For the last several years, I’ve taken some time over the holidays to write down my goals. As I went to add my 2016 goals (survive with my wits intact?) to my trusty black Moleskin, I took a moment to peruse my goals for 2015 and 2014. I had big plans to follow-up with this exercise—even going so far as to schedule check-ins in my Google calendar—so you know I meant business. The check-ins happened sporadically, because life. The goals themselves were audacious: get a novel published, find a true and lasting love, make bank (or at least more than piggy bank) at my day job. And lookie here! Ring on the finger, galley on the shelf, healthy-looking saving account. I’m not bragging I’m telling you, if you do nothing else this resolution season: write it down. It’s no secret (and it’s definitely not The Secret) it’s just the simple fact that writing something down makes it real: a sort of binding contract with yourself. So write it down, bonus points if you tell a friend and make them hold you accountable. While you’re at it, tell ME! How are you taking on the world in 2016? 

Overdrive

 

Somewhere between the blitz of pie, family, and football of the long Thanksgiving weekend, I hit a wall. Writing my weekly blog post—something I usually look forward to—felt like an insurmountable task. And though the months bringing us to year’s end have flown by, suddenly the weeks until Christmas stretch long before me.

2016, you see, is meant to be my year. Easily the two biggest events of my adult life thus far—the publication of my first novel and my wedding—are respectively slated for February 23rd and August 20th of 2016. With all of that coming at me, I’m gearing up, trying to prepare myself for changes that might not be entirely possible to prepare oneself for. I go back and forth between a heady mix of joy and adrenaline and a giddy nervousness that I will somehow muck it all up.

Fortunately my fiancé and I have hired a miraculous woman named Michelle to help us plan the wedding. But the bigness of such a step still looms. I temper the anxiety by remembering that at the end, I’ll be a married to my beloved, so even if my dress gets drenched in red wine, an uncle makes an inappropriate toast, and someone’s underage cousin gets drunk and pukes on the dancefloor, it will all turn out alright.

The book release—happening in February—is in the foreground and God knows what state I’d be in if I didn’t have so many other distractions (including a busy full-time job). It’s a great advantage to me that I’ve worked in books all these years, but knowing everything that I could be doing to support the book creates a constant thrum in the back of my mind that I’m not doing enough. There’s an ambient fear that I am letting my moment pass me by, that just when the crucial bend in the road appears, I’ll find myself asleep at the wheel.

Does it sound like I’m complaining? I don’t mean to. There are many days I wake up overcome by the good fortune that’s befallen me. But good stress is still stress. The closer you get to what you want, the higher the stakes become.

Underneath the noise there is this: all my life the one thing I’ve been sure of is that I wanted to be a novelist. And now there is something else I’m sure of—or someone rather—and he’ll be beside me every step of the way.

 

 

NaNoWriMo Chapter Four: Keeping the Faith

Here it is, the last week of NaNoWriMo. That went by fast didn’t it? If you’ve been keeping pace—or at least continuing to write, even if you’ve fallen behind—you probably have a lovely pile of pages of by now, and are perhaps barreling towards a completed first draft of your novel. The daily task of writing seems more daunting in the abstract than it does once you’ve made a habit of it, doesn’t it? Once it’s in your daily routine, it seems as though the words accumulate like so much snow falling outside your window.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it, Nano-ers, if your goal is to get your book published someday, the road ahead of you is long. You likely have years—perhaps many—ahead of you before you’re going to see your book in print (by traditional means anyway). I know this journey, and so I hope to end my little NaNoWrite series with some words of wisdom to keep you company on the difficult, but ever so worthwhile, road ahead.

Understand What You’re Up Against

I’ve written numerous times about a conversation I had with the writer Polly Devlin when I was twenty-five. She and I had become friendly through my work at Random House, and after at last confessing my writerly ambitions to her and noting that I was have trouble making progress on my novel, she enumerated the many challenges my life posed to accomplishing this goal. “You live in one of the busiest, most distracting cities in the world, you’re working full time in a stressful job, and you are absolutely terrified, I can see it. Well, let me tell you my dear,” she continued, “that fear isn’t going anywhere, so make peace with it. And of course you need the job. What time do you go to bed at night?” Around midnight, I told her. And what time did I wake up? Eight or so, just enough time to dress and get to work on time. Well, could I go to bed an hour earlier, get up in the morning to write? Somehow, this had never occurred to me, I’d always been an avowed night owl. “Let me tell you what will happen if you don’t. You will sitting here in ten years, wondering where the time went, novel still unfinished.” She said this with kindness but also with the certainty of an accomplished older woman who had no time for any excuse I might offer her.  Reader, I got up at 6:30 the very next morning. We may all dream of some isolated garret in which we can write in peace, but this is not the world we live in. You probably have a day job, friends, perhaps children, a life full of obligations. Find a way to carve out some time in your real life rather than fantasizing about more time magically appearing. It may not be as much time as you’d wish to spend on your writing, perhaps it’s only a half an hour a day, but if it’s regular, it’s enough.    

Enjoy Your Apprenticeship

Gifted writer and wise advice-giver Cheryl Strayed said something I loved during the most recent Dear Sugar podcast. She was asked what advice she’d give to her twenty-eight year old self. She recalled being obsessed with the idea of getting published while she was still in her twenties. She now knows, of course, that she had a ways to go; her first novel Torch would not be published until 2007, making Strayed nearly forty when it came out. She told the audience that she would tell her twenty-eight year old self to chill out, that had many years of being an apprentice to the craft left. In many ways, we writers stay apprentices of the craft all our lives: and this is a beautiful thing. Something my mentor, Pat Geary, told my senior seminar class (a group of bright eyed twenty-one year olds) has always stuck with me. She told us we should feel lucky to be writers, because it was something—barring loss of mental faculties—that we could do forever. Reading and writing are truly lifelong passions: unlike athletes or dancers, you don’t age out of your chance to make it as a writer. And perhaps the view from the road is a bit better after you have some success, but make no mistake, it is the same road.

Find Your People   

You may have noticed that in my both of my above points I reference conversations with mentors—a crucial element of you writing team, especially when you’re young and all this writing business feels so life and death. Writing can be lonely, and though you must indeed learn to enjoy your own company as a writer, the group of people you surround yourself with is crucial. Finding a mentor, fellow writers to share work with, the right agent, the right editor—these are the people who will bring your best work to fruition. Just as importantly, you have to know how to separate yourself from the people who are not helpful to you. Not every friend who is also a writer, for instance, will make the ideal reader for you. Not every professor is made to be a mentor, and not every agent is the right one to represent you. Be choosy with this group, because much depends on them. Finding people you can share your unfinished work with, and trust that they’ll help you improve upon it, is as rare as finding true love.

 

 

 

 

NaNoWriMo Chapter Three: Finding Momentum

Here we are Nano-ers (Nanophites? Nanophiles?), the third week of November. It went by fast, didn’t it? How is it going out there? Are you keeping up with your word count? Getting sleep? Staying healthy? Are your friends and family still speaking to you? I hope so. I’ve been thinking about you. We’ve loved hearing from you over on the Girl Friday Twitter (just a reminder that it’s not too late to join our awesome contest for a chance to win a free edit with GFP, details here).

If you’re still in it now, you’re serious. The lightweights dropped out after one week of trying to write over a thousand words a day, but not you, you came to win, you mean business. Even so, dear reader, you might be feeling like you could use a little wind in your sails, right? I mean, the days are getting really short, and work is really busy, and Thanksgiving is right around the corner. And it turns out that fifty thousand words is a lot of words (never mind the thirty thousand or so more you’ll probably write to finish out your first draft, you can worry about those in December). But this is what it’s all about, my friend, getting a whole bunch of words on the page and then weeding out a lot of those and replacing them with others until you have 80,000 good ones. Give or take. Maybe you made it through the past two weeks on sheer adrenaline, but that can’t last. What you need is momentum, something you can ride all the way to the shore. So how do you keep it up?

Let it Go. Let yourself write bad sentences, bad paragraphs, bad pages. Revel in the filth of your own worst writing! No one needs to see this (or should see it, really) until you’ve spent many months polishing what you joyfully, blithely spit out onto the pages today. Writing with abandon, rather than with precision, is the whole fun of working on a first draft, so let it fly! 

Don’t Edit. I repeat do not edit. Editing is a wonderful and necessary skill to have as a writer, but it is separate from writing: and the former can stifle the later in a heartbeat. Tell your inner editor to take a seat for now, you’ll see her sometime early next year, and boy will you need her. When I’m editing a draft of my work, I always print it out. I find it easier to get some space from it this way, and it’s a little trick to tell my brain, “Okay, Editrix, you’re up!” But she’s off the clock during first draft time, she’s at the bar drinking martinis with the copyeditor and the cover designer, and I don’t want to disturb her. She’s really sassy when she drinks.

Be Kind. Now is the time for encouraging self-talk. The voices of doubt can get loud at this point, trying to keep you from every finishing a draft. Maybe you read the first paragraph of this post, and thought, “Oh no! I’m behind on Nano! I’m not the real thing. I’ve let myself down, I’ve let everyone down!” But take heart! There is still time. And if you end up with 40K instead of 50K (or 30K for that matter), you still win as long as you keeping going. The world is going to tell you no plenty of times with your writing, you’ll learn that soon enough if you haven’t already. Use this time to practice telling yourself yes.

 

 

NaNoWriMo Chapter Two: Building Good Habits

What do you need to make it as a writer? Talent? Ambition? Discipline? An enormous trust fund that allows you to quit your day job?

Sure, you need those things (okay, not the last one, but it couldn’t hurt). But whether your version of “making it” is getting through your 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo this year, getting a six-figure book deal, or anything in between, you definitely need good habits, because without them, none of the rest of these things will matter.

What I love about NaNoWriMo is that its very concept dispenses with any precious notions of what it means to write a book. NaNo does not concern itself with airy-fairy visions of the muse alighting on your shoulder and inspiring greatness; the only goal is to reach the word count. Technically this means that you could write the sentence “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” five thousand times in a row and complete the NaNoWriMo challenge, though we all know that doesn’t end well for the author. (On a related note, if you ever find yourself saying, “You know, if only I could get somewhere really isolated and quiet where I didn’t have any other responsibilities, I could definitely get my novel done,” you should probably watch The Shining.)

We can safely assume that most NaNoWriMo participants are not taking a sabbatical from their jobs to write their drafts. They are also, presumably, still eating, sleeping, and attending to their children, pets, and anyone else whose survival depends on them. But for a month, they are making time in their everyday lives to write. And a month is long enough to build some really good habits. No one is suggesting that you keep up the pace of 50K per month, but think of November as boot camp for the rest of your writing life. You’re doing something to break yourself in that will bolster you for years to come.

I write for an hour a day, a not terribly unmanageable or impressive amount really. The hard thing is the “every day” part of the equation. That’s the part that gets the words on the page and that carries me through the crappy days and into the one where the muses do decide to show up. It’s the part that keeps the story fresh in my mind so that dialogue comes to me while I’m walking my dog, characters reveal themselves as I’m in the shower (not literally, thank god), and plot twists occur to me just as I’m falling asleep.

For years I’ve been writing in the mornings before I go to work. I do this so I don’t have to decide to write. I’m just on autopilot: coffee, breakfast, some fiancée and dog snuggling, and then butt in chair for one hour. I’m not some kind of madwoman who just likes getting up early, but over the years I’ve come to enjoy this little habit around which my life revolves. The first thing I do every day is something that is mine. The earlier hours are the easiest to control. Once you are on e-mail and out in the world in those post-8:00 a.m. hours, anyone can make a demand for your time and attention.

Maybe mornings won’t work for you—perhaps it’s your lunch hour or the hours before bed that will serve you best. Whatever you do, find something that will stick. You may be able to get through November on sheer adrenaline (and coffee and bourbon), but when the calendar turns to December, your habits are what will keep you going.

Don’t forget to enter GFP’s NaNo Contest! Details here.

 

NaNoWriMo Chapter One: Getting Motivated

Even though I’ve never officially participated, I’m a fan of NaNoWriMo because it celebrates something I love: writers supporting each other and building community.  

Writing is a lonely journey as it mostly involves being by oneself, butt in chair, typing away. One of the best arguments for workshops—either in an MFA program or otherwise—is that they can be a great place to pick up mentors and writing buddies. Beta readers and writing groups have their perils but a sense of connection is important to seeing you through the many years you’ll likely be working on your book before anyone in the professional realm (agents, editors) gets involved. Having a second (perhaps third and fourth) pair of eyes on your work is crucial, but moreover, you need the support, the shoulder to cry on during the difficult moments of writing your book, and the perhaps even more challenging process of trying to get published.

In celebration of NaNo this month, I’m going to be sharing my thoughts on four of the pillars of my writing life: getting motivated, building habits, finding momentum, and keeping the faith. I hope to inspire you and make you feel less alone: which is, incidentally, what I believe all good writing does.

I’ll start with a simple question: why bother writing?

No really, why? There are a million things you could do that would be more immediately gratifying than sitting in your chair making things up, including but not limited to: hanging out with your friends, exercising, sleeping, cuddling your dog, catching up on Empire, or reading a book that some other hard working soul has already written. Here is a harsh truth for you: no one will care if you don’t write today. Unless you are currently under contract, it is unlikely anyone will even notice. I say this not to be harsh—I’m on your side—but this is the bargain.

Your reason for writing doesn’t have to be eloquent or noble, it’s okay if you never even tell anyone else what it is. It just has to be deeply meaningful to you or it won’t see you though the hours and weeks and years between the beginning of your writing journey, and that magical transformative moment when someone else—publishing professionals, readers—will actually care whether or not you write today. And even then, you will need to care ten times as much, because even if you become a bestselling, prize-winning author, everyone’s life will go on if you never write another word, I promise you.

I should say here too that your reason needn’t have anything to do with commercial success, recognition, or even readers. Perhaps you want to write because it helps you sort out your thoughts, or to record your memories for future generations. These are fine reasons, so long as you feel inspired by them. Writing has excellent side benefits, after all: it can make you more empathetic and thoughtful, and in our overstimulated beeping buzzing world, it can carve out space for those two rare treasures: quiet and solitude.

Know why you write. Answer the question, and hold onto that answer in the days to come, days that will test you with the world’s indifference. Think of this as your personal mission statement, the few crucial words to carry you through as you make your way to the 50K mark.

 

Reflections on #WhyIWrite

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The other night I spent some time going through childhood photos looking for a picture my publisher had requested. My mom and I drank wine and reminisced over bad hair, bad clothes, and good memories. I came across the above gem, which is a photo of me in fifth grade with my Reflections (an arts contest run by the PTA) trophy. I had just finished reading my winning poem in front of an audience that probably numbered around forty, but felt like four hundred. This past week, I’ve been glued to the #WhyIWrite hashtag, so the memory felt especially apropos.   

I wrote winning poems several years running in middle school and somewhere there is a small collection of these nifty trophies. The poems themselves were really little stories, little scenes of the larger goings-on of my imagination; they were the beginnings of my fiction writing. I went on to write plenty of poetry throughout high school, a mortifying amount of it about boys. I had a lot of feelings. The poetry thing didn’t stick, and it’s been many years since I’ve written a poem, which is probably a good thing considering that internet exists and they might not all remain tucked away in notebooks as my childhood poems are.

Seeing this photo, I remember how I nervous I was to read in front that audience: made up chiefly of the parents of other winners, I’d imagine. I also remember being really stoked on that matching shirt, velvet choker, and headband combo I’m rocking. And I’m reminded too that it was always there, the desire to write. It was always the subject I excelled at in school, the thing I most looked forward to. Throughout my childhood, she tells me, my mom would find miniature legal pads (which we for some reason always had boxes of) filled with mysterious dialog and snippets of scenes. As far back as I can remember, there’s been this stream of it—the parallel world that my fiction originates from—going on ceaselessly in my mind alongside my real life. It was only as I grew up that, as all children do, I came to understand that my experiences were not universal. Somewhere on the road to adolescence, others tuned this imaginary world out. I couldn’t tell you exactly where or why because I never did. Those of us who don’t, I suppose, become artists or eccentrics or both.

I’m grateful for the circumstances that allowed me to pursue my writing—the immense privilege of educated, encouraging parents and the resources for books and time to read them, education and time to write them. I often stress with students and clients, the necessity to keep the business of being an author separate from the art of being a writer. The latter is so very personal. The truth is, a great many things that are written ought not to be published, but it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be written. Because the act itself is beautiful and important; a measure of grace that should be encouraged in all.

 

Chasing Thirty Redux

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In the fall of 2011, I made a list: thirty things I wanted to do before I turned thirty. I was twenty eight at the time. I’d just gone through a breakup that I was more relieved than sad about, I was living with my parents after a big move back from New York, and was feeling generally stalled out. Nothing was happening with my career, nothing was happening with my writing, and I no longer had the distinction of living in New York. So I started a blog, which I pitched as a column to a site I’d just begun reading and loved: The Gloss. I chronicled my adventures and reflections in a weekly column called Chasing Thirty, which I’ve now collected and made available as an e-book that you can download for free on Noisetrade Books.

I had great fun with the list and the column. During that year, I travelled to Argentina, joined a salsa dancing team, published one of my collecting-dust novels on the site in serial format, learned Spanish, and hosted a fake bachelorette party, among other adventures.

Re-reading these columns four years later has been an entertaining and somewhat sobering experience. It is no exaggeration to say that the very best and the very worst moments of my life have all taken place between now and when I began writing the column. I lost my sister, I met the love of my life and got engaged, I sold a novel, found a job I love. When I re-read these columns, I see harbingers of all of these things and am deeply grateful for the friends, family, and co-workers who’ve been by my side through the highs and lows.

I didn’t do all thirty things on the list. But I can see now that it was never about that. It was about figuring out what I really wanted and finding a way to put that out into the world. To say it aloud, to write it down. Writing the weekly column forced me to reflect on what it meant to be me in that moment. What did I fear? What did I hope for? Who was I and what did I want?

Looking back on the experience is a great reminder that when you feel stuck, the best to do is to start moving and keep moving. Even if you don’t find yourself going in exactly the right direction, you’ll be going somewhere, and sometimes, that’s all you need.

 

 

None of it will be perfect, all of it will be wonderful

 

The above are my words to live by for the next year. Just as life tends to throw its worst at you all at once, it also sometimes heaps so many simultaneous blessings on you that you’re not sure what to do with yourself. As anyone who reads this blog likely knows, I have my debut novel coming out next year and as of a couple of weeks ago, I now have another large, joyful occasion to plan in 2016: a wedding.

As my Facebook page helpfully reminded me, I got my dog, Oliver, almost exactly three years ago. The beginning of my life with Oliver was a marker of sorts for me, the moment I began to emerge from a time when my life was at its worst: with an all-encompassing family tragedy, a stalled career, and a train wreck of a love life. Of course the latter two things were influenced by the first, but it certainly felt like nothing could go my way circa 2011/ 2012. Things slowly got better and then, over the last year and change, took a turn for the awesome. I met my now fiancé, Derek, I got a new agent, and then a book deal. Work started going like gangbusters. Suddenly I was batting a thousand.

I’m not naïve enough to think that good times are here to stay forever and always—that’s not how life is. But as far as game-changing happy events go, true love and a book deal are two pretty big ones.

Anyone who has planned a wedding or a book launch can tell you that they can be as crazy-making as they are joyful. There are so many details, and if you let it, the pressure to do it all perfectly can rob you of the joy of the moment. Hence the mantra.

I never had a particular fantasy around what my wedding day would look like. I’ve had thoughts about what I liked and didn’t like about other people’s special days during the dozen or so that I’ve attended over the last few years. Since Derek and I started talking in earnest about getting married, we’ve discussed some of the details, like where (his parents’ house) and when (next summer). But I suppose I’ve always felt more strongly about the things I didn’t want at my own wedding: no ball gown, no bouquet toss, nothing that says “princess”.

On the other hand, I’ve thought a great deal about what life as a published author might be like: spent nights awake writing my acknowledgements, fantasizing about being interviewed by Terry Gross, or just imagining the simple moment when I walk into one of my favorite bookstores and behold my own work.

Planning can be fun, it can fill your days with dreamy anticipation, but it can also transport you out of the present moment: the one in which, miraculously, your lifelong dream is in the process of coming true, and the man you love is your fiancé. And after all the books have been signed and the canapes have been eaten and the pictures taken, there will be the man and the book: the things that matter most. The things that are here to stay.    

  

PNBA from the Other Side

Last year, I attended the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association’s annual tradeshow on behalf of Girl Friday. I moderated a panel on building book communities and sat on a second panel about reading and influencing. Last year was my first time at the conference and I was amazed by the sense of community. Here were folks from Northwest booksellers and libraries big and small—along with sales reps from publishers of all sizes—and everyone seemed to be friends with each other. This was the book community as its best. I’ve attended a number of writers’ conferences with GFP over the past couple of years and while they’re a lot of fun, the atmosphere is entirely different. Many of the attendees at those conferences are writers hungry for contact with agents, publishers, and anyone else who might shepherd their work to the top of the proverbial pile. I love talking to fellow writers at any stage, but this dynamic often creates an unfortunate atmosphere of “us and them”. (Note to aspiring writers: if you think that foisting your manuscript on an unsuspecting agent when you see them a conference is an effective strategy, be advised, it is not.)

This year I attended the conference as an author with my effervescent Simon and Schuster sales rep Christine. I spent the bulk of Saturday hanging out by the S&S booth chatting with booksellers and librarians about Losing the Light and signing galleys for folks to add to their overstuffed totes. One bookseller told me she brought a tiny bag with what she needed for the trip, and her biggest suitcase to cart books home in. Getting a haul of free books just never get old.

Not long after I arrived I was introduced to a bookseller from Powell’s (the mecca of Northwest bookstores) and found myself in the transcendent moment of being asked, for the very first time, to sign a copy of my own book. I signed many more copies throughout the day, and by the time I left, had exhausted my supply of galleys.

Chatting with booksellers and library folks throughout the day, I heard many incredible stories of all the creative ways they interact with their communities. There were tales of book clubs and French clubs and pairings with local restaurants and wineries. One owner of a small bookseller told me about the older gentleman who comes into the bookstore each and every day. “We sent him a card when his cat died,” she told me, “we were so sad for him.”

I thought how lucky the communities that these bookstores belonged to were to have them. That sense of community and knowledge—not only of the books they carry but of their particular patrons—is something that can never truly be replicated online. As easy as it is for readers to purchase a book they want with the click of the button, helping them figure out which book they want is more complex than ever. In our ever-expanding world of reading options, the flood of content we all contend with, the presence of a trusted source to place something in our hands and say “read this” has never been more crucial.

Long live the bookseller. 

First Comes Love

What is the most important element to writing a book? The one thing you must have?

Is it talent? Knowledge? Marketing chutzpah? Dedicated writing habits?

All of these matter a great deal but they’re nothing without passion.

As my colleague and friend Jenna pointed out in a post on the Girl Friday blog not long ago, the writing process is a long one. And the publishing process—that of bringing the book you labored so hard to create to the world—makes it longer yet. Combined, it can feel relentless and endless: a process that almost certainly takes years, perhaps many of them.

Being a writer is a life’s work. It takes years of practice and study (also known as reading) to hone your craft. Being an author is another deal entirely: this is a the business end of books and many people who write books—memoirists with one extraordinary story to tell, subject matter experts, politicians—are not writers primarily. But one thing all authors must share is an abiding passion for their book.

The good news is that you’re not entirely alone in this: you can and should enlist many people to help you along on your journey. Right now for instance, between my agent, my editor, my in-house marketing and publicity team, my hired publicist, and various industry friends that are offering their support (god bless them), I have a veritable village working with me to bring my book to the world. And that is a beautiful thing. Part of the dream of landing a traditional publishing deal is that other people are investing in your book because they believe in it. Some things didn’t change so much post book deal—I still get up to write in the mornings, I still go to work, I’m still me—but this was one huge thing that did. As I said to a friend recently: after being the only one carrying the lonely torch of my writing aspirations all these years, suddenly having other people care about my book—not about me but about the book itself—is a revelation. In this way my writing life feel markedly different.

And yet.

I continue to care more than all of them, and that’s exactly as it should be. Being a writer is tough stuff, it almost certainly involves quite a lot of rejection and disappointment before any kind of real success can be found. And life will always try to crowd writing out. I’m busy, you’re busy, we’re all busy. Can we just agree on that? America is too busy and too obsessed by being busy, so it’s not likely to change anytime soon. This is a topic for another day—but it’s a certainty that you will have many demands on your time other than writing. So what will bring you there? What will inspire you to wake up earlier than you need to? Devote hours of your weekend? The world is indifferent to whether you write or not, I promise you.

And this is the thing you can never outsource. Even if you’re one of those authors I mentioned—the non-writer authors—you still need to have a passionate drive to see your story told. The author is at the molten core of any book project: and if they lose steam at any point in the process that Jenna so elegantly laid out? That project is doomed.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how many experts you hire, how much fancy software you purchase, or impressive degrees you amass: You absolutely must feel the love.  

 

 

The Wild Horses of Overwhelm

I have this particular image that comes to mind when my life starts to feel out of control. I’m on a horse galloping off through a field. I’m not sure where I’m going or if I’m coming back, the crucial thing is, I’m getting away from everything. On a horse. There are often other horses with us, a stampede of sorts, and we are getting the hell out of there. The horse is usually chestnut or black: not to be confused with a white horse or the accompanying prince, the fact that I am the only human in this fantasy is central.

When this image starts popping up, I know I’ve hit a wall. Because, while I do love horses, I don’t truly wish to leave any part of my life behind. I love my work, my life, and most definitely my prince. But sometimes it’s suddenly just all too much.

The wild horses are a consequence of the hyper-drive that I spend a lot of my time in, the escape fantasy that emerges from the desperation of not knowing how to slow down. One minute, I’m so into it. I want to be a bad, boss bitch and do all the things. I’m leaning in, I’m daring greatly, working and writing, eating, praying, and loving my heart out and then BAM! Wild horses.

Maybe the horse imagery doesn’t do it for you, but my guess is there isn’t a person reading this who can’t relate to this feeling of hands-in-the-air I give up. We live in a stressed-out, demanding, overwhelmed kind of world. A lot of these factors may be out of our control at any given time. Here’s a little four-step process I use to sort through what is:

 

1.      Make a list.

Stress can be most pernicious when it’s a nebulous black cloud following you everywhere you go. So write down everything that is stressing you out. Maybe it won’t look as bad once you have it all down on paper, maybe it will look worse! Deep breath! That’s what the next steps are for.

 

2.      Ask: What can you delegate?

“If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself” Ha! Words to die by right there. Don’t be a martyr to your own inner control freak; mine tends to reach for the wheel the more stressed out I get. Have the humility to ask for and accept help from your partner, your co-workers, your friends, whomever.

 

3.      Ask: What can you let go of?

If you’re life feels like a closet that’s bursting at the seams with a whole lot of nothing to wear then it’s time to do some sorting. Much like those jean shorts buried in the back your closet, there’s bound to be something on your list that is neither rewarding nor necessary. If so? Toss it!

 

4.      Cut yourself a break.

I’ve realized that this busy year ahead is the perfect time to ditch my habit of going into a downward spiral when I’m feeling stressed out. I simply don’t have time for the pouting and doubting and self-recrimination that I’m apt to go into when I get really overwhelmed. What better time to learn to be kind to myself?

  

How do you cope when it’s all too much?

 

The Dream Lives

 

Walking to the Atria offices from the subway last Thursday to meet the team who’d be working on my book, I was suddenly struck that this, exactly this, was what I had worked so hard and held out so long for. I was an author now.

There are many ways to bring a book to the world—from self-publishing to hybrid to traditional presses small and large—and at Girl Friday we work with people every day who are making ingenious use of this dazzling array of options. But when I dreamed of being an author—when I was little girl, when I was a teenager, when I was a college writing major, and most of all when I was a twenty-five year old getting up early in the morning to write before heading to work at the Random House building in midtown—this was the dream. Me in a snappy blue wrap dress heading to a sleek office building in Manhattan (Simon & Schuster in this case) to meet with a group of bright, enthusiastic twenty-somethings who’d be working on my book; followed, of course, by a fancy lunch with my lovely editor.

These details, and all the ones to follow—the book launch, the tour, the parties to celebrate—matter for the same reason our thousand little traditions around getting married matter. It’s not that the flowers and the dress and the ring and the pomp and circumstance are what make a marriage, but the rights of passage are still important. They let us pause, look at where we are, mark the important passage of a dream realized.

Meeting the team at Atria was surreal. I’ve spent ten years working, in various capacities, on the other side of the table. Listening to them talk about the book, remark on the characters and the cover, ask me questions about my influences, threw me for a loop. Logically, I knew they’d read it but still my gut reaction was: how do you guys know all of this? It was the first time I’d been in a room full of people I’d never met who’d read my book. If I’m lucky, I suppose this will happen many more times, but this was the first, and it felt miraculous.

When I came by the offices the next day to pick up a galley hot off the presses to take with me to a dinner, I was nearly out of my mind with glee. It looks like a real book now, nearly the final thing. I barely resisted the urge to shout to the security guards: You guys! It’s my BOOK!

I vividly remember watching authors swan through the halls at Random House, with a strange aura of importance around them, and thinking someday that will be me. And now—many years, disappointments, and rejections later—incredibly, wonderfully, it is.     

Cover Reveal!

I couldn't be more thrilled to share the cover for Losing the Light! It feels utterly surreal to see my name on something that looks like it belongs to a real book: and not only that, a book I I would immediately pick up if I saw it on a table at a bookstore. Where it will be, in about six months time. 

The months of waiting for your debut novel to come out are strange and wondrous: with every step in the process--the copyedit, choosing a title, the first pass pages--inching you ever closer to the dream you've been holding onto for all these many years. 

In addition to my cover, I have another fun piece of material to share: a video that my friends over at Book Country put together for me. Enjoy! 

Life Unplugged

Point No Point, BC where I spent three days with no cell service. 

Point No Point, BC where I spent three days with no cell service. 

There are times when you want a vacation, and then there are times when you need one. When you’re likely to end up curled in the fetal position in the corner or bursting into tears at the post office for no reason if you don’t take one.

For me, the perfect vacation is a mix of a little adventure, a lot of reading, some great food, and zero connectivity. It used to be that going out of the country would automatically mean you were disconnected, but now with free WiFi in every café, it takes a little more discipline.

Reader, I’m not here to tell you that I took a vacation and discovered the evils of social media. I love social media! Twitter forever! But study after study shows us how addictive it is, and it’s healthy to break away once in a while and reassess your habits.

Itchy Trigger Finger  

The first day of my vacation, I was sitting in an armchair reading and noticed that the mint from our little window box had grown so wild that it had gotten caught in the doorway, making it look as though it was ready to take over the apartment. Ha, I thought, I should Instagram that! This wasn’t the last time I caught myself thinking in social media-ready bites. This isn’t a bad thing, I need this skill for work, but it made me realize how deeply my work life and my personal life are intertwined at this point. Like many of us, I use social media not for one particular thing but for a mix of connecting with friends and family, clients, and other people in the great jumble of work and leisure that the book world at large is to me.

Take a Look Around

I noticed my tendency to reach for my phone the moment that I was otherwise unoccupied, when I was waiting for a friend or eating my breakfast alone in my kitchen. Instead I stared out windows, people watched, and eavesdropped. Oh the things I learned about the love lives of the twenty-something girls sitting next to me while I was waiting for my boyfriend at our favorite pizza place! She broke up with Carl twice but at least the second time he didn’t send out a mass text to her whole family. It’s so embarrassing that her mom still invites him to dinner whenever he’s in town. God Mom. (NB: what twenty-something dude is running around with the name Carl?).

No Distractions

Without my phone, and all its many portals to the wide world, I was without distractions in a way that I’ve grown unused to. I had occasional moments of feeling disconnected in an unpleasant way, like everyone might be at a party I hadn’t been invited to. But mostly I just felt more relaxed: I wrote in my journal, I took pictures just to have them, to put them in a frame on the wall maybe. And whatever thoughts came, I let them come—joyful, anxious, dark—they washed over me.

Now that the detox is over and I am back online, I hope to learn to use these things better. I missed tweeting about books, and I can’t wait to logon on light up some of the authors I read over vacation. (#amreading! Er…#wasreading!) But there’s a lot of social media time I spend that is far less justified: perusing the wedding pictures of a high school classmate that I could not for the life of me produce a meaningful memory of, for instance. I want to keep the good, but ditch the junk.  

What do you notice when you log off?   

Bumbershoot!

 If you live in Seattle, we probably don’t have to tell you that Bumbershoot is a big deal around here. The iconic music and arts festival is in its forty-fifth year and draws over 100,000 people every Labor Day weekend. The live music often draws the most buzz (you can find this year’s lineup here), but the festival also features a spectacular array of comedy, theatre, dance, film, lectures, and literary and visual arts.

This year, GFP is sponsoring a program on the Words & Ideas stage, and we couldn’t be more pumped about our lineup. Look how excited Kristin and I are in this video.

 

By the way, if you’ve ever wondered what our Seattle headquarters looks like, there you go.

 

Here’s a shorter version of the video. I wanted to share this mostly so that you can see the sassy face I give Kristin when I pass her the proverbial mic. And no, I have no idea why I made that face. It took us a few takes to get this—strange things happened.

 

I’ve included all the details of our lineup below so you know where and when to find us during the festival. We’re all going to be running around trying to get you to contribute to our crowd-sourced novella and to play conjunction Twister with us. You can purchase tickets here. Hope to see you there!

 

“Parenting with a Past with Michelle Tea and Jerry Stahl.” Two writers discuss their journeys from life on the edge to life as devoted parents. 5:30 p.m., Saturday, September 5, in the Charlotte Martin Theatre.

Michelle Tea is the author of multiple books and founder of Mutha Magazine. Her newest book is How to Grow Up: A Memoir. Jerry Stahl is a screenwriter and author. His newest book is OG Dad: Weird Shit Happens When You Don’t Die Young.

 

“Scary Feminist with Peaches, Chelsea Cain, and Mandy Stadtmiller.” Three iconoclastic women delve headfirst into sex, gore, and feminism. 5:30 p.m., Sunday, September 6, in the Charlotte Martin Theatre.

Chelsea Cain is a New York Times bestselling author of horror novels that turn the genre on its ear. Her newest book is One Kick. Peaches is a pop culture icon. Her latest project is the book What Else Is in the Teaches of Peaches. Mandy Stadtmiller is a writer and comedian. She is the editor-at-large at xoJane and is host of the News Whore podcast.

 

“Writing the Northwest with Timothy Egan, Brian Doyle, and Jamie Ford.” KUOW’s Marcie Sillman will lead a discussion among three award-winning authors on the role of place in their writing and how their disparate backgrounds influence their take on the Northwest. 5:30 p.m., Monday, September 7, in the Charlotte Martin Theatre.

Timothy Egan is a Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times contributor and the author of seven books, including The Big Burn. Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine and the author of Mink River. His newest book is Martin Marten. Jamie Ford is the New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. His newest book is Songs of Willow Frost.

 

Treat Yourself

Meet Bianca. 

Meet Bianca. 

 

When I got my book deal last fall, it was naturally a cause for celebration. There’d been years and years of tears, angst, and rejection that had preceded that phone call from my agent Carly, telling me we had an offer.

For a good ten minutes after I put the phone down, I couldn’t stop crying: tears of relief, of joy, of the particular type you cry when the thing you’ve longed for so hard and nearly lost faith would ever happen happens. I hugged my co-workers: who popped a bottle of champagne during the one o’clock meeting in my honor. I called my mom and dad and boyfriend. Later I called a number of friends who had been reassuring me for years that this day would come. I went out to dinner with my boyfriend to our favorite restaurant where yet more champagne was had. It was a great day. So yes, I celebrated. And then, as quickly as I could, I got back to work.

There’s plenty of work that goes into a book once the deal is made, and perhaps even more crucially, I rededicated my efforts to working on the next book. I know all too well what a potentially perilous time the debut book release can be for an author: that thrilling and destabilizing mix of anticipation and fear. Writing is the thing that has always kept me sane; I knew I’d need it now more than ever.

When I saw Judith Curr, president and publisher of Atria, give the keynote address during the San Francisco Writers Conference last February, she made some comments about goal-setting really stuck with me. She advocated being specific about goals and celebrating each milestone along the way, rather than gritting your teeth and losing perspective. She told us that she buys herself a piece of jewelry every time she has a big success, to remind her of what went into it.

I had always planned to do the same when I got my book deal. I’m not much of a jewelry person, but there is one piece I’ve always coveted: the Cartier Love Bracelet. The bracelet actually plays a role in my novel and I’d always imagined that once I sold the book, I’d buy myself one. I envisioned it dangling delicately from my wrist as I typed, reminding me of the journey I’d been on, inspiring me to continue on when I wasn’t feeling so hopeful. But once my advance check was received and stashed away in my savings, taxes begrudgingly paid on it, I just couldn’t do it. The bracelet is obscenely expensive—which is sort of the point, to buy myself something I would normally abstain from—but the money felt too loaded, it felt like I’d worked harder for that money than every other dollar I’ve earned in my life combined.

Then a couple of months ago I got an email from my editor that the audio rights to my book had been sold to Brilliance Audio. I almost didn’t know how to process such news. The idea that something could happen with my work without me having to hustle for it was incomprehensible. And there would be a second smaller advance to boot! Unlike the original advance money—which I felt tempted to convert to gold bars so that I could look at it and keep it forever—this felt so random and unexpected that it was more like winning money from a slot machine than earning it. This money I felt okay spending.

But the bracelet still didn’t feel right. Much like my main character Brooke, I’ve changed a lot during the unfolding of this book. When I was living in New York, the Cartier bracelet would have been just the thing. But now? I wanted something that could take me places, that could help me appreciate how far I’ve come just to end up right back where I started: Seattle.

It turns out the cost of a Cartier bracelet will buy you a really nice road bike. And a week ago, I became the proud owner of a Bianchi Impulso. Feeling the slick carbon frame fly underneath me on my inaugural ride with my boyfriend this weekend, I knew I’d chosen well.  It might have been the best money I’d ever made, but it also feels like the best money I’ve ever spent.  

Ten Lessons from #TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter

When I was a creative writing major in college, I got my first taste of the bafflingly obnoxious way that some people respond to a pronouncement of writerly ambitions:

“Don’t worry,” one bro a friend and I met an L.A. bar told me, “I had a bullshit major in college too. I turned out fine.”

Reader, I assure you, he did not turn out fine.

This was an egregious example but many well-meaning (ish) people seemed to fret about what I would do with such a fanciful degree. Did I want to teach? No…I wanted to write. And hey! What do you know, a decade after graduation, I use my degree every day of my life. So there.

One fantasizes that getting a book deal will stem the tide of this mystifying awkwardness. At very least, if one becomes famous for it, people will be respectful of the profession, right? Oh, sadly not, as last week’s hilarious and cringe-inducing hashtag #TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter on Twitter proved.

As a public service message to all, here are ten things you should keep in mind when talking to writers:  

1.      We don’t like to work for free any more than you do: 

2.      We don’t need to hear your book idea…

3.      And we definitely don’t want to write it for you: 

4.      This IS our job. We get paid for it (see above): 

5.      Buy the book cheapskate. This is how we make a living (see above): 

6.      Wait, you do know how to read right?

7.      That’s so funny, because we have totally dabbled in brain surgery! 

8.      Why didn’t WE think of that?

9.      If you can’t say something nice…

10.      Let us go fetch you a gold star, BRB: 

 

The Cool Author

 

Last week, a writer told me an agent story that is the stuff authors’ nightmares are made of. The details of this story are always similar: after toiling away on their novel for years, a hopeful author summons all of their courage to send their work into the world. They send off query letters and wait. Then something incredible happens: an agent falls in love with their work. And it’s a match! Hurray! Then for whatever reason, the agent ghosts. Perhaps they reappear with some vague information and apologies about their absence, but ultimately, the result is that the author’s work is never properly submitted. This process can take months or years to unfold while the author waits it out as this writer had: too polite to draw the line with the flakey agent, too scared to risk the chance they’ve been given. They’ve done their research, they know how hard it is to get an agent: what if they can’t get another? Maybe flakey agent will come around.

“I tried really hard not to bug her too much,” the writer told me, as she recounted the tale of not one but two flakey agents that had put her through the ringer.

None of what happened was this writer’s fault, but she’d accidently become a doormat after getting caught in a diabolical trap so many of us find ourselves in, that of trying to be the “Cool Author”.

There is a brilliant passage in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl that had women round the world nodding their heads. It concerns that mythical being of post-feminist pop culture: The Cool Girl. 

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.”

This resonated hard with so many of us, whether we’ve played the Cool Girl or not in previous relationships, we know the trope all too well. We’ve surely hit up against the expectation of it, and her equally legendary counterpart: the Crazy Girl (alternately known simply as That Girl i.e. “I don’t want to be that girl.”). It’s a false dichotomy: be Cool lest everyone think you’re Crazy.

The Crazy Girl in her extreme incarnation is the stalker, the nut job, the stage five clinger, the jealous, vindictive, obsessive nightmare woman. Of course this woman, though rare, is out there, though usually far less actually dangerous than her male counterpart. Some people are crazy, some of them are women, sure. But the Crazy Girl is more often used as a shaming tool to ensure that women don’t express their needs and wants in a way that will make a man uncomfortable, or to, heaven forbid, call him on his bad or childish behavior. Still, we all fear this label.

I’ve noticed that many writers, male and female, similarly fear being the Crazy Author. Now, just as some Crazy Girls exist, so does the Crazy Author. I have met a handful that truly earned the label in my many years working in publishing, and the thing about the Crazy Author is—much like the Crazy Girl—they are neither aware that they are being the Crazy, nor are they terribly concerned about being the Crazy, they’re just running with it. They berate you for not doing things exactly as they wanted, they yell and cry and throw temper tantrums and tell their agent to call your boss. They call you on weekends, there is no spot on NPR or rave review that will satiate them. They are impossible to please, ego-driven, nightmare humans. Everyone in publishing has a couple of stories. No one wants to be the Crazy Author, because the Crazy author is the worst.

Much better to be the Cool Author, the one everyone goes the extra mile for and thinks “books like this are the reason I work in publishing”, the author who sends flowers to the assistants, and treats to the staff, and that everyone in the office gets excited about when they stop by.

This is a fine aspiration. But, just as in romantic relationships, when the desire to be Cool instead of Crazy, clouds our judgement to the point that we endure bad treatment or don’t speak our mind, (“Whatever you guys want! I don’t mind! It’s only my treasured novel that I spent ten years on, but I’m easy! I’m cool!”) it becomes a problem.

My advice? Be good to the people who work on your book. Most of the agents and other publishing folks I know (and I know many) are some of the kindest, hardest working, brightest, most passionate people I’ve ever met. It’s why I stay in this industry despite its foibles. But if you do get a bad apple, don’t stand for it. You have a right to be treated fairly and respectfully; you have a right to expect trust and good communication from those you work with. Whatever you do, don’t trade your dignity for Cool.  

 

 

 

 

More Human than Human

 

Last week there was a happening in book publishing. It came in the form of a newly published novel from Harper Lee, who has gone these many decades shying away from the limelight, never seeking publication for any work her beyond beloved 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. The circumstances surrounding the novel’s publication are extremely shady, but that’s another post altogether.

TKAM happens to be the favorite book of one my fellow Girls Friday, Leslie Miller (Lam as we all call her). She wrote a post for the GFP blog last week about the fervor over Go Set a Watchman and, in particular, what it “reveals” about iconic hero Atticus Finch—a character Lam herself was so affected by that she named her eldest son after him.

As she put it in our conversation about the hullabaloo at the office, you would think someone had discovered damning evidence about a presidential candidate rather than a literary character who—much as he may have been inspired by the author’s actual father, much as he’s become a cultural icon—is not actually, you know, a real person.

But we could be forgiven for thinking he was, couldn’t we? The books I really love, the ones that stay with me for years after I’ve read them, are usually ones that have caused me to suspend disbelief to the point that I do, on some level, feel that the characters and worlds they create are real. Not flesh and blood, but real in some even deeper way, spiritual sense. I still think about Briony from Atonement and Esperanza from The House on Mango Street and wonder what became of them after I left them. Because those books touched something beyond the rational, it’s why I loved them so much.

In a world where the images and impressions of our real life public figures—our politicians and celebrities and sports heroes—are managed and obscured to within an inch of their existence, it makes sense that we’d feel closer to our fictional heroes: the ones who hide nothing from us, who offer their whole selves for our judgement, our education, and our comfort. Maybe they feel real because, on one level, they are.