Encouraging, giving

When NaNo time comes around every year, I honestly get a bit blue. It seems like everyone and his brother can churn out thousands of words a day, and I just can't. I never could. Not even when I was furiously scribbling away in high school (and my teachers through I was such a great note-taker! Ha!).

Photo credit: ajaxserix from morguefile.com

But you know what? There are plenty of NYT bestsellers, plenty of Pulitzer prize winners, plenty of all kinds of good, successful writers who have never written 50K words in a month. NaNo can be a motivational tool BUT it should never, ever be a de-motivational tool--something that makes you feel like a hopeless loser for not diving into.

Sometimes great ideas come in a flash of white-hot inspiration. But more often, the big ideas, the life-changers, take time to develop fully. Serious time. Decades of time.

With that in mind, I thought I'd share my story of the idea that arrived before I was mature enough to write it, and how letting ideas simmer can yield good results. Stop on by Shannon O'Donnell's blog Book Dreaming and be encouraged.

Shannon is also hosting a giveaway of an e-book of NEVER GONE and a SIGNED paperback. If you've been hankering to win a copy but don't have an e-reader, this contest is for you!

Do you keep an idea file of stories that come when you aren't ready to write them? What's the longest you've ever worked on a project?

Read More

The gift of delays

Most of the time, when things don't happen on schedule, our natural reaction is annoyance. Stupid obstacle! Rubbish delay!

Taking on the publisher hat in addition to the writer hat has really challenged my attitude about delays. Doing things right is better than doing things fast. I can't tell you how many times in the processes of setting up my small business and preparing NEVER GONE for publication that delays have proven beneficial. I ended up delving into new social media to relieve the itch of waiting for my photographer to get back from vacation and my cover designer to take needed time to do color enhancements. I found and fixed some wonky ebook formatting while waiting for some early reviewers to tell me what format they preferred to read in.

I continue to wait to have the final cover files to do a reveal, and I'm pretty sure the wait will be for the good in some way.

So stay tuned. I'll soon share the look and a description of my "book baby"...when the time is right.

How have you been stretched in your writing life? Have you experienced times when your patience has paid off in unexpected ways?

Read More

HP Week: The benefits of books first

Today I have a guest post from my husband Joel, an assistant professor of philosophy at La Salle University who teaches a course, Harry Potter and Philosophy. He also contributed a chapter to a collection of "philosophy for beginners" essays that engage Rowling's world--The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts for Muggles.

Because of this, his university PR department often send reporters his way that are covering Harry Potter topics. Joel kindly let me post his response to a reporter at the Hartford Courant (not sure when/if his comments will appear in the planned article).

She had asked,
"How does the experience of readers today differ from the generation of readers who were growing up as the books first came out?"

Joel replied:

I've taught Harry Potter to college students who grew up with them and I have an elementary school-age daughter who is now reading through the books, so I've seen both generations of readers and movie-watchers.

It seems to me that Rowling always intended the books to be taken slowly, over an extended time -- and that is how we are guiding our daughter in her reading. The books are intended to grow up with the children who read them, as they in fact did by necessity with the first generation of readers.

After all, with each successive book the volumes get longer, the plots become increasingly more complex, the main characters grow up, the wizarding world becomes darker and scarier, the stakes become higher, and the themes of the books -- love, death, relationships, sacrifice -- become more mature. There are matters to be puzzled out, problems to be pondered, and realizations to be fought for.

So, these are not books meant to be read by a precocious youngster all in a single summer. Rather, the volumes reward delayed gratification and re-reading. A rapid read will miss too much and fail to absorb all that is going on.

This seems to me part of the genius of Rowling's work -- taking young readers, carrying them along through the character's experiences, and growing them up and helping them mature right along with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. The magic of that sort of literary and personal transformation requires time and patient reading.

Another difference today is that many readers of the books will have begun with the films rather than the books. For those of us who read the books first and then viewed the films afterwards, there was always a certain disappointment with the films. Given the limits and strictures of film-making, they could not help but fall short of the rich tapestry of Rowling's world, the depth of her characterizations, and the complexity of her plots.

The relationship between the films and the books is now reversed for many children (and adults!). There's nothing wrong with that in principle and I'm sure new readers who have seen the films will be impressed by how much of the books is left off the screen.

But what will be lost in reading the books after the films is the sense of discovery the first readers enjoyed -- getting to know these characters and imagining Rowling's world. For many new readers, Hogwarts will always be the place director Chris Columbus imagined and Harry will always be Daniel Radcliffe. Furthermore, these new readers will also lose the experience of being surprised again and again by plot twists, mistaken identities, and startling revelations. And that's a sad loss, I think.

What was your experience with reading the books and watching the films? What are your thoughts on taking the series slowly, books first?

Read More

Give me patience now!

Waiting. It's a huge piece of what it is to be human. We wait for the weather to change. We wait for payday or that insurance reimbursement. We wait for decisions to be made, calls to be returned, packages to arrive and all sorts of mundane things that somehow just don't happen instantly.

Writing has its own set of waiting hurdles. We wait for our skill level to improve. We wait for the perfect character name to dawn on us. We wait for the shiny new idea. We wait for solutions to plot holes to occur to us. We wait for critique partners to give feedback. We wait for our market savvy to increase. We wait for agents, editors, reviewers, royalty statements, etc., etc., etc.

My faith tradition ties waiting to one of the "abiding things" along with faith and love: hope. "If we hope for what we do not have," says Romans 8:25, "we wait for it patiently."

Personally, I struggle a lot with hope. It's a heck of a lot easier to despair. No real effort or waiting required. Indeed despair can be yours right now with no wait! Not much of a selling point though, is it? Anyway, I've come to grasp the fact that waiting in a state of hopelessness is actually a kind of impatience--one that immobilizes.

We tend to think of patience as a very passive virtue that requires idle serenity. But the serenity that comes from patience is actually quite active. The patient mind works hard hoping. It refuses to moan or flail around. It keeps a steady routine and doesn't lose sight of the thing hoped for. Patience is diligent (not slothful), continuing to find places to progress during times of waiting.

Let's encourage one another to take up the tools of patience when we're on this wait-filled journey. Here are some I can think of:

~limit "stalking" behaviors online (those aimless hops from post to tweet to status without ever interacting); instead use social media to meet friends and encourage others. Take social media breaks when necessary.

~limit slothful habits (TV, video games and the like); instead produce pages of something every day--drafts, research, notes and outlines, wordplay, journal entries.

~experiment with a new technique, genre, style, POV, verb tense.

~focus on learning--study craft books, attend seminars, research new ideas.

~critique others' work and learn from them.

~read widely and make notes about what other authors do that you can emulate.

I could go on an on about all the active ways to wait--there are so many! The key ingredients are progressing toward a goal because you believe with hope that something good will eventually come of it.

What impatient habits or "habits of despair" do you struggle with? What habits of hopeful patience might you try?

Read More