And here we are at the second-to-last song from The Way We Fall‘s unofficial soundtrack, The Perishers’ “Let There Be Morning”:

This is a song about dying, but it’s also a song about making it through one more night, seeing the dawn light and hearing the birds sing, welcoming the morning, which I think makes it hopeful too. And so, to me, it’s the perfect song for the end of the novel, as Kaelyn comes to grips with everything she’s lost and realizes how grateful she is for what she still has. There’s still plenty of uncertainty (“I don’t know how/I made it ’til now…” “Will I see another dawn?”). Yet at the same time, she’s ready to meet whatever will come (“Hello future, goodbye past…” “Let there be light/Let there be morning”).

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

Click here for an explanation of the The Ways We Struggle guest post series.

I’m a little sad to say that today I’m sharing the last of my The Ways We Struggle guest posts. It’s been inspiring hearing about all the obstacles my writing colleagues have overcome, and I hope you’ve found it so too.

Last but certainly not least, we are joined by Janni Lee Simner, author of the YA fantasy Bones of Faerie trilogy and Thief Eyes, as well as the MG Secret of the Three Treasures and Phantom Rider trilogy. Janni has also published more than 30 short stories for kids, teens, and adults, including appearances in Welcome to Bordertown, Cricket magazine, and Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar. She lives with her husband, Larry, in Tucson, Arizona. Today she talks about the difficulties of letting go.

   

It’s been fascinating reading the posts in this series, because so many of them resonate with things I’ve struggled with as well: jealousy, control, imposter syndrome … things that are a little uncomfortable to admit to, but, well, one of the things about a series like this is that it reminds us all that there’s nothing we struggle with that others don’t struggle with, too.

So here’s one more thing I struggle with: letting go.

That’s related to control, but it’s not only about control. For me at least, it also means holding on to things that have nothing to do with control. It means keeping close that hurtful thing someone did two years ago, or five, or ten, long past when they’ve forgotten. It means beating myself up for that hurtful or maybe just awkward thing I said, long past when it could possibly have any effect. It means letting the past cast longer shadows than it deserves to cast over the present.

Holding on isn’t always bad, of course. It’s holding that let me continue writing during the ten years between selling my first three books and selling the next. It’s holding on that made me return, time and again, to an opening scene that I loved but couldn’t find a story for, until a decade later I finally wrote the rest of the book that became my first YA fantasy, Bones of Faerie. And holding on to what it feels like to be eleven or sixteen years old is pretty much required for telling stories with characters who are also these ages.

Like all our tragic and not-so-tragic flaws, holding on is a strength and a weakness at once. I tend to think of it as problematic when it ties me up in knots inside, or when it keeps me from moving on.

Sometime during that ten-year career gap, I realized holding on was one of the things that was holding me back.

I was holding on to three different things at once: a work-for-hire project that I was the wrong writer for; a writer’s group whose members had different processes and looked for different things from critiques than I did; and an agent who, while the just-right agent for other writers I respect, wasn’t the right agent for me or my stories. I held onto the work-for hire project for a year, trying to write the book the packager’s editor wanted. I held on to the writer’s group and the agent both for five years.

When I finally did let go, it wasn’t because I was on my third page-one rewrite of the work-for hire project, or because I left the writer’s group meetings depressed and disheartened, or because the agent had been unable to sell any of my original work. In retrospect, there were clear enough signs things weren’t working, but in all three cases, instead of making an active decision to leave, I passively waited for some clear sign that things had gotten bad enough that I was “allowed” to let go.

For the work-for-hire project, I waited until I realized the in-house editor of the project liked the same drafts my packager editor was rejecting, meaning nothing I did would ever result in a book we all accepted. For the writer’s group, I waited until we reached a point where of one of the other members was calling me unprofessional for workshopping rough drafts and refusing to outline, and even then, I took a three-month trial hiatus before leaving for good. For the agent, I waited until I wrote a book that was not only one he couldn’t sell, but one he didn’t believe in enough to try to sell.

I don’t blame work-for-hire project, writer’s group, or agent for this, at least not anymore. Because it wasn’t their job to let go for me. It was my job to step back, admit to myself things weren’t working, and either try to fix them or admit I didn’t want to try to fix them, and move on.

   

Once I left, I began selling books again, and helped start a new writer’s group, and signed with a new agent. I also began to be more actively for signs that it was time to let things go before they got bad.

A couple years later, I saw those signs very clearly, not in my writing life, but as a Girl Scout leader. After eight years, the girls in my troop were about to start high school, and they were getting busy with other things, so busy that whenever we tried to schedule an event, they’d run into conflicts. Over and over again I’d tell them it was fine if they were too busy for an activity, and over and over again, they’d complain bitterly that I didn’t understand that… they were too busy for that activity, never mind that I’d just said I did.

I finally realized out that on some level they, too, knew it was time to leave, but were waiting for things to get bad enough that they felt they were allowed to — had no choice but to — let go and move on, even if they had to generate the angst to make things that bad themselves.

I decided I wasn’t willing to let these girls, who’d become friends and who’d loved Scouting for so long, leave the troop angry and bitter. We talked, though at first they didn’t want to. We looked at our schedules. We cut back to once a month meetings, and we talked some more. We stopped meeting altogether and planned one last, grand weekend of horseback riding, and then — with tears but also with fond, not-at-all bitter memories of our time together–we let go, and doing so felt good and right and as it should be.

I remain on the lookout for those moments when I’m holding on to the wrong things, because of course I still have them. Fortunately, I also have my stories, which sometimes understand what I need to work on better than I do.

When I wrote Bones of Faerie — which became the first book I sold with my new agent — I created a protagonist, Liza, who had summoning magic she could use to call things to her. Whatever she called had to come, and it had to stay until she released it. In Bones of Faerie, that magic saved Liza and her loved ones’ lives. In the sequel, Faerie Winter, it continued to do so, but I also began exploring the problems that went with such magic. And by the third book — Faerie After, due out in 2013 — I found myself telling a story where summoning magic threatens to destroy everything and where the fate of more than one world just might depend on Liza’s ability to let go.

Looking back, I suppose I should have seen that coming all along.

View all the The Ways We Struggle posts so far.

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

Where’s your favourite writing space? Do you have one?

I do have one main writing space. I’m lucky enough that at the moment I’m able to have a whole room of my house devoted to my work, which I generally call my “office.” It’s where I do almost all of my writing, as well as other writing-related activities like posting to this blog (I’m in my office right now), answering emails and interview questions, updating my website, and so on. It’s also where the majority of my and my husband’s books (all of our fiction, and all my MG, YA, and research books) are kept. And when my in-person critique group gets together, we hang out in that room.

I actually have a video tour of my work space up on Youtube, which you can watch there (for a larger size) or here:

Of course I don’t always write there. It’s good to have some flexibility about where you can write, because you won’t always have the ideal circumstances when you need to get to work. We don’t have air conditioning in this house, so in the summer I often take my laptop downstairs and work on the living room couch (it tends to be several degrees cooler on the first floor). And during nice but not too hot weather, I like to sit out on our deck and write. I really enjoy writing outdoors when I can — maybe because it makes me feel more separate from my day-to-day life, which makes it easier to sink into the world of the story. When I’m on a writing retreat I always try to stake out a good outside writing spot. Hoping for less rainy weather here in Toronto soon so I can start doing that more often now!

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

Have a little time, so I’m finally doing a non-guest post update! We haven’t quite finished going through the songs on The Way We Fall‘s unofficial soundtrack. Number 13 is Regina Spektor’s “One More Time With Feeling”:

To me this is a song about still trying and fighting to survive, even when circumstances are dire… which is pretty fitting for the book, particularly the final section. The hospital imagery in the lyrics makes sense with the story. But mostly I love the chorus, which I can imagine Kaelyn repeating to herself over and over as she gets through one more awful day:

“Hold on
One more time with feeling
Try it again
Breathing’s just a rhythm
Say it in your mind until you know that the words are right
This is why we fight”

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

Click here for an explanation of the The Ways We Struggle guest post series.

I’m joined this week by Kirstin Cronn-Mills, author of the contemporary YA novels The Sky Always Hears Me and (coming in October) Beautiful Music for Ugly Children. Kirstin is a self-proclaimed word nerd. She lives in southern Minnesota, where she writes a lot, reads as much as she can, teaches at a two-year college (she won the Minnesota State College Student Association 2009 Instructor of the Year award), and goofs around with her son, Shae, and her husband, Dan. Today she talks about taming her Inner Bully.

   

The anthology Dear Bully has gotten a lot of press in the last year—as it should!—because the authors who wrote it are speaking back to their bullies. Bullies hate that, you know. I have a bully in my life, and it’s taken me years and years to speak back to her. What’s her name? Kirstin, but I call her The Bad Voice, or TBV. She can’t physically hit me, but her words are a punch to my gut every time she opens her mouth.

TBV has kept me company for years. Way back when I was a kid, TBV heard the questions I kept asking myself: what’s wrong with me? Do my parents care about me? Why don’t other kids want to play with me? Nerdy smart kids don’t mix well with small towns, so my self-confidence wasn’t great to begin with. Since nobody was answering, TBV decided to speak up: everything is wrong with you, of course. No, your parents don’t care about you. Other kids don’t want to play with you because you’re awful.

By the time I was a grown-up, TBV was constantly chattering in my ear. Should I be an English major? What can you do with an English major? You can’t be trusted to figure out your future. Is he the right guy for me? You’re too dumb to figure that out. And guys don’t like nerdy English majors—especially ugly ones.

You can imagine how Inner Bully reacts to the world of publishing. You’re too stupid to be a writer! You’re writing the wrong thing—nobody reads edgy contemporary YA. Teenagers hate you! Can’t you tell? That editor hates you. Librarians can’t stand you, either. It’s possible what she says is true, at least for some people. Who knows? But now I know TBV lies—bullies are great liars. And I’m not friends with liars.

Most days (though not all of them) I’m wise enough to know the little girl who thought she was awful is now a woman who understands she’s just fine. I may never win an award or make enough money to quit my day job, but I like my books, and other people like them too. I’ll keep writing, because you never know what could happen. My best-seller could be right around the corner! If I quit writing, I’ll never find out.

Now, when The Bad Voice starts yelling, I offer her chamomile-pear tear while I listen. Then I whisper some soothing words, give her a hug, and send her to a dark corner of my mind. Then I go back to my story. I was silly to trust her for so many years, but she was talking about important stuff, so I thought I had to listen. Then somehow I realized I could listen to my heart instead. That sounds so corny! But I don’t know what else to call the Good Voice. Yes, my parents cared about me. Being smart is a good thing. I’m not ugly. I make good decisions. I can figure out my future.

Flesh-and-blood bullies are bad—no question—but inner enemies can be just as awful. I’m sure I’m not the only one who lives with The Bad Voice. I just hope other people can send theirs away sooner than I could. Life is so much better without her.

View all the The Ways We Struggle posts so far.

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

Click here for an explanation of the The Ways We Struggle guest post series.

This week I’d like to welcome Julia Karr, author of the YA science fiction novel XVI and its sequel, Truth. Julia’s schooling in the art of writing came from reading, voraciously. As a young mother, reading books to, and eventually with, her daughters, she fell head-over-heels for children’s literature. While still working a nine-to-five job, after hours she can be found at home, sitting on the couch tapping out stories on her laptop, with one of several cats draped behind her and her dogs sleeping nearby. Today she discusses struggling to stand up to one’s fears.

     

Thank you, Megan, for asking me to write a post for your blog! Of course, it IS a tough subject – talking about something that I struggle with. I have to say – I have a wealth of possibilities! lol! However, I think the one that’s at the root of all struggles (at least for me) is fear.

I’ve been fighting against fears of some kind or another since I was a little girl.

The fears I face now are just as frightening and paralyzing as the bogey man outside the door fears. Which, actually, for me weren’t pretend. When I was a young teen living with my grandmother and sister we were terrorized by a stalker who would come around at night and rattle the windows, scrape on the screens, tap on the doors, and during the day he’d make obscene phone calls to us. Even with increased police patrols and a neighbor who was always at the ready with his shotgun, we never found out who was doing it.

I remember one particular night I was sitting in the living room reading and he started clawing on the screen. I stood up and screamed at the window for him to go away and leave us alone! I don’t recall if that was the end of his tormenting us – but it was the end of me being terrified. Sure, I was still scared, but I didn’t feel powerless after finding my voice.

So – I was thinking how this relates to present struggles for me and how I face down my fears (scream at the window, as it were.)

One of the biggest fears for me is that I’m not “good enough” as a writer. The struggle I have keeping that at bay comes from comparison. Comparing numbers of any variety (Goodreads ratings, Facebook fans, Twitter followers, Amazon ranking, Book Scan numbers, etc., etc., etc.) is not an author’s friend. Particularly not this author. Numbers do absolutely nothing to help you become a better writer – nothing.

My struggle is to keep away from the numbers, from reviews, from anything that might bring up a comparison (good or bad.) Because this writing business isn’t a competition. It’s a personal desire for me to put words on paper – telling a story – and to get better at it as time goes by.

I don’t always succeed, because I don’t live in a bubble. But, being aware of the challenge and recognizing when I’m getting caught up in it gives me the opportunity to step away from the toxic comparing and get down to the business of writing. Because there’s only one person I need to be a better writer than – and that’s myself.

Thanks for having me, Megan!

View all the The Ways We Struggle posts so far.

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

I’ve been pretty quiet online the last week because I’m immersed in a new project. Regular blog posts should resume before too long! I will still be posting The Ways We Struggle guest posts this week and next week, and if any major news comes up, I’ll be sure to share it right away.

Hope all’s well with all of you!

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

Click here for an explanation of the The Ways We Struggle guest post series.

This week I’m joined by Sydney Salter, author of the MG Jungle Crossing and the contemporary YA novels My Big Nose And Other Natural Disasters and Swoon At Your Own Risk. Sydney lives and write full-time in Utah while her daughters attend school and her husband keeps busy with his pediatric patients. She spends my days at my messy desk working on novels, and drinking lots of tea. She also loves reading, hiking, skiing, cooking, going to movies and rock concerts, and traveling absolutely anywhere! Today she talks about rising above other people’s expectations of what you can do.

     

This school year, I’ve spent a lot to time teaching writing workshops to kids from 4th grade through high school. In every class, there’s at least one precocious author-in-progress. I’ve met 5th graders who’ve finished novels, sophomores who possess crazy-good plots, and 6th graders who capture authentic dialogue. I can’t help praising these young stars.

Most of the kids I meet aren’t stars. I’m thinking about the 4th grader who erased every word, leaving messy marks on the page. Or the 5th grader who never quite finished anything; the 6th grader who inked pages of words, but shyly shook his head when offered the opportunity to share. And the high school junior who listened intently, but never spoke. I can’t help recognizing myself in these kids.

No one ever singled me out either. I poured words into journals, but I struggled against other’s low expectations of me.

High school classmates muttered bitterly when I won a 3rd place prize at a regional journalism conference. How could such a mediocre student win? Yet that itty bitty victory allowed me to dream, maybe I could be a writer?

I watched other students receive the kind of praise I craved throughout college. Yet, I plugged along—stubbornly—filling journals and notebooks, crafting poems and stories. I submitted a few pieces, beginning my impressive collection of rejection letters.

Later I attended workshops and conferences. No one ever singled me out. I watched agents and editors pull other writers aside. I kept writing, completing one manuscript after another. I won a few local contests, each little victory allowing me to dream, maybe I can succeed as a writer?

     

I wish I could say that publication has erased my struggle against low expectations. But editors still reject new manuscripts, agents have stopped believing in me, and I’ve received a mix of good and bad book reviews. Yet I’m still plugging away, writing new manuscripts, filling journals and notebooks.

And when I teach, I end every presentation by talking to those kids who haven’t impressed me. “You’re the only one who has to believe in yourself,” I say. “If you want to write, do it! Don’t let anyone else tell you can’t be a writer.”

View all the The Ways We Struggle posts so far.

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

I had the pleasure of being a part of two very cool events this past weekend. (I also had the pleasure of enjoying the lovely warm Texas weather — very chilly back here in Toronto!)

On Friday, I flew to Houston. I got my first thrill before I even got on the plane: I found The Way We Fall face out in the airport bookstore!

The event in Houston was TeenBookCon, an amazing conference for teen readers (as well as adult fans of teen fiction). I met with a couple dozen wonderful authors at the reception at the beautiful Blue Willow Bookshop on Friday night, which you can see pictures of here.

On Saturday we zipped off to the high school where TeenBookCon was being held. More than a thousand enthusiastic readers showed up! I was on the Dystopia Rising panel with Michael Grant and Marissa Meyer, and we had a full room every session (you can see only part of the audience below):

I may have gotten a little over-excited seeing a girl in the front row holding Give Up The Ghost during the first session. The teens asked a lot of thoughtful questions which led to some in-depth conversations about books, writing, and publishing.

And of course we had to take a picture with all the authors and the conference organizers:

(More pics from TeenBookCon here.)

The next day, I left Houston with fellow Hyperion authors Robin Mellom and Inara Scott to zip over to Austin, where we had a school event planned for Monday. When we got together for dinner after checking in, we all squeed about the incredibly lovely surprise we each had waiting for us in our rooms: a tray of treats including an edible version of our book covers!

We arrived at Hill Country Middle School in style, to a parking spot specially reserved for us:

Inside we found huge stacks of books waiting to be signed…

…as well as three teen book bloggers who interviewed us, and a large group who’d gathered to hear us talk about our books, read from them, and answer questions. They cheered when we came in! It was a great crowd. I’ve never spoken to a school group anywhere near that large before (I’ve usually just done single classrooms), but after meeting those kids, I’d love to do it again.

And now, of course, I am back home. Happy to see my husband, missing the warmth and new & old author friends. Can’t wait to visit with more of you at Rochester’s Teen Book Festival next month!

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

We’re up to song number twelve from The Way We Fall‘s unofficial soundtrack: Joanna Newsom’s “Sadie”:

This is another song that’s more about the general feeling to me than a very literal connection to the story. The lyrics talk about death (“And ’til then we pray and suspend/The notion that these lives do never end”), the unpredictability of life (“And all that I knew/Is moving away from me/And all that I know/Is blowing like tumbleweed”), and the need to hold on to what’s important to us (“And you do lose/What you don’t hold”). I can imagine Kaelyn listening to “Sadie” toward the end of the book, and feeling both reassured and saddened by it.

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

The best of what I shared on Twitter and Tumblr this week…

-Robin LaFevers talks about the many second chances in a writer’s life.

-Some thoughts on how men talk to women about food and their bodies and how that affects them.

-A whole bunch of news has just been release about J.K. Rowling’s upcoming adult novel.

-Very thought-provoking post about cover trends in YA novels and their possible negative connotations.

-A very true depiction of the intended purpose of group projects vs. the reality.

-Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 essential tips for writing.

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

Click here for an explanation of the The Ways We Struggle guest post series.

This week, please welcome Saundra Mitchell, author of the paranormal YA novels Shadowed Summer, The Vespertine, its sequel The Springsweet, and (coming in 2013) Aetherborne and Mistwalker. Saundra is also the editor of the forthcoming YA anthology, Defy The Dark. For almost fifteen years, she was the sole screenwriter for the Book of Stories, On the Road, Fresh Films and Girls in the Director’s Chair short film series. In her free time, she enjoys studying history, papermaking, and spending time with her husband and her two children. Today she talks about struggling with the feeling of being an imposter.

     

There’s a psychological phenomenon called impostor syndrome. It’s not a mental defect or disease. It’s more a condition. When someone can’t internalize their accomplishments, when they believe they’re incompetent and are just waiting for people to figure out they’re a fraud. That’s impostor syndrome, and it’s particularly potent when you’re looking at a book that’s due and hating every single word of it.

There are so many gatekeepers in publishing, and so many people trying to get past them. And the fairytale stories abound. You know, the ones where somebody dreamed a book and wrote it, and twelve months later, they’re a New York Times Bestseller. So every time I leap a gatekeeper, there’s the moment when I feel like I’ve cheated. That it was luck. Or a hole in an editor’s schedule, or my agent’s particularly silver tongue that made it possible.

I learn more craft with each book I write. Which means the more I write, the worse I am at it*. I see so many more mistakes. So many more pitfalls to avoid. The first 20,000 words are when I’m the worst impostor. Sometimes the impending sense of disaster lifts once the exposition is done. Sometimes, every single word of a novel is torment. When I look at it and know: This is the book that will make my editor quit me, my agent fire me, and ruin my career.

Then Kirkus gives it a thumbs up and instead of celebrating, I wonder how they missed the disaster on those pages.

     

I suppose it’s only fair, though. Not as often, much more elusively, there are god moments. When the book comes easily, perfectly, everything is working. When there’s a light in my soul and fire in my fingers, and I’m living every single terrible simile and metaphor for inspiration. Those moments intoxicate and entice. They don’t make up for the fraud muse, but they balance it.

There’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance. Fortunately, there’s always the impostor syndrome — waiting in the dark. Lurking beneath the stairs. Licking its chops in anticipation of the next submission, the next exposition, the next gatekeeper in the distance.

That’s what I struggle with: the certainty that I’m not good enough to publish books for a living, and the paradox that I’m still doing it. I just hope that I realize the moment that I actually start to fail. Until then, I will doubt and do it anyway. The rewards are just too great.

*Theoretically, I’m getting better; I’m just more aware. But it sure doesn’t feel that way when I’m staring at a blank page and seeing all the mistakes that could fill it before I write a single word.

View all the The Ways We Struggle posts so far.

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

Just a quick reminder: If you’re in the Houston area, you can come see me at TeenBookCon this Saturday, April 14th! I’ll be on the Dystopia Rising panel with Michael Grant and Marissa Meyer, and there are tons of other awesome authors who’ll be presenting as well. And at the end of the day, we’ll all be signing books, and I’ll have some swag on hand for anyone who stops by to see me.

Check out the full schedule here. Hope you can make it!

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

Like many authors, I get curious about what people are saying about my books. So now and then since The Way We Fall‘s release, I’ve checked out recent reader comments and reviews. It’s been great to see many of you enjoying the same things about the book that made me want to write it, and waiting enthusiastically for the sequel! And I’ve noticed that a fair number of comments and reviews include questions about the book. Things you wondered while reading, or weren’t entirely sure about.

Most of these questions, I could totally answer! But I have a firm policy of not intruding into reader spaces unless I’m expressly invited. So I thought I would create a space here, where anyone who has questions about The Way We Fall can ask — and have them answered.

Want to confirm your impressions of a character? Confused about one of the events in the book? Just curious why I had things happen one way and not another? If there’s anything at all you’ve been wondering, feel free to ask here in the comments, and I promise to respond. (And if for some reason you’d rather not ask publicly, I’m always happy to talk to readers by email.)

Note: Those who have not yet read the book will probably want to stay out of the comments for fear of spoilers.

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

The eleventh song from The Way We Fall‘s unofficial soundtrack is one I’m sure many of you are familiar with, though probably not this version — Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over”, covered by Sarah Blasko:

I love the original version of this song too. It’s been one of my favorites, for its apocalyptic feel and message of determination, since I first heard it as a kid. But I though Sarah Blasko’s rendition fit the book better. It’s a song for Kaelyn, refusing to give up, so a female vocal makes sense. And I think the stripped down instrumentation works well with the straight-forward way Kaelyn bares her thoughts and feelings in her journal.

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

The best of what I shared on Twitter and Tumblr this week…

-Agent (and author) Mandy Hubbard shares a peek inside an agent’s life on a trip to meet with editors in New York.

-Author Sara Bennett Wealer on getting and listening to critical feedback.

-Some insightful thoughts on how to know if it’s time to give up on a dream.

-Author Saundra Mitchell on why the problem of getting boys interested in reading is not about the books.

-On a different but most likely related note, author Catherynne M. Valente on the unequal balance of power between male and female voices in the writing community.

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

Click here for an explanation of the The Ways We Struggle guest post series.

Joining us this week is Jaclyn Dolamore, author of the YA fantasies Magic Under Glass, its sequel Magic Under Stone, and Between the Sea and Sky. Jaclyn skipped college and spent eight years drudging through retail jobs, developing her thrifty cooking skills and pursuing a lifelong writing dream. She has a passion for history, thrift stores, vintage dresses, David Bowie, drawing, and organic food. She lives with her partner and plot-sounding-board, Dade, and three weird cats. Today she talks about teaching your mind to recognize the positives in life, when there are so many things you could be worrying about.

     

I’m writing this post at the last minute because I’ve actually been struggling with what to write about. I first thought I might talk about my fear of flying. I’ve never liked flying, ever, but I had a flight going out of DC two years ago that hit a big rollercoaster dip on takeoff, and after that I really had to fight to regain my ability to go anywhere without losing my mind. It was particularly tested when I was asked to do a library visit in Dallas, because that meant taking on a certain responsibility to get on the plane no matter what the weather, because people were expecting me and paying me.

But then, I wasn’t sure that struggle had much of a conclusion. I’ve shoved my panicked self onto a plane, I’ve gotten better at deep breathing, I ended up with some FANTASTIC seat mates and smooth flights, I tried Dramamine and then succumbed to taking a mild dose of Xanax when the weather looked mildly scary (but turned out to be smooth anyway…hey, at least I actually managed to read half of a novel for the first time ever on a plane). I feel like these struggle stories should have a better ending than “when life gets rough, you’d better hope your seat mate is a really zen Hindu businessman, and if not, carry some pills”.

Could be worse mottos, I guess.

Then, I thought perhaps I would talk about my struggle with friendships. I’ve always had a hard time with friends. I’ve never had a best friend. I always feel like the girl everyone likes but no one likes best. But this is something I really don’t know how to talk about. Friends that I felt a deep connection with seemed to have no trouble dropping out of my life, and now I’m terribly neurotic about the subject. Plus, I’ll admit I’m not always a very good friend either. Although I can certainly be friendly and outgoing, I’m still an introvert at heart, and if I don’t feel a deep connection with a person, I usually would rather just stay home and write than spend time with them because it’s very exhausting to me to socialize with people who are anything less than kindred souls. This sounds callous and means I feel like a jerk with a lot of perfectly good people, and it’s one reason I like conferences and writing festivals better than intimate gatherings and regular critique groups–I am actually less exhausted by hanging out with a bunch of people at some huge crazy event than just one or two people. I don’t really know how to explain to people that I love BEA better than a writing retreat BECAUSE I’m an introvert.

Since that topic just remains too emotionally loaded for me, I thought maybe I could talk about my career. This has been a weird time for me. I just sold what will be my fourth and fifth books to Disney-Hyperion last year, and that’s been great. I’m not sure ANY book deal comes without some struggles, but still, the whole thing came together easily as these things go. I’ve been lucky, and I’m well aware of it. At the same time, my second and third books came out within just a few months of each other, which was surprisingly stressful. When my first book came out and not everyone liked it and sales were just okay, I got used to bad reviews pretty quickly, and they slid off my back.

     

What I didn’t realize at the time was that my coping mechanism was to tell myself that it was fine BECAUSE I was personally much more passionate about my second book, and then I thought my third book was a real leap forward as far as my growth as a writer. The first time I saw a review of my third book that said, basically, that it was awful and they couldn’t believe it was the same author as Magic Under Glass, in some ways it felt even worse than the first bad review I ever received, because my good old mental pep talk had basically been stomped on and ground to dust. When your first book comes out you have to face the idea that not everyone will like your debut, but by the time I got to book 3, I’ve been having to come to terms with the kind of author I am in general, and the fact that some people will HATE ALL of my books, will occasionally even hate me PERSONALLY (at least, what they know of me), while other people will think that my first book was the BEST ONE, no matter how much work I’ve put in to grow as a writer since then. And yes, some people will also think I keep just getting better, but as usual, those aren’t the people I think about when I’m laying awake at 3 am.

In the end I realized that what I struggle with most is my own mind. Some people have truly awful life circumstances; deaths of loved ones, diseases, injuries, loss of jobs or homes, things they couldn’t control that anyone would find to be a test of strength. So far, knock on wood, my actual life circumstances have always been good. I’ve been lucky to have many opportunities to travel (and worry about airplanes). I’ve always had a lot of wonderful people in my life, even though I keep mourning the few dear friends that drifted away from me, and I don’t always appreciate what I have. I can only remember ONE time in my life when I had no money some years ago, and that was only because I caught the flu and missed a month of work. I recovered with the next paycheck and a few months of very cautious budgeting. And yet I also can’t remember a time when I wasn’t worried about not having any money. My worrying-about-not-having-money to not-actually-having-money ratio is like 2000:1.

This year I signed up for a yoga class for the first time. I spend an hour thinking about connecting my feet to the floor, and movement, and breath, and then at the end we close our eyes and try to calm our minds and relax. It’s hard to calm my mind. I’ve gotten a little better at it with each class. I always leave feeling vibrant and happy, no matter how grumpy I was all day. My new mantra is to live like my brain is in yoga class. That might be the biggest struggle of all, but if I can get there, maybe someday I’ll be the one calming my seat mate on a plane.

View all the The Ways We Struggle posts so far.

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

(From the audiobook giveaway)

What’s the best advice you can give aspiring writers?

I often get asked this in interviews, too, so it’s obviously a topic a lot of people are interested in. I think I’ve said most of what I’ll say today before, across various posts, so this may not sound all that new. But to put it all together…

1. Read. I took classes in creative writing, I’ve scoured books on writing craft, but honestly I think 9/10s of what I know about how to write fiction well, I learned from reading it. The more stories you read, the more you pick up the different rhythms of storytelling and figure out which feel best to you. You see what’s already been done, and what hasn’t, which helps you narrow your ideas down to the ones that will set you apart. You absorb models for structuring plot and character development and theme. You get inspired.

I highly recommend not just reading, but reading widely. Go beyond the sort of books you want to write, to what are considered the best works in all different genres. Different genres can teach you different things, and the more you learn, the more tools you have in your box when you sit down to write your own stories. It also helps you break out of the tropes and cliches that emerge in any genre and look at your plot and characters from fresh angles.

2. Write. Every skill requires practice. Someone or other once said that you need to write a million words of crap before you start producing anything worth reading. I’m not sure how accurate that is, but it certainly can’t hurt. Just like practicing a musical instrument teaches your fingers how to respond to the notes instinctively, and practicing a martial art builds up your reflexes so you can block a blow without thinking, practicing writing allows the skills to become automatic, so you can focus on increasingly refined elements of the craft. How can you focus on making your dialogue sound realistic when you’re not quite sure yet how to place dialogue tags correctly? Well, once you’ve been writing dialogue for a while, you’ll have worked out the formatting so often you won’t have to think about it anymore. And a while after that, getting the dialogue to sound reasonably realistic will be something your mind just does automatically, and you can start considering how to make each character sound not just believable but distinct from the others. And so on.

(BTW, this is why I think it’s important when getting feedback on your writing, to mainly get it from people at about the same skill level as you. To continue the above example, people who haven’t yet figuring out their formatting may have trouble telling whether your dialogue is actually realistic. And people who’ve moved beyond that to focusing on distinct character voices may have trouble explaining to you why your dialogue in general isn’t realistic enough, because they no longer consciously think about how to do that in their own work.)

3. Try to write better. It’s not enough to just show up, throw some words on the page, and declare yourself done. If you’re not consciously trying to work on your skills, your writing practice isn’t going to be much different from sitting down at a piano and plunking random keys. Be aware of your goals for the story. Are you hoping to make your plotlines more clear? Your characters more sympathetic? The pacing more gripping? Pay attention to how you’re writing, and pause and consider now and then whether you think it’s working.

It’s hard for us to judge our own work, of course, because we know so much more about what we intend than any reader will. So part of writing better usually involves getting other people to read what you’ve written. Preferably people who take writing seriously and won’t be overwhelmingly impressed by the fact that you’ve finished a story at all, and people who won’t be afraid to give you real criticism. Because if they’re doing their job properly, there will be criticism. No story is perfect. Even multiply-published bestselling authors have editors telling them to drop that subplot and make this character more engaging. Hearing what’s wrong with your writing is hard, but take comfort in the fact that it’s a process everyone goes through to make their stories as good as they can be.

The most important part, though, whether you’re reading over your own story, or getting feedback on it from someone else, is then to go back and actually address the things you or they have noticed aren’t working as well as they could be. Revising doesn’t mean just fixing spelling and grammar errors — it means completely rewriting scenes, taking out material and putting new material in, rethinking plot points and character motivations — it can be as much work as writing the story in the first place! But I love this part of the process the most, because it’s the time when I don’t have to worry about whether I have a story at all. I can just focus on shaping it up from that rough draft until it’s as close as possible to the story I really wanted to tell.

(I have some more thoughts on learning to write better in this previous Reader Question post.)

4. Remember that there is no “right” way. Creativity works differently for different people. Sometimes you may hear authors you respect talk about their process as if there’s no possible way anyone could be successful at writing unless they did things the same way. This is not true. I have talked to dozens of writer friends about how they brainstorm/outline (or not)/get through a first draft/revise, and honestly, the only thing we all have in common is that at some point in there, we put words on the page, and at other points we change those words to try to improve them. Trying to follow a process that doesn’t jive with your creative style is a sure way to end up stalled and discouraged. The best way for you to write is the way that gets you excited about the writing and results in you finishing a story. Figure out what works for you, and don’t worry about what anyone else is doing.

(Note: It can be useful to find out how other writers work, and try out their processes to see if you might discover one that works even better for you than what you’re already doing. The important thing is not feeling like a failure if those other processes don’t work for you.)

5. Keep going. Writing is a tough career. It can take years to get that first story or novel published. But the one thing that’s always going to be true is you will never succeed if you stop trying. If you love writing, and you want it to be more than just a hobby, be patient. Read. Write. Work at writing better. Send your stories out there. If people don’t respond the way you’d like, remember you’re still learning, still practicing, and still improving. As long as you keep doing that, you’re well on your way to writing stories you can be proud of and others will be excited to read.

And good luck! Because that never hurts either.

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

We’re all the way up to song number ten on The Way We Fall‘s unofficial soundtrack, that being “(*Fin)” by Anberlin:

Most of the lyrics to this song don’t fit the book literally, other than the chorus with its changing phrasing: “Aren’t we all to you just lost causes?/Are we all to you lost?/All you are to them is now a lost cause/Just all of us, the lost causes/All we are is all we are.” And Kaelyn does become a sort of “patron saint of lost causes,” in her determination to find a way to help.

But mainly it’s about the mood, the feeling of desperation and hopelessness and losing faith, that Kaelyn has to fight off throughout the last section of the book (not always successfully). At times, with so many dead and still dying, and no assistance from the mainland in sight, it’s hard for anyone on the island to believe their town is more than a lost cause.

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

The best of what I shared on Twitter and Tumblr this week…

-If you notice you don’t seem to be following all the people on Twitter you thought you were, it’s probably this bug, not your memory, that’s at fault. Also good to keep in mind if you’re surprised by someone unfollowing you, as it might not have been their choice.

-Possibly the most awesome to do list ever.

-A very sweet story of a dog who adopted a stray cat in need.

-And most importantly, fan responses to the Hunger Games film proves racism is very much alive. Here’s a Tumblr post you can reblog to show your support of the movie’s casting.

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.