The summer of my sophomore year at Vassar, I worked as a nanny for a wealthy family. Their housekeeper was on vacation visiting family for the summer, but, as luck would have it, so were the neighbors. So the neighbors’ housekeeper came to work with me in the rich family’s house. The new housekeeper was a cheerful Portuguese woman in her mid fifties, and the family I worked for quickly noticed a change in their home. “The floor is glowing!” “The boys’ clothes have been organized!” “My god, what’s happened to the garage?!” I felt a bit sorry for the old housekeeper, honestly. This woman had a gift.
One day, I asked her what her secret was. “I loves to clean!” she chirped as she rapturously wiped out the sink. “I loves to take something dirty and make it clean.”
Whoa. This was one secret I hadn’t anticipated. I’d thought her secret would be something more along the lines of “I use Pledge!” I had always thought of cleaning as the kind of work you did when you had no other options. It was work to be endured, not loved. But this woman had a passion for cleaning. And so I began to Read More »
I’ll never forget how I sold The Wizard, The Witch, and Two Girls From Jersey to a publisher. I didn’t go through my agent (sorry, Ro!). Instead, I got the perfect editor for the project—Liesa Abrams—alone in moving car with no chance of escape. We were coming home from Kieran Scott’s engagement party (at which the favors were engraved pencils—the perfect gift for a bunch of writers), and I gave Liesa the usual disclaimers—you may not be interested, blah, blah, blah–and then I told her the idea. Two girls get stuck in a classic fantasy novel and have to find their way out. It would hit all of the tropes of the genre and would reference all of my favorite classic fantasy books, and would be a fun, funny adventure and a story about an unlikely friendship. She laughed and was delighted and said Of COURSE we have to do this book! and so I went home and wrote up a proposal and Razorbill/ Penguin bought it and life was perfect.
Then I wrote the book, and Liesa thought it was hilarious and we couldn’t *wait* to publish it. And then—good news!—it would be one of the lead titles for the imprint! Read More »
image by smokedsalmon
“There is a difference between a work’s beginning and starting to work.” From The Creative Habit, by Twyla Tharp.
As usual, my girl Twyla makes an excellent point. Here are Lisa Papademetriou’s 3 Stages Of Beginning A Piece Of Art:
- The first beginning: Conception. This is the moment when a thought, image, or emotion strikes you and you realize that you have something that you want to work with. This is a frustrating moment, because you know you have taken the first step on a path, but you don’t have any idea where the path leads or how to get there. Sometimes, (often)(okay, always) I have to stand around blinking in the sunlight and get oriented before I take the next step.
- The second beginning: Starting to work. We have very little control over a work’s beginning, but we can always control when we begin to work. For example, I’ve successfully put off beginning to work for several hours now. I finally had to accept that neither my blog nor my novel were going to write themselves. So I sat down and started typing.
- The third beginning: The beginning. For me, finding the proper opening of a piece is often a process Iundertake Read More »
Image by pixtawan
I always love it when someone wins a major award, and then they give an acceptance speech in which they state that they are “deeply humbled” by it.
Dude, if I won a major award, I would be deeply psyched. Winning an award is not humbling. Winning an award is the reverse of humbling. Do you know what is deeply humbling? This review: “This tale is more annoying than funny. The main characters are broadly drawn with no depth and the plot is thin at best. Although the colorful cartoon artwork is appealing, the weak writing will discourage repeated readings. Buy extra copies of Dav Pilkey’s “Captain Underpants” books or Daniel Pinkwater’s “Fat Camp Commandos” adventures (both Scholastic) instead of wasting money on this one.” That’s a review I got for the first book in a series I adapted called Monster Manor. It appeared in School Library Journal, and I was humbled all right. I was nearly humbled directly out of the writing profession.
It’s very, very hard to pick yourself up after a lousy review. I can read twenty positive reviews, and one negative review will devastate me, even if it’s from a fifty-one year old woman (not my target Read More »
So I met these really fascinating, intelligent writers at NESCBWI: Ansha Kotyk, Laura Pauling, and Jennifer Carson. I spotted them right away because they were wearing these T-shirts:
Write dangerously, then revise.
That reminded me of something that I always say, which is: “Write to your strengths, then revise to your weaknesses.”
But what does that mean? Okay, the first thing you have to understand (and this is explained in greater depth in my presentation, Maximum Potential, which is downloadable on this site) is that there are two kinds of writers: character writers and plot writers.
You know that you are a character writer if your critiques tend to say that your characters feel fully fleshed out. That their inner lives are well-imagined. On the negative side, you may also hear that not much happens in your story, that it doesn’t feel active. You know that you are a plot writer if your critiques tend to say that your plots are very engrossing, that every scene leaves readers hanging on the edge of their seats. On the negative side, you may hear that your characters don’t feel fully fleshed out, that the reader doesn’t feel like he or she really got to know the people Read More »
photo credit: Simon Howden
It started with A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. This is a book I read almost every year. (It’s really touching and hilarious—I’ve never seen a cinematic or theatrical version that does it any kind of justice.) Two years ago, I paused on Mrs. Cratchit’s “twice-turned gown.” “What the heck does that mean?” I wondered. So, naturally, I turned to Google to solve this problem. It’s really what the search engine was created for. That, and for finding out whether celebrities are dead.
Okay, so it turns out that a “turned gown” is a dress that started to look shabby, so the owner took it apart, turned the fabric onto the other side, and re-sewed it, so that the fabric that used to be on the inside is now on the outside, looking fresh. A “twice-turned gown” is a dress that has now been taken apart and re-sewed again. In other words, the original shabby side is now the “fresher” side. So it’s a very shabby dress, at this point. Both sides of the fabric are worn.
Last summer, I made a project of reading the collected works of Edith Wharton, often referred to as “the Last Victorian.” In Read More »
I always love going to the New England Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators conferences. It has all the elements: Books, coffee, and friends. I just get to sit around listening to people I admire talk about writing, and pretending that it’s work. Then I go out and get an iced coffee. What a scam!
I had the pleasure of going to a presentation by Jo Knowles and Sarah Darer Littman on finding the truth in your writing. Jo pointed out that people often make the mistake of making their work too autobiographical. “Life includes a lot of irrelevant, boring stuff,” she said. So cut that. Take the nugget of what’s true and use it, then change up the details. Sarah suggested that it’s often valuable to remember a time you felt a certain strong emotion, and then try to recall the details. Sometimes, you can come up with a very telling detail that will deepen the emotional resonance for the reader. The example she gave was of finding her great aunt’s hairbrush, and the grief she felt looking at the hairs of the now-gone, still beloved relative. Then she read from her work Life, After, showing how one of her Read More »
The other day, I heard a comic saying that no matter how much money you make, you always just need forty more dollars. “If I had forty more dollars, then life would be perfect!” But then when you get the forty dollars, it turns out you need forty more than you thought. I couldn’t remember the comic’s name, so I tried googling “forty more dollars.” The name didn’t pop up. Instead, what I got was thousands of internet requests for forty more dollars, so I guess what he was saying is true.
It’s true in art, as well. We’re always able to project just a little bit into the future, to that moment when life will be perfect. “Once I finish this screenplay.” “Once this book gets published.” “Once I have my first show in a gallery.” But then, when we get what we thought would make everything perfect, it turns out that we think we need just a little bit more. “Well, I finished the screenplay, now I need an agent.” “Well, the book sold to a publisher, now it needs to sell a few thousand more copies.” “Well, I was part of a group show in a gallery, but things Read More »
Credit: Kevin Lamarque – Associated Press/screen grab: textsfromhillaryclinton.tumblr.com
(OMG–is she texting about ME????)
“You know, if I didn’t know you, and I overheard you giving your order, I’d probably make fun of you via Twitter,” my friend Amy Gutman told me the other day. Amy is a mad blogger, tweeter, and facebooker, and I have no doubt she would have skewered me via any and all social media at her disposal. Because, you see, I am That Person.
I am That Person who goes into a restaurant and explains that she is allergic to gluten, dairy, soy, egg, shellfish, and yeast, and then proceeds to concoct some kind of far-fetched special order from the menu. But, as Amy was quick to point out, “But you’re so totally not That Person.” Except that I am.
I really, really HATE being That Person. For most of my life, I was the girl you could count on to always be up for ice cream, or pizza, or Ethiopian food. I loved trying new things, and often simply ordered whatever my server told me was the best thing on the menu. It took me years to accept the limitations on my food, because I didn’t want to be That Read More »
10. Need to check facebook ot see if people have responded to the post about neighbor’s cat.
9. Youtube.
8. Just not feeling it.
7. Time for chocolate break.
6. Laundry must be tamed immediately!
5. Busy planning 2013 vacation.
4. Too sunny.
3. Got that song stuck in my head again.
2. People Magazine will not read itself.
1. Hangnail.
What are your reasons for avoiding your art? Are they as lame as mine? Share them below–then go get to work!
