Progress and Regress on Mad Science Sequel

Sechin Tower

@SechinTower

Several months ago, I completed the Mad Science Institute sequel. Then I decided to scrap it and start over. The bottom line is that I’ve now completed a superior version, with the big change being that it features only Soap’s side of the story instead of alternating with other points of view (POVs) as I had done in Mad Science Institute. It’s got 95% of the awesome stuff that my first version had, but delivers it in 65% of the pages (which works out to almost 1.5 times as much awesomeness per page!).

I’ve found that a story can potentially go in any number of directions as it’s being developed. I usually start with a roadmap for the plot, but my characters invariably grab the wheel and we end up exploring new territory together. I say that like the characters have minds of their own because sometimes it feels like they do. That’s fine with me: my characters are encouraged to guide my stories because the process reveals who they are.

Will Soap stick around on campus for her date with Brett, or will she fly to Arizona to investigate the cyborg lab? Will Dean rush in to fight the bikers working for his nemesis, or will he hang back and call his buddies at the FBI? Those are questions for the characters to answer, and it feels like only they can decide those things. I, as the writer, get to decide which questions to ask by putting the characters into situations where they have to make those decisions. I can ask a hundred different questions to tell a hundred different stories, but it’s probably best not to ask a hundred different questions in the same story. It comes down to deciding which ones need to be asked in this particular book.

In the case of the Mad Science sequel, I decided that the questions I wanted to ask about Soap and Dean didn’t mesh as well as they had in the first book. In Mad Science Institute, it’s about misfits finding a home, and they both have that in common even though they come at it from completely different directions. In the sequel, it’s about Soap venturing out into the bigger world and discovering who she is, while Dean’s portion of the story was about grappling with grief and depression. It just didn’t match up. I want to explore both those situations, but I eventually realized that they needed to be explored separately.

What will happen to the Dean portions I removed? Well, he’s still in the book and throwin’ punches at bad guys. A few of his chapters I gave to Soap, and it was amusing to see how she overcame the same obstacles in different ways. Mostly, I think I want to save Dean’s portion of the adventure—or, at least, his character arc if not the actual plot details—for a future sequel. I’m even thinking I might do other novels with different POV characters—maybe Victor, Angela, Choop, and more. But first, at least during her freshman year, the series is going to stay with Soap because she’s got the most growing up (and blowing up) to do.

So, that’s the status of the new manuscript. Unfortunately, it will be a long while yet before this book finds its way to print, because publishing makes glaciers look like cheetahs. Finishing this manuscript has also coincided with my needing to find an agent, so that introduces a few more variables. I feel like a total rookie for not having recognized the needs of the story earlier on, but at least I can honestly say I’m pleased with the final result because it’s better, faster, and deeper than the first one.

For all you writers out there: am I the only one who’s ever gotten deep into a project only to want to start over? How do you avoid or cope with that? For you readers: would you prefer lots of cool details in a novel even if they’re a bit random, or would you prefer a more focused story? I’d be interested in your opinions.

Be good, and dream crazy dreams,

Sechin Tower is a teacher, a table-top game designer, and the author of Mad Science Institute. You can read more about him and his books on SechinTower.com and his games on SiegeTowerGames.com

My Brain, On Fear

I am a great believer in dreams.  Being a shrink, I guess you'd say it's in the job description.  I don't hold much stock in dreams as prognosticators of the future or omens.  The work our brains do whilst dreaming is both necessary and highly individualistic, and by and large, I look forward to dreaming more than I do sleeping.  (By the way, those who, like me, moan about just having to sleep because it's such a time sink and complete waste when you could be doing something much more important, like working?  Consider this: a new hypothesis suggests that while your brain is feverishly filing away the day's information, it is also restoring your brain cells to a sort of baseline set point.  Without this activity, argue UW-Madison researchers Giulio Tononi and Chiara Cirelli, your brain would be unable to encode new information.  You'd not only run out of storage capacity; your cells would pretty much crump because, as hard as they work during sleep, they must work even harder to soak up and react to all the stimuli you throw at them during any given day.)

So, okay, fair enough: I'm convinced, although I didn't need a scientist to tell me I ought to sleep.  It's the time I mind.  On the other hand, without sleep, I wouldn't dream quite so much.  So I guess it evens out.  (NEWS FLASH: Go without sleep long enough, and you'll get breakthrough REM whether you like it or not.  It's unpleasant, sometimes scary, but your brain is only trying to save itself, bub.  So forget the all-nighters already.  Your mother was right.  Get some shut-eye and dream the way your brain was meant to.) 

All this is by way of prelude to the dream I had last night or, much more likely because it is still so vivid, in my last REM cycle this morning.  (Oh, Ilsa, you can make everything so science-y.)  Like I said, I pay attention to dreams; my husband pays attention to his, too, mainly because he figures I'll interpret them in a way that makes sense.  Usually, I do, but only because I've known him a long time.  (And it's the same with a patient.  Anyone who tries to tell you what your dreams mean without getting to know you very well and for a really long time--in relative terms, that's about three, four months of intense talking--is full of it.  You'd get more out of a Magic 8 ball.)

My dream this morning felt very long and probably lasted less than thirty seconds.  I remember only the pertinent stuff: I'm in a marriage that isn't working with a person (I won't say what sex, but that was interesting, too) I'd never have married in a million years.  I was uncomfortable and knew it.  We're in a house that I'd never have chosen in my life, and it's a primitive thing.  We have to grow our own food, make our own furniture . . . I remember taking a carving tool or an axe to a chair, I think; I say that because I remember that the back was a hollowed oval.  I was making a mess of that chair, whittling off big ol' chunks and thinking, This doesn't look remotely right; this isn't going to work.  In the dream--right before I woke myself up--I thought, There has to be an easier way.  Why can't I go live somewhere I've been before, where I'm way more comfortable?

I can think of two possible interpretations for this dream.  There might be more, but it's the same thing when you say the right thing to a patient at the right time: everyone calms down.  They know you're right, and you know it.  The tension bleeds away; there's that little mental ding.

So this baby's got two dings.  One . . . I can't talk about just yet.  I'd like to; I know exactly what's going on here and in fact, I was going to blog about it.  But I have to wait.  Stay tuned, and in two weeks, I'll tell you because it's an interesting topic and interesting times and we might all have to deal with this sooner or later.

The second, I can. 

Freud said that the house in a dream represents the dreamer.  For me, I'd say he's right; just ask me about the doozy of an ooky nightmare I had right before my first visit with my training analyst: Creep City.  But I will also admit that I might be primed to believe that way.  I'd read The Interpretation of Dreams well before I stared at the acoustical tile of my analyst's ceiling for several years.  So if that's what the great man said, that's what I thought was true.  In part, I think we all know that Freud was a product of his times.  Not everything he said was right, but then again, not everything he said was wrong either.  My guess is people put a lot of stock in their houses; a house is the face the public sees. We make all sorts of assumptions about people on the basis not only of where they live and how but what their house looks like.  Think about it a second, and you'll see the truth of that.  Houses are clothes, on a larger scale.

But I also think that if cars were something I really grooved on--and I sometimes moon over a classic muscle car until someone shakes me--I might dream of being in a car I would honestly never drive.  It just all depends on the person.

So, the dream that I think I've got figured: it's really kind of straightforward.  I'm now in the middle of writing something in a style and way I've never done, ever.  I'm pushed way out of my comfort zone.  This thing is a huge challenge--but I also put myself there, deliberately.  I did it in the way I ended one book because that would force me to try something I've always thought I just might not be able to pull off--and working on this book now--horror/historical/sf--is the strangest thing because my brain is fighting itself.  I'm always holding myself off at a little bit of a distance, looking at the shape of thing, listening to syntax, trying to use the right language and slang.  My critical brain is active when, normally--or after a certain point when the characters are talking, and I've butt out--it's absolutely operating way in the background and so quietly, I only understand it's there when I get up, walk away from the book for a second--and then do a head slap because, DOH!  Ilsa, you idiot, you need to write it this way.

MONSTERS was a tad like this.  What with all the storylines and characters, it took me some time to build up a head of steam.  I think I wrote something like . . . a hundred pages?  one-fifty? . . . that ended up being shredded and I had to start all over again.  There are literally hundreds of pages on the cutting floor here.  Thankfully, my memory seems to be short, but the husband tells me I fretted about that book up to the last keystroke, wondering if I was getting it right.  I do know that every POV shift, every new chapter,  each scene felt like the beginning of the next uphill run--and there was no downhill, it seemed, ever.  I knew when I was done that it was fine and more than fine--and even, my editor made a few suggestions that ended up putting back some of the pages I'd slaughtered.

This book is similar; it feels much harder probably because it is, and I'm not known for easy formulas anyway.  The thing is a challenge; the concept is way out there.  So my dream-brain is screaming for me to cut it out; give it a rest; give it up and do something familiar. 

Now, I won't say that even the familiar is "easy."  As I remind anyone who turns his nose up at work-for-hire in other universes: Look, bub, every word, every line, each story was original.  So what if the book featured Kirk and Spock or Seven of Nine?  There was nothing easy about it and I did it all from scratch.

So this dream is about my worry that I'll fail.  I get that.  What is so funny about my dream is that I believe that I will fail with every new book; that the book I just finished is the best I could possibly do and I can't ever do half as well again.  In some ways, that's correct because I write the very best book I can at that moment; I don't do halfsies.  Who, in their right mind, would?  That's why I can't answer questions about what I'd change about a book if I could go back and do it again.  I can't ever do that book again in quite that way because I will never be the writer who did that book back then. 

So, great.  I know what's bugging me; well, that is, I've told you part of it, and I'll tell you the rest in two weeks.  The insight doesn't make me feel much easier.  There is nothing magical about this, no aha moment.   A correct and honest interpretation won't make my anxiety go away.   It's like Tiger Woods, I guess: it's about grinding it out, baby. 

In the end, I think this New Yorker cartoon sums it up best (and apologies for the shadows):

 

 

Stop by again in a couple weeks for Part Two.  Interesting times.

Memory versus imagination

Sechin Tower

@SechinTower

A few days ago I had the opportunity to visit my alma mater, Carleton College, for the first time since I graduated more than 15 years ago. As anybody who’s been to Carleton could easily guess, I borrowed heavily from my college’s geography and culture when I created Langdon University for my novel Mad Science Institute.

This tour of campus was, therefore, as much an inspirational outing as it was a stroll down nostalgia lane. As the saying goes: write what you know. I wanted to check how well my memory lined up with reality. It turns out, there were some staggering differences.

Burton Hall under Construction

Sure, the central buildings of campus looked absolutely untouched by the passage of years (Wish I could say the same for myself!), such that the minute I walked through the doors of Sayles-Hill (the campus center), I had an urge to rush over and check my mailbox.

Likewise, the dormitory where I lived for two of my four years was still as I remembered it: isolated at the far outskirts of campus. As it always had been, it was a hike to get there, but a hike with great scenery.

This was my view every time I walked to and from Goodhue dorm. It is, therefore, what I imagine Soap Lazarchek sees every day as well.

On my way back from my former dorm, I walked into an area I felt like I had never seen before. There were entire collections of buildings I didn’t remember—some of which were new, but a few had been there in my time yet sparked no memories for me. I simply hadn’t had a friend in this dorm or taken a class in that building, and therefore it had faded from my memory.

In the background is Skinner Memorial Chapel, where we used to go into the basement and play Sardines and Hide-and-Go-Seek

It was strange to think that so much could have slipped out of my head. I’d like to think that shuffling those memories off stage made room for new ones, but it doesn’t really work that way. What is true, though, is that the most important memories stick around. I know they do, because I could still point to a tree we always used as a goal in for Frisbee golf, and to the windows of each of my dorm rooms, and to the exact spot on the shoreline where my roommate fell into the lake. Good times.

Not too long ago, I finished the beta draft of the follow-up to Mad Science Institute, and this new novel goes even deeper into the fictional Langdon University’s quirks and culture. As far as writing goes, it’s a good thing that so much had changed at Carleton over the years and that my imagination had altered even more, because that Langdon University and Carleton College aren’t the same place, nor should they be. For one thing, using Carleton as an inspiration rather than a firm setting freed me to pick the best of the old and the new, as well as mix in more from the outside. Still, if you’ve ever been to Carleton, keep the campus layout and lore in mind and you might start to see where many of my ideas came from.

You can't make this stuff up. The ground floor of the library is actually the 4th floor, and you descend into the progressively quieter levels from there. (Blue Monday is a coffee shop in town)

Memory can play so many tricks on you. I’m curious to know if anyone else has had an experience of returning to a well-known place after many years. Did it seem smaller in person? Had it undergone new construction? Did you feel like you could just walk right into your old living room even though you hadn’t lived in that house for years?

What kinds of tricks has your memory played on you?

Be good, and dream crazy dreams,

--Sechin

What Lives in My Trunk

Earlier this week, I was scheduled to do a live audio-interview on Bookspark.  As with most tech, Murphy's Law prevailed; no one could sign into the site; and the evening looked like a bust. I just happened to be moaning on my publisher's FB page about this because she and a bunch of other folks had wanted to virtually attend. Long story short, she called; we moaned together; then I suggested we just move the event to Twitter and do a live chat there.  Smart move: we had a great discussion (we even "trended," which, I gather, is a good thing), got tons of participation and fabulous questions, and went for over an hour before I had to beg off and break the fast, or fall on my nose.

One question from that which stuck with me revolved around whether or not I'd ever run into a story I just couldn't write or tell.  My response at the time wasn't disingenuous; I said that I kept working until I got it right--and that is true.  I tend to be a drudge.  OTOH, I went to medical school, so that figures.  We were all drudges.  

But when I took a step back and thought about it, I realized that, of course, there are tons of stories I've been unable to tell.  Either they die in outline form (the most frequent and least painful way, frankly, because you realize halfway through that what you thought was a great idea wasn't), fail to find an editor, or languish in the trunk every storyteller has in that dark closet because you know there's something wrong . . . but you just don't know what.  

Only later, when you've either gotten distance or better at the craft--and, frequently both--do you realize why the story defeated you.  Some you're able to redraft (never try to "fix" a story that didn't work; by definition, that's one dog that just won't hunt), as I did with ASHES.  From others, I've lifted ideas and scenes to use in other stories,  not verbatim because, again, the setups themselves didn't work.  

An example: there was one basic, overarching setup for a TREK novel that I actually carried two-thirds of the way through (an origin story about the Borg) before deciding that no one would ever actually LET me write a TREK novel.  Years later, when I'd done just that (and many stories and novellas in the universe), I dredged up my original idea because, you know, I just really liked it.  That idea was stuck in my craw; it was a cautionary, sweeping kind of story I felt compelled to write.  So I redrafted the entire thing to the parameters of a TREK spin-off series I was writing for (SCE) and finally got to see my book become reality as a two-parter, WOUNDS, and the thing was popular to boot (enough that I earned out and made royalties . . . a big deal).

The story fit much better into that universe.  Not to be immodest or anything, but whenever you do an "origin" story for a universe, it's  a risky proposition.  You're mucking with a basic tenet of that universe, something editors tend to be protective of and with good reason.   I even hedged at the end of my book because I didn't want to run afoul of the canon.  But I was blessed with an editor willing to take those risks, and the story was so successful--so interesting--that he and I planned another spin-off series based on those characters (a kind of TREK CSI).  Unfortunately, the SCE series was cancelled, and so that went nowhere.  Which sucked because my poor characters were left in limbo.  One of the dangers of work-for-hire: if a series is cancelled, it's like all your great ideas--your babies--get orphaned.  Sometimes you can scrub off the serial numbers.  Many times, you can't. Again, better just to redraft.  With these characters, I couldn't, so now I'll NEVER know what happens next. 

OTOH, that book was an example of an idea whose time finally came.  Before then, I hadn't grown into my writing chops enough to pull it off.  I was trying to tell the wrong story at the wrong time.  

So, have stories defeated me?  Oh, yeah.  Have I lived through the trauma to tackle them another day?  Yes, and frequently, I'm able to see why they got the upper-hand to begin with.  There are tons of novelists who brush off trunk novels--things they either were unable to sell or couldn't quite pull off--spruce 'em up, bring 'em out.  Some writers even tell you when they haven't changed much and, sometimes, it shows.  I guess my feeling, and I can only speak for my own stuff . . . Ils, honey, if it sucked the first time through, it'll suck now.  You really want your name on stuff that sucks?  

For me, what lives in my trunk: my failures, either in execution, conception, or both.  But you really can learn from your mistakes.  Sometimes, you even get a do-over.

***
And now for something completely different:

Calling all film makers! Egmont USA is hosting a SHADOWS: Book Two of the Ashes Trilogy book trailer contest. To enter simply read SHADOWS and then submit your awesome book trailer to ashestrilogy@yahoo.com. Entries should be 30-45 seconds in length and should not exceed 3MB. We'll be accepting entries from now until Halloween!

The winner will receive a customized ASHES pack and signed copies of both ASHES and SHADOWS.

Now get filming!

Back It Up!

By Dan Haring

Is there anything worse than pouring your blood, sweat and tears into something you created, only to have it disappear?



Oh, well sure, there's THAT.

But I'm talking about non-life-threatening things.

More specifically, your manuscript. You know, that thing you've been slaving over in the hopes that someday the world will read? What would happen if it got deleted?

I'm sure there would be a fair amount of this.



But that's not going to get your book back, is it?

Trust me, it won't. And you'll just feel ashamed for, A. losing your work and, B. doing the ugly cry.

This actually happened to me with my last post on this blog. I posted it and everything was fine, then I went in to edit it and *poof* it was gone. Luckily I had a backup, and I can't stress how important it is to do the same with your work.

How? You might ask. 

There are plenty of ways, but I'll list a couple that I know about.

When I told Jordan about my problem, she suggested something called Windows Live Writer. I haven't looked into it too much, but it looks like a good option.

But let's say your computer pulls one of these:


Your files are just gone forever, just like Sarah Jessica Parker, right? Not if you're smart.

The first option is the external hard drive. These are great and for like a hundred bucks you can get a 2 terabyte drive.

For those non-techspeak people, 1 terabyte will hold a couple million pages of text files. So grab one of those drives and you should be set for life, even if every book you write is longer than Ulysses.

Unless you accidentally knock the hard drive over.

A friend of mine in animation school had all his files on an external drive and he accidentally kicked it, and he totally did the Dawson cry.

So if you're going to get an external drive, I'd recommend a solid state one. They're more expensive, but also more durable.

But what if you're travelling when your computer spontaneously combusts and you don't have access to your external drive?

There are a number of online options for file backup. I've used MediaFire.com and Dropbox.com. You can get a free account with a couple gigs of storage space or pay some money and get a bigger storage limit. Be warned though. I just got an email from Mediafire saying they might delete some of my files because I hadn't accessed them recently. (It's probably been about a year) I'm not sure, but Dropbox may have a similar time limit.If you're accessing it regularly you should be fine.

But my favorite method is free, easy, and allows me to have access to my document wherever I have internet access. It's called....Gmail.

That's right. My email account. I actually wrote my first book, all 76,000 words of it, in an email that I saved in my drafts. That way I had easy access to it wherever I had internet, and it would have been very hard to delete.

I'm still a little paranoid about losing my work, so on my recent manuscript, which I wrote in Word, in addition to cutting and pasting the text into an email and saving it, I would periodically email the Word document to myself. Easy enough, right? That way my computer could get nuked and I wouldn't have lost a word of my work, because I could just download it from Gmail whenever I wanted. It ensures I don't lose my work, and it keeps my keyboard free from those bitter tears that might otherwise fall.

So that's what works for me. What about you?

My Brain, Off-Grid

So my husband's dragging me away this afternoon (it's Thursday morning), and I'm thinking, shoot, I don't want to go anywhere, not even to spend several days off-grid, in the woods, tramping around, getting all dirty and smelly and feeling strong, like an Amazonian queen. Which is how I am and feel, at times, when I've put in a good day's hike.

But, for a person who never turns on her cell or answers it even when it's on (that sucker's always on silent, which drives my kids bananas); for a woman who turns off her phones all day, every day . . . I have tremendous trouble unplugging, being off-grid, going away. Always have had. Now, we can chalk this up to childhood traumas or something--and I'm sure that's somewhat true (you don't know true togetherness until you're squashed into a tiny camper, when it's about a thousand degrees outside and even higher inside--you're baking in there and lying on a little bunk hammock with about an inch of clearance between you and the ceiling, and then . . . you have to pee. In a bucket. Right there, while everyone listens . . .).

Yet, when I was in my residency and fellowship, I hated going away, too. I used to hoard my vacation and mental health days; I hardly ever used them up, and it may have something to do with the dread I felt about returning: the killing pace, the emergencies, the constant demands. All that was still there when I got back on Monday morning, whether after a weekend or vacation. (Which is why, I'm convinced, a reason this impending sense of doom rolls over me on Sunday nights. I have a tough time sleeping at the best of times, but forget Sunday night.) When I'm away--when my husband tells me I'm on vacation--I don't really relax-relax until about Wednesday or Thursday and, then, only grudgingly. (I'm like a Belgian shepherd that way: always on alert.) So, say, about three or four days into it, I sort of unwind and then, boom, before you know it, time to go home. Hardly makes it worthwhile, you know? Always been like this, too. So, gosh, thank heavens for the Internet that allows me to do this NOW and NOT FRET about having ZERO INTERNET access and all that while I'm gone and feeling pressured to get the blog done and OH, NOOOOO... I'm so important, I MUST be reachable . . . without me, all life on Earth will cease to exist . . .

Oh, pshaw.

Here's the thing, and I said it a couple weeks ago when I wrote about Facebook, et. al.: you are simply not that important. (Okay . . . I'm not that important, but you understand. It's that prototypical "you" I'm talking about.) Unless you have dying relatives or something, the world will continue. There is nothing THAT all-consuming and life or death for which you absolutely MUST be in touch, tethered, reachable forever and always. Even though I don't feel that way when I'm forced to go away, I've known this for a long time, and here's why.

You want to know important?

Death is important.

People actively dying is important. People THINKING about actively dying is important. This is why God invented pagers for nurses and doctors, so we would always be around to stop bad things from happening, or try to make bad things right. As a private practitioner, I was available 24/7, and yeah, when my pager went off at two in the morning, I knew that patient wasn't calling just to shoot the breeze. If we were lucky, that patient was only THINKING about jumping off the bridge or taking pills or whatever. If we were unlucky, the patient was TAKING the pills or had a foot off the bridge or broken out a window . . . You get the drift.

When I was an intern and resident, I was tethered with a pager-umbilicus, too, because when it went off and squawked about a code blue . . . that was my cue to hustle because only I, the surgical intern, knew how to slap in that CVP line without dropping a lung or skewering an artery. (That was the truth, too, in the hospital where I trained.) When that pager went off, people were dying or trying to. Most number of times I blundered out of bed and ran to the same patient trying to tank, in a single six-hour period? Eleven. ELEVEN. Try to relax, unwind, get some shut-eye knowing that's out there. Go on. I dare you.

Now, this isn't to brag or anything. All doctors and nurses and techs and EMTs and cops and all that . . . people in those professions all do the same thing. So this isn't about me being so wonderful; it's about me doing my job, the one I volunteered for, entered willingly. But this is also to make a very important point--well, important to me. It might even explain why I can't walk into a hospital these days without a mild return of PTSD (I'm serious here, folks): the elevated heart rate, the sweats, the semi-flashbacks to blood and guts and all that, the smells that trigger it. It might also explain why I both HATE being on-grid and off it, too; my love-hate relationship with all tech, to be honest, and so my need to venture into the wild and this overwhelming urge, sometimes, to stay there even as all my instincts are screaming that I MUST go back.

People write about your brain on- and off-grid: the feelings of anxiety about going away, the pervasive sense of urgency that you simply MUST be available, that kind of thing. There was a very interesting series of articles in the New York Times a couple years back studying this same phenomenon, and it's worthwhile reading, so take a minute.

What I found the most interesting--for me, personally--was all that stuff about attention: that the demands of a twenty-four hour news cycle, this barrage of information, reinforce the sense you are just SO IMPORTANT--and all that is awfully draining to creativity. (I could go into the neurochemistry of it--and it is REALLY fascinating--but I'll take pity.) We've all heard about the benefits of unplugging, getting away, letting those creative juices flow . . . etc. But so many of us can't do it or have a hard time or feel a profound ambivalence . . . blah, blah. As I think I've pointed out, though, our presence and attention to the minute workings of the universe are not required. The world will keep turning.

For the me of the past, though, this was not so because when I wasn't around, bad things did happen. They also happened when I WAS around; patients still paged me, had a hard time, etc. In fact, I guess you'd say that I lived with the threat of bad, that Damoclese Sword of IMPENDING DISASTER AND DOOM--and it was constant. Coming back after a break--whether as an intern or in practice--I always felt my gut tighten because a patient would've crashed during the night; a previously stable patient would be in the hospital (I'd get these long voice mails about who did badly while I was away, for example); someone would've died . . . again, you understand. So vacation--going off-grid, leaving that beeper on the bedside table--became merely a prelude to more bad, more doom and gloom, and--sometimes--death.

So, not fun.

These days--the me of the now--I'm only a little better, both because there is the PTSD-esque spectre of all that hanging around, just at the corner of my eye, and . . . well . . . because people about whom I care a tremendous amount will die when I step out these days, and that's a fact.

Now, I know you'll think that's silly, but it's true. Yes, I agree, wholeheartedly, with Stephen King and others who've said that a writer must allow time for the boys in the basement to do their thing. Even when I think I know my story, it's when I take a break--mostly, to exercise, and I do that every day, but it also happens after a night's dreaming on it--that the "answer" for how to keep my book alive, my characters doing their thing, all the plates spinning, comes to me. (As it did this morning, for example: I'm leaving in about five hours; I know I'll get maybe an hour of writing in before the rest of going away sucks me down; but I awoke, and very abruptly, knowing precisely what was keeping one of my characters from getting on with it already. That will necessitate killing about twenty pages and rewriting, but that's the work.)

NOT being allowed to continue--being wrenched away--leaves my characters in a real lurch. I know that I will, obsessively, rehash what's going on with them while I'm gone. I'll jot endless notes. I've got an outline, but I'll expand, in my head and on scraps of paper (I always hike with a pen and paper). I do my best heavy-duty thinking on the trail; I know that about myself.

Because here's the thing: I really am these people's life-support system. Quite simply, without me, my characters will wither up and die.  They NEED me, Energizer Bunny Ilsa, to keep them ticking.

No, this isn't narcissism, and I'm not psychotic (at least . . . hang on . . . no, I just checked; I'm not). But what I just wrote is the God-honest truth.

If I die tomorrow, my characters enter limbo. They'll never live again, for anyone. I'll never visit them again, and they won't get to live for you either.

So, for someone like me, it's imperative that I stay with them, keep them breathing and suffering and living for as long as I can--becauase only I truly know how to throw in that writerly CVP line for them. No one else can do it--or if they do (say, someone decides to release and/or finish the great previously unpublished, unfinished posthumous works of Ilsa J. Bick), my people won't be entirely the same. Come on, you know what I'm talking about, too; it's WHY no one can write the real conclusion to Edwin Drood, or WHY the Mozart Requiem is both so glorious and yet ultimately unsatisfying because the poor guy DIED after the first couple measures of the Lachrymosa. The folks who came after, trying to finish that masterpiece, ended up only repeating what Mozart had already done, just with different words. (Really. Go listen sometime. You can tell, INSTANTLY, what's Mozart and what isn't.)

Sure, I'm not Mozart. Some days, I'm not sure I'm even me. But I do know that I also unplug from THIS reality on a daily basis--because I dive into the page and the work at hand. You could say that I go on a vacation for as long as I can every single day; I get to go to a different country and leave all this, only to have to return to . . . pay bills, make dinner, etc. Pulling free from my worlds--leaving all those people HANGING--is tremendously anxiety-provoking. Yes, I know when I've done a good day's work. I also know when I've sucked and that novel's really limping along on life support. So I live in a continual push-me/pull-you of only you, Ilsa, will do.

I think this is reinforced by the fact that I'm working on the last volume of the ASHES trilogy. After it's done . . . that's it. No more chances. No re-dos. For people I've nurtured for so many, many months now--crying for them, worrying about them--the moment I truly pen the last sentence, they are . . . unplugged. They won't die, of course.  Crack the spine, and I can read about them.  But I won't be able to unplug and visit their world and make them live in quite the same way, ever again. Once the words are set in their mouths, they're set.  They'll never again have that chance to grow and become.

Would I have it any other way? Heck if I know. I only know it's the way I--and they--live now.

Okay. I'm gone . . . and this is the sound of me, unplugging . . .

<thwock>

Enjoying the Ride

If you've been out of town or off-grid for the last few days, then you probably missed hearing about Neil Gaiman's commencement address to graduates of the University of the Arts.  Even if you've heard about and/or listened, it's a speech well worth listening to again.  So, go ahead; I'll wait.




Now, there's a lot in this particular speech worth focusing on, especially the stuff about making your own rules. On the other hand, I'll be honest: I did that way back. Figured out which rules I could break and the ones I had to stick to, and then acted accordingly. Would I have gotten further faster if I'd stuck to the rules back then? Again, being honest? The answer is no. I did stuff you weren't supposed to, but I'd gone by the rules for a while, gotten nowhere, and decided I couldn't be doing any worse , so . . . why not? Of course, it also might have been that what I'd actually written before wasn't what it needed to be to break in. But I don't necessarily believe that either because I'd been playing by the rules with stuff that kept being routinely rejected--but which got accepted, pretty much right away, once I decided to break the rules.

But that's not actually what I'm writing about today. Nor do I agree with every single one of Gaiman's points because, honestly, you really DO need to a) be a pro, b) be on time and c) be turning in good stuff. I don't know anyone at this stage of the game who can be an absolute schmuck and yet be so totally brilliant that everyone just puts up with it . . . but then again, I don't move in the same circles as Gaiman and King and anyone else who's a mega-bestseller.


No, the part of Gaiman's address that I breezed right past--but which was, for me, the most important part--and something I still need to focus on is that whole enjoyment thing. It's really fascinating that while I heard it, I didn't "hear" it and it took a friend to point out to me what I'd missed. That's because he knows me, very well, and I'd just been stressing about everything I needed to get done in x-amount of time. He knew what he was hearing and how to rein me in.

Ask anyone who knows me, and they'll tell you: I'm a glass half-empty girl. Nothing's ever quite good enough nor do I believe that anything good--except my husband--lasts (and there are days when I wonder how much longer he'll put up with me). Call it a Freudian thing, or a result of being a kid whose dad was in a coupla different concentration camps, but I just don't trust that good things won't evaporate. I guess you could say that I'm not a look-on-the-bright-side kind of gal.

I tend to stress. I tend to do exactly what Gaiman talks about. I am ALWAYS thinking ahead to the next day, the next book, the next project, when I just MUST get a new book out there . . . all that stuff. Any enjoyment--even the accomplishment of FINISHING A BOOK (which is HUGE, guys, HUGE)--only lasts for a small span before I get restless, need to move on, have to edit. That kind of thing.

Now this type of restlessness is very good for, say, a medical student. An intern. A doctor, who's always leapfrogging ahead, thinking down the road, trying to figure out what might help someone in distress. In psychiatry, you're always in multiple times at once: in the moment with your patient; in their past, trying to tie what you're hearing to what's come up before; and in the patient's future, thinking about you might do or suggest that will help down the road. But in terms of actually ENJOYING the moment--the fact that I'm holding a book I wrote in my hand?

Well, I do . . . and I don't.

I remember when all I wanted was to publish a short story. Then, it was I'd like to keep on publishing short stories. Then, it was holding a book I'd written in my hand. Then, breaking out of work for hire and into seeing my own stuff in print. Then . . . You get the picture. It's very Roseanne Rosanneadanna: always something.

I also think that I breezed past that part of Gaiman's address because I must have some fantasy of what making it to that point entails. Unlike Gaiman, I don't have long signing lines and all that; I'm not a tenth of the way to where he was when Stephen King gave him that advice. Putting aside the fact that if Stephen King liked ANYTHING I'd written and told me so and then gave me advice, TOO, I'd probably have a heart attack . . . I think that Gaiman's inability to take the advice points up a fundamental insecurity we writers have--and, maybe, always should.

A friend of mine makes distinctions between an author and a writer. Authors live in Author-Land, a lovely alternative universe where they rest on accolades, hob-nob with influential people, are quite fun at parties, tell super stories--but don't write a darn thing, or--if they do--not a lot or very good anymore. They live on what they've done. Think . . . Truman Capote, J.D. Salinger, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner . . . or any writer who's effectively stopped writing but still has THE NAME.

Then, there are writers: people who grind it out, like golfers, every day. They do the work. They produce. They're in the trenches. The thing is, I think Gaiman was being a writer: someone who had to look ahead to the next book, the next paycheck, the next series . . . whatever. I think that, if he's honest, Stephen King was and might still be that kind of writer, too: a man who could live on Author Island but has both the drive and the inability to stop writing. Both are successful precisely because they never could NOT look ahead to the next project. Oh, and yeah, they write well.

But you understand what I'm saying. Most of us will always be only as good as the next book, which means that being in the moment and enjoying the ride take as much work as . . . well . . . the work. For me, there's the flip-side, too: when the writing is going well, I BLOODY LOVE IT. There is NOTHING in the universe I'd rather do--and then I am enjoying the ride. So, maybe, enjoying the ride is about enjoying the process of writing: the craft, the discovery, the desire to push oneself just a little harder, try something just a little different. Failing sucks, no question. But when you succeed--when you KNOW you nailed it--there's nothing finer.  What's even better is when you get to share this with other people; when you entertain them with the world you've created. Enjoying THAT ride is just as important.

I think the take-home here is figuring out what "the ride" is and means to you, and understanding that the ride may change over time as you mature as a writer and go further along in your career. Recognize that enjoying the ride may mean something as profound as holding a bestseller YOU WROTE in your hand or allowing your SO to drag you to a movie because you've put in a hard day, sweating over that keyboard.

So, be flexible. Enjoy. And, remember: it's never a bad day when there's cake.

Should I Plot or Pants? Yes!

The debate between plotting and pantsing your manuscript is one for the ages. People on both sides swear by their preferred method. The thing is, what works for one person could be the worst thing ever for another. I'm going to say right up front that I don't think one way is better than the other. You might prefer to work one way, but there are aspects of both that can be really helpful.

First up, Plotting. (or Plodding to those who don't enjoy it.)

Just like those awful reports you used to have to do in high school, having an outline can definitely help. It gives you a clear path to follow, which can be really nice. To oversimplify things, once you've finished plotting, the actually writing is like finishing a dot to dot versus drawing something from scratch.

I can't wait to see what it's going to be!

Another nice thing about plotting is you can catch inconsistencies and logical issues before you write yourself into a corner. Again, having a clear path to follow when you write can ease or negate later headaches. 

Next up, Pantsing. (or What The Crap Are You Doing? That's Not How You Write a Book! to its detractors.)

Writing fiction is a creative, artistic endeavor, and for the most part, artists don't like being told what to do.

Or what not to do.

With pantsing, you can add fun and exciting (or horrible and awful) things to your story as you write, often coming up with things that you might never have thought of if you were sticking to a rigid outline.

Pantsing can also be fun and exciting for the writer because you're able to let the story take you on a trip. It can be easier to stick with a project because you're excited to see where it's going to go next.

Of course, with these positives come some negatives. That's why I really don't think you should stick with just one method. When you start, it's probably best to have at least a rough outline of things that are going to happen. Otherwise you could get well into your story and realize you're lost in happy fantasy land without a good way out.

...can I go home now?

But at the same time, you can spend so much time plotting and creating a beautiful snowflake for your story that you lose all interest, and the project dies before it even starts. I think it's best to find a happy medium. A little bit of both works for me, and it might for you. Have at least a rough outline, with clearly defined points you want to make. Then you're not wasting too much time meandering. But allow yourself some freedom to meander as you write. Characters and events and fantastic things are there to be discovered.

I agree with Robert McKee when he said, “We rarely know where we are going; writing is a discovery.” But I also think it's good to take a map.

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.
.
•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?

Music Makes the Imaginary World Go Round

I'm a huge, huge fan of music. The majority of my day, whether I'm commuting or while at work, I'm listening to music. It's a vital part of my life, and that also extends to my writing. When I listen while writing, not only does it help inspire me, but it also allows me to immerse myself in the world I'm creating. Like blinders on a horse, plugging my ipod in helps me remove myself from the outside distractions and concentrate on the task at hand.

Speaking of distractions though, I can't just listen to anything while writing. I usually rotate through maybe five different bands and several movie scores that I'm very familiar with. I've tried listening to new stuff, even from some of my favorite bands, and my mind wants to pay attention to the lyrics, and it seriously hampers my writing ability. So when I listen to those old familiar tunes, I guess it acts as sort of a white noise filter, albeit a much catchier one. But I also have to be careful that the music fits the mood of the scene I'm writing. Let's face it, washing the dishes can become an intense and emotionally draining experience if you're listening to this.



And yes, I'm definitely speaking from experience on the subject. While it might bring on an unwanted anxiety attack, a song like that might be perfect for that chase scene you're working on. I've done some author interviews on my blog, and something I usually ask people is if they listen to music while they write. Here are a few of the responses:

Heather Dixon, author of Entwined: I listen to a lot of soundtracks. Lots of Hans Zimmer, Patrick Doyle, Alan Menken, Danny Elfman, John Williams, John Powell, Miklos Rosza, James Newton Howard, Alan Silvestri, Nicholas Hooper…and all those talented fellas.

Jaime Reed, author of Living Violet: I write with music, the louder and faster the better. When I edit, it has to be ABSOLUTE SILENCE. Don’t call me or knock on my door, or else prepare to get cussed out.

Trisha Wolfe, author of Destiny's Fire (and someone with excellent taste in music): I listen to music in every area of my life, except for when I write. I actually find it distracting. I’m a huge music fan, and that means I start jamming out instead of working. I like to make playlists for my books, though. And I listen to those while doing mundane things, and that helps with future scenes as I’m working on a book. For DESTINY’S FIRE, I listened to a lot of Florence and the Machine. Blinding, for me, is Dez’s song. It gives me chills every time I listen to it.

So it's all across the spectrum I guess, from listening not at all to all the time. I know people besides Trisha even create playlists for certain scenes and characters. The other day on Twitter an author posted that she had made character playlists, and one of her characters had horrible taste in music. I thought that was hilarious. As for my own writing, I tend to be on the pretty much all the time side. Like I said before, it helps me zone out of this world and zone into the world that I'm writing. In fact, there's a quote by conductor Sir Thomas Beecham that kind of goes along with this:

I definitely agree with this, as when I'm writing I need to get out of my conscious mind and somewhere that I can get in touch with the story. Some of the bands that help me do that are Social Distortion, The Gaslight Anthem, American Steel, Nick 13, as well as film scores from my favorite two composers, Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer, among others.

So how about you? Do you listen to music when you write? How about during revisions? And who do you listen to? Do you make playlists or just hit shuffle? Maybe you can introduce me to my new favorite writing band.

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.

What's in Your Backyard?

Eleven years ago I went backpacking in Western Europe. I hit ten countries in six weeks, and it was an amazing, whirlwind experience. There was so much to do and see, so many different cultures crammed together, so much incredible history to be experienced. I've wanted to go back ever since, but I've also had my sights on Japan, Australia, and a dozen or so other foreign destinations vastly different from where I call home. Part of it is wanting to see and explore places I've only read about, but part of it is also to experience something new and be inspired by the unknown. But as I was thinking about it, I realized there's another place that has a pretty impressive collection of cultures and sights. That would be the good ol' U.S. of A. From New England to New Orleans to New Mexico and beyond, there's thousands of different little subcultures and quirks in the United States, many of which are largely unexplored

In my freshman year of college I met a girl named Denise. When I asked her where she was from, she named a town in Michigan. When I said I wasn't sure where the town was, she held up her hand, with her fingers together and thumb sticking out, and pointed to somewhere near the tip of her ring finger. She told me that the main part of the state of Michigan is shaped like a mitten, and she lived near the top. Don't believe me? Check it out. Since that day, whenever I meet someone from Michigan I ask them what part of the mitten they're from. They usually hold up their hand and point, and they seem to enjoy the fact that I know this little tidbit about their state.

I was chatting on Twitter a while back with author Dwight L. MacPherson, who also hails from Michigan. He told me about the Upper Peninsula, or U.P., which is the non-mitten part of Michigan. The residents of the U.P. are referred to as Yoopers by the folks "downstate." A stereotypical Yooper seems to be a cross between a hillbilly and Rick Moranis in Strange Brew. They even have their own dialect. Oh, and they eat pasties. Dwight and I got to talking about how people know so little about the country we live in. In all my 32 years I'd never once heard the term "Yooper." Yet it's been there the whole time.

I'm lucky to have been able to visit a lot of different states, and although there are definite similarities, each place has its own way of talking, own way of doing things. It's just fascinating to me, and it makes me think that we don't need to travel to exotic places to get inspiration. The old saying "write what you know" takes on a whole new meaning when you realize there's a large part of the country (and world) that doesn't know what you know. Every place I've traveled, from Anchorage to New York City to Georgia has given me a fresh perspective on things, and each one of these things has helped me in my writing. But my writing is also hugely influenced by the tiny town in Utah I grew up in. From riding bikes through miles of fields, to crawling around dry creekbeds finding pieces of flint, to hiking through the old refinery just outside of town, there are a million tidbits I can snag from my hometown and inject into my work.

So what's unique about where you live? Tell me something only a local would know. I can almost guarantee whatever you come up with will be of some use to you. Go out there and look around your backyard. Travel if you can, but also open your eyes to what's around your home. We live in an amazing country, and there's so much to see and experience. Keep your eyes open, and you might even meet a Yooper or two.