The Fine Print

In case you missed it, there was a bit of a dust-up earlier this week over an opinion piece by Sarah Mesle featured on the Los Angeles Review of Books site.  I won't recap the entire article--go read it and all the comments here--but the gist is the author moaned about the good old days where books saw the successful transition of boys from happy childhood into powerful manhood and wondered just what contemporary YA books might be offering boys; whether the role models found in characters like Edward Cullen and Jacob Black, both "barely-contained monsters," are the best we could muster nowadays.  And, yes, predictably, a lot of people weighed in.  A few even had good things to say.

I'm not exactly joining the fray, but it seems to me that, time periods and conventional notions of masculinity and societal expectations aside, this is another of those proverbial tempests in a teacup: a lot of fru-fru hand-wringing over nothing.  So some of the boys in some books are beasts, and others are worried about their masculinity, and still others are confronted with terrible situations and make bad choices--and so what?  There are so many books out there, you can find examples to bolster just about any argument you want to make.  I can think of some fine examples of contemporary middle grade and YA lit--Gary Schmidt  and Patrick Ness jump to mind right off the bat--where boys are neither beasts nor angels, and many of the adults aren't too shabby either.  

To be quite frank, however, when I digested some of Mesle's misgivings, one thing that really surprised me: no one mentioned genre--and genre's everything.  Strip away the twinkly vampires and slavering wolves, and what you've got are Jacob's hunky six-pack and Edward's soulful eyes.  What you've got is a YA romance, pure and simple, and one that any person who's spent any time with bodice-rippers instantly recognizes.  I have no idea what Stephanie Meyer was thinking in terms of the guys when she wrote the series, and it doesn't really matter because she hews to the demands of the genre.  Nearly all romance revolves around does he or doesn't she, will he or won't she?  The choices are frequently bald and somewhat stereotypical; the men and women are types: Darcy's a prideful guy with a heart of gold; Willoughby's a scoundrel; Marianne's willful and intolerant; Jane's mother is a fluttery idiot--and so what?  I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that Jane Austen was as completely unconcerned with whether her male characters provided young men with appropriate role models as Nora Roberts is about whether any guy's going to pick up, say, Dance Upon the Air, and decide that, yep, a girl needs a smack now and then.  All Austen wanted was to get you to root for Jane and Darcy--and sell her book.  Whether you're talking Nora Roberts or Jane Austen, offering role models is completely beside the point.  You write the characters your story demands, and that's no less true for Meyer who--I just bet--was mainly about showing her readers a good time.

I disagree completely with one person who commented that it was "hardly unfair to ask literature to shine a light on the way gender is changing..." or redeem masculinity.  Say what?  Why should literature have to do any of that?  I don't know too many writers who approach a book with a mission in mind.

Besides, was anyone worried about this was I was a kid and there really wasn't young adult literature per se?  I grew up reading classics, sure, but also tons of science fiction (the YA lit of my day).  For the most part, those books were written by guys for guys and about guys--and I didn't care.  At all.  I also don't recall anyone getting all worried that literature was somehow failing to give me suitable female role models to manage the transition into adulthood.  Or maybe people were worried, but me being a kid, they didn't tell me about it and I had, oh I don't know, parents and teachers and other adults as role models.  Now that doesn't mean that I didn't want to grow up to be Captain Kirk's girlfriend (albeit I had superpowers and frequently saved the ship); armed with my trusty blaster, I played endless games of Lost in Space (although, yes, I admit it: they always picked me to play the mom and I remember being so focused on making dinner for Will and Dr. Smith after a hard day of fending off aliens).  But those obsessions don't seem to have done me any irreparable harm nor do I believe they told me anything about how to be a young woman.  What they afforded were types to slip into and identities to try on--and discard. 

So I read my share of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and George Eliot and Frank Herbert and Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Greg Bear and Anne McCaffrey and Lois McMaster Bujold and . . . Well, I won't bore you with the list because it's a long one.  But my point is that while I read classics which were stories of girls principally worried about marriage and their reputations, I also devoured more contemporary books which were, with only a few exceptions, either profoundly pessimistic meditations on the fate of humanity or about young men out to kick some serious alien butt--and a few young women who were, yes, ready to fall in love, not overly concerned with their nails, and still plenty capable when it came to saving the planet, mussed hair notwithstanding.  And I read about some splendidly evil men and women, too--because beastliness is, quite frequently and sorry to say it, very entertaining.


Sorry, but read the fine print of my job description: no book has to do or be anything more than it is, a private fantasy cooked up in a writer's head and made public.  The only obligation of any literature and art is to entertain, and not one whit more.  All this concern about role models or the lack thereof ignores the fact that whatever any writer puts on paper says something far more about the author than it does society.  Meyer made her guys as she did because she liked them that way, and those characters fit the needs of her story and its genre.  Ditto Collins; ditto Rowling.  Ditto me.  

Maybe this benighted view means I'll always be a hack or something and never do or write anything important, that's any kind of beacon, but turning up the wattage isn't in my job description either.  Books do not have to instruct or offer social criticism; books do not have to shed light on anything.  If they do or can, great.  But, in the end, books are entertainment; readers crack the spine with the expectation of becoming someone somewhere else; and the only obligation any writer has is to tell the very best and most entertaining story she can.  It is what every reader should and has the right to demand.    

I Want To Be A Spark Plug.

by A.G. Howard

Note: Despite the title and the picture below, today’s post is not about spark plugs.

But it IS a fitting analogy for an epiphany I had early on in my writer’s journey. And now it's really hitting home, since my debut, Splintered, is being offered to reviewers on netgalley and in hard copy ARC form. I'm starting to get reviews, be they positive or negative, and the spark plug analogy is keeping me sane.

Here’s the definition of a spark plug taken from Wikipedia: A spark plug is an electrical device that fits into the cylinder head of some internal combustion engines and ignites compressed aerosol gasoline by means of an electric spark.

In other words … it magically brings the engine to life. Vroom vroom. But there’s more than one kind of spark plug. So you have to follow the manufacturer’s instructions for choosing the right one to ensure it’s a good fit, or it won’t work. A bad fit means the spark won’t ignite, and there will be no vroom vroom.

A couple of years ago, when I was in the submission trenches with my first agent and my adult literary romance, we received feedback from an editor: I enjoyed the unique storyline and heroine, and I thought the author put a fresh twist on paranormal romance. But as I read, I just didn’t feel a strong emotional connection with the story, so it’s with sincere regret that I’m stepping aside.

I could whittle that entire explanation down into one phrase. No vroom vroom. I wasn’t the right fit for her, and there was no magical spark.

Ouch! That started me second guessing. Where did I go wrong? Why can’t I make everyone connect with my story? Surely, if my characters or storyline can’t capture every single reader’s affections, I have no hope of being a best seller or of winning a loyal fan base. Right?

Well, shortly thereafter I read a best-selling book at the time — one that I’d been chewing on for several weeks — and something clicked into place for me. The book had tons of sales, was well liked according to the majority of the reviews, and the publishers promoted it relentlessly (quite possibly the very reason why it had such great sales).

But upon closing that last page, I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Meh”. I mentally gave the book a 2 star rating out of 5. I liked the concept, and enjoyed the author’s writing style. But for some reason … and I could never put my finger on why … I didn’t connect emotionally with the MC. Actually, with any of the characters.

Yet I read that book front to back, just because the premise and writing style drew me in and held my attention. So I guess there’s hope; even without the vroom, sometimes people are willing to shift it into neutral and push on to the end of the road, if only to take in the scenery.

Some readers may not like my fantasy worlds or my plots, or they may not like my characters for their decisions or actions. My characters are flawed and human; sometimes they make mistakes, or don't think things through and act impulsively like real people do. If I write them in such a way to try to fit everyone's ideal, they become nothing more than cardboard cutouts. So, I have to stay true to my characters and my story, although it will mean losing some readers.

But even if someone doesn't like one element of my book, maybe they'll like another enough to read it to the very last line. That's an accomplishment in and of itself.

Maybe the science of writing isn’t quite as precise as the science of automobiles. But it occurred to me that subjectivity can be compared to finding the right spark plug (book) to fit the right engine (reader). Not everyone will love my stories, or my characters, or even my writing style. But all three WILL appeal to some and I will be a perfect fit for them. There’s just too many people with differing opinions and interests for it not to.

So, my hope now that my debut novel is finally getting read? That most readers will like at least one thing about it enough to push through to the end. But even more, I hope to be the spark plug some reader has been looking high and low for, that they'll connect to the story in everyway, and it will ignite their imagination.

And then: Vroom vroom … let the magic begin.

Interview with ENTWINED Author Heather Dixon

By Dan Haring



Me again. Ilsa is under some crazy deadlines, so she asked me to take her turn this week. A few months back I did an interview with author Heather Dixon, and I thought I'd share it here, as she offers some great advice and information.

 I've been lucky enough to know Heather for almost 10 years now. She was a year ahead of me in the BYU animation program, and it was a blast getting to know her and working with her. If you follow her Story Monster blog, which I suggest you do, you'll find she has a wonderfully dark sense of humor. It's even better because it's hidden beneath such a sweet exterior. Her debut novel ENTWINED is a fantastic read. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did! (It's pretty long, so make sure you click through)

I had to research the 12 Dancing Princesses because I'd never heard of the fairytale before. First off, I have to say that it's pretty rad that you're on the wikipedia entry for it. High five for that. What drew you to this fairytale originally, and how did the idea for the retelling come about?

Ooo, I scored on Wikipedia? Awesome ^_^ I'll have to check that out. I started the story back at the beginning of 2006, when I was taking a bunch of dance classes and majoring in animation. The story, with its silver forests and ballgowns and waltzes, is intensely visual and when it struck me, I couldn't get it out of my head. I had to write it down. (It helped, of course, that I grew up in a large family--with 10 brothers and sisters, I felt a special connection with a story about 12 sisters ^_^)

You're also a storyboard artist. How does boarding inform your writing? Do you ever board out scenes before you write them?

I often don't board out scenes I'm writing (it's often more time-consuming than the words), but I do like to draw beat boards to the chapters--quick sketches that mark the mood, staging, and tension of the piece. Strangely enough that's been helping me with pacing, because once I sort out which beat boards to draw, those are the marker points in the story that need the most focus.  

That's a really cool method. In my own writing, I sometimes sketch out maps or layouts of buildings to help me keep track of where things are taking place. Do you do anything like that?

You bet! It's especially helpful with staging, & world-building too I think. Right now I'm working on a story with a steampunk ship, which involves looking up a lot of airship & seaship diagrams, then mapping out what this certain ship would look like. It makes the story & scenes quite a bit more distinct I think.

Reaching the End

By Dan Haring

I've been on a pretty tight deadline the past few weeks, but finally this morning, at 2:23 AM, I wrote two glorious words at the bottom of my Word document:

The End.

This is pretty much how I felt:

Followed by a good dose of this after I woke up today.

This is only my second time doing it, but finishing a book is a pretty awesome experience. (and don't bring up revisions. I'm still on a high, okay?)  It's so cool to be able to get to those last few paragraphs and realize it's actually going to happen, that this story bouncing around in my head is finally going to be completely written down.

I know the hard parts are far from over. Even after I've made it as good as I can, it still might not find a home at a publisher. That's how things go in this industry.

And even if it does get published, it might not sell well. It might get panned by Kirkus. Who knows?

But I'm not worried about any of that right now. I hope anyone who has ever finished writing a book takes the time to enjoy the accomplishment, because it really is a big one.

Whatever the future holds for you and your story, you wrote a book. That's pretty darn cool, and you totally deserve one of these.

There will be plenty of time to plan for and worry about the future of this book, and I'm also excited for that part of the process. For right now though, I'm going to celebrate and enjoy the fact that this little story I've created has actually made it into the real world.

Right after I do this.
 

Revise or Die

Last weekend I was asked by someone how I was able to get through revisions. The person had finished her first novel, but was avoiding revising and editing. My answer probably didn't help her much, but I told her that I actually enjoy revising more than writing.

Writing a book is hard. It just is. Besides coming up with a story, characters, dialog, etc, it's hard to actually sit down and write. But once you've pounded out the first draft, to me that's when the fun starts. Once the story is complete, then you get to go back and make it better.

When I finished Oldsoul, I figured I would need to go back through and fix a few typos and maybe add a little extra to some scenes. Well, first of all, there were many, many more than a few typos. (In fact, over a year after finishing the first draft I was still coming across typos.) That part wasn't so much fun, and if that's what this person was talking about, I agree.

I had also underestimated how much I really needed to revise. In the end, I probably ended up revising Oldsoul seven or eight times, both with feedback from beta readers and friends and just on my own. And each time the story got stronger and better. It was actually fun going into scenes and figuring out how to make things more interesting and exciting. The heavy lifting was done. Now it was just a matter of going in and adding some extra zing. Of course I came across roadblocks and scenes that were difficult to revise. But in the end I fought through them, and the finished product, while still imperfect, is miles better than my first draft.

So my advice to this person and to everyone who writes: Don't be afraid of revising. If you've written a first draft, you owe it to yourself and your story to revise it and make it the best it can be. Granted, you might not enjoy it, but you and your story will be better off for it. 

Rotten Apples and Wayfaring Fleas

by A.G. Howard

A couple of years ago, I learned something about myself as a writer. My muse likes rain. No, let me rephrase that. My muse LOVES rain. In the span of two dreary, drippy days (which is almost unheard of in the TX panhandle), I managed to whip out close to 6,000 words (approx. 24 pages give or take), finishing out one chapter and coughing up another. DANG. No wonder Stephen King is so prolific, living in Maine as he does (it’s rumored he writes ten pages a day, even on holidays).

Anyway all of this got me thinking about how most writers have quirky habits or routines that help inspire and set the mood for a productive session.

Here are the quirks of some famous writers:

•The poet Friedrich von Schiller used to keep rotten apples under the lid of his desk. To awaken his muse, he’d open the lid and inhale deeply.

•Colette, the author of the famed novel “Gigi”, used to pick fleas from her cat before she wrote. Maybe she was afraid she’d mistake some of those parasites for misplaced punctuation on her pages?

•Voltaire, a French Enlightenment writer, used his lover's naked back as a writing desk. Not too surprising that most of his work had a romantic slant to it, aye? Teehee.

•Anne Rivers Siddons' husband reports that she makes a nest of papers, like a mouse getting ready for winter, then she starts walking into walls just before she begins a new novel. I can relate to that walking into walls thing … I use the same routine when I’m writing a synopsis.

•Emily Dickinson wouldn't see her dressmaker, go out of the house, or expose her handwriting . Her sister transcribed all of her letters. I’m thinking Emily would’ve loved email.

Now for my own personal quirks (which aren’t nearly as cool and twisted as some of the above):

•When I get stuck and need inspiration, I go to a neighborhood park and roller-blade; it opens up my mind to new ideas and directions I would never have come up with sitting boxed inside four walls

•Sometimes when I'm roller-blading, I murmur dialogue under my breath—bouncing from each character’s mind while they’re talking. This is the very reason I wear earbuds, so people will think I'm singing and not stark-raving mad.
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•I post mugshots of my characters on a bulletin board in my office and play out entire scenes between them that may or may not ever make it into the book

•Every Friday night hubbie and I watch a DVD together. During writing stints, I prefer movies about my WIP’s subject (I’m a bit of a fanatic about it). While working on my geisha vampire fantasy, we saw tons of vampire flicks (with the occasional side of Phantom of the Opera). Bless my husband and his tolerant heart.

•I usually keep a special ring on my computer desk. It has a blue-lace agate setting. Agates are considered stones of communication, enhancing speech and written communications. If you're into all that. I just like it because it's pretty. But it's gone missing of late, which might explain my muse's dry spell (that and the lack of rain here in TX).


That’s it for me. What about you? Do you have any quirks or tricks that help invigorate your muse?

The Power of Books

by Jennifer Archer

Books are powerful. The books children read can shape their lives. I'm proof of that.

I’ve been thinking about the stories I read and loved when I was a child and a teenager – the ones that inspired my love of reading and made me want to be a writer. As an adult, I’m a pretty eclectic reader – I enjoy many different types of fiction. Looking back, I notice that was true for me as a child, as well. So here’s a short list of some of my childhood favorites:

The Pink Motel by Carol Ryrie Brink. This was my favorite book during elementary school. I must’ve been in 4th grade when I read it the first time, and I’ve thought of it often over the years. I recently decided to search for a copy; I wasn’t sure why this particular story had meant so much to me that I’d never forgotten the title, and I wanted to read it again to find out. Honestly, I’d forgotten most of the plotline and the characters, but the joy of reading it was fresh in my mind, as was the breezy beach setting. (We always lived in landlocked parts of the country growing up, and I’m pretty sure this story played a big part in inspiring my lifelong fascination with the ocean and beaches.) The Pink Motel is out of print, but I was thrilled to find a used copy of the original PINK hardback version! Rereading the story as an adult, it’s clear to me what makes it so special. On the surface, The Pink Motel is a fun, quirky, adventurous mystery full of eccentric characters – the guests staying at the motel that Kirby and Bitsy Melon’s family inherits. But on a deeper level, it is a story about embracing differences in people and having an open mind. I think it “spoke” to me when I was a shy girl who moved a lot, because it seemed to say that unusual people who don’t fit in with everyone else are wonderful and interesting, and that there are places in our society where they can be accepted as they are. In this terrific book, one of those “places” is a pink motel where anything can happen.

Escape From Warsaw by Ian Serrallier. I read this novel in 6^th grade. I think it has stayed with me for so many years and inspired me as a reader and a writer because it made the horrors of war real to me by presenting them through the experiences of three children, ages twelve, eleven, and three. During World War II, their country of Poland has been invaded by the Nazis, their father thrown into a prison camp, and their mother arrested and transported to Germany. The children are left to fend for themselves, and when they hear that their father has escaped to Switzerland, they face many dangers to cross war-torn Europe on their own and try to find him. Escape from Warsaw gripped me, made my heart race, and made me look at the world in a different way.

As an older teen, I discovered The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and realized for the first time the beauty and power of symbolism and imagery in fiction.  At the same time, I also discovered the classic ghost mystery and love story Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. I loved the moody, dark tone of that novel, and I’m sure it’s the source of my own attempts to capture that “feel” in some of my own work. I also discovered romance novels during my late teens. I devoured the sweeping romantic historical sagas that launched that genre – Kathleen Woodiwiss’s The Flame and the Flower . . . The Wolf and the Dove – they are wonderful, breathtaking adventures – pure entertainment.  

Another book I fell in love with as a teen is Go Ask Alice by Anonymous. At the time of its release, this was marketed as the true diary of a teenaged girl who became addicted to drugs and eventually died of an overdose. Since then, it has been rumored that the "true diary" story was really a marketing ploy by the publishers and that the story is fiction. Either way, the book had a real impact on me. I read it when I was sixteen after moving to a new city and I related to "Alice." In the story, she moves to a new town, too, and becomes friends with the "wrong" crowd, which leads to her experimentation with drugs. The fact that I believed I was reading the words of a girl who had actually lived made me think more deeply about the choices we make and how they affect us. For that reason alone, I reluctantly forgive the publishers for deceiving their teen readers, if it's true that is what they did. 

As I glance over this brief list, it’s interesting that some of the titles that stand out in my mind, especially the ones I read as a very young child, are not well-known. Yet they affected me so much that I still remember their stories decades later. It’s also interesting to note that all of these favorites hooked me as a reader for different reasons and influenced my writing, and my life, in varied ways: The Pink Motel made me realize that books can provide comfort and friendship during times of loneliness, and can teach lessons in subtle ways; Escape from Warsaw offered an example of how powerful and life-changing a well-told story can be; The Great Gatsby brought me an understanding of symbolism and imagery, and exemplified that if handled deftly, those elements add depth of meaning to a story; Rebecca proved that tone and atmosphere can set a desired mood and stir a reader’s emotions; The Flame and the Flower illustrated that fiction doesn’t always have to make a social statement or inspire a reader to consider life in a different way – sometimes it’s enough to simply provide a fun and entertaining escape from reality. And, finally, Go Ask Alice taught me that a writer's words can influence the choices readers make in their own lives.

What books from your childhood or teen years taught you something about life or, in some other way, made such an impression on you that you've never forgotten them?

Visit Jennifer's website! 

We Creatures of Habit

Otto Dix once said, "All art is exorcism." In his case, he was grappling with the demons that took up residence in his brain after World War I



but he could have been talking about any struggle to make meaning, and let me tell you why.

Right now, I'm on this major mission after meaning. I know because I've been having a TON of examination dreams. You know the kind: where you wander into an exam and realize you haven't studied all semester? Where that calculus might as well be Swahili? I've had a couple of house dreams, too, and just last night/early this morning, I jerked awake from a real doozy about a patient--no one I recognized--for whom I apparently kept no record, no notes, did no exams, etc. It was, when you get right down to it, the perfect nightmare: me as a study in--and the very picture of--incompetence. To my credit, just before I woke, I was rearranging my office, moving things into the light, giving my animals--ANIMALS?!--space, digging through old records and beginning to right some of what I'd been doing wrong.

Now, being a shrink and having done some training in psychoanalysis--all those years of staring at acoustical tile, financing my analyst's vacations and free-associating about, well, things better be good for something--I tend to pay attention to my dreams and more so than, say, a deck of tarot cards or a horoscope because dreams are internally generated and chockful of symbols both peculiar to me and somewhat universal. (For example, house dreams are, by and large, commentaries on the dreamer herself. All those messy rooms, dilapidated furnishings...) I know myself well enough to understand that my dreams reflect what I'm worried about. In this case, I'm in the throes of beginning a new novel which is . . . well, let's just say it's kind of different and my self-doubt's a little high. Okay, okay, you win: it's off the charts. Yet I sense some daylight here. In the dream, I did at least understand my mistakes and was working to correct them. In fact, I woke thinking that I really had to declutter my desk, move the printer, take a bunch of books back to the library . . . And these are all signs I recognize. I breathe a little easier when I've cleared the decks, tidied things up, given myself some space. My dream's telling me that, too: although the jury's still out on what those animals mean, my brain's saying, among other things, that I need to give myself both a new space (the book) and SOME space (to cut myself a bit of a break; the sun's gonna come up tomorrow, betcha bottom dollar, there's tomorrow, yada, yada, yada).




Which brings me to writers and their quirks, habits, rituals and superstitions--and, no, they're not all the same beast, IMHO, although they may come to be loaded with the same emotional valence. For example, my paying attention to a dream is not, I think, the same thing as the ritual I follow pretty much every morning: up by first light (and frequently before), brew that pot of coffee, answer some email and read a bit of news (all standing up, by the way, and in the kitchen where I can look out and see the sun rise and which birds are coming to the feeder). But by 7:30 a.m.--8, at the latest--I better be writing-writing, or I start to get this crawl-out-of-my-skin feeling. I become very uneasy. Not starting work by a certain time feels like . . . bad luck.

I'm not alone here. Nearly all writers have habits, rituals, etc. There are famous examples. Ernest Hemingway had a lucky rabbit's foot he used so long it was nothing but sinew and bone by the end. (But contrary to the mythology, Hemingway didn't ALWAYS write while standing:



although he supposedly claimed that "Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up."






This is something that Philip Roth seems to have taken to heart (walking a half mile for every page he finishes while standing). On the other hand, Mark Twain liked his bed




and, if you can believe him,Truman Capote wrote lying down (so the movies--while fabulous--have that wrong):

INTERVIEWER
What are some of your writing habits? Do you use a desk? Do you write on a machine?

CAPOTE
I am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I've got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis. No, I don't use a typewriter. Not in the beginning. I write my first version in longhand (pencil). Then I do a complete revision, also in longhand. Essentially I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon. Obsessions of this sort, and the time I take over them, irritate me beyond endurance.

The Paris Review, Issue 16, 1957

On the other hand, Capote enjoyed being a celeb and, for his time, was a master of the outrageous.



Dickens arranged the items on his writing desk just so--dueling bronze toads, a bronze dog thief with pups stuffed in his pockets, and a green porcelain tea cup filled with fresh flowers, among other things. (Dickens seems to have had a touch of OCD, too, needing to touch things a certain number of times, but that's another story.) Legend has it that Carson McCullers always wore a lucky sweater when she wrote, which one can only hope she washed.

I could go on, but you get my point and these are only the tip of the iceberg. Do a search and you'll find stories--some of which are probably true--about the habits, superstitions and rituals of writers as various as Stephen King, Anthony Trollope, Franz Kafka, Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Freud . . . the list goes on and on.

Now, is it so amazing that writers have rituals or habits or superstitions? No, and like I said, I don't think they're all the same beast. I believe that a habit can BECOME a ritual and that ritual can become loaded with all sorts of (largely personal) significance, like that coffee mug you just have to use every day or your special pen, or--my personal favorite--a piece of jewelry that symbolizes your current project. (I've had the devil of a time finding one for my current WIP. I sense what I'm looking for/groping toward. Just haven't found the piece that speaks to me quite yet...)

But people are pattern-machines. Our brains are wired to make associations and find meaning in randomness; to generate order out of chaos; to take an ill-defined stimulus and attempt to give or fit it into a story. The behavior's got a fancy name--pareidolia--but it's the basis of dream analysis, you get right down to it. After all, your brain only has a certain set number of images and memories culled from everyday experience. Depending on what's going on, your dreaming mind, that enormously complex, meaning-generating machine, will cycle through and cobble together images it knows will get your attention. Or, to take all the woo-woo out of it, a dream is nothing more than your brain's attempt to associate what you've gone through that particular day with prior experience. Think of a dream as analogous to a computer trying to find the right--or similar--folder in which to insert a specific file, and you catch my drift.

If you think about it a second, this kind of pattern-seeking is to our evolutionary advantage. Nice to predict when that saber-toothed tiger might be on the prowl, for example, and it helps if you understand that the thing with two eyes, a nose, and a mouth contained within something vaguely circular is the face of a person, not a coconut. It is why people inevitably see faces in random dots or, as here, in the rocks and hollows of a crater on Mars




which "really" looks like this under different light at a different angle and with different resolution:




It's why our brain sees a woman's body clinging to this tree,





searches for faces in clouds:




or, depending on your point of view and circumstance, the Devil:





And, by extension, this explains why people structure highly-evolved, codified rituals and rules into things called mythologies and religions--because we are all, each and every one of us, seeking to establish meaning out of chaos. People are hard-wired to seek patterns in randomness. We even know where, in the brain, it happens (the ventral fusiform gyrus, to be precise). So we can't help ourselves. We are the creatures who develop habits in order to survive. It's just the way we are.

By extension, if you think about this for a second, you can readily understand why people like artists and writers develop rituals and habits, need to have things just so, or attach meanings to what are at first random acts later strung together to become an indispensable part of their routine: because we are trying, mightily, to give shape to the jumble of images and emotions that are stories and put them down in recognizable form.

Or put it this way: when I was in practice, I thought of my job as one of helping patients find the words to tell their stories. Well, we writers are no different. Our job is to fish all those words out of our minds and string them together on a page, in a certain order. We struggle with this all the time, and it's exactly why young writers are always looking to more established writers for those magical tricks: lucky charms, quirky habits. Writers create order out of the chaos of their minds, not an easy task by any stretch.

So is it weird or odd or crazy for writers to be superstitious beasts, or adhere to certain habits and patterns, or have their lucky talismans? Not at all. This kind of neuroplasticity leads us to develop associations: ah-ha, I was playing Van Halen when I had that great idea; or I used this typewriter to write my first successful novel and now I'm going to write every novel on this same typewriter(Cormac McCarthy); or hey, I was eating an apple under L'Arc de Triomphe when I figured out how to get my character from A to B (Alexandre Dumas). Or--in my case--I must start writing by a certain time every day or I get very, very uneasy. I must write a certain number of pages (and do, unless there's an earthquake), or I get uneasy. (Worse, the writing loses its vitality and the characters start to die in my head . . . but that's another post for another day.) In the end, I am uneasy because I am breaking with habit, and I have developed a habit because what I'm trying to do is make sense of disorder and chaos.

In the end, there is no right answer about which ritual to follow, what habit will lead to success. If you think that doing a three card reading from a tarot deck is an important way to start your day, have at it. If you want to write in the buff, that's fine, too (Cheever wrote in his boxers), but do pull the blinds and make sure the heat's on. Whatever you choose, remember this: if you expect to be a writer, you must write. How you get into that groove--how you pull together the chaos in your mind--is entirely up to you.

No magic involved.

****

On a completely different note, my new YA novel, DROWNING INSTINCT, has its book birthday on Feb. 1. YAY!






To celebrate, I'll be giving away a signed hardcover. The giveaway is open to residents of the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland and Australia, and will start at midnight (EST) 2/01/12 and end Wednesday night, 2/08/12, at 11:59 p.m. (EST). Be sure to stop by my blog beginning at midnight (EST) 2/01/12, and check out the Rafflecopter entry form for your chance to win.