On Here be Magic: Writing, Biology and the Value of Failure

I'm on Here Be Magic today, talking about how a career in biology helped prepare me for publishing by teaching me the value of failure. Lots and lots of failure. Stop by and tell me what you think the value of failure is.

What Revising is Made Of

This is what I'm doing when I'm revising. I didn't include "wasting time on twitter," because that would've been too embarrassing.

(I might've underestimated the panicking.)

How I got my agent, got a book deal, and finally got around to writing one of these posts

When I was first learning about the publishing business (something I’m still doing), some of my favorite posts were the “How I Got My Agent” and “How I Got My Book Deal” articles. When all I had was a half-finished manuscript, it was thrilling to hear success stories. At the time, I had my share of daydreams about writing my own such posts, but when those milestones happened for me, I never quite got around to sharing my experiences. So here goes. Sort of.

Like a lot of writers, I’ve always written. Ever since I learned how to make letters, I’ve been putting stories on paper. I started out with hand-scrawled, two-page epics about unicorns and moved on to sprawling Southern family sagas I never finished. It never occurred to me that writing was something I could pursue professionally. As a kid, I also happened to like math and science, and those were the skills everyone seemed to regard as useful. I majored in biochemistry, went on to grad school in the same subject, and figured I could always write in my spare time.

I didn't know how rare spare time was going to be. Graduate school was by turns exciting, frustrating and dull, but it was always all-consuming. There was no room in my brain for anything else, and all those half-finished writing projects I'd optimistically kept on my computer gathered digital dust for four and a half years.

That November, The Enabler and I celebrated Thanksgiving at a friend’s house. Most of our friends didn’t have the vacation time or the money to fly home for such a short break—hell, half of my friends were spending their “day off” in the lab, just like every other holiday. So The Enabler and I found ourselves at a Thanksgiving Day potluck with a large group of friends and strangers, making conversation and trying not to talk about work.

After dinner, the hostess started a party game. Everyone was supposed to ask a question, and we all wrote down our answers anonymously and shared our lists with the group. The goal was to guess who belonged to which list. A lot of the questions were things like Who’s your favorite Seinfield character? (Elaine) and What’s your favorite book? (Pride and Prejudice, of course). But someone—I don’t remember who—asked the following: What are you afraid you won’t accomplish before you die?

The answer came to me out of the clear blue sky, as so many true things do. I’m afraid I’ll never write a book.

It shocked me. I had no idea writing a book was that important to me. I had no idea it was important to me at all.

I went home and stared at all the unfinished novels on my laptop. I had stories about estranged sisters and stories about the dysfunctional Southern aristocracy. I had three pages of a silly space opera with lots of techno-babble and no plot. I had fragments of poems from college and a collection of rambling personal essays. None of it grabbed me.

This happened to be 2008, the year the financial crisis hit. There was a lot of panic floating around my department about how we were going to find funding in the new economy, and that panic was piled on top of my own terror about graduating and finding a real job. I also happened to be reading Twilight at the time—the first vampire romance I’d ever read—on the recommendation of a close childhood friend. All of these things were crammed into my head, and something in there just went click. I thought: This whole vampire thing—it’s not just about sex or lust or power—it’s about fear, and a writer could do some really interesting things to symbolically explore fear in a fantasy landscape.

It’s possible I’m too dorky for my own good.

Anyway, I started reading more genre fiction. I started devouring genre fiction. I’d always loved science fiction and fantasy, but now I started seeing these fascinating themes in all flavors of speculative fiction, the way writers played with mythical creatures and made them represent all the scary intangible fears and desires I was grappling with myself. I discovered paranormal romance and urban fantasy: Diana Rowland, Nicole Peeler, Jeaniene Frost, Ilona Andrews, Carolyn Crane, Kelley Armstrong, Jenn Bennett, Patricia Briggs, Jaye Wells, Charlaine Harris. I wrote a paranormal romance of my own. It came pouring out of my head like I’d knocked the tap off a hose. I realized, finally, that this was what I wanted to write.

The book was terrible. Half of it was set in a city in France I’ve never visited. It featured two first person viewpoints, neither of which was the hero. There were no sex scenes. I didn’t just make all the classic first novel mistakes, I invented new ones.

But I finished it. I finished it, and I revised the hell out of it, and I queried it.

Thank goodness no one wanted it. I got a few nibbles here and there, but after a few dozen rejections and half as many revisions, I faced the fact that the manuscript was never going to be fit for public consumption, and I shelved it.

Somewhat to my surprise, I started another one right away.

That’s when I knew I wasn't going to quit. The ideas kept coming. I was working on one book and jotting down ideas for the next. A whole world fell into place in my head, a universe of interlocking stories, people and places and relationships, dozens of them. I couldn’t write fast enough.

Unfortunately, I also had to write my dissertation. For weeks, I did nothing but write. By day, I wrote down my science, detailed technical descriptions of biochemical methodology, a precise accounting of ten fruitless experiments for every one that worked. A litany of failure. Every night, the stories were like therapy. I finished my dissertation and my second manuscript in the same week. I was exhausted. I graduated, and I sent out queries while I looked for a job. This time, I knew I had something worth reading. I got job interviews, I got manuscript requests, and about two weeks before my new job started, I got an email from Sarah LaPolla. I opened that email with my heart in my throat, waiting for a rejection. It wasn’t a rejection. She’d made me an offer of representation.

We eventually sold that book, now titled Twisted Miracles, to Carina Press in a three book deal. This past Thanksgiving was the five year anniversary of the one that sent me to my laptop in a frenzy, and my debut novel comes out in two months.

I’m pretty excited about it. And I figured this was my last chance to write one of these posts.

That’s my story so far. Whatever you’re wishing and hoping for this year, I hope it happens for you in the best possible way.

The Chemistry of Paranormal World-building

I'm at Paranormal Unbound today, talking about how paranormal world-building is just like organic chemistry. (Yes, I really am that big of a dork.) Stop by and tell me about your favorite fictional paranormal worlds!

The Power of Stories

Lately, I've been thinking quite a lot about how we use stories to communicate. There's a reason politicians like to trot out everyday folks on the campaign trail and talk about Mrs. Smith's personal story of loss or success. There's a reason so much of the Bible consists of parables. Stories are the most powerful way we can use language. 

I'm talking about a pretty mundane example of this today on Here Be Magic--one where my toddler stops screaming so much once he hears a story about a kid with similar problems. But if you're only going to read one post this week about the power of story, you should read my friend and fellow writer Amber Belldene's. She published this amazing Sermon on Romance yesterday, and it's a beautiful and articulate statement of what it means to be a storyteller. 

Have a great week, everyone, and I hope whatever stories you're reading, they speak to you in whatever way you need them to.

My First Interview!

I'm over at the Firebirds today answering questions about tough heroines, hurricanes, and the science of world building. Stop by and say hello!

How to Handle a Manuscript Critique

I’m in the editing phase for one of my novels, one that’s especially close to my heart, and I recently got notes back from my trusted critique partners and beta readers.  One of my betas is a very dear friend of mine, and when she was done with the manuscript, we went to a local microbrewery to have pizza and beer and talk about the book.  We sat down at one of the shiny, dark wood tables and whipped out our laptops. My beta started scrolling through my manuscript and telling me all the places where she paused, thought something was off, found a typo. At one point she asked me, “Joan had sex with Alex*, right? I mean, is that what you meant to imply in this scene?”

It was not what I meant to imply. 

“Thanks,” I said.  “It doesn’t really matter what I meant.”

And it doesn’t. 

Step one of handling a critique is to receive it.

No explaining, not to your reader, not to yourself. No attempts to justify the inclusion of, say, llamas in your contemporary romance. There are only two things you may ever say in response to a critique.  The first is, “Thank you.” The second is something like, “When you say you thought the chase scene didn’t make sense, did you mean the one where they chase llamas across the mall parking lot, or the one in the kitchen where she’s running after him with a frying pan?” Thanks, or a request for clarification. That’s it.  No explanations, no “But the llamas are crucial to the plot!”, no “Maybe you just don’t like llamas!” Shut up and receive.

It’s crucial that you make every effort not to spout off these explanations and justifications even to yourself. Just for a little while, pretend everything your reader says is the absolute truth, because in a way, it is. Her experience of the book is valid, even if it isn’t the same as your experience. That’s why you asked for her help in the first place. When those explanatory voices pipe up, have another beer and say, “Thanks, that’s an interesting point.”

Now you’re ready for step two. Take that critique and ignore it.

Critiques are like jumping into too-hot bathwater. They sting. (For me, anyway. If you’ve figured out how to take the pain out of statements like “I kind of hated your hero…sorry!” please tell me your secret.) The way to get through the pain is to live with it for a little while. Don’t think about it too hard. Let that critique sit on your hard drive for a day, a week, whatever it takes.

Ignoring your critique doesn’t just take away the sting. It helps make those persistent voices shut up. If you think about it too much, the need to EXPLAIN! will take over. You’ll get into a useless conversation with your critique and convince it that the llamas are necessary. You’ll be very satisfied with yourself, because the critique will just sit there saying the same thing over and over again. Easy argument to win. And the book will suffer.

Once the critique has been sufficiently ignored, you’re ready for step three: deal with it.

Now that you’ve calmed down and realized the llamas really are unnecessary, it’s a lot easier to cut them out. There may be points on which you simply don’t agree with your reader, and that’s okay. It’s critical here not to write off a response as “a personal thing.” All responses to books are personal. But it is okay to sift through those personal responses for the ones that ring in harmony with your vision of the book.

Many, many times, I’ve gotten notes back from multiple critique partners, and everybody has a problem with a particular scene. Say this happens with your parking lot llama chase scene. Somebody hates the llamas, somebody else thinks it would work better if it took place in an amusement park, somebody else thinks the dialogue between the hero and the heroine sounds stilted. What this means is that something is wrong. Nobody—including you—is sure what, but it’s your job to figure it out, and figure it out you will.

So there it is, handling a manuscript critique in three simple steps:

1. Receive it.
2. Ignore it.
3. Deal with it.

You may have noticed a secret step in there at the very end. Step three-point-one: Believe you will get it right. Having faith in yourself during a critique may be the hardest step of all, but keep believing. Trust in your voice, in your vision, in your characters. It may take time, multiple re-writes, lots of chocolate or bourbon or macaroni and cheese with bacon. But as long as you don’t give up, there’ll be a better book on the other side.

What’s your favorite trick for handling a critique?

*Names have been changed to protect the unpublished.

Burn the Boats

4028mdk09 / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0

When the Spanish conquistador Cortes landed in Mexico in the 1500s, he burned his ships on the beach.  There was no going back.  It was survive—conquer—or die.

I’ll put aside for the moment my moral argument with the Spanish conquistadors, and the fact that this story is utterly false.  (According to Wikipedia, he scuttled the ships to prevent a mutiny.  But whatever.)  Sometimes, it’s a pretty useful philosophy for living your life.  Choices, second chances—these things can be paralyzing.  If I can always go back, how can I move forward after a decision?

This is how I’ve been feeling revising my latest book.  It needs work.  I need to make some big changes.  But there are multiple ways I could take the story, and I’ve been stymied in a swamp of possibilities for weeks.  The only way to get out, I think, is to pick one boardwalk out of the marsh and burn the rest of them to the ground.

Usually, when I’m revising, I save every deleted word.  You never know when you’ll need it, right?  But not this time.  I’m hitting delete on tens of thousands of words and not looking back.  The only way out is to write my way out.

How do you force yourself out of tough spots?

In Defense of Language

I wrote a lot of bad poetry in college.  As part of this literary rite of passage, I went to a handful of poetry readings hosted by the English department, and at one of these, during the question-and-answer period, the poet on deck said the following when asked what advice he had for aspiring poets:  “Just sit down see and what you can do with the language.”

Until that moment, I hadn’t really grasped what language is.  A lifetime of schooling didn’t teach me that language isn’t just a set of vocabulary and usage rules:  It’s both tool-kit and rule-book, enabling and constraining, frustratingly insufficient and transcendently beautiful.  We struggle to express ourselves within its framework, but it never stays still.  It mutates constantly, and even words we thought we knew shift in meaning with every new reader and every fresh reading.

The more I use language for everything from text messages to novels, the more I’m struck by what a miraculous and versatile thing it is.  Which is why I’ve been dismayed by a few conversations I’ve been reading on a handful of popular blog posts discussing the quality of certain books.  There’s a recurring theme that it “shouldn’t matter” if a writer uses proper grammar or makes good decisions about words as long as “the story is good.” 

I understand the premise that in a novel, it’s the story that matters.  And if a bunch of misplaced modifiers and faulty parallelisms bug me, I don’t have to read it.  The trouble is, the misuse of language doesn’t just screw up a single story.  It has a reflexive effect on language itself.  A writer who uses words carelessly chips away at the integrity of our man-made, culturally negotiated system of expression, and that definitely, absolutely matters.

All of us who use language have the power to change it.  If enough of us adopt new slang or use new rules, those elements will be assimilated.  I love this about language.  I love that we can create new words and expressions that convey emotion and meaning (“jump the shark,” the verbification of “Google”).  But a writer is not just a consumer of language.  A writer is a caretaker.  A text to my mom about my new pair of black suede slouch boots (OMG so CUTE u gotta c them!) doesn’t have nearly as much power as a book meant to be read by the public.  People are gonna read that story, and it’s going to influence them, however subtly and imperceptibly.  Using words carelessly is like leaving soda cans on the ground at Yosemite.  It’s offensive when everyday visitors do it.  When the park rangers do it, it’s destructive.

Misusing language blurs the boundaries and crushes the nuances we could have used to do something interesting and fresh.  A new word creates a sharp, startling, useful new image (unibrow, agritourism), but a misused word just gets conflated with other words.  Take my (admittedly nit-picky) pet peeve: comprise.  Many folks use “comprise” just like they use “compose,” when in fact its meaning is closer to “embrace” or “enclose.”  To borrow Strunk & White’s illustration from The Elements of Style: a zoo comprises animals; it is not comprised of animals.  I see “comprise” misapplied so often, I think it’s probably already lost.  Just one more precision tool turned into a blunt object.

God knows I’ve been guilty of some pretty appalling abuses of language (see above: bad poetry), but I try to treat it like the commonly held commodity it is.  I don’t think that means we can’t take liberties to get our points across.  Taking risks, breaking rules, trying new things—that’s part of how language evolves, and that’s a good thing.  It’s great that language can change to accommodate the pressures applied to it by culture.  It just shouldn’t change because we’re too lazy or careless to use it well.

Big News!

You guys! I got some great news on Monday.  My book, Figs From Thistles, is a finalist for the 2012 RWA Golden Heart ® award!  I got the call at eight a. m., while breastfeeding The Small One.  I got very excited; The Small One got very confused. Ten minutes later I got pooped on.  Ah, the glamourous life of a writer.

Meaning What You Don't Say

!!! Spoilers ahead for the following: Downton Abbey, Intuition, People of the Book.  

On of my favorite authors, Jennifer Crusie, has a great essay on what television taught her about writing romance (check it out here), and one of her points is that in television, characters often don't say quite what they mean (Lesson #4: Mean What You Don't Say).  I’ve been thinking about this lately while watching Downton Abbey (streaming on Netflix!) and appreciating that famous British reticence as displayed by early twentieth century aristocracy.  At times, in fact, they’re almost too reticent.  When Matthew Crawley proposed to Mary, I had to think back:  When exactly did they get to that point?  The clues are so subtle, it was easy for a coarse American to miss them.  All the same, the lack of overt sentiment in the show makes every action carry more weight.  Mary's decision to take a jump while hunting with the alluring Mr. Pamuk says almost as much as her failure to kick him out of her bedroom later that night.

This isn’t to say that a well-placed declaration can’t be powerful, but some of the best writing gets at emotions obliquely, because that’s how we get at them ourselves.  It’s rare that people say what they really feel.  Hell, we often don’t know ourselves well enough to be that honest.  Part of the joy of a good story is participating in the mystery of what, exactly, is going on in the characters' hearts.  Showing emotion rather than  having it declared also gives a writer the chance to load up a scene with more detail and nuance than could be achieved with a simple, “Will you go to bed with me?”  To illustrate, here are two examples from the beginnings of two very different relationships:

From People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks*:

        He reached over then and wiped a smear of grease off my cheek.  I stopped laughing.  I reached for his hand before he could withdraw it, and turned it over in my own.  It was a scholar’s hand, to be sure, with clean, well-kept nails.  But there were calluses as well.  I suppose even scholars had to chop wood, if they could find any, during the siege.  The tips of his fingers glistened with the lamb grease from my cheek.  I brought them to my lips and licked them, slowly, one by one.  His green eyes regarded me, asking a question anyone could understand.

Zow!  There’s no “do you like me?” moment.  There’s no "do you want to come upstairs?"  There is only risk and the wordless communication that follows.  Even if you haven't met these two characters (and you should; the book is amazing), you can probably pick up on how different their lives have been up until this point.  They each approach this initial trial with their own tolerance for rejection.

Here’s the initiation of a very different sort of relationship from Allegra Goodman’s Intuition: 

            Then suddenly she was embarrassed.  She felt herself blushing, heat spreading under her skin.  The others were calling out to them from the table, and she would have run away if he hadn’t been holding her.  She closed her eyes for a second, trying to remember the steps.  She listened to the music and counted silently to herself: one, two, one-two, and then plunged in, as she might jump into freezing water.
            The pressure of his hand on her waist surprised her.
            “What are you doing?” he asked her.
            She looked up at him, confused.
            “I’ll lead,” he said.

I’ll bet you can see where this one’s going.  If you think about it long enough, you might be able to reconstruct the whole plot from those 100 words.  We have two individuals used to being in control, but one of them has a great deal more self-assurance.  It won't end well. 

Both of these examples are packed with emotion, and we get to infer what's going on from what the players do rather than what they say.  The authors could have gone about revealing those deeper themes in other ways.  In People of the Book, Brooks could have had her female protagonist think to herself, "I knew he wouldn't make the next move, so I did it for him, taking his hand and drawing his index finger into my mouth."  Goodman could have had her main character ponder the wisdom of dancing with this man, could have had her wonder whether she made herself vulnerable by accepting.  I think their restraint makes for more engaging stories.  

How do you like your emotion served?  Can it be too cold?

*p. 31-32, Penguin Books, 2008

**p. 65, The Dial Press, 2006

This is Your Brain on Revision

How I revise a novel:

As you can see, I start out optimistic and thereafter oscillate between joy and despair.  It is possible for this pattern to continue indefinitely.  What does your revision process look like?

My First RWA!

Last week, I attended my first-ever writing conference, the RWA National conference in New York City.  It was overwhelming and fabulous, and here are the highlights:

1. I met my agent (Sarah LaPolla, The Revision Ninja)!  Well, I’ve already met her, of course, but this was the first time I’ve gotten to meet her in person.  I tried not to squee.  We talked about books and publishing and the pros and cons of happy endings, plus our admiration for Bryan Fuller (and, of course, Lee Pace). 
2. I got to meet some of my favorite authors, including Laura Bickle.  (If you haven’t checked out her Anya Kalinczyk series, you’re missing out.)  Laura introduced me to some of the RWA FF&P crowd, and I decided it’s high time I joined the chapter.   
3. I should have been prepared for the ridiculous number of free books, but I wasn’t.  

I snagged thrity-five books. $356 worth.  The Enabler gamely carried on an entire suitcase full of books to avoid the checked baggage fee.  Bless him.  He really is an enabler.

4.  My roommates were rockstars!  I ended up rooming with my two critique partners, Rachael Herron and Kristin Miller.  They’re both published with Avon, which provided the free USB drives that came in our tote bags.  Those drives were pre-loaded with work by four Avon writers, and my roomies made up half of that list!  Pretty cool.  We had a gerat time.  Every night was like a slumber party, and the RITAs were like prom.  Here we are all dressed up at the awards ceremony:

Me, Rachael Herron, and Kristin Miller at the RITAs

It was a great trip, and I hope I get to attend next year as well.  Maybe by then, I’ll have finished half of those books.

What Makes an Excellent Fantasy Novel? Part 3 of 5: Villains We Can Relate to

Part 1: Making the Intangible Concrete

Part 2: There’s No Free Lunch

Fantasy may be one of the few genres in which a true arch-villain is possible, someone who is purely evil and bent on the destruction of the world.  Political thrillers aside, not many other types of fiction can pull this off.  It’s one reason why I think fantasy remains popular: it’s comforting to step into a world where the bad guy is easy to identify.  There’s no grey area or nuance: Sauron is evil incarnate, and we’d better find a way to stop him.

That said, I’ve never been a fan of the “serial killer villain.”  You know the type, the villain with no motivation other than destruction and pain for its own sake.  It can be done well (Iago?), but more often than not, this kind of bad guy is just boring.  Far more interesting is the villain who wants something, whether it’s a candy bar or eternal life, and even more powerful is when that villain wants something I might want myself.  In other words, what makes a great villain is also what makes a great hero: relatability.

In Harry Potter, Voldemort is a compelling villain because even though he’s as evil as it gets, his desires are the dark side of our own.  He fears death—who doesn’t?  He wants power and control, the same thing every politician strives for.  Of course, unlike us normal folks, Voldemort has let his fears and desires control him, and he’s developed the resources to act on those desires.  He’s a rare and stunning example of a truly evil villain who maintains believable motivations.

I don’t think the series would work half so well, though, if it didn’t include such a rich array of sub-villains.  Rowling weaves in a ton of them, and not all of them want the same thing as the arch-villain.  They aren’t quite as evil, but they are more accessible.  If heroes exemplify what we most admire in ourselves, villains are reflections of the qualities we detest, and Rowling’s sub-villains do this beautifully, even going so far as to reflect the flaws of the heroes we’ve grown to love.  

For example, Dolores Umbrige’s controlling authoritarianism is Hermoine’s respect for rules gone terribly, horribly wrong.  Lockheart’s childish avarice for recognition echoes Ron’s dissatisfaction living in shadow of Harry and his brothers.  And the disrespectful Mundungus, who's not quite a villain, is a sad shadow of the rebellious Sirius Black, who's not quite a hero.  In the heroes, these character traits are mixed with courage and goodness, and so they lead to good things: Hermoine’s sense of justice, Ron’s loyalty, Sirius’s fearlessness in the face of danger.  In the villains, they become coldness, vanity, and selfishness.  Part of what makes these villains so powerful is that they reflect the ways we could go wrong, just like the heroes show us how to go right.

What do you think makes a good villain?

What Makes an Excellent Fantasy Novel? Part 2 of 5: There's No Free Lunch

∆E = 0

The law of conservation of energy.  It’s the first law of thermodynamics, one of the most important physical laws of the universe.   And just because there’s magic involved doesn’t mean we have to break it.

In a nutshell, the first law means that you have to end up with the same amount of energy you started out with—no more, no less.  If you burn a tank of gas, for example, the chemical energy in the liquid fuel is converted to kinetic energy (the motion of your car) and heat.  The energy contained in your sandwich might get turned into you running a marathon.  (Or, in my case, just sitting on the couch, but for longer.)

I’m not going to argue for total scientific realism in fantasy fiction (where’s the fun in that?), but I do think we can stick to the spirit of the law.  Supernatural powers ought to come at a price.  For example, in the first book of Stacia Kane’s Downside series, the price of summoning and controlling a particularly powerful ghost is a human soul.  Doesn’t get much creepier than that.  Even in the teen drama The Vampire Diaries, vampires who don’t drink human blood are weaker than their murderous counterparts. 

The price doesn’t have to be a human sacrifice: it can be something as simple as time.  In Harry Potter, just because the kids have magical abilities doesn’t mean they can snap their fingers and get whatever they want.  It takes years of study and practice before they can accomplish spells.  And there are limits.  Wizards can’t create food they don’t already have.

Supernatural powers get a little boring if they come too easily.  It's one reason I'm not a big fan of day-walking vampires.  When the bloodsuckers are confined to the dark and can't enter your home without invitation, it makes their creepiness more visceral, and their gift of immortality more limited. A paranormal gift feels more precious when it comes at a cost, whether it’s a character’s personal energy, the time it takes them to study and perfect their art, or some sort of sacrifice.  The alternative is too God-like to be interesting.

What's your favorite price for supernatural power?  

(P.S.  You can check out Part One of this series here.)