Teen Writers Bloc

I grew up reading Barbara Park, Louis Sachar, Baby-Sitters Club, S. E. Hinton, Paula Danzinger, Beverly Cleary, the American Girls series, and Lois Lowry. Some of my favorite books from childhood are The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, Just as Long as We’re Together and Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great by Judy Blume, the Anne of Green Gables series, Behind the Attic Wall by Sylvia Cassedy, Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt, and Betsy Byers’s The Summer of the Swans. So I had a pretty eclectic taste in books, but one thing never varied: pretty much all of the books and authors I liked focused solely on white characters. If there was a non-white character, s/he was usually around to teach the white kids a lesson on race or tolerance or just a peripheral character who happened to be ethnic, but usually not the main character. (Some of the authors/books/series mentioned above did feature non-white characters, but that was pretty rare and even rarer for the main character to be non-white.)

So I know I should be lamenting the lack of diversity in the books I read as a kid and how it made me think less of myself, but honestly, it didn’t bother me or affect my self-image growing up. I never read books looking for characters that were just like me because I didn’t want to read about me, a poor, biracial girl living with an abusive white mother in an economically-depressed and uneducated black neighborhood who was made fun of for attending mostly-white private schools. I knew that story inside and out and didn’t want to read about it while I was still living it. Books were my escape, my chance to see how normal people lived because my life was very abnormal.

I grew up seeing myself as neither black nor white, but as a mixture of both, and so it didn’t matter what race the characters were so long as they took me away from the problems of real life. But now, as an adult, I realize those books did have an impact on me. As a writer, it’s so easy for me to fall into the default white trap. Creating racially diverse characters is a conscious effort and I have to actively work to make sure that my stories represent people of all skin colors.

When I come up with a new idea, I generally don’t think about race. As I start writing and getting to know my characters, sometimes a light bulb goes off and I think, hey, wouldn’t it be cool if everyone was black or mixed-race like me? But why do I think writing a book about non-whites is a novelty? It all comes back to the books I read growing up. Even though I wasn’t bothered by the lack of diversity as a child, it subconsciously left an impression on me and made me prewired to assume my own characters are white, which is troubling since I’m not even fully-white myself.

In my own writing, I sometimes get a bit heavy-handed with my character descriptions. I feel like I have to shove it in the reader’s face that these characters are not white because if it isn’t explicitly stated, then people will just assume everyone’s white. And, frankly, I’m tired of reading stories exclusively about white people as if people of color don’t exist. We do, and our stories need to be told, too. I now recognize the importance of including a racially diverse cast of characters. Nowadays, I get excited when I find a book with a biracial main character and if the character is female, it’s even better. It feels good to be represented in literature.

Guest blogger Jean-Paul Bass recently decided to quit her job to focus on writing full-time and she swears she doesn’t miss having a regular paycheck at all. She is currently working on her MFA in fiction at The New School and writing a memoir about growing up in Cleveland, Ohio.   

Photo Credit: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Scholastic, HarperCollins, Viking, Dell Yearling, and Puffin

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As we reflect on our time at The New School this month, I am predicting a repeating theme: yes, this degree and endeavor was worth it for ME personally, but I wouldn’t say it’s ALWAYS worth it.

In the course of my time at The New School, I managed to finish three complete drafts for three separate novels and start countless others; I landed an awesome agent, Kate McKean; and I sold my first book in a two-book deal to Bloomsbury. I am 100 percent certain that this would not have happened if I had not taken the plunge, moved across the country and gone back to school. However, I also don’t think I would have reached these goals, and certainly I would not have reached them so quickly, if it weren’t for my classmates. And that’s the problem. Who you end up in class with is completely luck, right?

Well, maybe it doesn’t have to be. When I think about it, our class did practical things that lead to it’s effectiveness. So maybe we should talk about actual steps that will make an MFA, especially The New School Writing for Children MFA, worth it.

1. Write WAY MORE than required. You’re only going to be submitting every few weeks, but you need to write everyday. In my first semester I imposed a two hour a day rule on myself and I was disciplined. I would come home from work, turn my phone off, disconnect my internet, and set an alarm. Then I would sit at my computer until the alarm went off.  By the time I was required to submit my first ten pages, I had close to 80. When it was time for me to submit, I would then go back and edit the ten pages I was going to send. I would have a much better sense of the shape of the whole because I had so much more written. This made it much easier to weed out the helpful criticism during critique.

2. Find a small group of serious writers from within your class and form an extra critique group. Meet regularly and be dedicated to it. Sona, Corey, Dhonielle, Amy and I did this for the first two semester and Sona, Corey, Alyson, Dhonielle, Lenea and I have done this for the final semester. This has been incredibly valuable to me because I get more written with more deadlines, because I get to have a dialogue about my work, and because I get invested in voices outside my own. It’s easier for me to have a realistic (and not overly negative) opinion of my own work when I’m very invested in others’ as well.

3. Start a project together. I think we would all agree that Teen Writers Bloc helped us to become a unit. It also gives us a way to stay connected to each other and our writing after we graduate.  And, when at times we were perhaps a bit frustrated with some select teachers, Teen Writers Bloc helped us feel supported and reminded us that there is a larger purpose to our writing than what’s happening in class.

4. After the first semester, your classmates are going to know your writing better than your teachers do, because they will have read more of it. Find the voices from your classmates that are helpful to you and listen to them. Listen to your teachers, but remember that they’re only with you for a semester. So you also need to find helpful critiquers among your peers.

5. Find the classmates who really know the business and talk post-drafting. Talk about query letters, agents, publishing houses, promotion, and other aspects of the business. Share agent stories. Share queries. (Heck, Sona basically wrote my query for me, and Mary helped me land an agent.). Get invested in each others’ careers because different people have different strengths. Use yours to benefit the entire class, and then tap on others’ shoulders.

6. Trade full manuscripts before your query. You need someone to read from beginning to end, not just in little spurts, and your best bets are going to be the people in your class, provided you have invested in their writing and careers as well.

7. Become friends. Go for drinks or coffee. Take a walk. Throw a holiday party like Corey did for us first semester. Ultimately, this was a positive experience of most of us, but with a huge side of frustration, disappointment, and lack of control. That’s what happens when you’re really passionate about your career. You will need your friends to commiserate and celebrate with, because no one else will understand what you’re talking about. And because sometimes you need to get a good gripe out before you can get back to work.

Photo Credit: Institute Childrens Lit

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If you asked me today whether I would do The New School’s Writing for Children program over again, my answer would be an unequivocal yes. Thanks to the program, I’m now part of an amazing community of writers that I know I’ll be part of for the rest of my life. I’ve completed four novels, and my writing has improved immensely. Though I had already sold my first book by the time I started the program, I think that my MFA experience has greatly enhanced my lifetime career prospects.

So if you asked me whether you should do the New School MFA, I’d say yes, right? Well, not so fast. You see, the reason that my experience here has been so fantastic is my peer group — the twelve fantastic writers I’ve had the honor of working with over the last two years. Over the last two years, we’ve pushed each other and supported each other so that each of us has reached greater heights than we ever would have without the group. Though we had three talented writers for workshop instructors, it was the comments of our peers that we most trusted, and it was our peers’ writing that we most learned from. The New School provided the structure for the thirteen of us to come together. But what else did The New School provide? What would the program have been like if it were just the program, and my classmates had been different? This question has left me wondering whether the program will be as amazing for others as it was for me.

For anyone considering whether to do the MFA, this is what The New School Writing for Children program consists of: Two literature seminars taught by fantastic New York editors, three peer-driven workshop classes led by talented authors, and a thesis advisor. That sounds good, but it doesn’t exactly add up to two full years of instruction, worth two full years of tuition. The school offers three semesters during which MFA students take classes. For one of those semesters, Writing for Children students (but not Fiction or Poetry students) must take a literature seminar outside their genre. When some of us complained about the lack of a third Writing for Children seminar, the administration presented it as both an issue of lack of funding for the missing class and as a good thing for us, because Writing for Children students need exposure to other genres to become well-rounded writers. If the out-of-genre requirement had applied to all genres, I would have been okay with this and possibly even supportive, but as it was, I found it insulting. The insult was compounded by the fact that not one of the fiction seminars we ended up taking included a single YA book on the reading list. I’m guessing that everyone reading this blog agrees that YA literature is, in fact, real literature and that YA writers are, in fact, real writers. Plus, I’ve already ranted on this blog about how unhelpful I found my literature seminar to be. Suffice to say that I didn’t feel that our tuition money was wisely spent on our out-of-genre requirement.

And now we come to the fourth semester. During the fourth semester, MFA students take no classes whatsoever. We meet with peer groups and work with a thesis advisor on a creative thesis. The New School requires a “literature project,” but Writing for Children students typically use a paper that we write in David Levithan’s first semester literature seminar to fulfill that requirement. So the school demands full tuition simply for advising on the creative thesis. Don’t get me wrong, I loved working with my fabulous thesis advisor, Susan Van Metre! But I know the school isn’t paying her my full tuition. So I think the fourth semester is a rip-off.

Finally, there’s the problem of low expectations. If you wanted to, you could graduate from the program without ever having completed a novel. The thesis requirement is only fifty pages. You could literally write only fifty pages in the entire program and still graduate.

What does this mean? Basically, I think the program is a crap shoot. If you get lucky and end up with a fantastic class, then the program will be well worth it. But if you get unlucky, and you end up in a class that’s less cohesive and motivated, then the program may not be worth the money. Personally, I chose to come to the program because I wanted to make being a children’s author my lifelong career. But if I hadn’t been able to attend the program for whatever reason, I would still be writing. I would even still be celebrating the release of my first book (Wuftoom, on shelves May 8!) I suspect that many of my classmates would also still be writing and still have achieved at least some of their successes. The program enhanced our careers, but it didn’t write our books for us. Success in the program requires a fire from within, something no amount of money can buy you.

Image credit: The Fabulous Riddhi Parekh!

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So I was going to write about the bad writing habits I need to get rid of for this month’s topic, Spring Cleaning, but every time I started to write something I felt like a broken record. I’ve mentioned my tendency to procrastinate and to be distracted by my non-writing obligations, i.e. my full time job and other outside commitments, many times before. So writing another post about it doesn’t seem all that useful.

What I really want to write about is something that I’ve been afraid to bring up. It has to do with something that I wish I could easily forget but can’t for some reason — a harsh critique that I received last semester in workshop from my professor.

I won’t say what that critique was. All that I’ll say is that it has stayed with me through this semester, especially because I’m still working on the same piece. The problem is that I still have my professor’s voice in the back of my head, making me second guess whether I should even bother working on what I’m working on. I mean, I am working on it, because I’ve made major changes to it since the critique was given, and I lucked out and got a really encouraging and helpful thesis advisor. But it’s been hard, nonetheless. Even though I really believe in what I’m writing.

Here’s the deal: Our thesis is due in the beginning of May.  And while I must say that I’m extremely grateful for the amazing feedback I’ve received along the way because it’s made me a much better writer than I was before and, honestly, I have loved this entire experience overall, part of me is looking forward to having the ability to breathe again after graduation. I’m ready for the chance to feel like I’m writing the book that I want to write instead of the one that will appease my professors and, though I love them dearly, my classmates. Even if that book might not be the book. You know, the one that sells.

It’s a process. I’m still pretty young, and with all that I’ve learned from my talented peers, and yes, from my experienced and usually quite wonderful professors, I think eventually I will get the hang of this writing thing, once and for all.

Or so I hope.

Image of the ‘Holstee Manifesto’ Courtesy of HOLSTEE.COM/MANIFESTO

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Our good friend Lisa Amowitz, graphic artist who created our wonderful banner, has big news today. Her book Breaking Glass has a cover and a book trailer.

Check it out the synopsis:

“On the night seventeen-year-old Jeremy Glass winds up in the hospital with a broken leg and a blood alcohol level well above the legal limit, his secret crush, Susannah, disappears. When he begins receiving messages from her from beyond the grave, he’s not sure whether they’re real or if he’s losing his grip on reality. Clue by clue, he gets closer to unraveling the mystery, and soon realizes he must discover the truth or he become the next victim himself.”

Head over to her blog for a snippet of the forthcoming book. This book layers of intrigue and mystery, and you’ll be on the edge of your seat, turning the pages to find out what comes next.

Also, take a peek at her awesome book trailer!

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I love spring cleaning, any kind of cleaning, really. Whenever I have a bad writing day, or I’m not sure what’s going to happen next in a scene, out come the yellow rubber gloves, Windex, and Clorox.

The thing is, I know exactly what is going to happen if I scrub the kitchen counters and meticulously vacuum and mop the floors. They are going to sparkle and shine, like it says in those 1960s Hoover advertisements. Plus, cleaning is the perfect distraction from writing and re-writing a scene that could end up being absolute trash. And I’ve managed to rationalize it as a perfectly reasonable alternative to actually working. I’m still being “productive.” I’m outlining in my head. I’m thinking through dialogue. I need a break to digest what I’ve written. Lies. All lies.  I am procrastinating.

And the thing about cleaning is that everything just ends up getting dirty again.  If you like to dust and organize as much as I do, you can find dirt to wipe up anywhere — at any time, like on a Saturday afternoon when I should be writing, finishing my thesis, and catching up on Publisher’s Marketplace. Or at 3:00 a.m., when I should be sleeping. In fact, cleaning has become the very bad habit I have to give up, because my shirts don’t need to be folded or color-coordinated again. But as I edit the final scenes of my manuscript and get started on the next one, I can’t seem to stop myself from rearranging everything around me.

The problem is I’m cleaning the wrong thing, and I know it, even as I take the Scrubbing Bubbles out from under the kitchen sink.

What I need to do is de-clutter my life. I have to clear out space in my mind and make more room to think about my books. So this morning, I woke up early and worked out, for the first time in longer than I’m willing to admit, even to myself. I had time alone, away from my Swifer Wet Jet, to think and brainstorm and not worry about anything except my characters. I got to go somewhere else, a land I invented where there is no such thing as dust.

Photo courtesy Hoover

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Alas … the dreaded day-job — well, really, afternoon, early evening, and weekend job — is cutting severely into my productivity. There aren’t enough hours in the day for me to make a dent into my on-going, never-ending to-do list. I try and try to get up earlier, take a shorter lunch, sit in Starbucks, but I can’t seem to get it all done. I always have to create a worksheet for a kid or I’m running to make photocopies of test prep material or scooting up to the Upper East Side at rush hour, fighting through the crowds to get to Madison or Park or Fifth Avenue.

It’s a never-ending loop. You could say, “Dhonielle, you have your whole day all to yourself.” YES! I do have that. I can get up leisurely and write. But I’m always preparing or behind, so I need to get caught up so I can use my day-time hours more efficiently. That, and going to bed at a decent hour. I get home from tutoring and decompress with a little TV, and then try to do more work. By the time I’m finished it’s 3 a.m.

And at the end of each day, even if I’ve checked something off the to-do list, I still feel like there’s a mountain on top of me and I’m spinning my wheels.

My list of bad habits that need to be kicked this spring are:

• Staying up past midnight
• Eating past midnight and thus fueling myself to continue working
• Staying in bed past 10 a.m.
• Taking on new tutoring clients
• Ignoring my thesis!

But here’s a sample of what’s on my plate to justify my whining:

• Editing and cleaning up my thesis!
• Completing the last 50-75 pages my current w-i-p MG novel — smoothing it, editing it, giving it to Amy Ewing to read — to turn a full into the agent
• Finishing a massive edit of a collaborative project
• Launching a website with Jess Verdi — details to come soon
• Slowly working on another collaborative project with Lisa Amowitz
• Reading and critiquing

Photo Credit: Secretary of Innovation

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I blogged last month with The Lucky 13s about my overly rigid habits as a writer. That I “can’t write” unless I’m at a certain cafe at a certain time drinking a certain drinks in a certain way. I wrote about how prohibitive that process can be for me, how it blocks me from taking advantage of all available writing time. That’s certainly one habit I’m working on curing, in baby steps. In fact, this past weekend I wrote all Saturday night — at home, no less! It was a big step.

But the real Spring Cleaning that needs to happen for me has to do with that elusive work-life balance. It’s a bit of a cyclical problem: if I’m ONLY writing and not experiencing life, I feel deflated and have have nothing to write about, I feel uninspired. But if I spend too much time living life, being social, having adventures, then I don’t actually end up doing any writing.

Recently, during Teen Author Week, author Ellen Hopkins talked about writing for 8-10 hours a day. I was at once insanely jealous and totally positive that that would never work for me. When she’s working, she’s WORKING and nothing else. That kind of intense focus, that total disregard for the life outside the computer screen — that isn’t my style.

You know why I write in a cafe? Because in a cafe I know that something exciting could happen. Life could happen, while I’m sitting and writing. I could meet someone! There could be a brawl! An impromptu party! An awkward first date or breakup conversation to eavesdrop on! I need those things. I need the promise of excitement, I need to be constantly working AND living life, in tandem. Talking about writing when at drinks with friends. Hoping for a friend to drop by while I’m deep in writing or revision. But I’m not sure these desires are reasonable, or even making me happy/keeping me productive. I’d like to try JUST writing, or JUST living. I’d like to be focused on my friends when I’m with my friends, to talk about things other than writing when I’m sharing french fries with a writer-friend. And when I’m writing, I’d like to have a taste of Ellen Hopkin’s razor-sharp focus. I’d like to be only thinking of my characters and nothing else.

I’m not sure it will happen. I can’t seem to get writing out of my mind, even at the best, busiest, most delicious wine bar. And I can’t seem to forget about the wonder of Real Life, even when I’m deeply entrenched in the creating of a Fictional Life.

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My good friend Kate Milford is embarking up a fascinating journey — using self-publishing to accompany her traditionally-published novels, The Boneshaker and The Broken Lands (Clarion, September 2012). She is one of the most talented writers I know, and I love all the things she writes. Plus, she’s always up to something. Most recently she has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund her latest book (which is wonderful and imaginative and everything I love in a good book).

We caught up with her about her latest endeavor.

Here’s the big idea in her own words describing what she’s up to:

I’m publishing a novella companion to release this fall with my second book, The Broken Lands (Clarion, September 2012). I want to experiment with self-publishing as a way to promote and enhance traditional releases by providing extra content to readers in the form of complete, related tales. I also want to use resources that support independent bookstores. It’s my hope to release a self-published novella alongside as many of my forthcoming hardcover releases as possible in an ongoing effort called the Arcana Project, which is why it has the optimistic subtitle.

The novella is called The Kairos Mechanism (Arcana #1), and it’s a story about characters from my first book, The Boneshaker (Clarion, 2010). It’s also related to the events of The Broken Lands. 

Synopsis: 

September, 1913. The crossroads town of Arcane, Missouri, is a place where strange things happen, and lately those strange things have a habit of happening to thirteen year-old Natalie Minks. It’s Natalie who first encounters the two boys who arrive in town seemingly out of nowhere, carrying a dead man between them. Odder still, a few of her older neighbors immediately recognize the dead man as a fellow citizen who’s been missing for fifty years–and who doesn’t appear to have aged in all that time. When another newcomer, a peddler called Trigemine, arrives in town, Natalie learns why the two boys and the peddler have really come to Arcane. And, of course, she realizes she has to stop them.

Like The Boneshakerand The Broken Lands, The Kairos Mechanism is a moderately frightening folklore-based fantasy. If you have read The Boneshaker, you’ll find the novella full of clues as to what’s coming and bits of history about characters you’ve already met. If you haven’t read it, don’t worry. You’ll fall in love with Natalie and Arcane right away.

I caught up with her to ask a few more questions about her project and how she creates as a writer.

1. How did you come up with the whole idea for having this novella? Are companion novels and novellas something you’ve always wanted to create as a writer?

I guess it started with the Nagspeake Board of Tourism and Culture website. I love cities and towns, and I love the idea of exploring a fictional city the way you’d explore a real one, by poking your nose into different streets and alleys and shops at random to see where your wandering takes you. So I started building a fictional city, Nagspeake, online. I’ve sort of always been interested in the ephemera that are hidden around a place or a story, just waiting to be discovered.

Ultimately this is why I started thinking about writing some companion pieces to my books. It was an idea I’ve been kicking around since the year after The Boneshaker sold. At that point, I had the idea for the project that would become The Broken Lands—it was just the tiniest bit of an idea, but I was thinking about what Jack the Drifter might’ve been up to before he wandered through Arcane. At the same time, I was beginning to think about a bigger story, something that would pit Natalie Minks against Jack. I thought it would make for a neat bit of backstory, something that might tide readers over until I began the big Natalie/Jack series. Fortunately, my publisher thought The Broken Lands would make a better full-length novel, and she was right. But I never stopped thinking about what I could do with all the extra little ideas I had floating around, and how I could use them to provide extra content for readers to explore the world of The Boneshaker.

Also I had about a year where I wasn’t sure what my next contract was going to be, and a girl’s gotta stay busy. At least, I do. Otherwise I go a bit crazy, and my husband likes it when I’m not crazy.

2. When you created the world of The Boneshaker and The Broken Lands, did you know you had several more stories within the world to tell? Did you always plan for this? Give us a little insight into your world-building.

Originally, I had envisioned The Boneshaker as a stand-alone novel, but once I added Jack, I started thinking about it differently, and by the time I was done, I knew I wanted to bring Jack back to Arcane. And I started wondering about what he might’ve been up to. Jack is an extraordinarily powerful creature looking for a place to make his own, and for this purpose he needs a place with a powerful crossroads. It occurred to me that before he settled on a small crossroads town like Arcane, he might’ve tried for someplace big first. From there, I started tracing his efforts backward, so now I know of several places he turned up before Arcane.

What happens with me is once I get really immersed in a place or time, I keep getting ideas. I fall in love with my characters (even—maybe especially—the villains), and I know where they all come from and where they all were at different times. And since the world of The Boneshaker is populated by a number of ancient wanderers and a number of powerful crossroads, I started thinking about those, and about their histories and about how the roamers might’ve crossed paths and where, and when…and things evolve from there. Plus, I’m an obsessive researcher, so as I get to know an era better and better, I start thinking things like, you know, Liao (a character in The Broken Lands) would’ve been a boy right about then. What might he have been up to? And Jake Limberleg (the villain of The Boneshaker) would’ve been youngish then, too…I wonder under what circumstances they might have crossed paths? This is where most of the ideas I have stockpiled away for the Arcana came from. It’s also where most of the ideas for the full-length projects I’m working on right now come from, to

I did seed certain things into The Boneshaker and The Broken Lands that I knew I wanted to come back to. Two characters in The Broken Lands spring to mind, for instance: there is a nameless woman with a violin, and a girl with silver eyes. They are not physically present in the book the way the protagonists are, but they are mentioned in a crucial story that one of the characters tells, and they’re characters in future books. But that’s often as far as my planning goes. I know I’m coming back to them, and why, and I usually have a vague (but sometimes only the vaguest) idea as to what their untold backstories are. But I don’t always know the specifics.

3. Without spoiling the wonderful plot of The Kairos Mechanism, can tell us how this book is a bridge between The Boneshaker and The Broken Lands? Or how do you intend it to function?

The Boneshaker takes place in Arcane, Missouri, in 1913, and it’s about a girl named Natalie Minks. The Broken Lands takes place in New York City in 1877, and although two characters from The Boneshaker turn up, the cast is otherwise entirely different. It’s a bit of a prequel, in that the events that take place in The Broken Lands relate to The Boneshaker, but it’s basically a stand-alone story. So The Kairos Mechanism is meant to do two things. Firstly, it’s a Natalie story, to tide me (and any Natalie-fans who are out there) over until I get to come back to her and to Arcane. Secondly, it provides some extra clues as to how the two books are related, some clues to what’s coming for Natalie, and some history for readers who, like me, want to know more about the world and the characters. And it’s a self-contained story in its own right.

Like I mentioned, I really love when, as a reader, I get to explore a world in more depth and really get to know it. But I want to be able to explore it while I’m reading the story it relates to, and I particularly love when I find extra content that isn’t just extra content, but something that actually changes the way I read the story. Obviously this is a fine line—if it’s not in the book, it almost can’t be critical to the story (unless that’s the point, I guess). And the extra content can’t be spoilery—for instance, I don’t know in what order people are going to read The Kairos Mechanism and The Broken Lands, and there are probably going to be people who read one of those two before they even read The Boneshaker. So I’m having to be very careful about what’s fair game to include, or refer to, or reveal. It’s very tricky.

4. If the Kickstarter campaign is successful, which we know it will be, what are your plans for the rest of the Arcana? Can you give us a little insider information? Or a sneak peek of your vision for them?

My pie-in-the-sky dream is to release an Arcanum novella alongside every hardcover release. I have a list of projects I’m saving up for them—basically for every full-length proposal I’ve written in the last year, I have a plan for a novella to accompany it. And one of the coolest things I’ve planned for the project (if I do say so myself) is that each one will be available in a digital version illustrated by young artists, one artist per chapter. The group that’s assembling right now is so diverse in terms of styles, I think it’s going to make for an amazing collection of illustrations. (And for what it’s worth, as of 1pm EST on Wednesday, I am still in need of one or two more artists.)

The Kairos Mechanism Kickstarter campaign’s off to a great start, but it still needs backers in a big way. Plus, if we exceed our goal, I’ll be able to bump up the artists’ compensation. Plus plus, if we REALLY exceed our goal—and it can happen, there’s still time—I may be able to finance the second Arcanum on this campaign. That would be amazing. I’d like the project ultimately not to require crowd-sourcing the funds, but that’s a long-term goal, obviously. It won’t happen on the first few installments.

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Okay, this month we’re supposed to write about bad writing habits or problems. What, me problems? Because I’m a subscriber to Scientific American Mind, I know I’m not unique in bearing this psychological trait: I’m sure that none of my problems are really my problems. Which is to say, they’re not my fault. Which is to say:

I’m not lazy, I’m just tired.

I’m not procrastinating, I’m percolating.

I’m not surfing the Internet, I’m researching.

I’m not sleeping, I’m active dreaming.

I’m not reading, I’m learning my craft.

I get headaches, so sue me.

Do you have any Excedrin? I’m out.

I said, do you have any Excedrin?

I SAID, DO YOU HAVE ANY EXCEDRIN???

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

It’s not my fault you didn’t give me any Excedrin. I really can’t be held responsible for my actions. For example, why has my nice book about some kids prancing around in a fantasy world suddenly turned into a senseless bloodbath involving body parts and spurting guts? Possibly it has something to do with the way THIS COMPUTER SCREEN IS GIVING OFF SO MUCH *&(#*& LIGHT!

[Four hours later.] In all seriousness folks, I could work more. I know that some people think I already work a lot, but it’s not good enough. I still spend way too much time being tired, percolating, researching, active dreaming, and of course, learning my craft. I could blame the headaches, insomnia, distractions, work-work, or my stuffed pink pig. But the truth is, I should just try to buck up and work more. Probably that means I’m going to have to start getting up earlier. Also, I should actually do the things on today’s to-do list instead of just moving them to tomorrow over and over again. Finally, I should work more. There aren’t really any gnomes inside my head making me forget what I’m doing and play ping-pong with them. That’s just a story I made up to avoid writing another 1000 words today. But now that you mention it, I think I will play another game.

Image Credit: Simon Howden

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