Screaming at the Ump. Goodness. I can’t tell you how good that feels. I’m now in a surprising and content little pocket of time, waiting to hear back from the brilliant writer-friends who are reading my manuscript.

In other words, there’s absolutely nothing I ought to be working on right now.

Of course, you’re never really done, right? Those readers will pick up on myriad oversights, writer-tics, if not downright big-old hard-to-solve problems. And then I’ll have to get right back to it. But not now! Shhh! Don’t even mention that! Right now I’m singing and I can’t hear you. Fa la la la la…..

For years, the idea of getting through another novel, start to finish, was hanging over me. It’s a heavy weight. And now it’s on vacation. Which means that in some ways, so am I!

Fa la la la la….

There are exciting projects ahead—an attempt to write a chapter book with a close friend and brilliant writer, developing the ideas generated during this and last year’s PiBoIdMo. I’m even excited about the next novel I want to write, which I started, just so I could take the abstract albeit giant and potentially-debilitating-if-you-think-about-it-too-much-without-actually-doing-it step from idea to actual word document.

But with a step like that comes the feeling that this little vacation I’m enjoying is about to come to an end. I think I shall step ever so slowly…at least until January.

Enjoy a merry December, all.

Video warning: this really doesn’t start until a minute and a half in. And the quality is bad. But once it starts…1978 Bruce Springsteen! Fake snow! Some beautiful vocals near the end. (See above: I have time for this now.)

Stockpiling

These are strange times. This week has felt more like four months. We stockpiled before the storm–water, flashlights, canned foods–and also enjoyed some strange serendipity. My daughter’s soccer team fundraiser was selling Yankee Candles, which were delivered the day before the storm. Our house may have been dark, but it smelled like lime-vanilla nirvana.

With the power out, we all read a lot. When my son ran out of YA selections, I handed him Augusten Burroughs’ Possible Side Effects. And I was very alarmed when he said, “Now I understand why you like him so much. He’s just like you.” A lot to think about there.

Meanwhile, after the storm, I started, along with many, taking part in Picture Book Idea Month. This is my second year participating, and it’s another form of stockpiling. The thirty ideas I come up with this November will serve as the large supply gathered and held in reserve for use during a shortage.

I wrote about my own PiBoIdMo success story over on the PiBoIdMo blog last week. That post was also about how much I hated it when other writers bemoaned how there was no time for ALL the ideas they had. I had the opposite problem. But not anymore, reader! Because now I stockpile. I’m not done with last year’s list—there are some there I still want to develop. And some of my shiny new ideas are pretty exciting too.

Like I said, though, these are strange times. This post, sadly, is like the state of my mind. Regular life in our own house, and then, oh my goodness, the world right outside our door. Our neighbors, mostly to the east, up and down the coast, have lost so much. Many are still without power.

It’s that time of year when stockpiling seems like the natural thing to do, and yet so many had everything they owned, their own stockpiles, washed away. Things can change from good to bad awfully, awfully quickly.

Another storm’s heading this way. Be safe, everyone.

And here’s to better days.

PiBoIdMo: The Promise

Last year I participated in the kind of event I normally run from: PiBoIdMo (picture book idea month). The prospect of coming up with a new picture book idea every day for a 30-day month was, of course, horrifying. I am not generally a joiner in writing-based activities; my process is its own dysfunctional self, working on a clock and calendar that bears no resemblance to what the world has accepted as as its clock and calendar.

As a writer, I’m more like a reluctant exerciser. I love having done it, but sometimes the prospect of having to do it makes me want to cry. The promise, however, of somehow muddling through and, in the end, having 30 spanking new story ideas,  was an irresistible lure. And I did it.

Some good came out of it too. I’ll be blogging about that on the PiBoIdMo blog next week. For now, if the idea sounds intriguing and you want to learn more, or sign up, visit Tara Lazar’s PiBoIdMo blog.

Until then, Bruce Springsteen’s “The Promise,” which features my favorite kind of circa-1978 gravelly vocal. It’s interesting, too, that the song ends with the words “throw it all away,” perhaps not the most apt or inspiring message for idea generation. But it’s a kickass song that I’ve loved for, oh dear, more than three decades. And the title is “The Promise.” Just saying.

The Goat, the Hero, and the Yankees

I once heard Bernie Williams talk about how quickly you can go from goat to hero in baseball. (As someone who wants a baby pet goat, I paid attention.)

But what stuns me more, as a generally well-rounded person, is the vast difference between sports highs and sports lows for the fan. I am familiar with this situation because I watched last night’s Yankee game. Losing, losing, losing, grumble, grumble, grumble, then unlikely scenario yields a tie, then absurd, impossible, ridiculous scenario leads to a win and I go to bed deliriously happy and perhaps a little Yankee-smug.

Bear with me here. When I’m reading fiction,  I’m always very put off by the moment of implausibility—that scene when the author knows he needs to raise the stakes, push the envelope, so he makes his character do something I don’t believe the character would do. That’s when I yell “No way!” and throw the book across the room.

Yet this is what keeps me loving baseball—I see the impossible happen. I can’t argue for a more plausible series of events. It is what it is. To quote the radio voice of the New York Yankees, that’s baseball, Suzyn.

Raul Ibanez, aka Yertle the Turtle*, did the same thing in the bottom of the 9^th and 12^th innings, tying and then winning the game.

Yertle didn’t get his first at bat of the game until the 9^th inning. He came up in place of the antihero, Alex Rodriguez, a Yankee reviled by many fans of the very team he plays for.

The hero got to replace the antihero and tie the game. Three heightened-stakes innings later, he won the game with a first-pitch home run. Absurd. And FANTASTIC.

This does not mean I will be more tolerant of unbelievable moments in fiction. They will still make me fling the book across the room. I only believe the unbelievable when it actually happens. I’m often the only one still awake, yelling at the TV, “NO WAY. NO WAY!”

If I had baby goats, I bet they’d stay up with me to watch.

*requisite children’s literature mention

Literary Comfort Food

We have a winner!

My random number generator, aka my firstborn, was asked to select a number from 1 to 27. If you knew that he was a big Don Mattingly fan, you’d have left the 23rd comment and you’d be the winner of a signed copy of Amy Hill Hearth‘s Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women’s Literary Society. Well played, Ruth Horowitz.

(If you read this, please email me at audrey (at) audreyvernick (dot) com.)

Thank you all for the wonderful comments. It’s pretty clear to me that the books we loved as children are nothing short of literary comfort food.

For those of us who write for children, it’s a pretty heady thought: decades from now, you might be someone’s book equivalent of macaroni and cheese.

Yum.