Write Talk

Last night we went out to Libba Bray's kick-off event for her tour in support of The Diviners (out now in all fine locations) at Joseph-Beth Booksellers (*blows kisses*). (Rest of schedule here, and definitely catch her if you can. I'll be at the final event in December at Oblong Books with Libba and Maureen Johnson, filling the riff-raff position.;-)

Every time I go to a book event, I'm reminded why I always vow to go to more. Not just because it's nice for the author if there are people there — though it is; I've been very lucky so far not to have a crickets event yet (I'm sure it will happen) and so grateful to every person there — but because there's often a moment when something that's said is just what I need to hear at any given moment as a writer.

I'm not and never will be making any claims at being some kind of expert on writing or anything just because I have now published a book. I still feel just as terrified (if not more so) and flummoxed and full of questions when I'm writing as I ever did. At one point last night someone asked a question, I think about advice for writers (but it might have been a different one) and Libba said read everything (YES, completely agree) and also, "Be brave." Paraphrasing, she talked about how a writer she admired said once that during the first draft we protect ourselves, and it's only in revision that we can go deeper, risk more. And that every book you write should change you, when you come out the other side.

Yes, yes, yes.

The book I'm revising, I see this all over it — the protecting myself in the first draft. Much of it comes from the fact that, as usual, I didn't know the character(s) well enough in the first draft to be true to them. For me, so much of the first draft is just beginning to figure out what the book is, and making many wrong turns along the way. This particular book, which I don't want to talk about too specifically yet (hopefully someday I'll be able too), is near and dear to my heart. It's a bit of a departure (first person, for one) and the main character is something of a daredevil. I've been kicking myself because while she was daring, even in the first draft, she was also not daring in places where she should be — that's a lot of what I'm working on in this revision. Because true daring? Requires vulnerability. Dropping shields, being open to injury, to falling, to failure… It requires caring enough to risk everything.

Just as being the kind of writer I want to be requires being brave enough to risk all that, too. Every time.

A reminder I needed to hear just when I needed to hear it.

I already tumbled this fabulous quote from Terri Windling's blog, but I'm putting it up here too (not least because, um, cleanliness wasn't meant to stay at the top of ye old Shaken & Stirred for a whole week–oops):

"What you need to know about [your next piece of art] is contained in the last piece. The place to learn about your materials is in the last use of your materials. The place to learn about your execution is in your execution. The best information about what you love is in your last contact with what you love. Put simply, your work is your guide: a complete, comprehensive, limitless reference book on your work. There is no other such book, and it is yours alone. It functions this way for no one else. Your fingerprints are all over your work, and you alone know how they got there. Your work tells you about your working methods, your discipline, your strengths and weaknesses, your habitual gestures, your willingness to embrace.

"The lessons you are meant to learn are in your work. To see them, you need only look at the work clearly — without judgement, without need or fear, without wishes or hopes. Without emotional expectations. Ask your work what it needs, not what you need. Then set aside your fears and listen, the way a good parent listens to a child."    — David Bayles & Ted Orland, Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking

First off, I'll definitely be seeking out Art & Fear, just based on this snippet.

Anyway, this quote immediately made me think of one of the wisest things anyone ever said to me about writing, one of those lessons that I come back to often. The advice, because I think it does qualify as advice, came from Tim Wynne-Jones (recent Horn Book award winner–yay!) in an early packet response my first semester of grad school. What he said was essentially that we give ourselves the solutions to the problems we encounter in our work. That when really and truly stumped, the answer is often to be found hidden, obscured, embedded somewhere on the page. The subconscious is a tricksy beast. I have found that this is a great and powerful truth.

When I really can't find the answer, no matter how much long dog walking and listening to playlists and banging head against desk and vacuuming I've done, I go back to what I have and I look at it and I think about it and I usually do find the answer in hiding there, right in front of me. Occasionally it's the absence of something that's the answer, or that something feels wrong, but often enough it's a grace note, an image or a line that appeared and that I didn't understand the importance of yet. When I give notes to someone else or talk out my own plots (Christopher is very patient on the dog walks where this happens, and sometimes we talk out his too), often that's what I come around to. It's that "OH! It's already in there! I just didn't RECOGNIZE it!" moment.

We give ourselves the answers we need, we only have to be willing to look for them.* Every piece is its own secret decoder ring.

Unrelated, but amazing, a feature slide show of photographs of aging dogs from Nancy LeVine's Senior Dogs Across America.

*Of course, for this to work you have to make pages where the answers can hide first. That is the Greatest Secret of All: Everything is possible once you make the pages.

I've posted here before about the importance of playlists in my writing process. And I always love reading other people's playlist posts–it's one of the reasons I like largehearted boy's Book Notes feature so much. It's a particular look through another writer's window, slightly and enjoyably voyeuristic, even though limited to the book in question. Another way of understanding both writer and novel, or just of finding new bands or being reminded about old ones. For my own part, I know a project's taking on life when I feel the need to pause and make the big playlist that I'll listen to while writing, though that playlist evolves along the way. A new draft means a substantially tweaked playlist, usually.

Anyway, I realized this morning that I also tend to find a new song sometime along the way through the draft that I come to think of as the book's anthem. Typically, it shows up right before the last third of the story, and this morning the creepy island book's came blaring out of the car stereo muse-sent from my very own iPod,* a song I'm not even sure I'd ever listened to after I downloaded it. The song is "Kick In Your Heart" by Gliss (which can be heard here, if you like). I suspect I will listen to it a millionty times in the next few weeks.

The anthem is different than the playlist. First, it gets played on repeat over and over again, and usually when I'm consciously thinking about the story, instead of while actually writing. The song tends to conjure strong visualization of big scenes, call up emotion to match, and lead to lots and lots of plot nailing-down. It begins to represent the whole story I'm working toward having told. It becomes the song of the book that will soon be written.

The last book had, I'd say, three distinct anthems: "Golden" by Sister Suvi, "Splintering" by Arizona, and "Golden Children" by Black Feelings (the last was probably the anthem).

What about you guys? Do you do this, too?

*Good thing I haven't quite figured out how to manipulate the contents of my birthday present yet (it's fancier than my old one!), or I probably wouldn't have had the song on there in the first place. Autoload can sometimes be serendipitous.