How Many Hats Can a Person Wear?

I often feel like I'm in one of those crazy one-woman stage shows, the ones with elaborate costume changes and monologue-dialogue-entire conversations with myself, and sometimes the house is packed, and sometimes it's just the bleak sinkhole of an empty auditorium.

Suffice to say, I wear a lot of hats. I've become a quick-change artist, shifting between the different roles constantly; in fact, my daily to-do list is structured around the idea that I can only take so much of any one role for so long, and have to keep cycling through them to keep my energy level high. So here are just a few of the hats I'm constantly juggling:

• Author (with many subhats, like Book 1 I'm Drafting, Book 2 I'm Drafting, Book I'm Editing, Book I'm Brainstorming/Researching, Book I'm Promoting, and so on and so forth!)
• Editor (Editorial Assistant with Spencer Hill Press; editor/beta reader for friends' mss)
• Worker Drone (subhats: foreign affairs wonk, translator, writer, working group coordinator--perhaps the toughest hast for an introvert to wear!)
• Grad School Student
• Goth-Rock Martha Stewart (subhats: Girlfriend, Sheltie Mommy, Board Game Night hostess, Master Mixologist, she of the healthy meal preparation, she of the "we are all going to exercise together dammit" whip-cracking, and lately, High Priestess of Rounding Up the Sacrificial Virgins and Faustian Pacts to finalize our first home purchase)
• Worthless Lazeabout (subhats: binge-watching trashy paranormal "reality" shows, plowing through my never-diminishing stack of books to read, and assorted video game dorkery)
• Cheerleader/Ass-Kicker for My Writer Friends

Whew . . . I got a little exhausted just thinking about it all!

But to touch on what Danielle said, far more artfully than me, it is exhilarating and fulfilling and just such an honor to live such a rich life. It's also occasionally draining and vexing--I never get that wonder day-after-the-last-final-exam feeling, and my working memory is totally shredded. (Thank goodness for my ubiquitous notebook, aka, the real brains of this operation.)

Still, cycling through all the hats works wonders for keeping me engaged and focused. If I get stuck on one task, I switch to the next. If I feel my attention straying, I can swap to something else to keep my excitement fresh. The brain is an amazing creature, and it always amazes me what problems my subconscious will solve for me when I've distracted my conscious mind with something else!

How do you juggle your hats? Do you have to tackle one task at a time until it's done, or can you alternate?

Lindsay's Reads for 2013

2013 is going to be a fantastic year for first books and sequels alike! If I had to pick just one 2013 book that I'm dying to read, though, it would be Rachel Hartman's Dracomachia, the sequel to 2012's Seraphina--an achingly gorgeous and witty YA fantasy that's up for this year's Morris Award. Fortunately, there are plenty more books for me to devour:

Star Cursed by Jessica Spotswood - Sequel to last year's lovely and fresh Born Wicked, continuing the trials and tribulations of the witchy Cahill sisters in a fascinating alternate-history version puritan America.

The Boy on the Bridge by Natalie Standiford - Soviet Russia, angsty romance, and Natalie Standiford's always brilliant prose. You know I'm all over that.

 The Secret Place by Tana French - agggghhh another Tana French murder mystery in Ireland you guys I can't even help myself.

All Our Yesterdays by Cristin Terrill - The Terminator meets The Time Traveller's Wife, with a dash of Mean Girls for good measure? SOLD.

Charm & Strange by Stephanie Kuehn - Promises a wonderful and complex male main character who is LITERALLY at war with himself.

 

The Bittersweet End

I hate endings.

I still have the last half-season of Battlestar Galactica hanging around on my DVR because I can’t bear to watch it end. (NO DON’T TELL ME WHO THE FINAL CYLON IS.) The more I’m enjoying a book, the slower and slower I read it toward the end, savoring every word, dreading the point when I reach that last page. 

I hate writing endings, too. I feel like we lifelong aspiring writers are bound to be better at starting a book than finishing it. When we first take a stab at writing a novel, we inevitably end up with 800 first pages and then, only much later, are we fortunate enough to carry a story to its completion. So we’re already better practiced at launching our plot than guiding it safely back down to earth.

Fortunately, there are a couple things we have going for us as we reach THE END.

Momentum. When I’m really into the draft I’m writing, right around the time I hit that third act marker, the words are flying. Every plot thread is untangling itself in my head and I have a good enough of an idea of what needs to happen to conclude all the various components that it becomes a frantic race to the end before it all unravels in my brain again. Of course, the downside is that you inevitably forget something, which makes for very annoying revisions.

Inevitability. In a lot of ways, endings write themselves—there’s only one way the story can end, and chances are good you had some idea what that was when you started writing it, though you can and should do your best to obfuscate it from the reader. When the book ends, they should have both never seen it coming and also know that it could never have ended any way else. (Not asking for much, those readers, huh?)

Closure. You love all the wonderful plot threads you put into your story, right? You want to give each one of them their due. So if you find that you just can’t sort out a good way to close something out that builds off of the overarching plot, then maybe it doesn’t really belong there in the first place. Make a note to yourself, drop it, and trim it out in edits.

I hope these tips will help you get through your own endings! I can’t make them any less bittersweet, but hopefully you can use these guidelines to end them on just the right bittersweet note.

Tangled Boys Take Over: Valentin of SEKRET!

I'm so excited to share this first look at Valentin with you guys! He's from my debut novel, SEKRET, a YA historical thriller set in 1960s Soviet Russia where psychic teenagers are forced to spy for the KGB. SEKRET won't be out till early 2014 from Roaring Brook/Macmillan Kids, but I hope Valentin will pique your interest!

Name:

Valentin Borisovich Sorokhin. Uh…  sorry, it’s Russian. You can call me Valya.

If you were a dish at a Mexican restaurant, what would you be and why?

I’ve never had this “Mexican” food. Given the nature of my psychic abilities, though, I’d be whatever dish scrubs your insides out. Oh—that’s most of them? There you go.

Describe yourself in five words or less.

Intense, musical, passionate, determined, silent.

Name one thing you cannot live without.

The out-of-tune baby grand piano in our prison. Well, it’s not technically a prison, but it might as well be. Playing piano keeps me grounded; it orders my thoughts so I don’t hurt anyone unintentionally. I’d gladly give up that piano to escape, though. Preferably to somewhere that also has pianos.

Okay… boxers or briefs?

Whatever the KGB brings for us that given week. Trust me, there’s nothing sexy about Soviet underwear, regardless of the style.

What’s your favorite smell?

The salty air coming off the Black Sea, back when I lived on the coast. In the evenings, my mother would throw open every window in the house and we’d play piano duets while waiting for Papa to come home.

What is the grandest romantic gesture you’ve ever made?

I’d have to let Yulia tell you all the details—it’s not mine to share—but I took all the wonderful thoughts in her head and turned them into her own song. I, ah… [Furious blushing.] I wanted her to hear the beauty that I heard whenever I looked at her.

What’s one trait you have that the MC finds annoying?

Perhaps “annoying” isn’t the right word, but she is not much of a fan of the way I warp the thoughts of those around me. The first time she got caught in that crossfire and realized what I’d done, she nearly pushed me out a window.

What is the one thing you’d never admit your significant other does better than you?

She’s much better under pressure than I am. I wouldn’t be afraid to admit this to her, though I think sometimes if I act more confident than I feel, that gives her the courage to do what she needs to do.

If you could change anything about the girl MC, what would it be?

I would take away her anger and hurt. She’s right to be furious about our situation, but I’m afraid it will make her do something dangerous.

If you had a superpower, what would it be and why?

I do have a superpower, and believe me, I’d be rid of it in an instant if I could. I don’t like causing such pain. I suppose if I have to choose another one, I’d choose invisibility, so I could slip away from everything.

Where Do Characters/Ideas Come From?

 

Where do you get your story ideas? Do you wake up with them in the middle of the night, trying to pull them out of your dream before it dissolves? Does a character walk up to you and slap you in the face (perhaps literally)? What about situations? Does something poignant in a local news story or celebrity scandal resonate with you, or even a global event, a historical watershed?

I get way more ideas than I ought to admit from trashy television. It’ll be late at night and I’ll be sifting through the channels, quite possibly with an adult beverage in hand, Hoovering up all the crazy I can stomach. Alien abductions, serial killer documentaries, hunts for Templar treasure, reality TV catfights, you name it.

But something always leaps out from the madness—a fundamental truth about life, or human beings, or how people relate to one another. (Even if that fundamental truth is: we are all flippin’ nuts.) And I keep turning that idea over and over in my mind.

What if my dad really did run a moonshine still out of our backyard? How would that feel? What would my life be like? If I actually survived an alien abduction, would anyone believe me? Would I believe myself? What happens after the bodies are recovered and the case files are sealed? How do the detectives move on? Or even, how would that familiar story go if I wrote it? How would I make it stand out?

The story I’m outlining right now is a Cuisinart mixing of about three such tales: an ancient retelling, a medieval mystery, a near-modern wartime saga. Characters and places and props may change, but the humanness of our stories remain. Whatever dressings of genre, setting, and technology you put on your characters, I suspect you’d know them anywhere.

So what have you learned about the way they choose to meet you?

 

Dissecting Genre: Fantasy

I have always loved fantasy--light and whimsical, or dark and devastating. I grew up on Narnia, Oz, Madeleine L'Engle, Robert Jordan, and Sarah Douglass. And I don't think it was the sorcery or the ancient prophecies or the excessive usage of "e"s (Ye Olde Taverne) that compelled me to read and write fantasy, either, though those elements didn't hurt! It all comes down to one awesome feature:

You get to write the rules.

Heterochromia = an exceptional talent? Done. Brain inhabited by squawking bagpipe players? Make it happen. Sorcerers hoarding gemstones they popped out of dead folks' belly buttons? Shine on, you crazy diamond.

(Those would be Graceling, Seraphina, and The Girl of Fire and Thorns, for those keeping score.)

Fantasy lets you pull on the Power-Glove and  magic up whatever bizarre, surreal, unbelievable, or frighteningly believable world you can imagine. If you need that mountain ridge to curve just so to explain two thousand years of tension between kingdoms, then you can do it. If you need to build a whole cultural zeitgeist around something to conceal a major plot point, that's well within your right.

But there's always a catch.

You have to live and breathe your fantasy world. Your characters have to inhabit whatever maniacal, goofball, dreadful world you've created for them, and sell us on its feasibility. We have to see the way things are in that world--in as unobtrusive a way as possible, of course! no infodumping!--and understand why your characters have to interact with their world in the way they do. You can write whatever rules you want, but once you've made them, you have to own them.

Sell us on your world, and the plot and characters that inhabit it, and you'll have mastered fantasy!

What do you love about fantasy? Is it the common fantasy setting itself--swords and sorcery and pseudo-medieval politics? Is it the possibility? Is it the idea of interacting with a plot on an epic, world-shattering scale? Share your favorite parts of fantasy--and your favorite reads--in the comments! I'm always dying for new recommendations.

Here are some of the Tangled girls' favorite fantasy reads:

Christina- Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

Lindsay-Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

Danielle-Fire by Kristin Cashore

Ariane-Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Cindy-Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers

Patricia-Firelight by Sophie Jordan

 

That Insidious Predator

It hunts you down when you’re exhausted, powering through a first draft in search of the finish line. Or maybe when you’ve just settled in for a long night of revisions, it calls to you. It can strike as you try to fall asleep, or wake you up before your alarm goes off.

The Shiny New Idea.

Mine usually start with a situation, and then the attendant plot structure and necessary characters spin off of that. The function comes first. But I know plenty of people who find their characters first, their form for the book, and grow the plot out of that.

But how do you tackle that idea when it’s not yet time? When you’re caught up in your old love, or maybe multiple ones, and can’t make brainspace for whatever comes next?

If you’re a plotter, can you step outside of your current work long enough to get the outline down on paper? Or maybe you trust that if the idea is good enough, real enough, it’ll patiently sort itself out in the back of your mind so that once you have the time, it’ll be ready and waiting and all gussied up.

Or maybe you have to word-vomit anything and everything associated with the new idea before you can trust that it’ll stay put. When my new idea woke me up last weekend, I had to sit down, write out her first few paragraphs and a few bullet points, and then get on with my day. Otherwise my MC and her story would wander back into that jumble of isotopes in my head, never to collide and form a full-fledged atom again.

Whatever your method, I think we’ve all faced the dark fear of running out of ideas. I have a bullet point list of at least twenty books I want to write eventually, and I still fret about reaching the end of that list someday and having nowhere to go. Which is ridiculous, because it feels like each book I go through the writing and revising process with spawns at least ten more ideas, usually completely unrelated to the task at hand.

How do you tackle those shiny, sparkly plot-predators? Do you succumb to them, indulge them just long enough to keep them happy, or ignore them completely until the task at hand is done? Are you desperately in need of a new idea and fantasizing about smothering me with a pillow for daring to suggest that there are more ideas than hours in the day?

 

Pushing Through Summer

Hi, everyone! My name's Lindsay, and I'm so excited to be joining the team here at Tangled Up in Words. This summer, I met Danielle and Patricia through a local writers' . . . group? Drinking club? Coping mechanism? here in Washington, DC, and instantly clicked with them. What a fabulous bunch!

In fact, I've been really pushing out of my comfort zone this summer to meet other writers and readers, instead of holing up in my dog hair-filled urban cabin, banging away on a manifesto without eating or bathing (and possibly wearing plaid). While I love living in the city, and I ADORE talking about reading and writing, I'm very shy by nature. I've found such great friends--and so many awesome books--through this experience, though, that I'm kind of embarrassed not to have done it sooner.

And it's a good thing I'm getting over my social anxiety, because my life is about to turn into a psychotic blitz and self-promotion and marketing, because . . .

This summer, I sold my first book!! SEKRET, a YA historical thriller, sold to Roaring Brook Press/Macmillan Children's, and is due out in early 2014. Enough time that I'm not yet hyperventilating, but I'm sure it'll be here all too soon.

Appropriately enough, then, that my summer has been one of keeping calm and carrying on despite the good--but scary!--but good! things happening. Happy hours, sure, I can lock my anxiety in the vault long enough to make some amazing friendships. I'm getting published, big deal, I'll just keep putting one word in front of the other in my new manuscript(s) . . . (s). (Wasn't kidding about the unhygienic manifesto factory I sometimes become.)

How are you pushing yourself this summer, in writing and in general life?