Inspiring With The Aspiring

I spent the weekend with the Buffalo-Niagara SCBWI group, a growing chapter in New York. It was a great experience, with editor Alyson Heller (Simon & Schuster), agent Brianne Johnson (Writer's House), and MG authors Dee Romito, Jennifer Maschari, Janet Sumner Johnson, and YA authors Kate Karyus Quinn, Demitria Lunetta, Janet McNally, and adult author Alyssa Palombo.

I've always been a fan of giving back, partly because I met an amazing group of authors on the forum AgentQueryConnect that were a step or two ahead of me, and were a great resource for me as I climbed to join them. Now, I can do that for others.

And while I went to the conference planning to be a giver, I ended up taking a bit away myself. I've been in a bit of a writing slump lately, having just finished a first draft and wrapped up an edit. I took most of May off to take a breather, but rolling into June I was still feeling a bit of a drag.

I've got to put an edit on that first draft, and I have to admit I'm not looking forward to it. I've taken the steps - ordered books to help with beefing up some research, compiled feedback from multiple critique partners. But I haven't taken the step were I actually read the words I wrote... mostly because I don't feel like doing the heavy lifting of editing.

What I needed was a reminder that writing is re-writing.

As I moved from table to table talking over multiple projects with aspiring writers, I watched their faces as they moved through the natural reactions that come with a little criticism.

1) Um, no.
2) Wait... I see what you're saying.
3) Holy crap, that could really improve my project.

From table to table, question to question (Why not make this MG? Are you sure that's picture book material? Can you age that character up / down? How married are you to the illness angle? Don't you think you're packing too much in there?) I watched different reactions, most people landing on that last place... one where you realize a suggestion from someone else could make a big difference in your work.

I left the conference much more open to some of the feedback I received from my critique partners, and reinvigorated to do the heavy lifting that I'd been putting off.

And I also mean that literally, since I haven't been to the gym in a week...

Research As Writing Inspiration & The Cure For Writer's Block

One of the most common questions I get when I do school and library visits is how I deal with writer's block. My answer is not a popular one, but it remains the same.

I don't necessarily think writer's block exists. If it does I haven't experienced it yet, so if / when I do I will come back to this post and eat some crow. For now I call it procrastination, something all writers are familiar with, and I think procrastination itself is a symptom of fear.

I always have ideas, I just don't necessarily know how to execute them. Typically if I've hit a scene that is dragging or I simply don't know what happens next, it's because I don't know enough about my topic to deliver. For example I was recently writing a scene that took place in the back of an ambulance. I had no idea what the medics were wearing, what machines they had back there, what kind of language they would use to communicate with each other. It took three days and the exchange of over 25 emails with an EMT friend in order to finish that scene - which is only two pages long.

That's a snail's pace, and incredibly frustrating. But diving into the research for the particular disease that afflicts my main character was enlightening in more ways than just medical terms. I'd reached the halfway point on the manuscript and was wading into waters that went over my head. I vaguely knew what I wanted to have happen in my plot, but knew I needed a juicy subplot in order to avoid a saggy middle.

Some research provided me with exactly what I needed. Just a few lines out of a medical journal provided a simple fact - candidates for heart transplants wear pagers to be alerted when a heart that matches them is available  - and suddenly I had a supporting character, a subplot, and an entire backstory for her that would could nicely draw out a few of my main character's less-lovely characteristics.

One line of research provided me with enough material to fill at least a quarter of the gaping back half of my book. Being a pantser isn't for everyone, and I know that if I were a planner I could have avoided this particular gaping hole of almost-writer's-block that stared me down last week. But I stared back, did some research, emailed some friends, and it flinched first.

The Beauty Of Pantsing It: The Character You Didn't Expect

I've got a lot on my plate right now, but I mean that in strictly the metaphorical sense because I definitely just clean plated my breakfast. Farm eggs, man. Can't beat 'em.

The first draft of my fantasy series, GIVEN TO THE SEA, is due somewhat soon, and I also need to do an edit on my 2016 release THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES, which is a rape-revenge vigilante justice contemporary. It's possible that one day I will write something where the description doesn't make people cringe a little, but don't hold your breath - that's what I keep telling my mom, anyway.

So with all this work staring me down, the coffee pot on overtime and the cats tossed outside so they can't sit on my face, I've actually been getting a lot done. The fact that it's been raining non-stop in Ohio for the past two weeks has been a big help, as my outdoor soul isn't contending with much guilt from nice breezes and warm sunshine.

All that being said, it's still work, and cranking out the words is never easy. There's always the author's biggest enemy - procrastination - staring you in the face (well hello blog post, I should write you, yes?). But what stalled me the other day was something else, something that I only have myself to blame for.

I'm a pantser, complete and total. Whenever I turn in a synopsis to agent or editor it comes with a heavy warning that some people I earmarked as survivors may actually die, and I might decide to kill those who got a reprieve in the initial concept. I also might wander down paths I didn't know existed, which is where my subplots always come from. It's a lovely thing when an organic subplot pops up, and that happened to me yesterday, in the form of a character I didn't know existed.

He had a few things to say. He's quietly masculine and made of honor, and while I only meant to give him a line or two of comfort to a stricken female, he showed up again a few chapters later and kept talking. I was like dude, what are you doing - I didn't even give you a name, so shut it. And suddenly I had to give him a name, because he kept talking to my female character and the pronouns were getting old, and once I'd given him a name I gave him a wife and a kid, and suddenly he had a subplot and possibly his creator had a little crush on him.

This is why I love being a pantser - a subplot I never intended, but neatly ties together my overall arc came about organically, nicely tied up in a cool dude with armor and a conscience.

I'll take it.