A year ago today, my life changed

On any given day, it's pretty much a crapshoot whether I know the date, or even the day of the week. Do I have to put on pants? No? Then it really doesn't matter. Even when I do, it's pretty rare that I could tell you what I was doing a year ago on this date. Writing? Eating chocolate? Listening to music? All pretty good bets, but they don't really narrow things down beyond "breathing."
Today is different. 365 days ago, I was waiting for a band I love to get onstage at an amazing venue. It was one of the greatest concert experiences of my life, and there's a lot of those to choose from.

But something made it better.

I got an email while I was waiting, an email from the lovely Meredith Barnes, who had requested my full manuscript the day before. It was an email offering representation to me and CODA.

A lot has happened since I accepted the offer a few days later: we edited, and edited again. CODA went on submission and, after what I can tell you felt like forever but really wasn't that long in the grand scheme of things, was bought by my wonderful editor Lisa at Running Press Kids.

After that, those clever people at Soho Press lured Meredith away, and I found a new agent, in what's a funny told-over-cocktails kind of story.

I know sometimes the road we take can seem endless, even directionless. It's a hard path, but today I'm just thinking that in a year, I've gone from someone with a manuscript to someone with an agent--two, now!--who is looking forward seeing cover designs, holding ARCs, and--most importantly--to her publishing date next spring. You can bet I'll remember what that day is.

Thank you, Mer. And Lisa, and Brooks. You've changed my life.

Genius writing advice, or why my friend B is brilliant

Text conversation:

Me: This page is very white and blank. *glares at it*

B: Quick! Type your favorite word on it.

Me: *does*

B: See?  You can't glare at your favorite word.

And she's right.  And the page isn't blank anymore.  And I can probably just do a "Find/Delete" on all instances of "defenestration" before I call this manuscript done.

The no-longer-blank page now has 200 words it didn't have 20 minutes ago.  Only one of them refers to throwing someone out of a window.

I want to be a writer when I grow up.

I said this to myself when I was about eight.  I remember it really clearly because we learned to write haiku in third grade and I had so much fun playing around with the syllables, even though I'm sure my attempts were pretty terrible.

My eight-year-old self has her wish, but there are a few things I wish I could tell her at the moment of that revelation, just to prepare her:

Dear Small Self,

Writers spend a lot of time not writing, or at least not writing books.  Some of it is related to writing books, though.  There are edits and outlines and synopses, where you write the whole book in five pages before you write it in four hundred.  Yeah, I know.  You still have to do it.  There's something called social media for making friends and getting people to learn your name, and you'll find out all about that when the Internet becomes a Thing You Can Play With.  Right now it's just something computer people have.

You'll also spend a lot of time not writing books because, again, someone invented this Internet thing.  There will be strange, amazing, as-yet-unheard-of entities called Twitter and Wikipedia.  Please, don't let these take up too many hours.  That also goes for a thing called an iPad and its very reason for existing, Angry Birds.  It's coming.  Prepare yourself.  (But if you're curious, you're actually pretty good at it.)

Small Self, I have to tell you you're not quite done with the magic of bath crayons.  Oh, you'll find more fun things to play with in the next few years, like skip-its and Dungeons & Dragons and boys, but, in the end...bath crayons.  You'll need them because your best, most creative ideas will come in the shower, and you'll work your way out of that seemingly impenetrable plot tangle while you have suds in your eyes.  Your friends will come over, have a glass of wine, and emerge from the bathroom asking, "Why do your tiles say, 'Speakers = Eggs'?" 

You'll have to answer them.  That, though, is good practice for talking about your work, which you will do with friends, critique partners, agents, editors, the cute tattooed guy who works at your local bookstore.  And I want you to remember that, in big and small ways, these people have your back.  They want to read, sell, and promote your book.  They want you to succeed.  Give them the satisfaction of doing just that.

And, on that note, treasure every hour you get to write.  There'll be times when you can't (see above) and times when it's hard and times when it's easy.  Value them all.  Small Self, you get what you want, and nothing will make you happier.  Trust me on this one. 

From catastrophe to fresh start

While Brooks is busy judging contest entries, I'm going to talk about my week.  It was one of those weeks.  You know that part of one of the HP books (3, I think) when Harry and Ron are working on their Divinations homework and coming up with fake predictions of a different horrible event they'll experience every day for a month?  This week was like that, except it all really did happen, and without my prior consent.

Most of it's stupid, boring stuff involving a cold and ripping one of my favorite shirts, but some was particularly fun.  My internet going out for 24 hours while I was in the middle of researching Book Stuff was a good time.  (Warning:  Doing in-depth historical research on an iPhone for a whole day will give you a wicked headache.  So now you know.)   I'd had my connection back for about twenty-three seconds (ok, a few hours) when I had a ridiculous accident with a French press and my trusty old MacBook.  It was...not pretty.  Trusty Old MacBook is now in the Great Apple Warehouse in the Sky.

So now the week is over, I'm online from a swishy new Shiny Thing, my book deal present to myself landed in my hands (Best. Headphones. EVER.) and things are looking up, especially thanks to an unexpected silver lining.  As you can expect from an old computer, it was filled up with all kinds of crap I didn't need or particularly want, but who ever feels like sitting down and clearing things out when the Sparkly Internet is there just waiting to distract and entertain?  Not me. 

I'm thrilled I managed to rescue the data that wasn't already backed up, but I've been able to choose to transfer only stuff I need onto Shiny Thing.  I'm feeling wonderfully uncluttered and very clearheaded.  I've done a fair amount of writing in the past day or two, and it may be the stress (or relief from it) talking, but I'm noticing a difference in quality and clarity.

It's not quite spring yet, but maybe there's something to this cleaning out/fresh start business.  This nightmare of a week has turned into a pretty good one, though I will still whine about one thing:

That was one *($@)^@#*$ expensive cup of coffee.

Books I'm reading...or not.

I'm sure I'm not the only one out there who needs to steer clear of certain kinds of book while writing.  During the CODA process, I had to give up sci-fi completely, and even a lot of other kinds of fiction written by people whose style stuck in my head too easily.  I wound up reading a lot of non-fiction, especially biographies and travel memoirs, and re-reading a lot of Terry Pratchett.  (I love the Discworld books, but the style was never going to infect me.  I'm totally incapable of bringing that level of funny.)  I celebrated finishing CODA by reading John M. Cusick's excellent GIRL PARTS.*

Now, I'm writing two books at the same time.  One is a kind of companion novel to CODA, so all of the above still applies.  The other one means that I can't re-read any of the fantasy series I love so much.  Including Narnia and Harry Potter.  My soul is crying.  If that's not incentive to finish the book, I don't know what is.

What I am/have been reading recently:  A lot of contemporary YA, in particular John Green's amazing THE FAULT IN OUR STARS. (I don't really need to link that, do I?  You all have a copy?  Good.)  Also, all the Bill Bryson travel memoirs I haven't read yet (there aren't many on that list), THE MASTER AND MARGARITA again to see if I understand more of what the hell is going on the second time around, and a few reference books on plot and style I dip in and out of.

It's important to know and ready widely in your genre, but equally important to let yourself fall behind on that reading while you write.  You know, YOUR book.  The one that's nothing like anyone else's.  You can always catch up.

Mostly, though, I'm writing another book I want to read.

*And with a bottle of Bombay Sapphire.  The author made up a drinking game for me based on the book.  HA!

Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Arrrr!

I'm a recent convert to LibraryThing, but if you haven't checked it out yet you should do so today.  They've translated the whole thing into pirate-speak and I can't stop giggling.  (You can turn it off if it gets annoying.)

The hodge-podge post

Life has been crazy recently, and the past week has been a contender for the craziest week ever--in the best way possible.  I'm not quite ready to share my news, but I'm feeling bloggy so I thought I'd put a little something up here.  I was actually planning to do a "week in pictures" thing and scour the net for randomly hilarious gifs, but I'm navigating my trackpad with a finger that took a paintball to the knuckle a few hours ago, so I'm going for minimal effort here.

Instead, I will say my week went roughly like this, and 90% of it is book-related:

OMG.
OMGSOCOOLBOUNCEBOUNCE.
CANNOTBELIEVETHISISREALLYHAPPENING.
SEEINGBRIGHTEYESDESERVESMYFAVORITECOLORANDZOMG!
SOMUCHZOMGICAN'TBREATHE.

And that brings us to today, where as you read above, I injured myself in a way only I could manage.  Outside of a dance floor, graceful, I am not.  Accident prone, I absolutely am.   If I based a character on myself and documented examples of my own actual klutziness, no one would believe it.

Add in the beginnings of the plot for my next book, general awesomeness at seeing some old friends, and a trip to my favorite restaurant anywhere in the world, and it's been a really great week. 

Since I should talk a little about actual writing and stuff here, I'll say that lots of things are brewing in my head--new projects, old projects, and peripheral projects to the manuscript I've just completed.  I'm excited about writing in a whole new way now, and that's saying something considering how I attacked the creation of my MS with all guns firing.  (Literally, when it comes to the end.)  More than ever, I'm looking forward to doing this forever.  There's a quote I've had reason to share this week (which in fact I misattributed, so I will correct that here.)

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else. ~Gloria Steinem

If you feel like that, keep writing.  It's the reason we can't stop, and I know so many of us feel this way.  Write everything you can think of.  Carry a pen everywhere.  Keep a notebook by your bed and don't make the mistake I do of not being able to read the completely illegible scrawls the next morning.

So, that's kind of what's been going on with me--short on the details, I know, but stay tuned for BIG news on Monday.