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Jealousy As Career Booster

Posted in Life, Writing, tagged , , , , , on September 22, 2011| 20 Comments »

I read a lot of blogs. Some I read regularly, some I occasionally swoop down upon and catch up in a big glut of reading, some I read only once. Many of these blogs are writer blogs, and I’ve seen more than one post about Writer Envy.

What is Writer Envy? It’s that niggling feeling in the pit of your stomach when you hear that Jay Lake averages 2,500 words per hour. It’s the pang you feel when you hear someone’s broken into a market that you’ve been dying to get into. It’s the discouragement of feeling that maybe you’re being left behind as one by one, all your writer friends get agents and publishing deals and more and better sales than you think you are getting.

Does anyone know why we call it green with envy?

Well, guess what? I’m giving you permission to be jealous, whether with Writer Envy or because of your friend’s superior cooking or for any other reason. To envy is to be human. And, it turns out, it can even be good for you. Psychology Today recently ran an article citing a recent study about envy. The results are fascinating: it turns out that feeling the emotion of envy both causes us to focus more on the object of our jealousy and boosts our memories. Basically, jealousy allows us to more efficiently learn and remember how to achieve what we’re jealous of.

Therefore, instead of beating ourselves up when we feel it, we can begin to think of envy as a tool. We can use it to make ourselves better writers (or cooks, or car washers, or underwater basket weavers). We can harness that energy to motivate ourselves instead of to discourage.

Example: Let’s say my friend Beth makes a sale to Greatest Ever Magazine, which is the market that I most want to break into. I can wallow and feel terrible about myself because Greatest Ever Magazine still sends me form rejections. Or, I can use my desires and feeling of jealousy to motivate me. I can read Beth’s story and analyze why I think Greatest Ever Magazine liked it. Perhaps the subject matter is perfect for the market, or perhaps the market prefers upbeat endings like Beth’s. I can figure out the strengths of the story, and then compare it to my own recent work. Perhaps Beth’s story shows excellent use of setting, whereas I have too many under-described, white rooms in my recent work. Or perhaps Beth’s story has a twisty and exciting plot that drives it, while my recent stories have all been character-driven. I can learn from my friend Beth’s success where the weaknesses in my own work are and how I might get started on improving them. Beth might even be willing to share her own insights on Greatest Ever Magazine. Meanwhile, because I am jealous, I’ll be more likely to focus and remember what I’ve figured out.

(This can also work, by the way, with embarrassment. I was so embarrassed that I forgot the names of the two rivers of Mesopotamia in seventh grade social studies that I will probably remember that they are the Tigris and Euphrates for the rest of time.)

Of course, experiencing jealousy doesn’t mean we can’t also feel happy and pleased for a person who has succeeded. And it certainly doesn’t excuse any bad behavior on our parts. However, knowing that our brains are designed to feel jealousy on purpose to give us a better chance of survival can change our outlook. Instead of seeing jealousy as an embarrassing weakness, we can see it as another way to move forward towards our goals.

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Social Media: Do What You Love (or at least like)

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , on August 18, 2011| 28 Comments »

Last week when I was schmoozing away at the SCBWI conference, I told my friend how much I love my blog. “I don’t know if it builds my audience or will help my career in any tangible way,” I said (paraphrasing alert!), “but I don’t really care. I love writing for my blog. It’s an important part of my life as a writer.”

My friend responded that she hardly ever heard those sentiments. The conversation moved on, but what I think she meant was that so many people don’t like to blog. They complain about blogging. They wonder if they can get away without blogging. Blogging is a duty, another item on the to-do list.

I don’t think it’s worth it. I read a lot of blogs, and I can tell which bloggers love it. It shines through in their posts. I begin to feel like I know them, even though I’ve never met most of them. They are often so passionate about blogging that they can’t help talking about it every so often, just like I’m doing right now. Their blogs ring with passion, with thought, and with genuine interest in their readers. These are the blogs I miss when I’m away from the internet.

I question whether that sort of commitment can be faked. I’ve been hearing a lot in the past year about the craving we as a society have right now for authenticity, to the point that it has become something of a buzz word among certain circles. But jargon or no, I think it’s relevant to the conversation. We can tell when someone cares deeply about what they’re saying or doing, and their authenticity draws us in.

We can talk about how much we love blogging all we want, but it is our actions that show  whether we’re being genuine. Do we post regularly or do we tend to find excuses to avoid it? Do we write about subjects that we obviously care deeply about? Do we engage in the comment section with thoughtful discussion? Do we approach the writing of a blog post as though it is one of the most important things we could be doing right now?

For those who don’t enjoy blogging, there are plenty of other ways to engage with others. Happily we live in a time rife with choices: Twitter, Facebook (and Facebook pages), Google+, podcasts, Goodreads, etc. If there’s one of these platforms that we connect with better than the others, that ease will reflect itself in our interactions.

I hate the thought of the dutiful yet miserable blogger. Of course, even the most passionate blogger will have his off days or her moments when the words just don’t flow. Sometimes I’d prefer to mess around on the internet instead of writing the next essay, or ideas fail me and I don’t know what to write about. But ultimately I’m working out of a sense of love, not duty. I remember how much blogging gives to me and I push through the laziness and the lack of inspiration.

I think we find authenticity when we do what we love.

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The ABC Trifecta of Writing: Art, Business, Craft

Posted in Arts, Writing, tagged , , , , on August 11, 2011| 9 Comments »

I’m writing this up in my hotel room at the SCBWI conference. I just heard an amazing keynote speech by Bruce Coville, who was in part saying what I said in my blog post last week about influence and never knowing how your actions will affect others. Only he said it in a more articulate and developed way and threw in several musical theater references for good measure.

He also gave many tips for writers, and something he said jarred a useful insight loose in my brain. He talked about the importance of art, craft, and business sense. All in one speech. I’ve been thinking about each of these subjects a great deal, and you’ve seen some of the results of that thinking here on this blog. But the speech gave me some much needed cohesion.

Sometimes I feel like art has become something of a dirty word among many writers. If we’re serious about writing (and oh, are we ever serious), then we discuss craft a great deal. Sometimes we even bite the bullet and talk about business and the industry in ways that are more thoughtful than reactionary and more intelligent than just following the herd. (Sometimes we freak out instead.) We can be inspirational within certain boundaries. But art. Yes, art is a loaded word.

When we hear others speak about art, perhaps we imagine the dilettante artist who never actually writes anything. Or perhaps we think about those who start with a message and try to slap their audience in the face with it. Or perhaps we think of something inaccessible, like the serialist movement in music that I was talking about on Tuesday. The starving artist comes to mind, the irresponsible flake who needs to be talked down from the ledge by the long-suffering editor, the tortured soul who has a room filled with crumpled pieces of paper (see the recent movie Limitless, in which the writer portrayed has nothing to do with reality whatsoever).

And yet, this is not how art needs to be, and this is not how we must define ourselves as artists. Art doesn’t have to mean any of these things. Instead, it is an essential leg in the tripod of the writer.

Here’s how the system works: A good grasp of craft means that we produce sellable and marketable works, which helps our business. It also means that we have the tools at our disposable to create art that works, that really does evoke emotion and help us see the world differently. Craft is essential.

A good grasp of business means that we can get our work out into the world. This facilitates its purpose as art to communicate. It’s also always nice to avoid being screwed and to get paid for our work, which helps us continue both our craft and our art.

An acceptance of our work as art keeps us inspired. It encourages us to keep improving our craft so that we can achieve more through our words, and it challenges us to learn the business side so that we can achieve greater impact.

Lose touch with the business aspect and we cannot support ourselves or get our work out into the world. Lose touch with the craft aspect and we cannot write well enough to be effective. Lose touch with our work as art and we flirt with a sense of futility and forget to take risks.

I tend to neglect the art aspect that reminds me of my purpose and pour all my energy into craft and business. This choice, I tell myself, makes me a serious writer.

But I am wrong. My best work doesn’t happen when I only have two of my cornerstones. It takes place when I remember all three and dare to write bigger. It takes place when I accept that I am a businesswoman, a craftsperson, AND an artist.

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Can Blogs Be Art?

Posted in Arts, Music, Writing, tagged , , , , , on August 9, 2011| 7 Comments »

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about art: how art can be defined, what its possible purposes are, what I am trying to accomplish personally as an artist. This exploration began many years ago when I was a student musician: a singer, a songwriter, and a composer.

In my music program, we spent a year on music theory that looks beyond the standard Western tonal palette. Our curriculum began with late 19th century composers like Wagner and Debussy, which I very much enjoyed studying, and then progressed to atonalism, serialism, and other 20th century classical music (including John Cage, Philip Glass, etc.). We also spent a quarter studying 20th century music history.

After I finished this course of study, I went on to take a few composition classes and seminars and began to consider more seriously the question of why. Why do so many cultures include music as an integral component? Why do so many of us like to listen to and/or produce music? What was I trying to achieve with the music I was writing?

The answer, I decided at the time (and it still holds true for me), is communication. Music is a way of communicating to others; of evoking a response, often emotional; of taking something we’re familiar with and translating it into something new, or of exposing us to something new that is outside our own frame of reference. Music can tell a story, something that happens especially frequently in vocal music (my other focus at school) but can also happen in purely instrumental music (listen to Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique for an excellent example of programme music). Music can make us feel a certain way: when I’m watching a suspenseful TV show, it’s often the music that makes me jumpy before anything has even happened on-screen. Music can share universal experiences or distill unique experiences in a way that are more relatable. One of the reasons I adore musical theater as much as I do is because it combines the dramatic potentials of theater with the emotional resonance of music, while remaining accessible to a more general audience than opera often does.

Unfortunately a lot of the music composed in academia, the new Classical music of the 20th century, didn’t seem to me to be very accessible at all. In fact, at the time it baffled me because the goal of communication often seemed very absent from it. Indeed, serialism in particular seemed like a game played with numbers that had very little to do with actual sounds at all. I realize now that I wasn’t seeing the complete picture; I believe even the most experimental pieces were trying to communicate. The problem, for me, was that they were communicating with only a select group of people who were educated enough in music to be able to understand them. I was in that group, yes, but what about everyone else? Imagine the equivalent of throwing out an old common language and writing in a new language; you will only be able to communicate with the select group also versed in the new language. So what we are talking about then is the question of audience. If art is communication, then considering a given piece of art’s intended audience becomes very important.

I also approach writing as art, and therefore as an act of communication. But in pursuing that line of thinking, I realized there are many forms that written art can take. We have the obvious: novels, short stories, plays, poems. But we also have the slightly less obvious (at least to me): letters, blogs, Google+/Twitter/Facebook. Am I saying everyone’s Facebook account is art? I’m not sure if I’d go quite that far (although feel free to make a case for it in the comments). I’m saying it can be art; it has the potential to be art. I’ve certainly created art through letters/emails, in which I create an idea, a vision of who I am and what my life story is. And then on the flip side there are the banal and mundane emails that are just a recital of facts or a quick way to make plans.

I’m in love with this great art project, in which a photographer traveled around the country taking photos of people’s refrigerators. I think about this project all the time because I am just blown away by the coolness of it, showing the stories of these random people through one photo. To me, this is art—it turns my assumptions around, it evokes emotion in me, it causes me to see the world around me in a different way.

So then is this blog art? It certainly tries to do those same things. Some of you will think I’m being pretentious by labeling my blog as art, but isn’t it interesting to think about? I like to think of each essay being a small piece of a greater mosaic—I wonder what it will look like when it is complete. I wonder what picture I will have created. I get excited just thinking about it.

What is art? Is it in the eye of the beholder, the creator, or both? Is it about intention or execution? What does art mean to you?

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Forever Sixteen: Perpetual Adolescence

Posted in Arts, Science fiction and fantasy, Writing, tagged , , , , , on August 2, 2011| 18 Comments »

I have the pleasure of announcing that my story “Forever Sixteen” is now up on Daily Science Fiction’s website. I’ve been very excited ever since I sold the story back in March, and I’m thrilled that it’s now available for everyone to read.

 

The main character is a girl whose aging and development has been arrested so that she remains sixteen years old (if you want to know why, you’ll have to read the story). What would it be like to stay sixteen forever? On the one hand, we live in a society that is obsessed with youth and appearance, so the idea of being able to retain that youth (and implied health) is quite attractive. On the other hand, would you really want to be sixteen for the forseeable future? I didn’t even have huge high school traumas and I’m still not overly enthusiastic at the thought of remaining a perpetual teenager.

Going wider, this premise can be seen as a metaphor illustrating the tension between the desire for stasis and the need for change. We live in a world that is constantly changing, and we’re constantly changing within it. It’s natural for us to want to impose our control on such chaos, to attempt to preserve the status quo. So many of us fear change (and I’m certainly no exception), even when the change is largely positive in nature. And yet, what if that potential for change was taken away from us? What if everything really did stay the same, even our own bodies and the hormone levels coursing through them? As much as I sometimes dread change, this story illustrates one of my true nightmares: the attempt to suspend change.

We’ve all heard the old saw about how the only sure things in life are death and taxes. But whenever I hear that, I always think that in reality, the only sure thing in life is change. Life may trundle along on an even keel  for a while, even for many years, but ultimately something will happen to disrupt its direction.  Sometimes we choose the change; sometimes it chooses us–like death, a natural disaster, or a shift in politics or the economy. Sometimes we have to fight for change, like the protagonist of my story. And sometimes change comes at a high price, at which point we are called upon to decide: how high is too high?

On a more personal note, this story is one of my own favorites. I don’t know if this is true of other writers, but I definitely have the stories I’ve written that are especially meaningful to me and stay close to my heart. Right now I have three of those special stories, and this is one of them (the other two are still looking for homes). The fact that my first pro sale was made with this story in particular makes me feel especially pleased.

So tell me: would you want to stay a teenager forever?

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YA Novel Challenge: Road Blocks

Posted in Writing, tagged on July 21, 2011| 7 Comments »

You may have noticed that I have not mentioned the YA Novel Challenge recently. This is not because I have not been doing it, but because it has been going poorly. And I find that talking too much about something that isn’t working well can be a bit on the depressing side. However, I said I’d blog about it, so here I am.

It is not my discipline that has been failing, although it is always more difficult to work on a project this recalcitrant. I am floundering around a lot with the present tense, which I knew going in would be challenging. The truly crippling problem, however, is that I don’t much care for my protagonist and narrator. I haven’t found her voice. I don’t understand who she is. I can’t feel the way she feels.

I decided to forge ahead to a certain point in the story to see if this problem improved. Surely, I told myself, I will grow to know her. Surely I will begin to hear her voice in my head. And then I can go back when I’ve reached the end and rewrite the first bit to match. No problem.

Only I haven’t found her. She’s still missing in her own story. And I’m far enough along by now that it has turned into a more serious issue.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with this novel. Something has to change. I have been tempted to put in on hold until (and if) I can figure out what that is. So I might do that, and work on some other projects instead. At three in the morning last week, after I’d gotten home from watching the last Harry Potter movie, I had an idea that might help things. It would necessitate starting over from the beginning, but there is at least a chance it could work. So I might try that. Or maybe I’ll come up with another solution to make the book work.

Dealing with this kind of brokenness is part of being a writer, I think. As a newer writer, I don’t always know how to fix it. And I don’t always want to talk about it because at a certain point I have to figure it out for myself. (That is my nice way of saying, please don’t deluge this post with advice.) I hope that working with the pieces gives me more insight into both why stories work and how they fail. None of my creative projects is a complete failure unless I have failed to learn from it.

So you might not hear anymore about the YA novel challenge. Or you might. I make no promises either way. But I’ll still be sitting here, learning to become a better writer. Of that, I am determined.

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Writers are Super Heroes

Posted in Arts, Writing, tagged , , on July 19, 2011| 41 Comments »

I have a writer friend who is having a bit of a tough time right now, and I am writing this for you. (You know who you are.)

It is okay, natural, and possibly even healthy that you are having trouble embracing your writer identity right now. Take your time about it–it’s an important identity to get to know. And I’ll let you in on a little secret: your writer identity is like your super hero identity. Yes, I’m serious. Right now you’re learning to find the super hero within.

On the outside, writers may appear like normal human beings. Some of us are frumpy or bad dressers, some of us need haircuts. Many of us wear spectacles. Some of us have unexpected hair colors or holes in our bodies that weren’t there when we were born. Some of us have a clear affinity to steam punk and corsets, others to shapeless T-shirts with geeky slogans on them. A lot of us are introverts, and we can often be found with our noses stuck in a book (or a smart phone, or a Kindle, or…). But all of this is just a facade, a way to divert attention from our secret identities.

All writers are super heroes. We fight ignorance and apathy, loss of wonder and despair. We entertain people who deeply need to be distracted from pain or sickness. We make people think of consequences, both of personal actions and society’s decisions. We remind people of what it is to be human, both the good and the bad, and we inspire people to strive for the best.

Many writers live in the stars. We dream of times past and future, reinterpreting what has happened and twisting together visions of what is to come. We deal in possibilities, in vast heroics and small personal acts of courage, in envisioning worlds that we hope for and fear. We keep the spark of ideas alive, even ideas that aren’t enjoying their time in the public spotlight, so that someday when we need them, they will still be available to us.

We create characters who take the proxy role of mother and father, husband and wife, best friend, diabolical arch-nemesis, and noble mentor. We teach people how to live, how to survive through hard times, and how to die. We serve as society’s mirror and conscience simultaneously.

Sometimes we get tired. Sometimes we fall short. Sometimes we feel like we’re not really super heroes after all, and we don’t belong in the Super Hero League of Awesomeness. Maybe we lack some credentials, or maybe we don’t know the right people, or maybe we’re not good enough yet. Maybe not enough people read our stories or buy our books or follow us on Twitter. We are unsung, unappreciated, without creative mojo. We toil away in our anonymity and obscurity, wondering if what we’re doing even matters.

But oh, my friend, when you ask yourself this question (as I know you will, because we all do), answer with a resounding Yes! It is the lot of a super hero to be handed thankless tasks and toil away with little personal reward. But we continue because of our conviction that it matters; that we can, in our own humble way, make a difference.

We give the world its voice. Don’t let anyone take that away from you.

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Choose Your Own Adventure

Posted in Arts, Life, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on July 12, 2011| 13 Comments »

I’ve been feeling all organized because last weekend I made a list of topics for my next several posts. And then this morning I read a blog post offering some misguided writing advice. (No, I’m not going to link to it. I’m sure way too many writers read it as is.) Cue complete topic derailment.

I’ve already written about writing advice in the past, but the more I think about it, the more I think this issue isn’t confined to advice about writing. It isn’t even confined to advice about artistic pursuits. Over the years I have certainly received a great deal of advice about basic life topics, some of which has thrown me for a loop and later proven to be completely wrong. (My favorite? “Oh, Amy, you just have delusions of grandeur” in response to me having big artistic dreams. Way to try to ensure they’ll never happen.)

Add to this the undeniable fact that I sometimes give what could be construed as advice right here on this blog, and I feel almost obligated to write the following.

Read, learn, listen to other people’s point of view and feedback. Think about what people say, try out various ideas. Don’t automatically assume you know the one true way to doing anything. But ultimately, DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO. Do what you need to do (assuming that what you need to do doesn’t involve anything blatantly illegal, of course). And more than that, do what works. Advice, even the more strongly worded variety, is merely a suggestion that we can take or leave according to our own inclination. Even if it’s good advice, we might not be ready to implement it. And if it’s bad advice, we might accidentally harm ourselves or take the plunge into regret that I talked about last week.

That’s one of the really wonderful things about life. We get to choose our own adventure. Sure, we can’t control everything or even most things, but within our small scope of decision, we act as our own kings and queens.

It’s not such a leap to believe that creative types need to follow their muses and express their personal integrity and vision of the world in their art. But what if we take a step farther and consider ourselves to be art and our lifetimes to be our canvas of expression? The expressions “Follow your heart” and “Follow your gut” are close but incomplete representations of this kind of life. Follow who you are, and even more, follow who you wish to become.

Choosing to live this way can mean leaving a lot of the advice behind. The Backbone Project has really opened my eyes to this. Why do people care whether I drink alcohol or not? Why do they care (especially women!) if I self-identify as a feminist? Why do people want to change my writing process? Often I think the answer is that they don’t actually care about me personally at all. Instead they are seeking to validate their own way of life and their own choices. Instead of following who they are and finding a sense of rightness in that, they need reflection from the outside world to reassure them. Instead of deep and subtle thinking, they allow themselves to fall into the black and white thinking trap: I’m right and you’re wrong. Because this doesn’t work for me, obviously it won’t work for anybody. Something needs to be fixed; you need to be fixed. If I have a big bad problem, that means you must not have any problems at all or else you’re trying to compete with me, but it doesn’t matter because my problem must be the worst. (Or flip it around: if you have a big bad problem, that must mean my own problems aren’t important at all.)

Don’t take my advice about this, though. Think about it, and make up your own mind. Choose your own adventure. Turn your life into art with every choice you make.

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My Ideal Critique

Posted in Uncategorized, Writing, tagged , , , , , on June 23, 2011| 5 Comments »

Many of you will remember my first backbone post in which I gave my own take on how critiques can go wrong. Now, I think that critiques can sometimes be an extremely helpful tool for writers, so I’d like to talk about my ideal critique. Before I begin, though, I’d like to emphasize that all writers are different. Thus, my idea of an ideal critique and your idea of an ideal critique may in fact be radically different. I’m not saying that my ideas are the only right ideas. There are several different styles of learning, so it follows that there are probably several helpful ways of critiquing. The trick is to figure out which one works for you. If what works for you is ignoring everything I’m about to say, more power to you!

For me, critiques are all about learning. When I’m receiving a critique, I’m doing so in order to learn more about writing and to improve my writing abilities. While it is lovely when critiques end up making my story stronger, that is not my primary motivation for seeking critiques. Instead, my goal is to continue to improve by gaining insight into what works and what doesn’t work. When I’m giving a critique, I’m doing the same thing: trying to teach the writer in question by pointing out what worked and didn’t work for me as a reader.

One thing I am not trying to learn from critiques is how to deal with rejection. I understand that others feel differently, but honestly, I get plenty of practice dealing with rejection by…getting rejected. There is no shortage of editors and agents happy to help me out in this regard, except with them, there is always at least the chance that they will instead decide to help advance my career and/or give me monies! Another thing I’m not looking for in critiques is warm and fuzzy validation that everything I write is awesome. If everything I wrote was awesome, I’d be getting warm and fuzzy validation from my fans, who would be–guess what!–paying monies to read my work. Yes, I know, again with the monies. Notice a trend?

I look at critique as a learning process between colleagues; therefore, my main focus is on how I can help the other writer, and this focus informs my delivery. My husband tells me that people get promoted into higher tiers of management partially because of their ability to deliver bad news. Delivering bad news well is hard! And yet this is, I believe, an essential skill in giving a good critique because almost every critique is going to include the bad news that our work isn’t perfect (and it might even be hanging together precariously with paper clips and duct tape).

Here are some guiding principles that I try to think about as I critique:

1. Mention the positives as well as the negatives. It is so tempting not to do this, and instead just focus on what’s broken. Sometimes, honestly, it’s hard to even think of any positives. But not only does this leave the writer more receptive to thinking about any criticism, it also shows the writer what she’s doing right, what she shouldn’t mess with, and what her strengths are (that she can showcase and allow to shine in future work).
2. Discuss what doesn’t work in a matter-of-fact and positive manner. Example A: “I can’t believe you used all those adverbs. There were just adverbs adverbs adverbs flying all over the place. Get rid of those goddamned adverbs, okay? It was just so bad how you used all those adverbs.” Example B: “I noticed you used a lot of adverbs. I’d suggest going back through and deciding which of them you actually need.” Example A makes people feel bad and stupid and discourages experimentation. But if you’re not experimenting as a writer and taking risks, how are you ever going to get better? (Note I am not actually advocating vast amounts of experimentation with adverbs in particular.) Example B or something similar is what I prefer.
3. State your points in a clear and concise manner. So often I hear people speak at length about one point of criticism that they could have easily expressed in a few sentences. In a verbal critique, using loads of examples to make your point is not required. Instead, mark them on the hard copy of the manuscript or in track changes, and summarize when you’re speaking. The writer can always ask questions later if something is not clear.
4. Use ditto freely. Another thing I hear a lot is several critiquers waxing long about the same point, one after the other. There is no need to do this. Instead, just say, “I ditto Katherine that the beginning seemed slow” and move on. My Taos crew were experts at doing just this, and it was amazing how much it sped critiques along…as did the two-minute time limit per person.
5. Decide what key points you wish to make verbally ahead of time. Prepare for the critique as you would for a lesson. (Can you see my teacher background here?) Consider typing up a summary sheet of your critique that you can give to the writer afterwards. I know a few writers who are masterful at doing this, and I always look forward to receiving critiques from them.
6. Help the writer by talking about their story, not yours. We all have the types of stories we like to read, and the types of stories we like to write. These types might not be the same for other writers! (I know, it’s shocking, but there it is.) Give feedback and suggestions while keeping in touch with the story you think the writer was trying to tell instead of figuring out what story you would be telling. The second rarely provides a useful learning experience since it mostly just reflects your own personal taste.
7. Critique with an eye towards making clear the promise and/or vision of the story. Benjamin Rosenbaum said something very intelligent in the comments of my critique backbone post. “I think detailed, specific positive critiques — not just cheerleading, but analysis of what worked — are actually more useful than negative ones which focus on what’s not working. Both are useful, but in the end you want to revise towards a vision, not away from problems. Doing the latter will result in a dead story — all rough corners smoothed away, with what’s left being something no one would object to, but no one is excited about either.” What he said. If we as critiquers can help the writer hone his vision, then we’ll leave him excited, both to potentially revise this story and to write in general.
8. Be encouraging. There is no reason for a writer to leave a critique feeling like a swollen and bloody rat. Honestly, I don’t care how bad the piece might have been. If a writer is regularly working and improving, there is something to be encouraging about, whatever the flaws. I’m not saying to lie and say this was the best story you’ve ever read, but a few kind words acknowledging that the writer has worked hard can go a long way. No, editors and agents won’t usually give these words. That’s why it’s even more important that they be given by supportive colleagues.

Of course, this list covers my ideal critique. In practice, I often fall short in execution, but it is what I strive for. I have been lucky enough to receive many fine critiques that have taught me both how to be a better writer and how to critique with an eye towards helping a writer learn instead of tearing them down.

What is your ideal critique? What are your guiding principles when you’re preparing a critique? What about giving a critique do you find the most difficult? Let me know!

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Why I Write YA

Posted in Writing, tagged , , on June 21, 2011| 13 Comments »

Ooh, it’s reader question time! I adore good reader questions. Derek asks, “I’m rather curious about the distinction between YA and “regular”/adult fiction writing.  What makes you prefer one over the other?” (He actually asked a couple other really good questions about YA too, but I’m going to save them for another post.) I have blogged about why I like to read YA, but not why I like to write it. One of my first reactions was that I don’t necessarily prefer writing YA to writing adult fiction, but then I thought about it some more, and yeah, I kind of do prefer it. We will pass very quickly over my one attempt at writing an adult novel, which was an unmitigated disaster, and take a look at my short fiction, which I write to sell to so-called “adult” markets. Even so, most of my short stories include characters who are kids, teens, or college-aged. Not all, but most.

I think the reason for this preference is that I love teenagers. A lot of adults look at me kind of funny when I make statements like this (especially if they are parents of teenage children), but there it is. I think teenagers are great. I love teaching teenagers; as a group, they have consistently been my favorite age to teach (and I add preteens into this group, so think ages 11-18 or so).

Teenagers are so inspiring to me. They have most of their lives in front of them, and they genuinely believe they can accomplish great things. Many of them are passionate and smart, ambitious and driven. Sometimes they are complete wrecks, but they haven’t ossified into their wreckitude.  They also haven’t developed the thicker persona that so many adults have, so they feel very, very real. They’re in the thick of trying to figure stuff out, complicated life stuff, and their emotions are flying all over the place, and who knows how it will all end up? Teenagers are exciting.

In a typical conversation with a teenager, they’ll talk about their friends and some recent friend/boy drama, or they’ll talk about school work. They’ll talk about their interests with huge amounts of enthusiasm once they’ve gotten comfortable with you. They’ll talk about their plans and/or dreams for the future, they’ll talk about the problems they’re having with their parents, they’ll talk about prom (or fill-in-the-blank Big Event). They laugh a lot and still know how to be silly. Sometimes they cry too, because they’re not all about keeping up that perfect veneer. Sometimes they’re flaky and irresponsible, but they’re still learning so at least they might not be forever flakes. They literally vibrate with possibility.

Contrast that with adults, with whom I might normally converse about the weather, or health problems, or their crappy jobs, or home improvements, or “what do you do for a living,” and really the only question remaining in my mind is, why don’t more people prefer teenagers since they are obviously so much more interesting? I’m the kind of person who is always changing and afraid of stagnation. I’m not saying I always like change, but I’m fascinated by it and ultimately see it as a positive thing. I get excited when other people are changing too. And pretty much all teenagers are changing, whether they like it or not.

Luckily I know many interesting adults too (and no, I’m not just saying that), but I find the teenage years to be of inherent interest and inherent conflict. And inherent conflict and characters in the throes of change theoretically lead to riveting story; it’s a little more complicated than that, obviously, but it’s one of my strongest reasons for liking to write YA.

What about you? Why do you like to read and/or write in your genre(s) of choice?

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