T-Shirts With Words & Earworms

This is not a post about the demise of our culture.

This is a post about the how the human brain is processing our information-infected world. And I say this as a lover of the internet and someone who still occasionally yells, "CHAARRRLEEEE! We're on a bridge, CHAAARRRLEEEEE." And if you don't get that joke, you haven't seen this yet - also you probably don't want to click because you'll never say the name "Charlie" normally again.

Yes, I love technology and I love our world. I adore the fact that I can get weather on my phone and that I'll never need a newspaper to check movie times again. It's great that I can add a book to my wish list (or get crazy and outright buy it) the second that a friend recommends it so that I don't have to worry about forgetting the title later.

And yet... this also means that I'm wiring my brain to digest and forget the written word. It hungers for little morsels it can tear through like drive-thru cheeseburgers, not getting any lasting nutritional value and learning that the easy rewards are best, after all. Because I'm everywhere at once online when someone asks me where I read some nugget of information that I repeat a couple days later, I breezily reply, "Oh, online somewhere," which any librarian will tell you is pretty much the worst Works Cited response ever.

In his book THE SHALLOWS Nicholas Carr investigates the rise of the internet and streaming information on how our brains process all of this material. I read this a few years ago, and I highly recommend it to everyone. You'll re-think how you approach reading, and if you're a social media person like myself, it'll change the way you view these venues as well.

Today everyone has a blog, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, YouTube... you name it. Anyone can print their own clever t-shirt online, and honestly I wouldn't want to be in the Clever T-Shirt Business because standing out on that crowd would be pretty hard. I guarantee you at the moment you are reading this, at least a couple thousand people are singing to themselves, "What Does the Fox Say?" I know I was as I brushed my teeth this morning.

How can writers compete in a world where funny one-liners get free chest display and mammal-inspired ear worms have tunneled into the brains of the best of us?

I don't advise starting with a t-shirt that has War & Peace on it, although it would be an interesting conversational piece.

I think the answer is to just keep going, be the best we can be at what we do and ride the waves. When radio came along they said the printed word was done, when tv showed up they said radio was dead, when cable happened they said network television was sunk.

We're still here, all of us.

Interview with Victoria Aveyard

I'm lucky (or cunning) enough to have lured yet another successful writer over to my blog for an SAT - Successful Author Talk. SAT authors have conquered the query, slain the synopsis and attained the pinnacle of published. How'd they do it? Let's ask 'em! Today's guest for the SAT (Successful Author Talk) is Victoria Aveyard, a member of the Freshmen Fifteens and author of THE RED QUEEN, coming from HarperTeen in 2015.

Are you a Planner or Pantster?

Full disclosure, I had to look this up. I guess I’m sort of in between – I started TRQ with about a ten page outline and a few more pages of background world info, then I dived into the story. I despise outlining, but love worldbuilding, and made a conscious effort to rein myself in from worldbuilding too much and killing my drive outright. I’m a big believer in letting the story and the characters take you where they want to go, and the second act reflected this the most. I like to know my first and third act down cold, and then let the characters knit the two together with their own actions and growth.

With other projects, I’m definitely a Pantster. Last night I wrote about 2k words of a story and I had no idea where it came from or where it was going, I just know it wanted to come out.

How long does it typically take you to write a novel, start to finish?

I had never finished a novel before TRQ, so I can only go by that particular project. The first draft was 160,000 words, and took six to seven months to write. Another two months to revise with my agent Suzie, who took a very well-wielded machete to my mammoth of a manuscript. Basically, I wrote the first sentence of TRQ in late June 2012, and we sold to HarperTeen in April 2013.

Do you work on one project at a time, or are you a multi tasked?

I generally like to multitask, but when I’m down and deep in a project, I work on that and that alone. During TRQ, that was the only idea I worked on, and I’m currently trying to get back into machine writing mode.

Did you have to overcome any fears that first time you sat down to write?

I started the book about a month after I graduated college, where I spent four years in writing workshop styled classes for my screenwriting BFA. I’d basically been writing every day for years at that point, and sitting down to write wasn’t an issue. It was creating something I was proud of, that I actually liked reading, and that surprised even me when the characters developed minds of their own.

How many trunked books (if any) did you have before you were agented?

Never finished a manuscript before, but I have five feature screenplays that will probably never see the light of day. I’m proud of all of them, but they are definitely staying locked away on my computer.

Have you ever quit on an ms, and how did you know it was time?

I guess the first manuscript I quit on was a picture book about an escaped princess I started when I was six and promptly forgot about ten sentences in. Since then, I tried my hand at Tolkien-esque high fantasy too many times to count, and always got bogged down. They were derivative, clichéd and eternally flawed, and I knew it. But the experience was nice!

Who is your agent and how did you get that "Yes!" out of them? 

My warrior princess agent is Suzie Townsend of New Leaf Literary & Media. I came to her untraditionally, and, judging by what I’ve heard about querying, I’m so glad I never had to face down that firing squad. Long story short: I pitched the idea of writing a kickass YA novel to the talent management company Benderspink in Los Angeles. They brought me in to pitch pilots and screenplays, and the little voice in my head told me to do this instead. They liked the idea, I wrote TRQ, and in January, the company passed on my manuscript to Pouya Shahbazian at New Leaf. He had sold the movie option to The Planet Thieves by Dan Krokos in conjunction with Benderspink, so they had a working relationship. Pouya thought TRQ was up Suzie’s alley and, against all odds, she read it the weekend she got it. After a revision, she offered representation.

I never spoke to any other agents and I’m so glad I landed where I did. I honestly had no idea how publishing worked or what good agencies were – and somehow I ended up at one of the best! I honestly think I must have been crucified and/or killed by Mongol invasions in a past life to earn this one.

Any advice to aspiring writers out there on conquering query hell?

Everyone comes in differently. Weird things happen. What works for someone else might not work for you and vice versa. And above all things, do what suits you best, not someone else. Just because so-and-so blasted 80 queries out in a week and got repped off it doesn’t mean you will. It could just take one, or 100, or 1000, or none at all. There’s no set path for this – you can only make your own.

How do you think it will feel the first time you see your book for sale?

I’m expecting to faint and/or set up camp in my local Barnes & Noble to pet my book when it comes out.

How much input do you have on cover art?

My wonderful editor Kari Sutherland at HarperTeen has just gotten the ball rolling on the cover process. We’ve started discussing, and my ideas were definitely welcome, if not encouraged. I’m so excited to see where we end up!

What's something you learned from the process that surprised you?

How nice everyone in publishing is. From the agents to the Twitter followers, people are absolutely grand. I spent four years learning how to break into the film agency and it was full of horror stories of awful, shark-like, Ari Gold people who I would probably punch in the face. Instead, I’m now working with people I consider real friends both in publishing and in film. They’re so genuine, and they let me ramble about Game of Thrones. They even join in!

How much of your own marketing do you?  

I’m most active on Twitter, mostly because it gives me an outlet to vent my sports/Game of Thrones/boring feelings and complaints. I also blog occasionally (I’m terrible at keeping up with it), and more so at Tumblr because it allows me to reblog funny Game of Thrones gifs. I’m very much a fangirl. As for true marketing, this is my first ever interview, and I expect things to intensify when we get closer to my publishing date in 2015.

When do you build your platform? After an agent? Or should you be working before?

I didn’t have a platform/probably still don’t properly have one. I don’t do much more than tweet my feelings about odd things I find in Target (VELVET SUNGLASSES), but I do finally have a Goodreads author account, and TRQ is on there as well! It magically appeared overnight, probably because of a fairy.

Do you think social media helps build your readership?

I hope so, but I assume it won’t be the end all to be all. Hopefully after people read my book, they go hmm, I wonder what that Victoria lady is like, and find my Twitter full of Game of Thrones theories and derogatory things about the New York Jets (PATRIOTS 4 LIFE). Then they’ll shrug and be happy I found a job that keeps me away from real people.

How To Stop Women From Writing

I spent the weekend in West Virginia with my boyfriend's family for Thanksgiving. It was really lovely to sit down to eat food I didn't make, and be able to sit down and relax in a house I didn't feel responsible for cleaning.

And then I came home.

I have two indoor cats and two dogs. My mom was nice enough to let the dogs in and out while I was gone, but everybody was anxious at my absence and it was easily seen. At some point someone had clearly dug into the garbage can. There were little cat paw prints on the counter that could only be seen in a certain light, but I knew they were there. Judging by the defiant looks, I'm guessing the kitties knew I knew and didn't care. The laundry I was supposed to do last week was waiting on me, the dishes in the sink were still dirty, and I really needed to put fresh bedding on my bed.

But the drive home had given me a few hours of warm, fast-moving-cocoon, quiet time. And the little seed in my brain that wants to become the WIP germinated in those few hours, sprouting supporting characters and ripping off a series of things I need to research if I really want to do this project justice.

Seeing all that housework waiting on me the second I walked in the door was like a killing frost on that seedling, as effective as the 15 degrees outside. There were things staring at me in the real world that needed my attention. People notice when you let these things go.

But the only person that knows when you let things go in your imagination is you.

So I decided to be dutiful, and I started in on the dishes when I suddenly remembered a quote from Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes:

I've seen women insist on cleaning everything in the house before they could sit down to write... and you know it's a funny thing about housecleaning... it never comes to an end. Perfect way to stop a woman. A woman must be careful to not allow over-responsibility (or over-respectabilty) to steal her necessary creative rests, riffs, and raptures. She simply must put her foot down and say no to half of what she believes she "should" be doing. Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only.

In MindyLand this translates as, "F#(*! the dishes. I'm writing."