Anne Lamott - Bird by Bird

 This is not a formal review. I don't do those. I just read books, and then I think about them a lot and then, sometimes, if I'm feeling bloggerly, I tell you the takeaway.

1. Don't read this book if you're one of those angry, hostile writers Anne is always talking about who just want to get published, and want her to tell you how to do this. She will not tell you how. She will tell you that you most likely won't succeed in gaining this dream, and that if you do, you will most likely not enjoy it once you get there.

How's that for an upper?

2. Anne Lamott is a real person. Her voice and her experience are dripping with down-in-the-trenches-beside-you-my-sista kind of wisdom. She's been there. She's suffered that. She's a human being with all her battle-wounds, and she is going to tell it to you straight. Which is what she wants from you. She wants you to write who you are, with no gloss and no candy-coating. I get the impression that Anne and I could sit down for a four-hour heart-to-heart therapy session, and I'd come away feeling like nothing I said could really surprise her.

3. Anne says that writers need to be present. They need to really live, observe, listen, experience. They need to live life to its fullest. She says that writer's block is a misnomer, because nothing is blocked, in reality we're empty, when we're stuck like that. That we need to fill back up. Live our lives, be with people, view the minutiae, and express it.

I was on a family camping trip with strep throat this weekend while I devoured her book, along with Natalie Whipple's Transparent, and Robison Wells' Variant. (It's amazing what being away from all my responsibilities can do for my reading speed. Good night, I love to lose myself in a good book.) Anyhoo, I was on this camping trip with all these amazing people who I love, and I found myself settling into the moments, noticing things, really noticing them. Seeing the magic in the people and the beauty of the world around me, and writing about it.

4. Anne Lamott is all about the art. She is not about the money or the fame or the idea of being published, although she admits to struggling with all of those demons. But at the heart of it, this book is for people who love to express life honestly through the written word, and want to do more of that in little pieces every day.

5. This book is humane, humble, hilarious, pessimistic, realistic, and delightful. *Go read it, my darlings.

*Go read it with the caveat that her language is a mite salty. She is not too reverent to toss around a few "colorful metaphors." (Thank you Spock in Star Trek IV for that expression.)

6. I am done now. What are you still doing here? If I had been planning on this review, I'd have quotes for you and a format for this blog post. I'm going to bed. But not before brushing off the gross pizza breath from my teeth. Hooray for Colgate.

Word Count Disaster

Writing along. Loving every minute. Delighted by my characters, my story, my dialog. So excited to finish my novel on May 6th. 80,000 word deadline set.

80,000 word deadline met.

Only trouble is...

I'm just at the midpoint, story-wise.

And I'm pretty sure my agent and her editor friends would tell me that a 160,000 word YA contemporary is... ahem... unpublishable.

Grandiose? Self-indulgent? Not. Happening.

So, new goal for the month of May.

Every day instead of producing 1000 words minimum, I have to produce 500 new words minimum, and then delete their equivalent from somewhere earlier in the story. I'll be working on the story from two different places, and that may make me unproductive, or less efficient. I'll have to see. If it's problematic, maybe I'll rotate days. Cutting day and writing day. But I kind of like the idea of earning my new words by cutting old ones.

My only problem is that if I stop producing new content, I lose the momentum, and I find myself paralyzed for a few days when I come back to writing prose. Which is bad for my arbitrary and totally self-imposed deadlines.

My husband and I have a smallish house and a large wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Awhile ago I told him that until we have a bigger house, once the shelves are totally full, we either have to get rid of books or stop buying new ones. Thank heaven for him the e-reader came along. Whew! Dilemma solved.

I'm viewing my novel like those beastly shelves. You want new words? You want your MC to ever get to find out the meaning of her life, make the tough choices, and get the guy? Then sacrifice her ten paragraph rant about how rough her life is in chapter 2. (I kid. If there is such a rant, may I be barred from my keyboard. Although if it does exist, that might make cutting 20,000 words a little les torturous!)

Nikki, seriously, you're not going to take the axe to my story for me? Caryn? Anyone?

I tremble in fear of today's writing session, but I thought stating the truth here might help keep me honest about the tough love this novel needs.

Fifteen Ever-Living Minutes A Day!

I've had people ask recently how I've gotten so consistent with my writing. This has not always been the case.

The first few writing years were filled with... I love writing. I want to write. I love having written. I hate writing. I can't write. I'm PARALYZED. I'm taking a break from writing... for oh, a year or so.

But now, I write. In January I was 25,000 words into my current WIP. Today, I'm almost to 80,000 words.

In the past four years, I've done two seriously vomitacious pregnancies, given birth to my second and third babies, kept two newborns alive through the grueling first six months, and completed the first draft of Novel #1, co-written Novel #2 with my husband, re-written and revised Novel #1 extensively, nearly completed draft 1 of Novel #3, queried, entered contests, attended writing conventions, gotten an agent, revised for her, and said farewell to Novel #1 as it went out on submission. And I've done it while running my photography business and serving in church callings and canning fruit and managing to sleep, eat, and exercise.


Because why? What has made this craziness possible?

Fifteen minutes a day.

If I'm consistent, and I write fifteen minutes a day, I can produce a chapter every one to two weeks.

Now, granted, at this point, I write more like 1-2 hours a day. And I brainstorm and think and talk writing with all of my friends.

But on days when I'm paralyzed and I think I'm awful and I question this whole exercise in frustration, I sit my butt in my chair, and I pound on the keyboard for fifteen minutes.

Don't tell me you can't do it. Because you can. Fifteen minutes every single day will either become more, become rewarding, and start to create magic, or it won't.

But either way, lots of really smart people have been telling me since I got the itch as a teenager that real writers write.

So do.

Or don't.

We can be friends either way, but wouldn't you rather be writing friends?

Writing YA Fiction - Saying Something True About Love

I'm a writer because I am a reader. I love books. I love the escape, the entertainment, the new worlds, and the messages. Most of all, I love reading truth. No matter the genre, I recognize truth when it speaks to me. I cringe with an antagonist when I see in him or her a reflection of my worst self. I rejoice in the triumphs and cry for the failures of characters.

As a writer, I feel that I am responsible for every word I print on the page and send out into the world. While my stories are organic, and not driven by message, I still feel responsible for the statements my books make. I think about the ethics of my profession, and of my offering to the world a lot—and I haven't even been published yet.

But more about that later.

Today I am babysitting for my friend's three youngest kids while she gets LASIK surgery. In my home right now, I have my thirteen-month-old, my three-year-old, her eight-month-old, two-year-old, and four-year-old. Three in diapers and two in full-blown choking hazard phase.

They've been here since 7:20 AM, and I should be exhausted by now. It's twelve o'clock, after all.

But I'm doing great. I feel refreshed and calm and happy. Only a small part of that is because my friend's baby is a bundle of joy, and hasn't cried yet.

The biggest part is due to my husband, Cody. He didn't need to leave this morning until about eleven. When he got home from exercising, he helped me feed the kids breakfast, and then offered to watch all five kids for me so I could go to water aerobics for an hour and a half. He was persuasive, and I took him up on his offer. When I came home, he had put both babies down for their morning naps, and cleaned the whole kitchen.

This is true love. This is what makes me weak in the knees.

I kissed him, told him he was a rock star, and as I headed down the hall to make my bed, I thought how it's sad that I can't write this into my YA romance novels. And then I remembered what I said to Cody last night as I read him a scene with Evan, my current teen romantic hero.

I write Cody into all of my romantic leading men because it's the only way I can understand real romance. I write men who are selfless, calming, validating, and who serve the women they care about. I write men who bring peace to the chaos of my main characters' worlds. And yes, they are also handsome, exciting, and desirable. 

Though it was unintentional to begin with, writing about love that heals and blesses instead of violence or domination or straight sex appeal has become one of my goals a writer.

When a teenage girl reads my books, I want her to see a glimpse of what she can really have. I want her to understand the power of kindness, and the value of peace.

Besides, it's what stirs my heart. It's what fills me up.

Discussing a scene that I finished a week ago, my husband told me that teenage girls would be DYING over the romance between Tessa and Evan.

"But it's not remotely sexy," I said.

"Depends on your definition of sexy," Cody said.

"But there's nothing salacious."

"You're right," he said, "It's one hundred percent pure. But the girls will die all the same."

He should know. He's a romantic hero himself.

And I love that a piece of Cody goes into Evan and Sheldon and all the teenage leading men in my books. It will happen naturally as I try to capture love page by page, and I remain determined to say something true.

Outlining Is Hard: A Sneak-Peak At My WIP

I think outlining is hard.

I said it.

I need it, but it ties me up in knots.

I'm about 40,000 words into my WIP and I'm still taking off a few days every week or so to toy with the outline. A suggestion from my genius sister finally helped make this outline into something I can hold on to. She told me to put it in the voice of my main character, from her perspective. Then, she said, "If your character spits the line of text back in your face, you'll know if wasn't really something she would think, say, or do." This worked amazingly for me.

Want a peak at what I wrote tonight?

Tessa’s Story: 
 

I’m sixteen and pregnant. My mother says not for long, but she’s crazy if she thinks I’m getting an abortion just because when she was a pregnant teenager she kept me—and always regretted it. One look at the ultrasound and I know I can’t go through with it. There is a tiny person waving a miniature hand at me, and I could be looking at myself, all those years ago. Mom will be too busy drinking to notice anyway.

I make the mistake of telling my boyfriend, Johnny. He says there’s no way the baby is his. Walks away from me while I crumple into a ball behind Burger Boy. Then the idiot tells the whole school on Facebook. So, now all my friends think his lies are truth—that I’m pregnant because I cheated on him. Then my best friend Brielle’s mom tells my mom everything and she blows up—kicks me out with nowhere to go. If it weren’t for my former dance teacher Julie taking me in to live with her, I’d be sleeping in a women’s shelter, headed for foster care. This world is seriously screwed up, because Julie has never been able to have children, while I’m apparently too stupid to keep from getting pregnant.

I’ve lost most of my friends to Team Johnny. I’ve had to give up dance and cheer. And with my body stretching and swelling to the approximate proportions of a whale, it’s lucky for me I have Evan, my coworker at Burger Boy. He’s the only person who doesn’t look at my belly first, these days; seems to really see me.

Then stupid Brielle and Johnny start dating, which turns my ginormous stomach. And when Julie miscarries after her last try at in vitro, I worry just a little bit that adopting my baby is the only reason she’s letting me stay. I go home to see if moving back in with Mom is an option now that she’s cooled off, but apparently her cooling-off process involved moving without leaving me so much as a forwarding address.

Beer. Beer suddenly seems like a good idea, so I have a couple of drinks at the party where Evan’s band is playing. Stupid? Whatever. I just don’t want to think anymore. Good thing I have Evan and Julie to do my thinking for me. Acting all disappointed in me, Evan drags me home to Julie, who decides to get all parental all of a sudden. I can stay with her until the end of the pregnancy, but only if I do nothing illegal, immoral, or harmful to myself—or more importantly, the baby. By the time the buzz has worn off, I can see that they’re right—not like I’ll admit that to them. 

The next day I go to my twenty-week ultrasound. And I see that baby. That perfect little tiny person. It’s a girl. I’m going to have a girl. I will name her something awesome. A strong name for a strong girl who will never be dumb enough to have sex without protection just because her boyfriend tells her it will feel better. Samantha. Looking at her, I realize something amazing. I don’t have to wait to find a guy who will love me for me, or hold out the crazy hope that someday I’ll have a mother who’s not too busy being broken to love me. I have the baby. She’s beautiful. She’s perfect. And she’s mine. She will love me the most, put me first, and be all the family I’ll ever need. 

If only it were that simple and I could skip right to the perfect ending. Julie's bossing me around these days, getting all serious with curfews and chores and "natural consequences." And Evan's confusing me by being way more attractive and less nerdy than I thought at first. Which makes me think of dizzying possibilities for how to support myself and Samantha with nothing but a minimum wage fast food job, a high school sophomore education, and a desperate hope that my baby will fix the broken parts of me.

The twenty remaining weeks of my pregnancy are plenty of time to figure out how all this is going to work, aren't they? 

Mwahahahaha... Of course that's all you get, right now. Just up to the midpoint—when Tessa's reaction turns to action. The moment where she thinks she knows everything she needs and starts to plan to get it. If you want more you have to read the book.

Well... I have to write the book and then my agent has to love it and pitch it and sell it and someone has to publish it. And then you have to read it... please.

Now that I'm happy with my outline, I've got to get my nose back to the grindstone and keep cranking out prose for my self-imposed deadline in May. 

But first I have to sleep. As for the book, like Scarlett O'Hara, "I'll think about that tomorrow."

Secrets Of The Universe

Writing fiction is interesting. You want to tell a satisfying story. You can only do this if you can create a satisfying arc for your main character. Which means taking them from one point to a different point where they have learned an important lesson or grown in some meaningful way, and demonstrated their growth through their actions. Essentially, along the way you need to teach your main character the secrets of the universe. Yesterday I was teaching my main character that love is unselfish. That when you truly love, you are willing to sacrifice for the people you care about.

You don't spend that kind of time considering these kinds of moral values without being changed. It's one of the things I love most about writing. Yesterday night I was sick. I felt miserable. And I wanted to go to bed. But my husband had worked late and the house was a wreck. Remembering the lessons I'm trying to teach my main character, I spent an hour sacrificing sleep, and cleaning so Cody could come home to a peaceful house.

And it was satisfying.

Like a character arc that really works!

We'll Run Out Of Stuff To Write When We're Dead

A writing friend commented on Facebook the other day that she had so much left to do on her book. I made the offhanded comment that we always have so much left to do, and we'll run out of stuff to write when we're dead.

I've since thought about this comment. It says a lot about my new way of looking at writing. For years, I've been an on-again-off-again writer. If I don't write for three or four days, I'm done. The very thought of opening my manuscript is paralyzing to me. But the minute I actually force myself to start writing again, the other me takes over. The one who wanted to become a writer in the first place.

Consistency, for me, is the key.

And if I stop to think too much about the big picture, I get overwhelmed and freak out and stop for two or three days, which can become two or three months without even trying.

My point is, if I'm a writer, I write. Every day. But it doesn't have to consume every thought, every relationship, every interaction.

So, for me, learning to turn it on and off is important. And learning that as a writer, every day I do my time, and then I also live my life. And then the next day, I write again. It doesn't matter which piece of the puzzle I'm working on if I don't think so hard about the whole picture. I can navigate between projects, focusing on whatever is most pressing. I can switch to revising for my agent, and back to working on my WIP without initiating a writer's block breakdown

And I'm not planning to ever finish. The goal is not to be done. The goal is to write.

(Responsible, Real-World Heather chiming in here: Obviously we have to finish certain manuscripts and revisions on deadlines... but like Scarlett O'Hara, I'll think about that tomorrow. Nothing kills my creative flow like the demand that I be funny, poignant, and articulate on a schedule. If I think about it in a pressure-free way, I am my most productive.) 

And we're writers. So we'll run out of things to write about when we're dead. And even in heaven, I hope I can spend a little time each day with the heavenly equivalent of my laptop and characters and glorious, delicious words.