metteharrison

Two Kinds of Writer's Block

2013-05-24T19:57:50Z

1. Story-related Block

When you have story-related block, you feel sick every time you think about the story you're working on. You find yourself avoiding sitting down. You wonder if you were made to be a writer. You being to make lists of everything you hate about your book. You even hate thinking about it.

It may be hard to see it, but sometimes you can get rid of this kind of writers block by:

A) Going back to the beginning of the story and seeing where it went wrong. You have to be courageous enough in this situation to cut as much of the words that aren't working as you have to. This may well be most of what you have written. But unless you do this, you will never be able to feel any interest in this project again. It may already be too late for that. And so . . .

B) Trying to write something new might be the solution, as well. If you can think of anything else you are interested in writing, maybe something completely different from the failed project that is haunting you, try it out for a day or so. Fiddle with it, play with it. See if you can make writing fun again. If it works, keep going. But be watchful. If you start to feel a niggling sense that you've gone wrong again, stop before you get too far in. You don't want to keep throwing books out.

2 Life-related Block

In my mind, life-related block is completely different, but I think that there may be some writers who confuse life-related block with story-related block. Both come with a lack of interest in writing, and a dread whenever the idea of work comes up. In addition, life-related block can also cause you to question if you were made to be a writer.

However, life-related block is far more pervasive. When I have life-related block, I don't want to watch movies or television. I don't want to read books. I don't want to talk to friends. I don't want to eat my favorite foods. It is a bit like depression in this way, in that it can feel like it takes over your whole life and makes it impossible for you to feel happy.

Unlike depression, however, a life-related block can actually be solved by fixing a specific problem in your life. I don't know what that problem is for everyone, and sometimes depression medication can help by letting us see our lives more clearly. Sometimes a life-related block is over-work or over-stress from a day-job, from family emergencies, or from the long illness of a loved one.

Sometimes a life-related block is the unconscious realization that there is something going terribly wrong in our lives, a relationship that has to be ended (and we don't want to do it), or a change has to be made. It can be related to the physical space you're trying to do your writing in. It can be related to money problems.

Whatever it is, if you have life-related block, starting a new project isn't likely to help you. You probably need to just take some time off your creative endeavors and really figure out what change is needed. Then, when you've got your stuff taken care of, the desire to create will naturally come back to you, slowly but surely.

Who is keeping you from writing?

2013-05-23T13:44:03Z

There are people keeping you from writing in your life. Some of them may be small, squirming, cute little creatures who think they need you constantly and weep piteously every time you try to move away from them. I had five of these and I understand the temptation to give up writing time for them. But there are other people who are stealing your writing time and I urge you to identify and stop them.

1. You are keeping yourself from writing. You have a million excuses. Sometimes you are keeping yourself from your best writing by working on projects you think are “more commercial,” but which you don’t actually love. Sometimes you are keeping yourself from your writing because you are afraid or because you don’t believe you are good enough. Sometimes you are keeping yourself from writing because you are refusing to admit that you need some medication or assistance with other work or because you need to say no more often to other things.

2. Old voices from your past. It could be an old teacher who told you you could never become a writer because you don’t know your grammar well enough. It could be a parent who told you that writing isn’t a “real job.” It could be an old “friend” who read one of your first works and then ridiculed you mercilessly about it the rest of the time that you were “friends.”

3. A spouse is actively sabotaging your writing. I have seen this happen on occasion. Most of the time, writers struggle with spouses who simply don’t understand what it means to be a creative type. They often mean to be supportive, but sometimes are doing it in the wrong way (by offering suggestions that are completely useless). But there are spouses who are competitive and simply mean. If you married one before you knew you were a writer, you may have to choose between the marriage and your dreams.

4. Your writing group acts like crabs in a barrel. They have stopped really trying to get published and they have certainly stopped trying to help you become a better writer. Instead, every group meeting devolves into a rehashing of all the old problems your earliest manuscripts showed and a list of everything wrong with the current book, with no kind words about how you’ve improved and no useful suggestions.

5. Children or parents who are afraid that your writing may in some way embarrass them. They are constantly asking to see manuscripts so they can “vet” them by giving you approval that your version of them is “correct.” This can happen whether or not you are writing anything remotely non-fictional. Sometimes people see themselves in characters where they are not. But even if you intended the comparison, it doesn’t help to have them give you “feedback.”

6. An agent who never sends anything out. If you have an agent who acts more as a block to you finding the right editor for your book than as a guide to the publishing world, it may be time to part ways. I often tell writers that the problem isn’t their agent, it’s themselves, but there are times when it’s the agent. If your agent doesn’t like anything you write or can’t see potential in it, then you have the wrong agent for you.

7. An editor who has damaged you so badly by rewriting things for you that you stare at the blank page with horror. I have heard stories of this, though it has never happened to me. Editors should NEVER EVER rewrite for an author. On rare occasions, I have had editors suggest “something like this?” But an editor who is writing lines for you is an editor who is trying to usurp your position as a writer.

8.A friend who keeps talking about the books you used to write. It may be that this is intended kindly, I don’t know. But in my experience, looking backward is not a good thing. If you have abandoned a project from the past, there is probably a good reason for it. Hitting your head against the same wall again and again is not productive creatively.

9. Co-workers at your day job/neighborhood friends who are constantly giving you advice on what book you should write next to “make it big.” What sells big and what you want to write are completely different things. What sells big and what you are uniquely able to write well are completely different things. You need to write from your heart more than you need to write what someone thinks is “easy.”

10.Critics of your last book that sold badly. I know this one intimately well, believe me. One of the problems here is reading reviews of your own books. Reviews are not meant for the author. Really, they aren’t. They aren’t kind attempts to help you become better. If they were, the reviewers would send them to you and to no one else (although sometimes on twitter, it can feel that’s what they are doing). Reviews are for readers. They are to help readers find books like other ones they liked. They have nothing to do with writing. NOTHING.

Writing Wednesday: 10 "Secret" Ways to Get Your Manuscript Thrown Out

2013-05-22T13:37:56Z

1. Print it on specially colored paper.
2. Turn one of your pages upside down to see it is read that far.
3. Send it in with a bribe of some kind, like chocolate.
4. Declare that your kids love your book.
5. Threaten, in a joking way, what you will do if it isn't published.
6. Describe the publishing industry as a waste of time.
7. Diss books published by agent or editor you are querying.
8. Talk about your book in vague terms, with no specifics.
9. Compliment yourself on how great your book is and how many copies it will sell.
10. End your letter with the words "You don't want to miss out on this once-in-a-lifetime chance" that sounds like what a car dealer would say.

Writing Wednesday: 10 "Secrets" to to Make Your Manuscript Stand Out

2013-05-22T13:34:43Z

1. Have a killer hook.
2. Show you read in the genre by naming a book that hasn't been made into a movie.
3. Use good punctuation.
4. Proofread your manuscript.
5. Don't ask the agent to read the new version a week after you've sent the first one.
6. Pitch one book at a time.
7. Have a killer setting.
8. Have good dialog.
9. Show, don't tell.
10. Do something uniquely well.

21 Reasons You Think You Don’t Have Time to Write

2013-05-21T16:23:44Z

1. You are letting people tell you that you should be doing other things with your time.

2. You can’t live with the level of clean that your family accepts as normal.

3. You haven’t decided to treat your writing seriously and so no one around you treats it seriously, either.

4. You haven’t made yourself a writing space.

5. You haven’t realized that you need help.

6. You do what is urgent rather than what is necessary.

7. You don’t let your kids and other people solve their own problems.

8. You think that someday you will have more time for writing.

9. You are spending time doing things you actually don’t care about.

10. You are actually using distractions as an excuse not to write.

11. You are terrified of writing, of actually sitting down and putting yourself on the page.

12. You are too busy criticizing the best selling books that you are reading to write something better.

13. You don’t know what to do with a blank page.

14. You don’t know how to turn off your internal editor.

15. You talk a good game, but you don’t play it.

16. You need to do a little planning and research before you start.

17. You don’t actually like writing. You like having written. (Join the club.)

18. You need to write the first line of the next chapter before leaving for the day.

19. You need to spend time remembering what it is you love about writing.

20. You have convinced yourself that you need 2 hours to write and don’t know how to use the 20 minute chunks you actually have.

21. You don’t have notebooks scattered through the house, including in the bathroom, to jot down inspiration.

The Rose Throne: Timeline

2013-05-21T14:50:49Z

Timeline is one of the trickiest things for me as an author. This may be because I don’t outline or it may be a problem for all authors and all books. For me, there were two distinct tasks involved in this.

1. Condensing events

My first draft of The Rose Throne had Issa and Ailsbet begin as pre-teens, about age 11. They met each other briefly, became friends, and then spent another 6-7 years apart before meeting again at age 17. I think I did this in part because I was used to spending a lot of time building backstory for my main characters. In The Princess and the Hound, Prince George begins as a young child and ages up through about 70 pages of the book.

But The Rose Throne was a very different book than The Princess and the Hound, in part because there were two viewpoint characters who grew up in different kingdoms and had very different views of the magic system which they actually share. But in addition to that, I think The Rose Throne is for an older audience than The Princess and the Hound. And there were other reasons for me to condense the story, which included the fact that if Issa and Ailsbet had met and become friends as younger figures, a lot of the narrative tension around their relationship was taken away from the rest of the book.

I cannot say how often I have done critiques on manuscripts in which I tell the author that the timeline needs to be condensed. It’s a major change, but increasing the tension often makes other narrative problems disappear or at least become easier to fix. It improves pacing enormously and makes the structure of the novel really pop out and make itself obvious. If you are meandering through your plot slowly, more tension will help you find your climax and move toward it more easily.

2. Day by day

So the second timeline issue was a chapter-by-chapter day-by-day issue. This happened at a much later stage in the process, at nearly the final revision before copyediting. After I had condensed the book events into one year, I needed to make sure that the seasons were right for each chapter and scene, and that events happened in the right order. You would be surprised at how often I had to shift things backward or forward in time so that one event that caused another didn’t happen chronologically after it in my narrative.

What I did to fix this problem was make a chart for each chapter and then type in a date. Now, the kingdoms of Rurik and Weirland don’t have our Roman calendar and I purposely never referred to our months or days of the week. I always feel like fantasy loses its sense of other-worldliness if it relies on our conventions too much (unless it’s set in our world, in which case, it’s fine). So instead I used seasons and day numbers. Each event happened on a given day in a given season. When I put them all together with a short one-sentence explanation of each chapter, I could glance through and make sure there weren’t any long, unexplained absences (which, of course there were, but I had to fix). I also could see whether too much happened in one stretch. This visual was a useful way to make sure the scenes were organized properly and that the events happened in a measured fashion.

I still have trouble with timeline in most books that I am working on now. Maybe one day I will figure out a way to hold it all in my head and not make a mistake. Ha!

What is YA?

2013-05-16T14:16:12Z

1. YA usually has a YA protagonist (13-19), but not always.
2. YA is usually shorter than adult fiction (60-80k, though fantasy can be longer).
3. YA is usually more quickly paced, with more dialog, less exposition, and fewer subplots.
4. YA tends to be in first person or very close third, and it tends to have a single viewpoint character, sometimes two.
5. YA has plot. Adult fiction sometimes doesn't.
6. YA tends to have a more hopeful outlook on like. (Despite what you hear about how dark and edgy YA can be, compare with Cormac McCarthy)
7. YA has VOICE. This may be the single most important feature of YA. Adult novels may have narrators who are invisible. YA rarely does.
8. YA is about becoming. There is no ennui.
9. YA often has a first real love, and not a sweet love as in MG. Love in YA is physical, even if it is "clean." There is a sense of smell, taste, and touch when it comes to love. Everything is sexy, sweat dripping down the face, and the smallest touch.
10. YA is about finding power. Adults may have accepted that there is no real power for them in the world. Teens don't accept this, and largely, when you think you have power, you do.

Davis County Literacy Night

2013-05-15T13:49:03Z

is tonight at 6:30 at Davis High School! I will be there with Tyler Whitesides, J. Scott Savage, Kim Williams-Justesen, Kristyn Crow, Kristen Chandler, and many others. This is a great chance to get a signed copy of The Rose Throne if you are looking for a chance to get one and to come meet me. I am speaking on How to Find Time for Your Dream.

Writing Wednesday: TRUST YOUR CHARACTERS

2013-05-15T13:21:33Z

I recently went to a talk by Victoria Curran of Harlequin on writing for her line. One of the things she talked about was the frequent problem of writers trying to follow formulas and ending up short-changing the story, the emotional impact, and the characters themselves. I was really impressed to hear her say a lot of things about romance formula that I have said myself. TRUST YOUR CHARACTERS, she said. Let them lead you to interesting plots.Let them lead you to new places that other romances don’t go.

I have been thinking for almost a week now about this idea of trusting your characters and what that means for writers. I know that we have this idea that there are writers who outline and writers who discover. But I am not sure this is really a different thing. I suspect that writers who discover-write can have just as many problems forcing characters to do what will lead to the “right” plot as writers who outline do. And writers who outline can outline based on character rather than based on the “right” plot as much as discovery writers do. It’s not really one way or another, once you have written fifteen drafts of a manuscript. You are moving back and forth between plot and character, tweaking character so plot works, and tweaking plot so character works.

That said, I still like the idea of trusting your characters to lead you to interesting plot. I think sometimes we are scared to let our characters veer off script. Even if you don’t have an outline written down for a particular novel, you still have an idea in your head of what is done and what isn’t done in your particular genre. And when a character might have a chance to do something that you have never seen a character do before, as a writer you might have a tendency to reel that character in because you will have an easier time writing the next scene and indeed the rest of the book if the character stays within the kinds of plot that you have seen done before.

For instance, if you have a character in a fantasy novel who decides to leave the magical school s/he is enrolled in, what happens next? That’s not the way those stories are written. If you have a character in a romance novel who decides to leave town just when things get hot and heavy on a year-long world cruise, well what next? You don’t usually have a year gap before the resolution of your romance. If you have a character in a science fiction novel who does something stupid and gets killed, well then who is going to be your main character for the rest of the novel? You put a lot of time and effort into developing this great alpha character and now all you have left is the beta characters running around.

But often the most interesting thing about a novel may be the ways in which it disobeys the formulas and rules of convention. Yes, there are probably rules you can’t circumvent. In romance, do you have to have a happily ever after? Well, actually no. I’ve read romances that didn’t. But readers are not always happy. Still, it can be done and if your characters demand it, then you may end up writing a much more satisfying story that way than by making your characters act in ways that serve the HEA, but take away all the uniqueness and power of the character development you have worked on.

Still thinking about this …

Free ebook stories now available for The Rose Throne

2013-05-15T00:01:45Z

The Rose Throne is out now! If you are interested but not ready to buy the book, here are some free ebooks you can sample:

E for Ekhono, about Kellin, a deleted scene from The Rose Throne:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/315878

Kedor’s Match, a sequel about Kellin’s brother Kedor:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/315881

Or on amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Ekhono-The-Rose-Throne-ebook/dp/B00CRMXJT8/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1368540472&sr=8-12&keywords=mette+ivie+harrison

http://www.amazon.com/Kedors-Match-Rose-Throne-ebook/dp/B00CRMXR68/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1368568377&sr=1-1&keywords=kedor%27s+match+mette+ivie+harrison

Monday Book Recs: Doll Bones by Holly Black

2013-05-13T19:50:57Z

Doll Bones is a delicious fantasy adventure about three children on the verge of their teen years. It’s about not knowing who you are and being afraid to be who you are. It’s about having friends who aren’t cool and dreams that are even less cool. It’s about wanting to stay a child and yet hating the lack of power that comes with childhood. And it’s also about the bonds between us that never die. I cried several times as I read and I could not put the book down once.

I am really amazed at how deftly Holly can move from her YA novels to the middle grade voice of Doll Bones. I never once doubted the age of these kids. Instead, as I read it, I felt myself sinking back into my own childhood, remembering what it was like to hide in the tree so I could read a book and escape from the never-ending list of chores my parents seemed to have for me, and the other siblings who teased me no matter what I read. I remembered old friendships from childhood that were long gone now, but how I cried over them, and felt like they were things that were being stolen away from me as I grew older. I remembered how I felt confused at kids who were becoming teens around me and seemed to become completely different people. I also remembered reading John Bellairs’ books, and the delight of feeling terrified, but also the assurance of knowing that any time I wanted, I could put the book down and wait, take a breath, and keep going.

I don’t want to tell too much about this story, but I did love the story of “The Queen,” the doll for whom the book is named. I loved how it was resolved, and I loved the sense that I had that the girl who had been harmed had found a way to power, even if it was only through haunting other children. I also loved the other story of loss, and it made me think about how often we tell ghost stories to comfort, and how little it makes sense to those who have had loved ones go on who don’t haunt them. I loved the way in which the library and the librarian in the end become such a pivotal part of solving the problem of the book. I love libraries! I love librarians! I think all authors do, and it’s great when a book can just tip the hat to our heroes. I also loved the made-up stories the children told themselves.

This is a book I suspect our children’s children will be reading to their kids. Or at least, I hope they do.

Friday Feminism: Introductions and Prevarications

2013-05-10T13:18:16Z

At a recent workshop experience, I asked all of the participants to introduce themselves. Then I noticed how many of the women in particular were self-effacing, embarrassed, or just plain prevaricating about their skills and years of experience as writers. I admit, these are unpublished writers, but it seemed that they thought of themselves as rank beginners. They were not rank beginners by and large, from my experience in reading their manuscripts before the class start. Many of the manuscripts were books I thought were publishable with a little polish, and a couple of them were so good that I was envious I hadn't written them myself.

Why, then, do we women so frequently undersell ourselves? Pretty simply put, this is how we are socialized. Women who lead with their accomplishments, and who value themselves highly are quickly taught a lesson that this is inappropriate. Men are not taught this generally. Women also internalize this to the point that even in all-female conversations, the same self-deprecating talk prevails. The only kind of one-upmanship in conversation I have seen with women is reverse one-upmanship, like if you think you are stupid, then I will tell you a story about how stupid I am. Or how clueless. Or how hopeless. Or how incompetent. Or how pitiful.

See, the funny thing about this is that I am so oversocialized myself that I don't particularly want to change this. That is, I only wish that men would be less arrogant, not that women would be more so. But this isn't really getting outside of the expectations of gender. I have been told on a couple of occasions that my conversational style is slightly male. Not in the sense that I tend to lead with my best foot (I don't usually), but in the sense that I don't end every sentence with a question mark in my tone and I don't apologize for my opinions as much as others do. I'm aware that a woman with opinions can be taken the wrong way, but I've just stopped caring.

However, I have spent YEARS learning how to introduce myself. I tell some groups of people I am a writer, and if they insist, I will tell them a couple of titles (though rarely are the titles recognized). Most of the time the title "writer" is far less socially intimidating than some of the other things that I might use to introduce myself. Like PhD from Princeton University at age 24. Or #163 nationally ranked triathlete in my age group. Or (now that my kids are older), a daughter at MIT and one at Berklee School of Music. I have found that women don't want to talk to other women they consider above them in status. But men have no problem with this. I have a dear friend who enjoys leading with all of my most impressive accomplishments the first time he introduces me to anyone else. He's proud of me, even if I'm not proud of myself. Maybe I need to learn his strategy. I think probably all women could stand to look at the way in which we introduce ourselves and consider changing it.

The Rose Throne: Names

2013-05-09T13:42:29Z

I knew from the beginning that Issa and Ailsbet, the two princesses, would have variations on the names “Mary” and “Elizabeth” because of the way they are anchored in my mind to the historical Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I of England. Other characters in the novel also have names that are references to figures in Tudor England, though it may be tricky to figure them out. In general, I used Dutch equivalents because I wanted to give a feeling of difference from historical England, but I also wanted the names to seem familiar in an eery way.

Haikor=Henry

Jaap=James

Ailsbet=Elizabeth

Mary was trickier because I wanted her name to be more different than the Dutch variations, so I admit, I mixed up some Mary-like names and came up with the combination of “Marlissa.”

In the first draft of the novel (and some of the subsequent drafts), Ailsbet also went by the nickname “Bez,” an analog of the nickname “Bess.” Ultimately, I chose not to use that name for two reasons. 1—Ailsbet’s position at her father’s court is not one likely to lead to her having a nickname. No one seems to have that kind of affection for her. 2—“Bez” didn’t work for some readers. They thought it sounded odd.

Just for fun, here is a list of other variants of Elizabeth that I considered for Ailsbet/Bez:

Ailsbek (Bek)
Ailsbet (Aila)
Ailusa (Lusa)
Elzavetta (Zava/Zavi)
Izabetta (Zaba)
Sabeta (Beta)
Elzunia (Zuni)
Chabika (Bika)
Chelbeka (Bek)

Writing Wednesday: How to Begin

2013-05-08T15:27:48Z

I am doing a workshop again this weekend and did one just three weeks ago. I find myself saying a lot of the same things about first pages in these sessions, so I'm going to repeat them here for those of you who don't have a chance to come to my workshops.

What a First Chapter Should Do:

1. Make the Reader Feel Something.
You want to evoke an emotion. It can be a negative emotion. It can be a positive emotion. But an emotion is almost always going to be associated with a human character. If your main character is not human, you are going to have to work awfully hard to make the reader feel an attachment to the character. Try to show the character as human as possible in the first chapter. You want the reader/editor/agent to really want to find out what happens in the next chapter. And reminder here: impressing the reader/agent/editor with your big words or pretty language isn't an emotion that is likely to make them want to keep reading, all on its own.

2. Introduce a Character who either desperately wants something or desperately needs/fears something.
This is one of the main reasons that a prolog can be a problem. Even if you have a prolog character who is desperate, if you change povs in the next chapter, you may lose your reader. Ideally, you want to keep the same protagonist from chapter one to chapter two and show this character doing something to get what s/he wants or needs. An active character is always better than a passive one. But the reminder here is: don't let worldbuilding overwhelm your character, especially in the first chapter. No matter how much you might want to tell the reader about all your cool stuff, if you don't have a strong character attachment in the first chapter, you are likely doing something wrong.

3. Be Unique.
Sometimes this means having a unique voice, but it can be many other things. If you are doing a paranormal romance (which I'm still seeing at a lot of workshops), make sure your set-up is unique and that your dilemma is unique. If it feels like the same-old, same-old, my eyes glaze over. Don't tell me that there is an evil bad guy and your mg protagonist has to save his father and then the world from this evil. Don't tell me that your two main characters have been in love for centuries, but keep losing track of each other and have to find each other in a new incarnation. Don't tell me that a vampire hunter and a vampire fall in love.

4. Show Conflict.
You don't need to introduce the main conflict of the whole novel in your first few pages. In fact, you probably don't want to because it takes too much set-up to explain the stakes and the worldbuilding. But you do need conflict in your first few pages. Conflict shows us about characters and it moves things forward. It makes things feel real and important. It makes characters feel real. So if you have characters who agree with each other or who don't argue in the first chapter, who are passive or not talkative, reconsider.

5. Is Clearly Written so that the reader knows what is going on.
This cannot be overstated as an important part of a novel. I know so many writers who are so concerned with proving that they can write as well as the greats in their field--or better--that they forget that a story needs to be understood to be valued. Just make sure that you aren't honing your words to the point that they lose all meaning. We need to know who people are, where they are, and what they are doing. It seems simple, but it can be very hard to achieve.

Why I Read Young Adult Literature

2013-05-07T20:39:14Z

When I was a child, I read voraciously. My mother had to give us a limit on the number of books we could check out each week. This meant that I often ran through all of my picture books in one or two days, and ended up reading “up” to the books my siblings got. (I was the ninth of eleven children and we were too poor to buy books very often, but lucky in that my parents valued reading.)

I remember when I moved up from picture books to early readers, and from there to “juvenile” novels as they were called at the time. I read through the entire bookcase of biographies, and then read through all of Louisa May Alcott's books, and then John Bellairs' scary books. My obsessions at this age were Robin Hood and King Arthur. But after that, there wasn't much left in the children's level of the local library.

In fifth or sixth grade, I moved up to the “adult” section of the library and began reading the books that I still consider to be the foundation of my literary interests: James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Star Trek and Star Wars, and Perry Mason. I actually read the James Blish versions of the Star Trek episodes before I ever saw them on television. (In my house, control of the television was never in my hands.) I also read romance novels voraciously, though this was easy because the library didn't count these in our total and my siblings (male and female) also read a lot of romance novels, so we never ran out.

When I reached junior high, I began to work my way through a long list of “classics,” including Gone With the Wind, Jane Austen, Hemingway, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens (never did much care for Dickens, sorry!), and of course, Shakespeare. I was one of those weird kids who would read while walking to school and during recess or lunch at school. I had a sister who read a lot of fantasy and I considered myself to be literarily far above her. I would never waste my reading time with that. So, while she enjoyed Diana Wynne Jones, I was reading Of Mice and Men and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

It wasn't until I was in graduate school, reading dark German tomes ten hours a day, that I finally turned to reading fantasy/sf and actually, young adult literature. Some of my favorites were: Lois McMaster Bujold, Kate Elliott, Orson Scott Card, and Cynthia Voigt. I made no distinction between young adult and genre literature. They were all books that I knew were “inappropriate” for someone who was working on a PhD in German Literature to be reading. In fact, I was terrified of checking books out of the Princeton Library, sure that my professors would get a list of the books I was reading. So I read everything in the library. I would spend hours there, reading things that were “just for fun.” I needed some fun in my reading, needed it desperately.

When I finished my PhD at last and started writing “just for fun,” it is no surprise that I also decided to write YA fantasy with a touch of romance thrown in. I was deliberately rebelling against all those “rules” of “high literature.” I was tired of my classes in which we deliberately turned our noses up at plot, at anything written by women, and at books that could be appreciated by someone without a PhD. I wish sometimes that I had discovered reading “just for fun” a little earlier. I wish that I had been one of those lucky teens who has Cynthia Voigt's Homecoming to read as a teen, who found books that connected with my actual experience as a teen, instead of having to make the leaps from classic books. But I suppose I wouldn't be who I am if that were the case.

I am not someone who loved young adult literature as a teen. I honestly don't remember realizing there was such a thing as young adult literature. I was certainly encouraged to being reading adult as soon as I could understand it. But I am glad that I found young adult literature when I did, when I needed it. The story of becoming that is in the background of every young adult novel is the story that I was going through in grad school, and to some extent is the story that every adult goes through repeatedly (if they are still willing to learn and grow). It is the story of life, of learning, and moving on, through loss and pain.

I knew who I was when I started graduate school, but I think I was avoiding it. I wanted to be a writer, but Young adult literature helped me find a place where it was all right for me to stop avoiding it, where I could play with my own identity. Maybe I was backward in some ways, but I don't think so. I think that a lot of adults are finding in young adult literature what I found back then. And to those adults, I say, don't be ashamed. Don't imagine that your interest in young adult literature means you are juvenile. It means you are still growing and changing, and you see that reflected in what happens to be shelved in the “young adult” section of the library and bookstore.

Influences on The Rose Throne #3: Elinor in Sense and Sensibility

2013-05-02T13:53:04Z

Marianne is the flashier sister, the romantic, the one with the dramatic love story of Sense and Sensibility. Elinor is the boring one, the one who keeps her feelings to herself, who never does anything wrong. Willoughby was the dashing, tall, dark, handsome hero. He was the one who understood poetry. Edward Ferrars in some ways feels like a pale imitation of a romance hero. He would never lie like Mr. Rochester, or do anything or stop anyone in order to get the woman he loves. He's a civilized man and he falls in love with a civilized woman. The happy ending between Edward and Elinor seems tacked on, a deus ex machina. Marianne, on the other hand, seems like she gets set down for all her pretensions to marry the ideal man, and ends up with the older gentleman, Colonel Brandon. The movies make us like Brandon far more than the book.

But as a teenager, I identified far more with Elinor than with Marianne, in part because my family was ruthlessly unemotional. I couldn't remember my parents hugging me from the time I turned five or six until the time I was in my twenties, when one of my sisters insisted that they do it again. It was very awkward, trying to put physical affection back into my relationship with them. My mother frequently complained when I was a child that I was too affectionate, but it's something I've tried to put back into my personality as an adult. I'm very affection with my own children.

The scene where Elinor is finally able to tell Marianne the truth, where Marianne chides her for never showing her heart and Elinor bursts into tears—I love that scene, both for the way in which it breaks character for Elinor and which it shows us her deeper character. When I was writing The Rose Throne, I found it easier to write the flashier character of Ailsbet, who was so defiant and unusual. But through every draft of the novel, I found Issa a much more difficult character to bring to life. She is obedient and feminine. She is the foil in some ways for Ailsbet. She is everything that Ailsbet isn't and can't be. She is the “normal” woman, with the woman's magic.

It wasn't until I began to see Issa as a kind of Elinor that I really found her spirit. She isn't without feelings. It's just that she keeps them hidden. She is very controlled, but she has deep feelings. Every scene she is in, I had to work to make sure that the reader senses her hidden feelings and the depth of them. I had to work hidden messages into her language. And then there had to be a great scene in which her feelings finally come out, in a rather over-the-top, loud, and messy moment. I loved writing that moment and I loved Issa after that as a character who could have a moment like that.

Short interview with me at The Enchanted Inkpot

2013-05-01T13:42:40Z

about The Rose Throne. If you are interested, go here:

http://enchantedinkpot.blogspot.com/

Writing Wednesday: It Will Get Better

2013-05-01T13:41:43Z

About ten years ago, I went to a marriage class taught by a professor from a local university. One of the studies he talked about tracked a large set of couples who were considering divorce. It tried to get as much information as possible about the couples, and then five years later, the same couples were re-interviewed. Apparently, the study could not find any significant factors that predicted whether or not the couples would divorce. What the professor found more interesting was that whether or not they got divorced, five years later, almost every couple said that they were happier. His conclusion? That there are ups and downs in marriage and that many times, happiness isn't a result of the marriage being good or bad. It's a result of the natural wave pattern of good and bad that happens in any life. He told the couples in the class that they should remind themselves, “it will get better,” when things were bad.

I have thought about this a lot as the years have passed. I think it applies to writing as well as it does to marriage. Maybe it would be more useful to simply accept a more yoga-like acceptance of the stress of being stretched into a new shape for the future challenges that await us. We can choose to stretch less or more, or not at all, perhaps. We can refuse to change. But that isn't really the way to happiness. Mostly, when we notice we are unhappy, in our writing lives or in any other part of our lives, it can be useful to remember that “it will get better.” Even if we don't do anything to change, it will probably get better. Or maybe we will do tiny things to grow that we don't even notice, and it will get better.

I am not trying to argue here that there are no marriages—or writing problems—that need more attention than the hope that “it will get better.” I know that some things require some drastic surgery. But a lot of the time, we stress about things that will get better on their own. We go to the doctor for colds right when the cold is about to get better on its own. The doctor does nothing, but we think she does because that's when we get better. (Antibiotics don't help colds, BTW.) Pain from a hard workout might respond to drugs, massage, or heat. But it also will mostly just get better left on its own to heal. The winter doesn't last forever. Neither does the summer heat. As Scarlett O'Hara would say, tomorrow is another day. And I would add, it's likely to be a better one.

Just For Fun: Outtakes from The Rose Throne

2013-04-26T15:35:59Z

At one point, my editor asked me to try writing a series of epigraphs for the beginning of each chapter. Here are a few of the better ones. None of them ended up in the book, by the way. It just didn't end up seeming right. But you try things in the writing process and they don't always work.

Rejected epigraphs Nov 2011:

A woman who loves too well is like a woman who forgets herself in her neweyr. She may return to herself, but she will never be the same again. And she will always be wary of giving too much a second time.

--Marriage and Neweyr

My neweyr is my child. My kingdom is my body. My women are my eyes. My plants are my breasts. My animals are my feet.

--The True Book of Neweyr

A girl who is born on a winter’s night is bound to have a great neweyr, for the world has been storing it up for her.

--Neweyr in Law and Practice

A mother can show her daughter the way to the neweyr, but she cannot make her drink it in. She must wait and see what her daughter wills, and how she takes the neweyr into herself her own way.

--A Mother’s Legacy

There are many loves. The love between a parent and a child. The love between a sister and a brother. Between friends and lovers. But there is one great love. That of neweyr for taweyr. For a true love must be love for that which is utterly different, and can never be encompassed or understood.

--Advice From A Mother to Her Daughter

Women, look for a man who is stirred by the passion of his taweyr. He must fight against it, but if there is no fight, there is no power and no control. A man of taweyr will make many children.

--Proper Marriage and the Weyrs

Writing Wednesday: Internal Sensors

2013-04-24T22:28:29Z

So for my race this weekend, I ended up forgetting my watch. It ended up being a happy accident. Instead of fretting over the time passing while I had problems on my bike, I thought about other things.

I simply let myself feel how the pace I was going felt. I listened to my own body, my own sensors. I did it again today while doing a hard interval set at the track. I just went as hard as I thought I could sustain for the 12 repetitions I was supposed to get done, and rested until I was ready to go again. Not surprisingly, in both of these cases, I was a lot less anxious and self-judgmental about racing. I don't know for sure if I always have better results in these cases, but I often do. It turns out that stressing about getting the results you want is counterproductive. On some level, you have to let it go, and let come what will.

Probably the comparisons I am going to make here to writing are obvious, but I am going to explain them anyway. For a long time, in the beginning of my career, before I had sold my first book, I would count up a lot of the outside gauges I had of my progress because they were the only things that I had. I would use my writers' groups responses and see if they thought I was doing better. I would notice the fact that I was getting more personalized rejection letters rather than form rejections. Then, when I published my first book, I continued to look outside of myself for validation. Professional journal reviews were the biggest measures then, and of course, book sales themselves. If I wanted to see if I was more successful as an author, I looked at my advance numbers, and my agent's sales and then later, the number of goodreads 5-star reviews or those on amazon, or even crazier, the links to reviews on twitter.

I can't say that I believe I will completely go without any external measure of my writing, just as I don't think I'm going to get rid of my watch for all my training. But I have to say, there are some wonderful parts of being a published writer that have nothing to do with external validation. I'm not saying I think that any writer should live completely in a bubble. I think it's healthy to have a writers' group, an agent, and an editor. But there are times when it's great to take off the watch and just do the writing without any other voices in your head, without anyone looking over your shoulder. There's a time when it's important to only look inside. How does it feel? Is this right? Is this true? Is this the story I want to tell? Is this the best way to tell it? Are these characters I would lie down in the street for? Is this a world I would happily go back to for the rest of my life?

Race report: My One Boston race at "Rage" Las Vegas

2013-04-23T20:38:40Z

This wasn't the best race ever. I ended up riding on a flat for way too long, and then stopping to change it, so my bike time sucked. But the swim and the run were still fun and a chance to practice my racing strategy. I started out too fast in the swim, went hypoxic, and had to breast stroke for a while. It was a good reminder to myself that I don’t race that way. I tend to start slow and pick people off ahead of me one by one. But I got back into it and finished strong.

The run was uphill for 3.1 miles, and then back downhill, which made for a great feeling. I started slow-ish and just kept telling myself to keep it under control, and to really turn it on at the top, which I did. It was also the first race I have ever done with a group of friends. We got to look out for each other on the race course and get ready at the beginning. Then we went out to lunch afterward and pounded as many calories as we could, while deconstructing the race. I also got to hear a few of the stories from the people there. What brought us to triathlon, and what we took away from it.

Everyone has a story. Everyone has been on a journey. For one of us, this was the last triathlon race due to some pretty serious injuries. When this guy crossed the finish line and the announcer said, “You’re done,” it hit him like a hammer. Triathlon has become part of our lives and it is a hard thing to give up and to move on to another part of life. I suppose we’ll all have to give it up at some point, and there’s a temptation to look away from that pain.

I love the way that triathlon has taught me about the goodness of people. A woman stopped to ask me if she could help with my tire issue. I have unique tubes, so she couldn’t. She went on to say she would go ahead and see if she could find anyone else with tubes or the bike support van. This one woman reminded me of the goodness of the people of Boston and how they reacted so immediately to the disaster in their city by going to donate blood, running to help rather than running away, offering places to stay to runners and family, and actually paying attention to the city-wide lockdown.

At the hotel all day Friday the day before the race, we were watching the news for updates on the search for the Boston Marathon bombers. For me it was especially tense because my oldest daughter is at MIT. She was in lockdown and was physically safe, but also kept thinking about how easily she might have been in the way of the suspects since she walks home from the library right by the site of the killing.

When I was so frustrated with my bike and the fact that I hadn’t brought my own equipment to change my tire (a mistake I didn’t realize until the race), I was tempted to sit by the side of the road and throw in the towel. But I’ve been in enough situations that were similar that I chose to keep going. It’s not the only honorable choice, but I was proud of myself for thinking that now I had a chance to enjoy the scenery and to find out who I was. There are a lot of different challenges in life. The emotional challenge of dealing with the grief and anger of Boston was far more difficult than the challenge of racing, but the race itself helped me put aside other thoughts, at least for a while.

It wasn’t officially a One Boston race, but I think no one could have been at Rage without thinking about how easy it is to go to a sporting event and be a target. There was no extra security as far as I saw, but in one way, continuing on with our race as usual is a way to fight back, to show we will not be cowed, in the same way that the city of Boston did this last week.

Ultimately, triathlon is for me a little bit of life, the good and the bad. Time doesn’t matter in the end. It’s the experience itself that matters, and for me, putting aside my watch was a good reminder of why I really race. Not to win a medal, but to win at life.

Lessons in Revision #3: The Rose Throne dialog

2013-04-23T16:03:19Z

“You’ve been hiding from me,” said Issa.

Her father let out a breath at that and turned to stare at her. “You know me very well.”

“Well enough to know when you don’t want me to read your face,” said Issa, with the lilting rhythm and harsh consonants that seemed appropriate to a northern life where the weather in winter could be quite harsh, even with the assistance of the neweyr.

“Ah,” said King Jaap. “There are times when I wish that I had not taught you to be so honest.”

“Not many times, I hope,” said Issa.

King Jaap paused.

“It is bad news, then,” said Issa.

He nodded. And then, because there was no more reason to hold back, he said, “It has to do with Lord Umber.”

Lord Umber was the southern-most nobleman, just on the border with the land bridge to Rurik, with whom her father had begun to negotiate a betrothal for his daughter.

“Has he refused me, then?” said Issa.

“He has left Weirland with half his men—the best half—and a good deal of his wealth,” said King Jaap in a rush of words that indicated only how upset he was. Normally, her father was as slow to speak as Issa was herself. “But Issa, I’m afraid that is not the worst of it. Umber has gone to Rurik, to the palace itself. To King Haikor.”

“He means to ally himself with Haikor against us,” said Issa, her tongue feeling leaden in her mouth.

She had always imagined that she would marry and be happily in love, as her parents had been when she was a young girl, before her mother had grown ill. She had never wanted anything more in life than to take care of her small kingdom with her neweyr, and to hold tight to a husband’s arm as he ruled the land.

But that was not to be, it seemed.

“What do we do now?” asked Issa, moving on. There was no point in trying to change what had already come to be. The past was gone. Only the future remained malleable.

“First, I must appoint a lord to take Umber’s place. And second, we must do something to stop him.”

“How?” said Issa.

“King Haikor has a young son. His name is Edik.”

“Yes.” Issa knew this.

“He is not yet old enough to marry, but he might be betrothed, if his father were tempted with the right offer.”

“Me,” said Issa instantly.

So this is the earlier version of this dialog, though I have cut out a lot of the text, at least half, because it is boring. One of the first rules of dialog: it can’t be boring. Also, I tend to have too much introspection, so I cut that out, too. Dialog should dialog, not be too thinky.

But the real problem with this first version couldn’t be fixed with more sparkling dialog. The real problem is that there is no conflict between father and daughter, or so little that it is just boring. They already know what’s going on in their world. They have similar goals. Far more interesting to introduce a different, new character who is really going to challenge them. I wouldn’t call the above Maid/Butler dialog, but it has some similarities. The two are talking about something more for the sake of the reader than their own sakes.

Hopefully, the final version introduces some real conflict and moves along more quickly. It is also funnier and has a bit of romance. Not that this romance wasn’t in the text to begin with, but I moved it forward to the first scene in the book with Issa, instead of leaving it for the third or fourth scene. Another great rule of dialog: do as much with it as you can. But that’s really true of all good writing. It should all multi-task. Compress, compress. Real life is boring. That’s why people read books.

Final Version:

“Issa, there is an emissary come from Rurik, waiting to speak to you in the Throne Room,” said her father, King Jaap, coming up behind her.

I am sure he would rather speak to you than me, Father,” said Issa. Since her mother’s death, she had taken the queen’s place in guarding the neweyr. But she had not yet decided if she would encourage the distant cousin who was her father’s heir to propose marriage to her.

“His name is Duke Kellin of Falcorn. He is one of King Haikor’s court favorites. He has come to offer a betrothal.”

“A betrothal?” said Issa. Well, this would be interesting, at least. A duke of Rurik had never been to the kingdom before. In fact, Issa could not remember any official emissary ever coming from Rurik, only spies. She might have fun with this.

Issa climbed down and made her way to the Throne Room in the other wing of the castle. Before she entered, her father touched her arm and she turned back to him.

“I have sheltered you,” the king said. “Kept you from your responsibilities as princess.”

“I have been guiding the neweyr in my mother’s place since I was eleven years old,” Issa protested. “How is that sheltering me from my responsibilities?”

“Not the responsibilities of the neweyr, but the responsibilities of the throne. You are a princess, Issa, and it is time that you were used as one.”

Issa still did not understand what her father meant, but she puzzled over it as he led her into the Throne Room. A man stood when they entered. He was tall, with broad shoulders and long legs. He was dressed in a long, thick, wool cloak that was adorned with pearls along the edge, and he seemed utterly untouched by the wear of the weeks of trave he would have endured on the journey here. It made Issa more conscious of her own worn tweed gown, the edges of her sleeves dirty from her work in the garden early that morning, the skirt with a tear to one side.

Issa glanced back up and saw Duke Kellin observing her every movement. There was a kind of arrogance in the set of his mouth and in the point of his chin. He seemed to Issa everything that she would have expected from a nobleman of King Haikor’s court. He was younger than she had expected, but perhaps King Haikor had run out of older, more experienced men. It was said that his favorites died with a frightening regularity.

“King Jaap,” said Kellin with a formal bow. Then he turned to her. “Princess Marlissa.” He bowed again, and held out his hand.

Issa gave him her own hand. When he kissed it, the sensation was strangely cold. Did he think she would marry him because he was handsome and powerful in King Haikor’s court?

“I come to you with gifts from King Haikor.” The duke offered Issa a small velvet bag. “To match the shine of your eyes,” he added.

Friday Feminism (Late): What Women Want

2013-04-22T14:27:02Z

Last week I read this post:

http://middle-agedmormonman.blogspot.com/2013/04/husbands-only-your-wife-might-be-lying.html

I understand that the man here is trying to be nice, and he’s trying to remind men not to take the easy way out just because they are given an excuse. On the other hand, this made me furious.

If you don’t want to read the whole post, the message is that men, your wife is lying to you. Don’t listen to what she says she wants. You know better. You should make a big fuss over her, even if she says she doesn’t like that. You should buy her big presents, even if she says that she wants cards for Mother’s Day.

I admit that there are plenty of women who expect men to read their minds, who refuse to say what they want either because they’ve learned no one listens to them or because they feel like they aren’t worthy of attention or because they simply like to manipulate people in ways other than through direct communication. However, I think that men ignoring what their wives says is a lot more likely to result in the continuation of this cycle than if they learn to listen very carefully and teach their wives that they can be trusted with the truth. The problem in my mind is not the Mother’s Day celebration. It’s the cycle of women learning that what they say they want is never listened to.

It’s been a real problem in my marriage (and in fact, in other relationships in my life) for me to learn to speak out loud what I want. And then to trust other people that they will listen respectfully, even if they do not agree, and actually try to understand what I have to say. Sure, there are situations in which I don’t say everything I think because I don’t know the people who are listening well enough to trust them, or where it is simply inappropriate to rant or explain things in depth. But I tend to err these days on the side of saying a little more than what might make others comfortable than less, simply because I think that there isn’t enough honesty in the world, in particular from women. And also because I think I am articulate enough that I have an obligation to speak out for those who are not as articulate.

When I say that I want cards for my birthday or Mother’s Day, I really mean it. I don’t want expensive gifts. If I want to buy myself something expensive, I really prefer to have some say in choosing it. I don’t expect anyone to read my mind. A token gift is a kind thing to do for me, but just don’t spend a lot on it. Make me laugh, if you like. But cards, homemade and handwritten, are really valuable to me. I leave them on my desk and read them all year long. They make me feel happier. I’m not lying when I say that’s what I want.

When I say that for my birthday, I don’t want any presents, I’m often serious, and not in a passive-aggressive way. Sometimes I want to go out to dinner. Sometimes I don’t. I don’t always want the same thing because I may feel differently one day than another or I may change my opinion of which restaurant is the best one or anything else. And it’s not because I’m a woman with changeable opinions or because I am trying to trick other people or make them work hard. I just grow and change like any other person, male or female.

The biggest problem I have with the above post is that it is so damned condescending. Like “we men” know better than women do. We don’t have to listen to them. We just tell them what they want, and then we give it to them. And we ignore when they say we’re wrong. This is not the way to a healthy relationship. If your wife likes surprises, why would she not admit to this if she trusts you? If she doesn’t like them and you insist on surprising her or making a fuss about her that she finds uncomfortable or embarrassing, what kind of a gift is that? Who is really the most important one in the relationship?

I have seen on to many occasions situations in which women are “given” something which it is clear they do not want, but which they then have to pretend to be very pleased about. This is oppression at work. If you are giving your wife a gift that is really about you showing off how wealthy you are, or wanting to make her look better so you look better, you are using gift-giving time as a manipulative tool to make her accept something that she doesn’t want without complaining. You make her feel like she has to be nice because it’s a “gift.” Children may need to be taught that they should say thank you even if a gift isn’t precisely what they wanted, but with adult women, it may be that if your wife isn’t truly appreciative, it could be your problem more than hers. You aren’t listening.

Influences on The Rose Throne #2: Scarlett O'Hara

2013-04-18T15:14:44Z

I read Gone With the Wind for the first time at a very impressionable age, in ninth grade. I re-read it several times, and became obsessed with the movie version in the next year or so. I read books about the making of the movie, drew portraits of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. I memorized lines and generally imprinted on Scarlett and Rhett as the perfect romantic couple. When the first sequel to the novel came out, I read it with pleasure, though there was a faint sense of disappointment.

What I loved about Scarlett was her strength. Yes, she was an idiot about men. She was always falling in love with versions of Ashley Wilkes instead of Rhett Butler. And when she had Rhett, she completely failed to see his real love for her. But she was great at twisting men around her finger. She was marvelous during the war, refusing to ever be cowed by Yankees or poverty. I loved the part where she makes her own gown out of curtains. I loved how she wouldn't listen to other women tell her about the danger outside. I loved how she was always getting into scrapes and getting out of them. She was in essence a survivor.

And as I grew older, I realized something about Scarlett. At the end of the novel, when Rhett leaves her, she says, “Tomorrow is another day.” She isn't going to think about losing Rhett, who might be the love of her life. She is going to think about tomorrow and she is going to move on with her life. Why? Because she is a woman who doesn't need a man. She has never actually needed a man. It was one of the reasons that she kept choosing weak men like Ashley and Charles to marry, men she could manipulate, because they helped give her a cover for her own activities. She could do what she wanted if she was married. And Rhett? Well, Rhett wanted too much of her. He wanted everything from her and she didn't want to give that.

When I was writing Ailsbet in The Rose Throne, I drew very much on Scarlett O'Hara. Ailsbet isn't petulant, I hope. But she is forced into independence. She has a good look at the men in her life and she isn't impressed by them. She has seen a lot of abusive marriages, and she has no romantic ideals left. She knows that her father will likely marry her off to someone she has no interest in. She accepts this, but that doesn't mean she isn't going to fight for what she wants. And it doesn't mean she can't find ways to get power for herself.

Like Scarlett O'Hara, Ailsbet doesn't need a man. She doesn't need or want romance either, not in Rurik, where she is always going to be a prize, the princess, and no one will ever see her for herself. What she wants is to be a musician. What Scarlett wants at the end of Gone With the Wind—I don't know. I suppose that's why none of the sequels make any sense. But she would figure it out. She would do something and she would do it well, because that's who she is. And that is, I hope, how Ailsbet is, as well. At the end of The Rose Throne, she knows what she wants with her life and she is going to get it.

Writing Wednesday: Beyond the Everyman/Everywoman character

2013-04-17T20:05:56Z

I am still thinking about why pity isn't enough for readers to feel for a main character. I can think of a lot of TV shows, movies, and books in which the main character is basically an everyman/everywoman who is suddenly faced with a terrible situation, a life or death choice. Like, your child is kidnapped or the world is about to be destroyed or you are separated from the man you love and have to get back to him, despite all odds. These stories work really well on a plot level often. But for me, they sometimes fail in the character department.

I want to read about a character who isn't an everyman, actually. I suspect that most readers are like me, in fact. Sure, they want to identify with the main character of a story, so it's important that the character have traits that the rest of us share. But it's also true that I read because I want to have an extraordinary experience, and for me, that experience is often about character rather than plot. If I have to choose between an amazing world with intricate, cool rules of magic, a fantastic set-up to a mind-boggling climax and a never-guess it twist with an everyman character, and a character who is extraordinary who lives in the real world, I will choose the extraordinary character every time.

I don't mean that I need to have a character who is of extraordinary intelligence or bravery. That can actually get old, and in some cases, can make it more difficult for me to feel sympathy. But I need a character whose situation is unique. I don't need a character with abusive parents who hit her. I need a character whose parents are cruel in tiny ways that they don't even realize. I need characters who hurt and love each other in equal portions. I want characters who have passions and weaknesses that aren't mine, but make sense to me.

I'm a writer and an athlete and a mother. Those are my passions. But one passion sometimes forces a choice that forces my life into imbalance. And then what? It's because I am so passionate that I have the life I have and the people around me. But what happens when I push someone away? Or when I get depressed? Or when someone falls in love and brings someone else into my life? I really think it is the small things that make the greater things make sense to us. And specifics about characters, tiny details, the right details.

You can do great world building around those perfect characters and make me even more interested in the book. You can add magic or space ships if you like. I like FTL travel and wormholes and wishing wells as much as anyone. But give me characters first. Give me a character who is only your character. Not you. But a person who feels so real I think if the book was left open for too long, she would walk right out of it. Characters I imagine talking to years later. Maybe this is because I am weird, but I sometimes wonder if the most meaningful relationships in my life have been with characters in books.