A Writer’s Process (12a)

Today, I’m talking with another great classmate of mine, Nora Carpenter. She’s here today and tomorrow to talk about her young adult novel, A Beautiful Kind of Crazy. And no, the novel isn’t about me. But thanks for thinking of me. We’ll also discuss some trends in young adult fiction. I’ve got my coffee in front of me, so let’s get started.

El Space: Welcome, Nora. Please share four quick facts about yourself.
Nora: I graduated from VCFA’s Writing for Children and Young Adults master’s program in July 2012—a proud member of the amazingly talented Secret Gardeners! I am Associate Editor for Wonderful West Virginia magazine; I’m a certified yoga teacher; I live in Asheville, NC; and I have a wonderful husband, son, and two mischievous dogs, Holmes and Watson. Sorry . . . that’s five facts. 🙂

El Space: That’s quite all right. The more the merrier, I always say. 🙂 What inspired you to write A Beautiful Kind of Crazy?
Nora: The initial nugget of inspiration came to me because of some struggles that some of my friends were going through, things for which there were no definitive answers. I started thinking about some hard topics, like family goals versus individual goals, loyalty, and betrayal, and how a teenager might handle being pulled in different directions by different people she loved. From there, the character of Cay Zeller was born. The novel explores deep family bonds, prejudice, and what it takes to heal a cherished bond severed by betrayal. And her story turned into something I didn’t expect, which was nice.

El Space: Cool! I love when a story evolves. What authors inspire you?
Nora: Gosh. So many! Actually, this is an interesting question for me, because I find most often that books inspire me. That is to say, I fall in love with certain stories and characters. There are no authors about whom I can say I love every single thing they’ve ever written, but there are definitely books that make me think, Wow. This is absolutely incredibly done. I hope my stories impact readers the way this story has impacted me.

So, let’s see . . . some inspirational books/authors for me are: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Damage by A.M. Jenkins, The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron, and the Make Lemonade trilogy by Virginia Euwer Wolff. I could go on all day, because I’d say anyone who writes a story that resonates with me provides inspiration. And I think I learn something from every book I read. What really impresses and inspires me is when authors make regular, everyday characters with regular, relatable problems completely fascinating and engaging.

             

Also, I love when authors write notes at the end of novels and talk about how they had to write their book five or six times to get it right. That is inspiring. It reminds me to make sure I give them as many drafts as needed. I think a lot of people think authors just sit down and churn out 300 pages on the first try, and that first draft is published as is. And maybe there are some people who do that. But gosh, writing is an incredibly difficult labor of love, and it can take draft after draft after draft to finally reach the heartbeat of a story and produce something that is vibrant and true.

El Space: What writing advice have you received that changed the way you think about writing?
Nora: In a fabulous lecture, Louise Hawes explained that in order to generate plot, you should constantly ask yourself two questions: “What does my character want?” and “Why does she want it?” I have these questions posted at my desk and they led me to create the plot for A Beautiful Kind of Crazy. It seems obvious now, but it was eye-opening back then to realize that in a great story, plot is inextricably connected to its protagonist. You shouldn’t just be able to change the protagonist and have the exact same story unfold. A different protagonist would have different ways of thinking about the world, and so make different choices, and have different friends, etc., all of which would change the outcome of the novel.

Breakthrough #2: During my second semester at VCFA, I worked with the magnificent Tim Wynne-Jones. He taught me so much about craft, but one of the best lessons I learned was how to make use of dialogue “beats” (pauses in which dialogue is broken by narrative—maybe a few words, maybe a sentence or longer—that make the dialogue feel real). Not only did I learn how to make fictional dialogue more authentic, I also learned how to accentuate important lines of narrative by manipulating the sentence length and structure of what comes immediately before and after.

El Space: What are you working on now?
Nora: I’m so close to finishing the last draft of A Beautiful Kind of Crazy. After that, I’ve got several ideas, but I’ll most likely be starting a novel with a teenage protagonist who suffers from undiagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder. People usually think someone with OCD is just a super-organized neat freak. That person may have OCD tendencies, but the illness is much scarier and life-hindering than that. My character is afraid of touching certain things, can’t stop washing her hands sometimes, etc. I’m also working on some more poems for Wild, Strong, and Free: Interactive Yoga Poems for Kids, my kids’ yoga picture book.

Tomorrow, I’ll continue talking with Nora about her novel and trends in young adult fiction. For now, if you have questions for Nora about her novel, the authors she admires, or about yoga, feel free to comment below. And thanks for stopping by!

Key from eastonclass1.bltnorthants.net. Book covers from Goodreads.

Check This Out: The Arf Thing

Today, I’m talking about short stories with another friend from VCFA, the awe-inspiring Val Howlett, whose story, “The Arf Thing,” has been published here at Lunch Ticket. Val’s story also won a coveted scholarship at VCFA in 2011! So go on. Read it, then return here!

El Space: Congratulations, Val! Please tell the readers about yourself.
Val: I have lived in five different states in my adult life; I studied fairy tales in college; I’m very close to my three younger siblings; and my girlfriend is also a writer.

El Space: How about a brief synopsis for those who haven’t yet read “The Arf Thing”?
Val: “The Arf Thing” is about the “bullying” of a boy named Adam Mavis, told through the perspectives of seven people at Adam’s school.

El Space: What inspired you to write it?
Val: I wrote the story in late 2010/early 2011, when a string of “gay” teen suicides started a conversation about bullying in the media. I put “gay” in quotes because in some cases, we don’t know if the victims were gay; it was more that much of the harassment they experienced were attacks on their sexual orientations.

I remember being frustrated by the simplicity of the media rhetoric following those tragedies. There was a lot talk of our nation’s “bullying problem” and our schools’ tolerance policies for bullying. Not that teachers shouldn’t be held accountable for prohibiting harassment in their classrooms—they absolutely should.

But I think harassment is more complicated than that. Particularly in this case, when the very media that discusses our country’s “bullying problem” is at the same time perpetuating the cultural assumption that homosexuality is shameful and attack-worthy by portraying gay and trans people as caricatures or not portraying them at all.

I should probably stop and get to your other questions. Clearly, I could go on about this for a while. But all that stuff was bubbling up in my brain as I wrote “The Arf Thing.”

El Space: Understandable. What’s challenging or exhilarating about short story writing?
Val: The room for experimentation is exhilarating. A lot of narrative techniques that could grow tedious over the course of a novel are exciting and interesting in a short story.

What’s challenging is there’s no room for excess—you want every element of your story to serve the effect you’re trying to create at the end. I’m long-winded, so my short story process is to write a lot, and then cut, cut, cut.

El Space: Which authors get you pumped up?
Val: Francesca Lia Block and Kelly Link. Also Laini Taylor’s story “Goblin Fruit” in Lips Touch: Three Times. All three are young adult writers whose stories are full of juicy prose and strange otherworldly tones. And they all deliver those punch-in-the-gut, tears-in-your-eyes endings that great short stories are famous for.

El Space: In an article in Publishers Weekly entitled “The State of the Short Story,” Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review, stated:

[W]hy do so many readers and critics today seem to divide their time between novels and essays—those first cousins of the short story—and leave short fiction alone?

What can be done to draw more attention to the short story?
Val: It’s no secret that a very small percentage of our population reads short fiction. I am fully aware every time I am working on a short story that I am shrinking my potential audience. It makes me a little sad!

I’m going to gear your question to YA short fiction in particular, because that’s the kind of story I have experience writing and trying to submit.

One problem with YA short story visibility is there are barely any journals that publish specifically YA content. I can only think of six journals off the top of my head. And you have to wonder how many actual teenagers read those publications.

So there need to be more publications that feature YA short fiction. Also, more attention should be given to those publications by educators and librarians—possibly in the form of yearly short story awards, like the awards offered in the scifi/fantasy community.

El Space: Great ideas! Stein also stated: “You can’t relax and lose yourself in a short story. Short stories bring you up short. They demand a wakeful attention.” Would you agree or disagree?
Val: I think Stein does a pretty good job of discussing that elusive, nebulous concept that short story writers and critics have been trying to explain since Edgar Allan Poe: that the experience of reading a short story feels different than reading a novel.

While I definitely have “lost myself” in short stories—forgotten everything around me, became immersed in the story’s world, all that good stuff—I like the idea of “bringing you up short” as a way to describe that jolt you feel at the end of a good short story, the way it leaves you thinking about the whole piece for an hour or for days.

El Space: What’s the best writing advice you’ve received recently?
Val: I keep returning to the advice my VCFA advisor, A. M. Jenkins, gave me last year, which was to not compare yourself to other writers because it’s a waste of your finite writing time.

As a slow writer, it can be tempting to watch my grad school colleagues submit their novels and see it as a sign of weakness that I’m not doing that yet.

But then I admonish myself in a Jenkins-esque way, saying—probably out loud because let’s be honest—“You could use the time you’re spending thinking you’re not good enough to actually write something! And you should be writing, because you’re slow!” Seriously though, everyone’s process is different. It’s good to remember to accept your process and give it hugs every once in awhile.

El Space: Any advice for those who want to tackle the short story?
Val: Don’t assume that just because it’s a short story, it’ll take a shorter amount of time to write. It took me four full months to write a draft of my most recent story. And that draft was a radical revision of a story I wrote four years ago.

El Space: What do you plan to tackle next?
Val: My goal for the summer is to finally pump out a full draft of the novel I’ve been working on forever, called Underdog.

Thanks, Val, for being an awesome guest!

If you haven’t yet read “The Arf Thing,” don’t miss out! Click here. Questions for Val? Please comment below.

Book cover from Goodreads.com. Poster from zazzle.com. Poe photo from Wikipedia. Book hug from cathryno.global2.vic.edu.

A Writer’s Process (6a)

Welcome to round 6 of A Writer’s Process. With me on the blog today is another friend from VCFA—the awesome Jen Bailey, whose blog is Write Fiercely. When you finish checking out Jen’s blog, come on back and take a front-row seat. Coffee will be ready in a minute.

El Space: Welcome, Jen! Please tell us about yourself.
Jen: I was born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario, and am the oldest of three children. I have two little boys and I read to them for a good hour every night—we’re currently obsessed with the Mr. Putter and Tabby books.

I also do a mean Junie B. Jones voice.

El Space: Ha! That would be fun to hear! I’m not familiar with the Mr. Putter books, so I’ll have to check those out. What else are you involved in?
Jen: I most enjoy working one on one or with small groups of writers. I am currently mentoring a teenager as he writes a sci-fi trilogy, and I lead a writing group at a homeless drop-in centre. In September, I’ll begin teaching creative writing at Algonquin College.

El Space: Wow. You’re really busy. It’s great that you’re mentoring a sci-fi writer! And congrats on the new teaching gig, Jen! Now, on your blog, you mention that you have “a passion for rhythm and sound.” Please tell us how that came about. What books endear themselves to you because of that?
Jen: I have a feeling that this came about because I have a musical background, and have read a lot of poetry. When words and music (rhythm, sound) combine in a complimentary way, I can feel it in my body, and it evokes emotion in me.

Rhythmic, sensory language comes naturally to me when I’m writing in character. I only discovered this about my writing when I noticed it in Last Night I Sang to the Monster by Benjamin Alire Sáenz and Quaking by Kathryn Erskine, and made the connection between the words on the page and the emotion that was being evoked as I read. I think it is a powerful tool that can also be used in revision if it doesn’t come out naturally as you write.

El Space: Are you a pantser or a plotter? How did you discover this?
Jen: I have never heard of the term pantser—but, I suppose that’s more what I am, if it’s the opposite of plotter! When I first started at VCFA, I was working on a middle grade suspense novel. It was fun, trying to figure out the way in which I would lay all the clues in place and keep the reader guessing. The thing was that my story seemed to be dead on the page, and I didn’t understand why. So I picked the advisor whose process was the most foreign to me to see if I could figure out what I could do differently.

I worked with Amanda Jenkins, and we started a new project from scratch. She had me do freewriting to learn about my characters, and introduced me to the idea of letting your characters tell you the story instead of vice-versa. What I learned from Amanda was that characters can surprise you if you listen to them, and they can lead you in directions you might not see if your analytical side is running the show 100%.

El Space: She told me the same thing when I worked with her. Her advice changed the way I write today. Now, let’s hear about your WiP.
Jen: Twelve-year old Norah Jackson can’t get “soft eyes” from her mother.

El Space: What do you mean by “soft eyes”?
Jen: Compassionate, loving eyes. All she gets are “piercing” ones—critical, demanding. She can’t figure out why—she has worked on this problem like a puzzle, turning the pieces over and over, but never finding the right fit. To make matters worse, her younger half-brother, Kevin, gets soft eyes all the time, whether in sympathy or in celebration of his “gold star” achievements at school.

When her stepfather, Dave, gives her a pamphlet for a boarding school, she misinterprets his intentions and believes that he, too, has rejected her. This brochure sets Norah on one final mission: to get a “gold star” like Kevin, and, in turn, her mother’s soft eyes.

Norah has always been fascinated by birds. When her art teacher, Mrs. McGauvrey, suggests she enter an art competition at a bird sanctuary, and Norah sees that its location is marked on a map by a gold star, she knows this is the way to win her soft eyes. Fearful of exposure, failure, and rejection, Norah tries desperately to get all the details right, but every bird she draws flies away. As her attempts for perfection at home and school intensify, Norah’s stuffed emotions brim over, and, with the help of Mrs. McGauvrey and a carefree friend named Josh, she discovers how to let everything out on the page so that the birds stay and she can be seen.

And that’s about all we have time for today. I know. You’re giving me the piercing eyes now like the ones in Jen’s story. Don’t be dismayed. Jen will return tomorrow for more questions about her book and process. You don’t have to wait till tomorrow to ask Jen questions, however. Just comment below! And as always, thanks for stopping by.

Book covers from Goodreads.com.