Archive for August, 2009

I Heart Spalding

Maybe you like to write, and you’re thinking about refining your craft in a formal setting. An MFA hovers on the horizon, and you consider going back to school. Then, you think about attending classes and turning in homework every week and how you’re going to fit school into your life. Impossible, you think. Allow me to introduce you to a magnificent solution. Spalding University’s Low-Residency MFA program.

I’m in my second year of the program, and I can’t say enough good things about it. I love the format. Writers should be writing, not sitting in class, and this school believes in that. The school offers a shorter Fall and Spring semester with the 10-day residency at the Kentucky campus. The alternative – of which I partake – is the extended eight-month Summer semester with a 10-day residency in a different country every summer. The semester kicks off with the residency abroad. At the residency, students attend faculty lectures on different aspects of writing, among other literary-related activities. PLUS you are guaranteed an hour-long workshop where your work is solely discussed. This is incredibly informative, not to mention how helpful it is to participate in the workshops on the writing of others in your group.

Once you return home, you are responsible for mailing off a packet every six weeks to a faculty mentor. The packet contains two papers you write on works you chose to inform your own writing – my focus is on YA lit right now so my reading list has a bevy of YA books like Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak and Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. The paper topics are meant to focus on some aspect of craft that the author incorporated into their work, so they become a tool for you to think about how you can apply lessons learned to your own writing. In addition to the papers, you turn in 35-45 pages of creative writing. Total packets turned in per semester? Five. Total number of creative writing pages, counting your workshop submission? 200 to 250.

The positives? The six-week deadline keeps me motivated to sit down and write. The three-to-five page letter my faculty mentor sends me with comments on each packet shows me where I can improve my writing. If you are seeking one-on-one mentoring, you can’t beat this program. Also, of all the programs I researched, Spalding had the greatest variety of subjects. You can focus on fiction, non-fiction, screenwriting, writing for children, and more!

The negatives? The program can be pricey once you add in travel costs, but there are scholarships and financial aid available.

Check out the program details here.

Underpainting Yourself into Your Work

We can’t escape it. Somehow bits of ourselves worm and wheedle themselves into everything we write, even without our knowledge. Our opinions and views, our history, our emotional hang ups. The boy we pined for. (You know who you are, Zach.) The sibling who drove us crazy. (My brother loved to take my book and throw it across a room, thereby losing my page. Awesome.) That embarrassing moment in high school that we never quite got over. (Mind your own business.) All of who we are becomes fodder for our writing.

The most invasive example I have is revealed when I write about family dynamics. My father walked away when I was a child, and I went through a series of stepfathers in his wake. My mother – a hardworking waitress – worked long hours on her feet to keep the four of us kids with a roof over our head. My siblings and I have a kind of bond like soldiers who’ve been through war together – few can relate to a house like the one we grew up in. What is the impact of this on my writing?

Hardworking waitresses appear in my stories frequently. The bond I had with my siblings – we raised each other – appears in the siblings I write. As for fathers? At first, they were always absent with no redeeming qualities at all. Then, I wrote my Master’s Project about a dying father trying to connect with the daughter he abandoned. I dug up all those ugly emotions and put them to page. To rave reviews, I might add. (I received Honors on my project.)

My latest work features a father who abandoned his daughter, but is trying to repair the relationship. He becomes a good father, but it’s not an easy path for him or the daughter. What can I say? I’m evolving.

What parts of you make it into your writing with the highest frequency?

Hunting for the Uninitiated

This weekend I flew up to San Francisco to participate in that popular sport of hunting that nearly extinct species – an apartment bigger than a shoebox for a reasonable price. I printed out my craigslist ads. I had copies of my tenant resume, a lovely cover letter telling all who would listen what a great tenant I’d be, copies of pay stubs, a letter of recommendation, and more. With GPS in my rental car and my iphone to guide me on foot, I hit the pavement and hunted. And hunted. And hunted.

In two days, I spied ten apartments. Some would be better described as closets, but I did find a couple that I could live in. However, the prey is scarce and the competition to find them fierce. Hopefully, I am one of the lucky ones. Two weeks to the big move. Keep your fingers crossed!

Editing Blues

I hate editing. I thought I was fine with it. In fact, I knew I was making the story better with each round of edits that I did. Now, on my umpteenth round, each mark on my manuscript feels like a little splinter on top of a paper cut on top of a nasty bruise.  I know the edits are necessary if I ever want my story to be read. I also know my book is good. [Luckily, my beta readers have all been enthusiastic.]

Still, some of the joy I felt while writing the story is siphoned off with each new round of changes. It’s becoming very hard to sludge through and keep the momentum I’ve had going for months while I wrote the story and worked on the initial edits. I feel ready to break free and work on something new, but there’s work still to be done.

What do you do to stay enthusiastic when the editing blues get you down? (Other than plant your butt in a chair and force yourself to get to it.)

Novel Soundtrack: Part II

My first novel, TOUCHED, is a YA suspense fantasy novel with a Romeo & Juliet romance at its heart. Below is my current playlist because it constantly changed as I progressed from writing to editing. SPOILER ALERT! Some plot points are revealed.

TOUCHED Playlist:

• Because of You – Kelly Clarkson (Remy)
• Waiting On an Angel – Ben Harper – (Asher)
• Daughters – John Mayer (Ben and Remy)
• Breakable – Ingrid Michaelson (Remy)
• Yes I’m Cold – Chris Bathgate – (Asher)
• Trouble is a Friend – Lenka – (Remy)
• You’re Not Sorry (CSI Remix) -Taylor Swift – (Remy)
• Hangin’ by a Thread – Jann Arden (Remy)
• Falling – Tyrone Wells – (Asher)
• Inside My Head – Clare Reynolds (Remy)
• Come Down to Me – Saving Jane – (Remy)
• The Death of Us – The New Amsterdams – (Asher)
• Hero/Heroine – Boys Like Girls – (Asher)
• Falling – Keri Noble (Remy)
• Next to You – Tim Easton – (Asher)
• Closer – Kings of Leon (Gabe)
• Hang On – Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan (Remy)
• So Long Sweet Misery – Brett Dennen (Asher)
• Winter Song – Sara Bareilles & Ingrid Michaelson (Remy)
• Arrivals – Aqualung – (Asher)
• I Would Die for You – Jann Arden & Sarah McLachlan (Remy)
• That’ll Be the Plan – Daniel Martin Moore – (Asher and Remy)
• The Night Will Go As Follows – The Spill Canvas – (Asher)
• All I Can Do – Tyrone Wells (Asher)
• Don’t Give Up – Clare Reynolds (Remy)

Enjoy the playlist! (Note: not all of the above songs appear in the player below.)

Novel Soundtrack: Part I

As stated in my previous posts, I write at Starbucks. Many of you will laugh when I say I do this to avoid distractions. However, since I can be an anti-social creature, the call of talking to strangers in a coffee shop is far less appealing than the pull of my TV or any obscenely boring activity other than writing. Starbucks is my office, if you will, and my dual purpose there is to write and consume delicious coffee beverages. (The employees know I’m a regular, but I confuse them by ordering a different drink every time. Keeps things interesting.)

With that said, I have my methods for drowning out the crowd – iTunes, a ragged set of headphones, and a custom playlist for each work-in-progress. My story plays like a movie in my head. A movie needs a soundtrack, right? I find that music helps me get in the mood for certain scenes. Sometimes, it also helps to ground me in a particular character’s mindset or personality. I highly recommend this process if you can write to music. Plus, creating a playlist is a great way to procrastinate when you should be writing.

Coming soon: my playlist for TOUCHED

When the Well Runneth Dry…

I am capable of writing for hours on end. Ask my local Starbucks barista. I work my normal 9-6 job, grab a quick bite, and I’m at my keyboard until midnight. There have been times I’ve taken over a table for a spell of ten hours (or in Starbucks time: a caffe mocha, skinny vanilla latte, and Zen tea) with twenty-five pages to show for it. Case in point. I began TOUCHED in December 2008 and finished in March 2009. That’s an average of 105 pages a month, and that doesn’t include about 50 pages I cut. Factor in a week I took off for the holidays and another two weeks when I had pneumonia (from overworking myself, obviously), and I was a writing maniac with no social life and way too much caffeine pumping through my veins.

And I’d give anything to be in the middle of that again. The story poured out of me during those months. It became this OTHER, a living, breathing entity that lived outside of me. I felt driven to get it down on paper. It’s hard to explain how alive I felt describing the world my characters were living in or how they lives affected each other. If I had to pick one word to describe that time, I’d say, CONTENT. And because I write, here are some others… Happy, thrilled, maniacal. The last because no one can live at that pace for long and not be a maniac. I actually wore the little labels off the keys on my keyboard. Thank goodness I touch-type or the N and D keys would be forever lost to me.

Now, I’m starting a new project. I’m in that dry spell before an idea really takes hold of you and makes you crazed with passion. A little nerve-wracking because a question whistles through the wind and the heat, “What if I never feel that way about a story again?” But also a little breathless excitement because is that a mirage I see on the horizon or my next big idea?

Freewriting vs. Outlining

Organic or Structured? The ongoing debate of writing methods – or should I say planning methods – can be a never-ending one. Many writers feel like the magic is lost if they know where they’re going. Others feel like they’ll never get to the end if they don’t have a road map. Me? I like to use a combination of both methods.

When I get an idea for a novel, I’m not always sure where the story is going to begin. So, I freewrite. I put fingers to keyboard and tap out pages until I run out of steam. Then, when I feel like I’m getting a feel for who my characters are, I go back to the drawing board and do my version of an outline – a malleable series of bullet points representing plot points and character notes for each chapter.

For my novel TOUCHED, I knew I wanted about 20 chapters coming in around 350 pages – on par for a YA novel based on my research*. (I really love research.) I typed up a list of prospective chapters and accompanying bullet points that represented major plot points that should be happening in each chapter. For example, a bullet point can be as simple as “First Kiss” or “New Power Develops.” Knowing where I was “kind of” going, helped me to think through what would need to happen before I could get there. If a couple was going to kiss, they had to meet (duh), have feelings develop, and be put in a situation where it could happen. Those became additional points on my outline in earlier chapters. I do this until I more or less have a list of things I want to accomplish in each chapter. When I get closer to writing that actual chapter, I fill in more of the details. Easy, right?

My list of bullet points (i.e. outline) is fluid. Sometimes I write a chapter and don’t get to all my bullet points because the story and the characters took me in a new direction. In that case, I simply move my bullet points into the next chapter. This process allows me to have some structure to my novel, while allowing me to let the writing happen naturally. Best of both worlds. Below is an example of my outline for Chapter One of TOUCHED. Admittedly, I cleaned this up a bit since I tend to use abbreviations in my outlines.

• Chapter One:
  • 17-year-old loner Remy has been abused for years and uses her ability to heal her wounds and those of others, including her mother, by taking them on as her own
  • She hides her ability worried she is a freak
  • Remy and her alcoholic stepfather fight when Remy defends her mother
  • She discovers a new ability to transfer her wounds/pain to another when she accidentally uses her power on her stepfather, Dean.
  • She is sent to live with her father in Port Townsend, WA after her stepfather puts her in the hospital
  • In Port Townsend, she takes a walk on the beach and meets a boy her age, Asher, who angers her by taking her picture (she has lots of bruises from fight with Dean)
  • She scans him with her power to see if he is ill and he manages to hold her energy hostage, something that’s never happened before.

TIP: When I’m writing a chapter, I paste my outline for the chapter I’m working on, plus that of the following chapter. This helps me to lay in details that foreshadow later events. Hope this helps you!

*NOTE: Another admission… My novel netted out around 405 pages, and that’s after I cut about 30 pages. In editing, I revised from 20 to 32 chapters, too, per beta reader notes. The best laid plans…

Saturday Sonnet

A light sonnet celebrating my writing office – Starbucks.

In a Starbucks World

We’re defined by our beverage of choice.

The Teas and Chai Tea Lattes are of green

tree-hugging, forward-thinking social mien.

The Vanilla Latte are sweet of voice

And have a lighter, kinder view of life.

Straight Black are extremely matter-of-fact

And like all things to be right and exact.

For Caffe Mocha, darker days are rife

With cocoa hints of saccharine relief.

The Caramel Macciatos are wise

With pronuniciation skills others prize.

For those who seek a more complex motif,

Change up your size or go nonfat, no foam.

It’s best, though, not to stray too far from home.