Sara Ryan

That’s right.

Portable. Affordable. Featuring sexy, sexy blurbs from Ms. Lauren Myracle and Ms. Jacqueline Woodson, and a very clever use of typographical ornaments on the back cover.

You know you want it.

Also! To make this post about just a bit more than shameless self-promotion, via Ellen Kushner, a meme that comes from fanfic:

If you could force me to write anything, what would it be?

From my inbox, a question from a 17 year old: “I was wondering if you could give me advice on how to get things published.”

This seems like a straightforward question, but it isn’t. So I have a bunch of answers.

First, some places to send your work:

• Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. I won one of these when I was in seventh grade. I got a dictionary. I still have it. The latest deadlines are coming up QUICK, though. Like, tomorrow. Or 1/9, in some states. So get on it.
• Push Novel Contest. Related to the Art and Writing Awards above. The gold medal winner will get editorial help from Scholastic and the winner’s manuscript may be published.
• Teen Ink. “Offers some of the most thoughtful and creative work generated by teens and has the largest distribution of any publication of its kind.”
• Cicada Magazine publishes a mix of teen and adult writers. The link is to submit work for the latest creative challenge.

A couple ways to get your work out that you control yourself:

• Make a zine. Then trade it with other folks who make zines.
• Play in another author’s world via fanfiction and post it online. (N.B.: If you want to write fanfic about my characters, I will be very flattered, but I will not read it.)

A workshop you might be interested in, if you write science fiction, fantasy or horror:

• Alpha. “Learn about writing and publishing. Meet other teens who share your interest in writing speculative fiction. Talk about short stories, novels, and films. Have your submission story critiqued. Brainstorm new story ideas, write a first draft, receive feedback, and rewrite. Attend readings by the authors. Do a public reading. Learn about submitting for publication, and send off your story at our manuscript mailing party.”

In case you’re thinking, “But these don’t count — I mean, like, real publishing,” let me assure you that many, many “real” writers got their start in one or more of the venues above. See also Justine Larbalestier’s essay, “Too Young To Publish,” and also her clarification.

And one more answer, related to what Justine says in her essay: Don’t be in a hurry to publish. I would not have wanted to hear this as a teen, but seriously. Trust me on this. Don’t be in a hurry. Read. Write. Live.

I may yet write something substantive with reflections re: the date ending in a different digit, but I have reason to suspect that if I do, it will be melancholy, and right now, I’d rather go for frivolity.

So let me tell you about my dumb problem. No, really, it is a dumb problem.

I have playlist block. Specifically, I have workout playlist block.

I know there are fabulous songs out there that would help increase my heart rate on the elliptical trainer or get me through one more set of curls.

Yet I end up resorting to songs that have been on my workout mix since said mix was on cassette (seriously): Beastie Boys, Fishbone, Ramones, Dead Kennedys, Misfits, Red Hot Chili Peppers. Etc.

And it’s not that I don’t have newer music! I do! Modest Mouse, Franz Ferdinand, Eagles of Death Metal, Franz Ferdinand, M.I.A., the Gossip, Okkervil River. Etc.

But when I scroll through my library, I’m paralyzed: is this song fast enough? Will it sound good next to that one? “Just put a lot of songs on; if you don’t like one, you can skip it,” says practical Steve. But! But! Which songs??

Guide me, Internet friends. Favorite fast workout songs? Songs that start slow and get faster are good, too.

Or rather, passed.

If the first day of the year portends the year itself in miniature, 2009 will include festivity, friends, sleep — punctuated by peculiar half-remembered dreams — and then quiet time for writing. There are worse omens.

Happy New Year, y’all.

Chau asks:

Is being an author financially “safe”? Does being an author carry risks that other fields do not? I suppose what I’m asking is, “What is the life of an author like”?

In reverse order, again:

What is the life of an author like? This is almost an impossible question to answer, because every author (and every person) is different. But here are a few things I’ve noticed that either happened or became much more pronounced after I’d been published:

• It’s a lot harder to take in stories without taking them apart. With any kind of narrative, anywhere I encounter it, I’m nearly always double-tracking: getting to know characters and following the plot, but simultaneously thinking about structure, stakes, how quickly the conflicts are established, the rhythm of the prose. It is far rarer for me to simply fall into a story. This isn’t a phenomenon exclusive to writing — I think similar things happen whenever you acquire sufficient knowledge/passion about a subject. When I was serious about theater, I’d double-track at every performance I attended: lighting, set, and costume design occupied as much of my attention as the actors. (Actually, this still happens sometimes.)
• You develop an awareness of your audience. (Hi, folks!) This is simultaneously wonderful and terrifying. Wonderful because hey! People are reading your stuff! And sometimes they completely adore it! And tell you! Terrifying because as soon as you have an audience, you also have a set of expectations. Was your first book about unicorns? If your next book is about zombies, you will hear about it from the disappointed unicorn partisans.
  • Caveat: This process may be different for folks who got an audience before being published traditionally. Fanfic writers, webcomics folks, zinesters, bloggers, vloggers, others, what do you say?
• Your ideas about what “success” means keep changing. Before I was published, being published was my sole goal: the fence to jump, the rock to scale, the Hellespont to swim. Once I was on the other side, though, I saw nothing but more fences, more rocks, more mythologically significant bodies of water to cross. I’m not saying you’ll never be satisfied (or maybe I am?), simply that the goalposts are always moving.

Does being an author carry risks that other fields do not? Yes. Obviously, unless you’re doing, say, reporting in a war zone, the physical risks to life and limb are minor. This is not mining, or heavy machinery operation, or farm work, or firefighting, or combat. But there are other kinds of risks. Friends, family members, and lovers will see themselves in your work. They may be flattered, but they may also be deeply hurt. Either way, you may not have had them consciously in mind at all when you created those characters or situations. Also, as a writer, you spend a lot of time in your own head, which is not always a pleasant locale.

Is being an author financially “safe”?

Seriously, no. Financial security is extremely unlikely as an outcome of a writing career. Lots of authors have day jobs, partners who support them, and/or a lot of debt. Especially in The Current Economy ™. But if you’re serious about writing, the bleak financial prospects won’t make a difference.

As always, I welcome additional thoughts and questions!

It’ll be continued light posting here for a little while as I hunker down and try to use the weather to encourage productivity. Enjoy whatever holidays you celebrate.

Sporkalicious (whose username I admire) asks three questions: “how do you go from writing an idea for a story to writing the finished product? and also, how do you manage to do it without worrying that it’s really a stupid idea or that someone else has already done it?”

I’m gonna respond to these in reverse order.

• If someone else has already done it. Depends on what level of “it” you’re talking about. Quite a lot of people have written about vampires, for instance, but it should not stop you from pursuing your own unique bloodsucking dreams. If, however, you find yourself inspired to write about a peculiarly sparkly and brooding vampire whose object of desire is a clumsy high school girl, that would perhaps be more accurately described as fanfic. Which is totally fine. As a matter of fact, I think writing fanfic, in addition to being fun, can be a great way to familiarize yourself with an author’s voice, and figure out via reverse-engineering what aspects of the author’s work you find especially appealing. Just don’t try to publish it somewhere other than a fanfic archive. Also fine: combining ideas previously used by others to form something new. “It’s like Harry Potter… BUT IN SPACE!” (Harry himself is something of a mashup of British boarding school stories and high fantasy.)

• If it’s really a stupid idea. Other writers who are reading, back me up on this: it is extremely rare to write something and NOT be convinced, at some point, that it is epically stupid. And by “it” I mean not just the original idea, but each individual detail of character and situation that you have developed. You second-guess yourself and think maybe you should just give up. But if you let yourself get hung up worrying, you end up never finishing anything. Heed the wisdom of Anne Lamott, advocate of shitty first drafts (that link there is a PDF, btw — thank you, Professor Morales, for putting the excerpt online) — get the words down first. Worry about fixing them later. Weird Al agrees. So does Lynda Barry. (And if you haven’t read Bird by Bird or What It Is, I recommend you do so as soon as possible.)
  • Caveat: the questioning that comes from initial, paralyzing self-doubt is distinct from the sorts of questions you ask yourself when revising. Once you’ve got a draft to revise, you can and should ask questions: whether an action makes sense for a character, if an incident would be stronger if it happened earlier or later in the story, and even if — yes — that one scene is just really stupid. And I’m not gonna lie: sometimes it is. If it is, either you cut it, or you stare into the middle distance, trying to remember why you thought it was so important in the first place, and if you’re lucky, that leads you to figure out how to express the ideas more clearly.

• From an idea to a finished product. Persistence. And here is a hard truth: even when you have that finished product, revised and polished to the best of your ability, it will probably not be awesome. But working through the process means your next story will move some incremental step in the direction of awesomeness. My artist friends talk about doing hundreds of bad drawings before you get one good one. A similar principle holds for writing.

I have a couple more questions to answer (and am happy to answer more if y’all have some!), and I’m gonna combine them into one post:

What’s the one (or a) misconception most people have about writers or indeed the ‘writing process’ that bothers you or annoys you?

It’s actually a misconception — or at any rate, I think it’s a misconception — that’s held by a lot of writers.

If Thou Art A Serious Writer, Thou Shalt Write Every Day. When I see a fellow author make this pronouncement — and I’ve seen it many, many times — it makes me wince.

I don’t write every day. It feels a little like coming out to admit that. I wish I did, so part of that wince comes from guilt. Clearly, I must not be Serious Writer. Yet I know that I am, and I also know that some days, what with things, I don’t write.

I do think it’s important to write often. Stories don’t finish themselves, and novels certainly don’t. And if you go a long time without working on a particular project, you may forget details of character and plot, and what you meant when you wrote that one note to yourself.

But some days, writing just doesn’t happen. Sometimes you need to get out of the house with friends, go to the gym, consume cultural products instead of striving to produce them, and/or do the damn laundry finally. You can beat yourself up about it (and believe me, I do — as my previous post makes clear) or realize that if you don’t experience existence away from the keyboard from time to time, you won’t have much to write about. Which leads to the second question:

Where do you get all the ideas for your books? I’m always getting stuck half way with no idea how to finish my books, any advice?

“From life” is far too simple an answer, but it encompasses everything: from the ecstatic and painful events in your own life and those of your friends, to the cell phone conversation you overhear on the bus, to the song you can’t stop listening to, to the poem that made you think of that girl, to the odd book you’re studying, to the headlines in your blog reader. It’s all material.

But how do you finish? I don’t know. As I wrote in my last post, I always struggle in the middle of a project — especially a novel — and don’t know how I’m going to get out. I firmly believe that you don’t ever learn to write books; you learn to write the book you’re writing. When you start your next book, then you have to learn how to write that one.

One semi-practical tip: sometimes, if you know what you want the end to be, writing it before you’ve figured out the middle can give you a point to aim for. I’ve been known to write the breakup before the hookup.

Other thoughts?

Zoe asked me to write about how I balance my full-time job with my writing career. Here are some ways, and I’d love to hear more thoughts from those of y’all who are also balancing writing (or drawing or music or theater or…) with another job.

1. Always, always carry a notebook. You can’t control when you’ll have an idea for a new project or suddenly see how to solve a problem in a manuscript, so make sure you’ve always got a place to jot down some notes. I’ve gotten better about this over the years. Very occasionally I still have to resort to cryptic scribbling on a receipt, or the back of a meeting agenda (ahem), but usually, I’m prepared.

I also think it’s important for this notebook to be dedicated to writing projects, and not used for anything else. Here’s why. Let’s say you’ve decided you’ll put all your writing notes in your personal journal, because after all, you are a fully integrated person and you can’t, you know, compartmentalize yourself, man, your writing comes from your HEART and your HEART is in your journal.

So you flip open your journal to note down what you’ve just realized needs to happen right after the swordfight scene, and the first thing you see is the intricate dissection of a recent relationship drama, or the nearly illegible, yet compelling, evidence of your latest middle-of-the-night gnawing anxiety attack — and before you know it, that idea is gone. I am all for keeping a journal, too — but in the immortal words of the Offspring, you gotta keep ‘em separated.

2. Have work dates. Work dates with friends who are also writers allow for simultaneous social interaction and productivity! The key to this strategy, of course, is to keep the former from overwhelming the latter. My best work dates happen when we go to a coffeeshop and agree to declaring a break at a specified time, like, say, a half hour or forty-five minutes after we begin. Then we talk for maybe ten minutes, maybe as long as fifteen, then put our heads down again and work for another half hour, forty-five minutes. Repeat until everyone’s too jittery to work more, or our energy has given out, or some combination.

3. Between jobs, rest and ‘reboot.’ I don’t do this every day, but I find that if I’ve had a challenging day at work and I know I need to do a lot of writing in the evening, it helps to take a short nap, or at least lie down and close my eyes, before I open up my laptop. In extreme cases, I will try to fool myself into thinking that I’m starting an entirely new day by showering after my nap. And then drinking some coffee. Which tends to lead to rapidly accumulating sleep dept, but, um, well. It’s something I do.

4. Write short pieces as well as long ones. As my patient readers know, I am not the fastest gun in the west. Doing shorter pieces means not only that folks will have things to read from me between novels, but also that I get the satisfaction that comes from completing a project. When I’m working on a novel, it’s impossible for me to judge how long it will take. At some point early in the novel-writing process, I always think the equivalent of the optimistic generals at the beginning of the First World War: “Ah, it’ll all be over by Christmas.” And then I find myself in a trench, wearing an ill-fitting gas mask and dodging shrapnel, and it seems impossible that I’ll make it out alive. It is an extremely good idea, when you’re in that trench, to climb out and write something that you can finish. This even works, on a smaller scale, with blog posts.

5. Don’t beat yourself up. This is one of those “do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do” pieces of advice. I am constantly aware that my friends who don’t have day jobs are publishing more frequently. I am constantly worried that I’m not fast enough, that people will forget me between books, that I’m not getting enough done. BUT. I try to remember: I care about both careers. My work as a librarian is rewarding, too. And publishing is not a race.