Teen Writers Bloc

Currently, I’m working on two realistic narratives. Both are in the beginning stages and won’t get fleshed out until summer. My stories tend to be about friendship and love. They are also about how teens react to being given once in a lifetime opportunities — do they squander the chance or take full advantage of what’s in front of them? One day, I can only hope to see my books in the amazing company of such wonderful authors as Sarah Dessen and Jenny Han.

When I write, I usually sit at my desk or on my bed, but I’ve been known to bring notebooks to various Starbucks around the city, too. No matter where I end up though, I need to listen to music in order to block out any background noise that could potentially distract me.  That’s not the only purpose music serves though. We all know that music has the power to inspire. For me, a certain song can spark an idea or trigger a memory that leads to a possible scene or plot point or description. Music influences my emotions in other ways as well. When I’m stressed it relaxes me and refocuses my energy. There’s no way I could write, let alone live well, without it.

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I’m on the road to (hopeful) publication. Step One: The Query Letter.

Fact: QueryTracker is an evil enterprise designed to make writers go insane.

Fact: The New York City dating scene is, miraculously, less stressful than the agent search.

Fact: My time in the New York City dating scene included a guy who talked about himself in the third person (G-Man. I’m not kidding) and a guy whose big business plan was to sell tampons on the internet. Just giving you a basic sense of the levels of stress we are talking about here.

Fact: I am currently totally qualified to be working on my novel about obsessive-compulsive disorder because I have developed a OCD habit of checking email over the last month of querying.

For those who don’t know about the process of getting published, it basically starts with a query letter. This query letter has to pithily describe your book in a way that is both original and accessible, descriptive and contained, literary and commercial. Also, it requires bragging about yourself modestly and not sounding insane.

It’s a tall order.

Lucky for me, I have classmates who are actually good at this kind of skill. In the words of my boyfriend, I “go on” sometimes. I’m pretty sure this is a nice/vague way of saying that in my attempt to describe my work I end up writing something longer than the actual novel. I also lack certain skills, like writing business-y letters or basically doing anything that isn’t either writing creatively or serving cocktails to weird tourists or picking out really good restaurants.

But with people like Alyson and Sona on my team I am UNSTOPPABLE. These girls took my 27 page query letter* (*dramatic interpretation of reality) and made it a nice little three paragraph superstar query letter.

Once the query letter was polished into perfection, I added on a few fun quirky details (being careful not to “go on” too much) and picked out the agents who would be lucky enough to consider it. Once agents receive your query letter, they decide whether or not they actually want to check out the book. Sadly, they can (and very often do!) reject the manuscript based on the query letter alone.

This is where the obsessing begins.

Because there is a website called QueryTracker, on which you can see who else is submitting queries, how long it takes agents to get in touch with them, how often agents request Full Manuscripts after seeing an initial query letter, and who is actually getting an agent. Then, if you are prone to craziness, you do complex Beautiful Mind-like calculations to see how likely it is that you will become famous soon.

Note: I never finished high school math.

Note: This is a completely true fact. I squirmed my way out of any math after sophomore year. It has not yet affected my life negatively in any way. Aside from an unfortunate idea to attempt taking the Math SAT 2, which, funny enough, requires you actually have finished your basic math requirements.

The point is: I do not actually have the skills to do any mathematical equations but I’m so nervous and impatient that I, for the first time ever, wish I had learned things like probability and percentages and algebra back in the day.

Long story short: Agents are looking at my novel. It has been exactly one month since I began querying. I am a super-fun combination of excited and terrified. I am a joy to be around.

More on this process later. I must go watch The Biggest Loser, which is the only thing able to distract me from my thoughts of agents and query letters.

Used with permission from Debbie Ridpath Ohi at Inkygirl.com.

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As a new contributor to Teen Writers Bloc, I’d like to let all the wonderful readers out there in on my life as an MFA student at The New School. I’m the only second year Bloc member, and therefore the only one with a bit of insight into the thesis semester. For those of you out there considering The New School’s Writing for Children MFA program (which, if you aren’t, you should be), the thesis semester is an independent construction by each individual student. You acquire a thesis advisor – either a professor in our program, or an outsider – you form a peer group and create your own schedule of what and when you want to submit. You can send in pages as often or as little as you want, as long as you meet your goal. (New School requires a minimum of seventy five pages in order to graduate.) I opted to search outside of the program for my advisor, and ended up with a wonderful editor from Penguin Books. I wanted a new, fresh set of eyes on my work, and I couldn’t be happier with my advisor. Seriously.

In fact, I submitted the first ninety seven pages of my YA novel to my advisor last week, and we had our first meeting this week. All I can say: the ideas are a-flowing! My creative juices are pumping, and I know exactly what my next step is.

However, my task at hand isn’t exactly a picnic in Central Park (by the way, planning a picnic in Central Park is actually harder then one would think). My advisor told me that my characters are really strong and wonderful and that she loved getting to view the world through their eyes. She said I have a very strong storyline and great themes, but I that basically have to change the ground they walk on and the backdrop around them.

There are two major problems:

1) They are too old. College is a tricky time for YA, and generally treads adult fiction territory.

2) There is too much time from start to end; I need to compress the time-span.

What totally sucks is that in the back of my mind I knew all of this before I even sent her the pages. Okay, well, maybe I didn’t explicitly know what needed to be changed. I just knew that something was off. Something major. But I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. And then I get my changes in an e-mail, and I knew right off the bat. Like the cliched old light bulb above my head, she had pulled the chain and suddenly it all made sense.

What’s even worse? That what she told me was what I had originally envisioned when I planned my preliminary notes on the novel and what I wanted it to be. Of course, when I started writing, my fingers and heart got the best of my brain and my notes, and set the whole thing in the winter, a whole year and a half from where I envisioned it.

It might seem like an easy enough task to switch from winter to summer, or to change a character’s age from 19 to 18, but let me tell you: it’s NOT. One might think it’s as effortless as changing “the slushy streets of New York” to “the glittering, sun-kissed streets of New York” or “piles of mountainous snow” to “piles of mountainous garbage,” but it’s not that simple. You have to think of clothing and catch every reference to a scarf or hat-and-gloves. You have to think of the temperature degree in the air and how it effects word choice. You have to think of the thematic schematics behind winter and summer and how it effects the overall arc of your story and its characters. In summation, it’s a bitch.

So what do I do?

I’ve already committed to making this the best thing I’ve ever written. So that means I have to get down to business, put my nose to the grindstone, get my hands dirty, employ every other clichéd sentiment to express hard work and get to work!

The good thing about all of this is that I have a clear vision of what needs to be done. I just know that it’s going to take my novel to the next level. And it doesn’t exactly hurt when an editor at a major publishing house tells you that she fell in love with your characters, especially the protagonist and his struggles. That’s just validation on top of a sort-of-half-cooked cake.

What’s next? I have to switch gears and change the setting from college to the summer between high school and college, picking up directly after graduation. That, and making sure I melt all the snow and heat up my pages. Hopefully the sticky, summer sun will spice things up and take them to that next level.

I have until February 11th to completely alter my characters’ world, make them a year younger, and finish the first (totally reworked) third of my novel. Excuse me while I wipe the sweat from my brow — and get to work.

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This past year has been an especially productive one in terms of creative output, risk-taking, and pushing myself to write every day. I have been mostly successful — a huge amount of writing happened, and finished products are pending. I am days away from a completed first draft of my first YA novel, and am in the third revision of a very special debut novel that has been a challenge and a thrill.

Most days I wrote a minimum of 1,000 words.
I didn’t shy away from really big revisions.
I wrote about a community I actually had to research.
I made enormous, chapters-long cuts to help the books move.
I started a first attempt at a middle grade novel.

Now it’s time, in 2011, to address the other side of writing: The Business Side. With a lot of material under my belt, I need to start figuring out what to do with it. BUT also keep pushing through on my newer work! Here’s my to-do list:

-write a great query letter for my YA novel as well as my adult novel

-sign with an agent

-remember to research publishing imprints and be vigilant about doing further research on my favorite books and authors

-finish my middle grade novel (or you know, get a chunk more than ten pages long under my belt)

-keep reading middle grade work to get more familiar with the genre

-make time for my freelance/paid writing work, even if I don’t feel like it. A girl’s gotta eat!

Wish me luck!

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My writing goal for this year: finish my book. I look back at the Amy that started this program in August and think, “Aw. Adorable. She thinks she has a completed book.” Okay well, technically, I did. It was just bad. Endless chunks of exposition and explanatory dialogue is not a compelling way to tell a story, particularly if you’re writing fantasy. Action is key — by trying to “save the good stuff” I created something not particularly interesting to read.

So now I’ve pretty much gutted about three quarters of the original. I have the same characters, the same setting (essentially), the same basic overall concept. But all the events, the action, the way characters get from Point A to Point B, has to be entirely recreated. Not so much a rewrite as a complete overhaul.

Oh, and I’ve conceived the story as a trilogy, so I’d like to get started on the second book this summer. Too much? We’ll see. Wish me luck.

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I have never been one to make New Year’s Resolutions. Just because the calendar flips from December 31 to January 1 doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of life, in my opinion. Rather, I tend to mark the passing of time with bigger milestones — birthdays, anniversaries, and major life decisions/changes (starting graduate school, for example!).

However, though it really has nothing to do with the New Year, I have set a writing goal for myself. I am determined to have a solid first draft of my current novel completed by the time spring semester rolls around. Being in The New School’s Creative Writing MFA program has been incredibly inspiring and valuable thus far… but it’s also been a lot of work!

So I’ve found that throughout the fall semester I haven’t had as much time to write as I would have liked. Now that we’ve got six weeks off from schoolwork, I am on a full-fledged writing mission. Can I hit 200 pages in six weeks? I think I can, I think I can, I think I can! And just in case the holidays and my birthday and all the fun new books I’m hoping to get as gifts prove to be too much of a distraction, I’m telling everyone I know about my plan — so they can keep me on track! Peer pressure can sometimes be a good thing!

Image courtesy of Philomel

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I want to let all the readers out there in the blogosphere in on a little secret: writing a novel is hard work. I know, it’s a shocking revelation, but alas, it’s true. Over the years, I’ve found more ebbs than flows in my own writing patterns. I’ve hit some serious writer’s block, and some serious strides. I’ve discovered some story lines don’t work, while others thrive. It’s the necessary road a writer has to travel, and I’ve become a believer that the key ingredient is determination.

Most of the time, if I’m not actually writing, my brain is going at warp speed thinking about what I’m going to write. Usually I fall asleep with scenes playing out in my head and usually these scenes prevent me from catching a good night’s rest. But I can’t turn them off. Every once in awhile – as a writer – a character will come to mind that I absolutely cannot ignore, no matter what I’m working on.

And the novel I’m currently working on centers around one such character. I started this project about five years ago during my sophomore year at Ithaca College, in my fiction writing class. The protagonist, Chase, came to me like a bullet to the brain, and I haven’t been able to shake him since. At first, I wrote this long, convoluted novel (a “finished” work, nearly 300 pages) told from two different perspectives. Back then it was my crowning achievement. What other college sophomore can shut himself away from vodka-and-Natty Ice-induced comas to write 300 pages? Too bad those pages have now been banned to the far corners of my hard-drive, never to be found as long I live. Sure, there are still some kinda-maybe-sorta-halfway decent parts that I could potentially rewrite and work into the new narrative, but 99.99% of it is trash. It’s like my version of a kindergartener’s finger-painting on the fridge: cute, but hardly a Van Gogh.

But, I digress. Chase’s story has changed so much over the years that what I started back then is completely, totally, entirely, wholly, ridiculously (get the point?) different now. The major difference between then and now? Now, I know every detail, every thought, every aspect of Chase so well that he’s more than just a part of me; I’ve become Chase. I know how he thinks, how he acts, and most importantly how he changes. Why? Because I am determined to get it right this time. This new project – the title I won’t reveal quite yet, though I do have one –  chronicles a very important chunk of Chase’s life, where he encounters all these roadblocks and new experiences (vague, huh?), and it all leads to the discovery of one thing: you don’t think I’m actually going to tell you now, do you? You’ll just have to wait until it’s on store shelves. (Which it will be! Positive thinking! Huzzah!)

So my New Years writing resolution is to finish Chase’s story. I want to quiet him in my mind. I want to bring him where he needs to go, to see him through until the end. His story has seen many changes over the years, and I’ve put it away for a few years to work on other projects, I’ve started it time and time again, but I couldn’t truly write it. Now I know I can. Timing is everything. You can’t just force yourself to write, even if the character won’t let you sleep. Every writer is different, but I know for me that I needed to remove personal roadblocks before I could properly flesh Chase out. And now that I have, I’m determined to finish.

Since it’s my last semester at The New School, I’ll be working with an advisor, who has already promised to kick my butt with deadlines. If all goes as planned and I stick to my deadlines (and let’s face it, I’m working with an actual editor at an actual publishing house, so of course I will!), I’ll have a finished novel by April. It won’t be the first novel I’ve finished, but I know for a fact that it will be the first that I’m proud of, the first that I think will stand on its own.

What I’m continuing to find is that writing often leads to places you never expected it to. Storyarc grows and change organically, just like life. And life is hard. But I’m determined to see it through! I’m determined to keep going. Otherwise, what’s the point?

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Salt did not rain from the sky! I waited. No white crystals pushed through my window, attacking my writing desk.

I wished for it. I prayed for it. Nothing helped. Sigh! I didn’t write as nearly as much as I wanted.

As predicted, the first two weeks of National Novel Writing Month were magical. I wrote for several hours a day, clocking in daily at 1,000 words. I marveled at the fresh pages and the new words. I was impressed by my effort and rewarded myself with a spa visit and several vats of ice cream. Then somewhere along the middle, I couldn’t resist the urge to revise. I negotiated with myself: “Dhonielle, if you revise one chapter, you must write a new one immediately afterward.”

This worked well momentarily, but my daily numbers dwindled, whittling away from 1,000 to 850 to 500 over the course of a few days. I couldn’t get the new chapters completely fleshed out because I kept revising the old chapters. Ugh! I couldn’t resist tampering and tweaking the first fifty pages. I cling to a warped philosophy that my book will fall apart if the first fifty pages aren’t perfect. Is there rehab for defunct writers? I need a twelve-step program to rid me of these troubling thoughts and behaviors.

So November 2010 was the Year of the Baby Slug! I wasn’t all out lazy. I wrote just about every day, including weekends, until Thanksgiving hit. Food and family wrecked havoc on my writing schedule, motivation, and mental time. I felt guilty for ignoring out of town relatives as my mind drifted to my story. I carried around my notebook as a reminder, but ultimately held it in my lap as I watched countless movies with cousins and uncles, heated up leftover turkey, and argued about Black Friday sales. I didn’t open my notebook or turn on my computer for about a week, from Tuesday before Thanksgiving to the Sunday after it. I forgot about my characters. The slug had succeeded in infiltrating my brain and body.

But my final NaNoWriMo word count wasn’t pitiful. I finished up at 19,568 words! Better luck next year.

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It’s interesting that in the fallout of the expose on James Frey’s fiction factory in New York Magazine last month, New York City MFA students are the ones who come off looking like fools.

That is, at least according to MFA guru Seth Abramson, author of The Creative Writing MFA Handbook, who wrote all about why we’re apparently idiots for the Huffington Post last week.

“In seeking out young authors to exploit, Frey has done as much as anyone in the United States to reveal the seedy side of unfunded MFA programs,” Abramson writes. “Indeed, research done into MFA programs since 2006 reveals that Columbia University and The New School, Frey’s top targets for young, desperate literary artists, are distinctive in only two respects: (1) they host the two largest MFA cohorts in fiction in the United States; and (2) their fiction alumni are believed to have the highest graduate student loan burden of any MFA graduates anywhere.”

The case he’s making is that students at the New School and Columbia (and no doubt NYU, too, by default) are so desperate to earn their way out of their MFA debt that they’ll sign any old contract, panting breathlessly at the very thought of actually being published. Because apparently we’re that hopeless.

In reality, I think the students that did sign on for Frey’s dastardly deal are simply hedging their bets. Some percentage of a million dollar deal is a hard thing to turn down. Especially when advances these days are often pitifully low. But that’s a whole other conversation.

Really, I’d rather address Abramson’s allegation that New York City-area MFA students are idiots. As a graduate student in the MFA program in creative writing at the New School: A) I’m not going into crippling debt to pursue this. Yes, it’s an expensive endeavor, but I (and many of my classmates) do have some funding. We’re in New York City, the heart of the publishing industry and the known world. Of course it’s expensive, but so are many programs in other parts of the nation. B) I don’t have the the luxury of packing up my life and my family and moving to Iowa or Nebraska to pursue a funded degree. I work. I have a family. I have family in the area. I want to be in New York City. C) I truly believe you get what you pay for. And to me, this degree and the creative community that comes with it are worth it.

But also, having spent a semester in the program thus far, I also see that my classmates are far from being idiots for taking on this purportedly life-altering debt for a degree, as Abramson put it in another HuffPost blog, that is “at base, a non-professional, largely-unmarketable art-school degree that can’t get anyone a full-time teaching job (at least not in the absence of significant in-genre publications) and is not designed to ‘network’ graduates into magazine or book publications.”

In fact, I’d argue that the Writing for Children program at the New School is designed to be pretty much exactly the opposite of what Abramson presents. The class of 2012 consists of 12 students, a small cohort that’s designed to create a close-knit writers’ community. (Hence this blog.) It’s one of fewer than a dozen programs in the nation with a writing for children concentration, so the odds are, it’s building up the next strong group of instructors in this very specialized field (and with YA markets booming, the need for instructors with expertise in this arena is no doubt growing). Its focus is on creativity and the canon, so we know all about where we’re going — and where we’re coming from. It’s a diverse, intelligent, creative group of writers who no doubt represent the future of publishing in this arena.

And even more significantly, the networking element is crucial and a key component of the way this program is built. Case in point: David Levithan. A force to be reckoned with in the children’s publishing industry, and a best-selling writer himself, Levithan hasn’t simply put his name on the program. He’s an integral part of it. For one thing, he teaches every year, unlike some of the brand name authors that serve as MFA ambassadors throughout the nation, pulling students into their fold only to depart on book tours or sabbaticals, rather than teach. And it’s an education only he could provide, given his multiple roles in the field and his careful, articulate examination of it. He also advises students, and even publishes some of them.

Secondly, David and the other instructors in the program — all of whom are working writers and/or editors — play up the networking aspect. Just this past week, David brought in a cadre of eight working writers to class to “talk shop,” as it were. Among these were best-selling YA goddess and Printz winner Libba Bray and National Book Award winner Judy Blundell. We got to ask them questions about their process, craft, publishing, the highs and lows of life as a writer.

Thirdly, given our locale in downtown Manhattan, we’re at the heart and the pulse of publishing every day. Another major part of our program — for all genres — is the writers’ colloquium, which mandates that we attend a minimum of eight author events and readings throughout the semester, either sponsored by the school (which offers a great line-up each year) or within the city. Of course, most students attend far more than eight, considering that New York boasts such readings and events on a daily basis with major names in publishing. One of the first such events I attended as a student was Salman Rushdie introducing new writer Tishani Doshi at the Brooklyn Book Festival, which was absolutely free. Another great one was one of David’s NYC Teen Author readings, featuring David and his Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares co-writer Rachel Cohn and YA icon Scott Westerfeld, amongst other teen lit all-stars.

And last, but certainly not least, are the alumni, who continue to support the program that brought them right into the heart of publishing. Next week, author and New School alum Coe Booth will be teaching our class — and teaching her books, Tyrell and Kendra (both published by David Levithan at his Scholastic imprint Push). She graduated from the New School in 2005, along with fellow published writers Jenny Han, Lisa Graff, Lisa Greenwald, Siobhan Vivian, Daphne Grab, Kathryne Alfred, and Caroline Hickey. (That’s right, the Longstockings.)Given the short history of the writing for children program, an astonishing number of its graduates are published and publishing. Not bad for a throwaway degree, huh?

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As a child I longed to see people like me in the fantasy books I treasured, doing fantastical things and going on magical adventures. So I was thrilled when, as I was working on a forthcoming three-part blog series titled, “Do Brown Kids Go to Outer Space? A Search for Multicultural Kids in Fantasy and Science-Fiction,” I came across author Wendy Raven McNair and her fantasy trilogy featuring African-American protagonists. I immediately went to her website and found out all I could about the author and her books, Awake and Asleep. I downloaded her book and poured over her world of African-American super-beings.

I caught up with Wendy to chat about self-publishing, ethnicity in books and what inspired her to write.

Tell us a bit about yourself and how you became a writer.

I grew up in the projects of Houston, and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, an accomplishment I didn’t fully appreciate at the time. I never travelled outside of Texas until I was an adult, and since then I’ve lived in Missouri, Iowa, Ohio, Massachusetts, and now reside in Georgia. Before I became a writer, I held many different positions: assistant teacher, manufacturing plant line technician, quality lab rep, office assistant, restaurant hostess, and bank teller just to name a few. My newborn daughter inspired me to pursue being a writer because I wanted to teach her by example to go after her dreams. Now, I’ve discovered that my life experiences are great resource material for my stories.

Can you tell us a bit about ASLEEP and AWAKE? How did you come up with the concept for the series?

Asleep is book one of a fantasy trilogy. Adisa Summers doesn’t know her boyfriend, Micah Alexander, can fly. In this opening story Adisa is introduced to the secret world of super beings as she’s falling in love with Micah, so it’s pretty intense right up to the very end.

Awake is book two of the trilogy. Adisa and Micah race against time to find a cure for Micah. When Adisa reconnects with the birth parents who abandoned her in a cotton field when she was only three, the shocking results threaten Micah and Adisa’s relationship, sanity, and even their lives.

My teen daughter inspired this trilogy. She loves fantasy stories, but my challenge was finding an age appropriate fantasy story with a lead character that reflected her, a teen and an African American girl. So I started the story knowing who the lead character would be. My initial fantasy idea was a superhero defender of the environment (my teen was learning about environmental issues), however the story was going nowhere. I did like the “superhero” idea, which evolved into super beings in the final story.

What’s your writing process? Where does your inspiration come from?

I’m a daydreamer, I always have been, so my writing process is simple. I daydream about my characters and write down what happens. I actually spend more time marketing, networking, and planning for or participating in literary events which all take away from my writing time and make up my typical day. For example, I’m taking time for this interview instead of writing, which is a great opportunity taking up some of my writing time. My ongoing struggle is to find balance between writing and all the other duties I perform as a self-published author. Usually I have to clear my calendar and just dedicate the whole day to writing.

What’s been the most surprising part of the writing/publishing process for you?

One thing it hasn’t been is boring! One surprising part has been the generosity of readers who are supportive and encouraging. Queries for my first published novel, Giant Slayers, received nothing but rejections. So I was thrilled to receive some positive agent responses to Asleep. But I decided to self publish since there are so many great alternatives available and reader response has been tremendous. However, I don’t have the money or resources a traditional publisher would provide, so I have to be a jack of all trades. It can be exhausting, but I get to do something I love, tell stories, so that keeps me motivated along with the positive feedback from readers.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever gotten? What advice would you yourself give aspiring authors?

Keep writing! That’s the best advice I’ve ever been given. My advice to aspiring authors is to not give up. Exciting things are happening in the literary world that are giving authors more avenues to getting their work out to the public. The traditional publishing route can be very discouraging to aspiring writers but now print on demand and e-books are allowing these writers alternate routes to realizing their dream of getting their stories out to the public.

What was your favorite book when you were a teenager? What are you reading now?

One of my favorites was Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. I’m currently reading Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Talents, the sequel to Parable of the Sower. Both authors are phenomenal writers and insightful storytellers.

What’s next for you writing-wise (and otherwise!)?

I’m currently working on a media project related to the trilogy that I hope to have up in 2011. Readers can keep updated through my website and blog. I’m also working on Ascend, the final book of the trilogy. After that, I may write a trilogy from Micah’s perspective. By telling this story through Adisa, much of Micah’s story is left untold, so exploring his side of things would be very revealing and a completely different story from Adisa’s version. So I believe it would hold many surprising revelations for readers. I’ll also be touring to promote the books.

Do you believe in being part of a “bloc” of writers? Are critique groups and writing communities helpful to you?

Ideally, yes, I believe a writing community could be very beneficial. Unfortunately, I haven’t found one that fits into how I work so I haven’t had the opportunity to experience it while writing my novels.

Thank you so much to Wendy Raven McNair for swinging by TeenWritersBloc.com to chat. Check out her website and books. They’d make great stocking stuffers!

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