Can you believe it?  2013 is almost over.  I've been cleaning up after the holiday rush, and I'm so ready to jump back into my WIP.  I had to set it aside for all the hoopla of the holidays which was fun--and during that time fun things arrived in the mail which I didn't have a chance to talk about . . .

ARCS!  Beautiful glorious arcs!

And something else too:
THE FINAL COVER ART!!!
I'm dying to share it! It is so completely--!

My lips are zipped.  My publisher will be revealing it soon. More news to come about when and where!

(But I LOVE it.)

In the meantime, I'm focusing on the WIP (book #2) On Twitter a few of us writers are jumping into January with a commitment #Jan1000, which for me means at least a thousand words a day every day.  Yes, every day. One truth I've learned is that writing begets writing.  Sometimes it's hard to get the writing engine warmed up, but once you do, it's hard to stop the wheels from racing. 

I actually hope (and expect) to write more than a thousand words a day, but that is my minimum goal. I like having goals that don't overwhelm me. Yep, bite off a sweet chunk that won't choke you!

Trying to do a "group" shared goal can be difficult because each of our writing lives are different.  We all have different kinds of commitments which include day jobs, children, other books that need editing while we try to write a new one, etc.  So #Jan1000 might mean a thousand words a day for one writer, like it does for me, or a thousand words a week, a month, or an hour (for you over-achievers.) But it is a goal!  And I need those.

If you do too, join us for #Jan1000 and make a dent in that writing project.

Bring it on 2014!

I don’t usually participate in memes but I couldn’t resist this one.  Opening lines! 

There are so many reasons opening lines grab, haunt, shake me, or send a little shiver up my spine so that I’m compelled to keep reading. 

It might be an intriguing premise, or a character I have to know more about,  an incredible voice, or language that is simply irresistible.  Here are some opening lines from both recent and older books that I have loved and made me keep turning the pages.

What are some of your favorites?


I didn’t know how long I had been in the king’s prison.  The days were all the same,
except that as each one passed, I was dirtier than before.  
--The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

Now come the mousies nosing out their hole, thinks Kuhru as he wipes fresh bone marrow from his snout. Three pretty little mousies.  Humans.  Females.  Ripe and soft and full of warm blood.
–Black Hole Sun by David Macinnis Gill.

The circus arrives without warning.  No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. 
It is simply there when yesterday it was not.
–The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

There is a certain kind of girl the goblins crave.  You could walk across a high school campus and point them out: not her, not her, her.
–Goblin Fruit by Laini Taylor

I am dying: it’s a beautiful word. Like the long slow sigh of a cello: dying.
–Surrender by Sonya Hartnett

The sirens are louder than I anticipated.  Not that I ever in a million years anticipated sirens at the beginning of all this.  Otherwise, obviously, I never would have agreed to it. 
Hindsight.  It’s a bitch.
–My Life Undecided by Jessica Brody

Being dead became fashionable approximately forty-five seconds
after Samantha “the Divine” Devereaux came back from summer break.
–Dead is the New Black by Marlene Perez

The screw through Cinder’s ankle had rusted.
–Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Here’s the thing: I was probably gonna write a book when I got older anyways.  About what it’s like growing up on a levee in Stockton, where every other person you meet has missing teeth or is leaning against a liquor store wall begging for change to buy a beer.
–We Were Here by Matt De La Pena

There was a hand in the darkness and it held a knife.
–The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

I have been in love with Titus Oates for quite a while now—which is ridiculous since he’s been dead for ninety years.  But look at it this way. In ninety years I’ll be dead, too,
and then the age difference won’t matter. 
–The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean

    The last several months have been crazy.  I've spent much of it tucked back in this corner of my yard--yes, even in winter with a blanket wrapped around me--writing on my laptop. 

    Being out there gave me an "away" spot where phones, doorbells, and the internet weren't distractions, but I was still near my research and notes in my upstairs office if I needed to get to it.  I had a tight deadline which meant that I had to write every day and all day.  I not only had to finish the first book in a new trilogy, I had so many details to work out for how this whole new world worked. Details!

    The surprising thing was, I found I loved writing even more when I wrote this way--non stop. There was less agonizing over what came next.  The juices were always churning. Except for a few days around Christmas, I never missed a single day of writing from November through April.  That was almost 6 months of non-stop writing!  And pretty much all day long.

    For me this was a huge leap.  But I definitely had to make some changes in how I approached my writing.  For one thing I increased my daily word count goals to 1200-1500. I know for some writers that is nothing, but for me that is a lot.

    Another thing I did was NOT incessantly revise as I wrote.  I had a habit of spending as much or more time revising each day as I did writing.  That was a hard habit to break.  I like to see things pretty and perfect and my words to sparkle and they definitely weren't doing that.  Also, revising is so much more fun than heading into uncharted territory. But this time, I was writing a true ROUGH draft.  This actually made more sense because why spend hours making something perfect if it might get cut in the revision or totally overhauled?  Still, I love playing with words and getting only the most essential ones down, and getting the emotional tone fine-tuned, so I had to get tough and turn a blind eye to the crappiness.  The carrot I held out to myself was that when I was finished I could revise to my heart's delight--my favorite part of the process. (But my poor editor and beta-readers had to deal with abundant yards of burlap, purple, and knotted prose.)

    As I wrote I looked for writing inspiration from time to time, perusing again my writing library, or looking for new tidbits, and I came across this from Laini Taylor: "Be an unstoppable force.  Write with an imaginary machete strapped to your thigh."  All of her writing advice was great but this really hit me because I already had this sort image lurking in my brain along with the order, "Be fearless!"  If I expected my characters to forge ahead, I could expect nothing less from myself. That became my daily motto--along with a scary me waving a machete.

    I also came across this from Rachel Aaron.  I especially found the "Knowledge" advice so completely helpful.  The thing was, I was already doing something similar but in a less effective way.  Each day when I finished writing, I used to jot down a few words or sentences of where I thought I wanted to go the next day.  I reversed that and started keeping a notebook, a daily log where I spent 10-20 minutes writing out scenes, interactions, key points I thought should happen, all in much more thoughtful detail than I used to, each day just before I began writing. It set the tone and my writing goals.  Did it all happen or go the way I thought?  Never.  At least not exactly, but it gave me something to work with, or diverge from--not just empty white space to get lost in. And if I did feel lost, I would look back at this log and revise my plan!

I've always kept daily word counts for my books--it helps me "see" in a concrete way the progress I have made. (I'm also a list maker because I love to cross things off!) but this time my emphasis was on the DAILY part.  This is a picture of my log for my newest book which will be out next year. I loved seeing the words add up and be able to go back and see a week's worth of progress. It also helped me predict how much I was capable of writing in a month, because I really wasn't sure before.  I'm just about ready to dig into Book 2 which means it's time to print out a fresh sheet and start filling in those rectangles.

With each book I've written, I've tackled it a little differently, but this time I tackled it a lot differently.  I think it's good for a writer (well, at least for me) to shake it up now and then and get out of their comfort zone.  You learn new things about yourself and maybe add a new tool to your writing chest.

In the midst of all this writing, I did have other things going on, including the publication of the last book (!) in The Jenna Fox Chronicles, Fox Forever--and all that went along with that, including some fun travels (Thank you Houston, Rochester, and Fort Worth!)  These travels included a first for me--presenting in a church on the altar no less--with stained glass saints looking on!  It somehow felt scandalous. (Jessica Brody, Marissa Meyer, and Lauren DeStefano, I'm looking at you.)

Other book news is simmering that I hope I can share soon.  In the meantime, I'm getting ready to revise the above mentioned book (3rd round) which is still untitled and I'm quite eager to jump into Book 2.  I've fallen in love with my characters over these past months.  I want to see what happens next!  I'm sure more months of craziness lie ahead.

But if you're in the middle of it now . . .

In my last post on tools of the trade, I mentioned that I was trying out Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet for the new book I was working on.  The beats of course, are all the elements of story, beginning, middle, and ending, and obviously several more beyond that.  So by the fact that I'm using it, it might imply that I know all these things about my story already.  Um. No.  In truth, the story I'm working on has already turned in directions that have nothing to do with the prescribed "beats."  And that's okay.  Writing out the beats certainly wasn't wasted time.  It gave me a chance to ponder my characters and the world they live in.

In terms of writing, I've always been more of a plunger than a plotter.  I find my way through a story, but that doesn't mean I don't do some planning too.  Usually after my initial plunge, I step back, regroup, and plan, at least loosely.  Then a bit more plunging.  Rinse and repeat.  Even though I try to plan, I know that Serendipity and the Muse could gang up on me at any moment and hijack the story in a way I hadn't expected.  Actually, I'm kind of counting on them to do just that.  The unexpected turn or revelation, even for the author--is one of the delights of writing.

And of course, since I've only planned "loosely" I'm hoping these wispy writing partners will also step up and fill in those gaps I couldn't quite figure out.  Usually they do by the time I reach the end.  I know it's only my subconscious working and trusting the process, but sometimes it does feel like some other being made all those unwieldy threads align.

It's funny because I sometimes hear authors firmly say they're in one camp or the other, plotter or plunger, but very often when they start describing the details of their process, they seem to be a bit of both: Trusting the characters and story to lead them where the story needs to go, but not afraid to wield a tool from their writing tool chest when the story requires it. What kind of writer are you?

Off to plunge and plot . . .

 I added a new page to my website  For Writers.  

I've received more than the usual amount of mail lately from new writers needing some tips or guidance and I figured it was time to put some helpful resources together in one neat tidy place. I hope new aspiring writers will find it useful.

If you know of other great writing resources, please share them!

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”
--Ernest Hemingway

I'm starting to write a brand new book and I’m at that giddy stage, the in-love stage.  Everything is possible! The pages ahead of me are an endless open territory.  My characters will do great things!  Hideous things!  Gut-wrenching things!  There are no limits to what I can do with setting!  It will be a character in itself. And the plot?  It will weave into complicated rivulets that will test the limits of my character!  That’s what beginnings are, open territory where everything and anything is possible. Inspiration abounds.

But I’ve written enough books to know that after the “everything is possible” stage comes the “oh crap, this isn't going exactly as I planned” stage.  Inspiration alone doesn't get a book get written. And that fact makes me mindful of craft, using all the tools at my disposal to help me tell the story in the best possible way I can.  At this early stage I begin revisiting and polishing up the tools I have, and always, always, begin looking for new ones. In terms of craft, I am forever an apprentice and I'm grateful for that.

I have to admit, I love reading about craft.  There’s hardly a book on writing that I don’t own.  Stephen King, Robert Mckee,  Anne LeMott, Madeline L’Engle, Donald Maass, Betsy Lerner, Linda Seger, and many, many more--I’ve learned something from them all. I love hearing their insights, their highs and lows of the process, and their own unique approaches which could never be mine, but make me examine my own process more closely. Yes, I guess this is a time of self-examination too.

This last year when I was on tour with Alyson Noel and Jessica Brody, they both told me about the Beat Sheet from Save the Cat, a book on screenwriting by Blake Snyder.  It helps you break your story down into fifteen essential beats. Much of what is covered can apply to novels too.  It intrigued me. So I’m using a modified version of that to organize my thoughts.

Why don’t I just use the same methods I’ve used on all my other books?  To a certain extent I do, but alas, no two books are ever alike, so they all have to be approached slightly differently.  And maybe I just like mixing things up a bit to help me think in fresh ways. I love the challenge of new stories and new approaches. Maybe that’s what I love the most about the writing process, is it keeps you on your toes.

And this new book is certainly doing that.  New territory.  Magical. But when the walls and detours start coming, I’m grateful for the tools too.