Reading, 'Riting, and Ramblings

I don't know how it is for the rest of the country, but up here everything has shut down since Thursday. At least my workplace has. The school is essentially at the top of a mountain, and there are steep inclines that make driving dangerous if there's ice on the ground. The problem is exacerbated by official refusal to salt the roads. Around here, the health of squirrels and fish trumps the lives of humans.

So at noon Thursday, when the flurries kicked up, a mass email went out from administration saying, "Flee! Flee for your lives!" I slip-slided home and haven't set foot outside since—because if I tried, my foot would go through two feet of slushy ice. In Indiana this is normal, but in this state people see a few snowflakes and freak out like the sun turned black and the seas turned to blood.

Fortunately, I have a few self-motivational tricks up my sleeve when I don't feel like chipping away at my WIP.

1. Build a fire.

I am, when you get right down to it, a superficial person. I care about the decor and cleanliness of a restaurant more than I do the food, I choose which books to read by the art on their covers, and I rank the desirability of houses and cars by how cute they look. In my senior year of high school, I chose my university ostensibly because they have a good academic reputation and offered me scholarships, but it was really because the campus had a lot of trees.

My mood, and what I feel like doing, is strongly influenced by the atmosphere. So if I get a Duraflame log going in my charming little fireplace, and I sit at my authorial-looking desk from Staples with the cat curled up by my feet, next to a bookshelf full of writing/research books and under a whiteboard bearing a multicolored outline of Kagemusha, suddenly I feel like Richard Castle. It's a shame not to write when you're Richard Castle.

2. Read books on writing.

I never get very far into books on writing because, after a page or two, I start applying the concepts to my stories and I must go write them down before I forget.

Note, however, that there are two types of books on writing. Some are about writing, and the others are about being a writer. The ones about actual technique—plotting, style, etc.—are the ones that get the mental juices flowing. The ones about "being a writer" are as useful as reading someone's personal blog. Good for entertainment or commiserating, maybe, but not for working.

On Saturday I wasted a few hours reading a writing book published by the Writers Digest—so I thought it would be about, you know, writing—but it was all about the author's personal trials earning her MFA and finding her voice and dealing with years of rejections before landing an agent who still hasn't sold her mystery novel to a publisher. The only thing she inspired me to do is write that blog post yesterday about hobbyists vs. professionals, and why it doesn't matter one bit, because she spent a whole chapter worrying over it and trying to convince herself and her husband that writing is work because it's hard. Egads.

3. Read good books in general.

Reading good books reminds me how much I love the English language, strange and screwed up as it is. If I read a story that grabs me emotionally or utilizes brilliant techniques I've never seen (or noticed) before, I want to run down to my computer and work on my own novel(s). It's like when I was a kid and saw people playing musical instruments, making wonderful sounds come out of them, I'd clamor, "Me too! Me too! I want to try too!"

Unfortunately, if I accidentally read a bad book, the opposite happens. My thought train jumps off the tracks and heads straight for a cliff.

Great gravy, this is terrible. Somebody published this? Critics gave it positive reviews? You mean people like this drivel? Maybe I don't understand readers as well as I thought. Maybe nobody will want to read my books because they're nothing like this awful one. I hate people. I hate the marketplace. I hate the universe. I'm going to go eat cake and cry.

These thoughts are hardly productive. So if I need a pick-me-up, I have a stash of favorite authors I can go back to and restore my faith in literature and humanity.

3. Talk about my WIPs.

I'm the type to get carried away by an idea and pursue it doggedly until it's realized. If I'm at work, for example, and I have a project to finish, I will get in The Zone and forget to eat, drink, or blink for hours, working until long after dark to get it done. Once I forgot to go home before the campus gates closed and almost got locked in for the night. (Luckily, one was still open. Maybe someone saw that my car was still in the staff lot.)

The Zone is probably not a healthy place for me to be, but sometimes it's where I need to go. Sweetie has picked up that if he prods me to talk about my WIPs, it can get the obsession ball rolling. Sometimes, if I'm pestering him or complaining that I'm bored, he'll say, "So tell me about [Title Here]." And off I go.

4. Do something mindless.

If I'm doing something that requires minimal intellectual investment, like cooking, washing the dishes, or playing around on my balance ball (um, I mean "working out"), my mind will usually wander to stories. Often they're stories I'll never write—ones that are better suited for movies or comics than words, or ones that don't work and probably can't work but I try in my head anyway. But sometimes they're stories I'm writing, and the more I think about them the more I need to write them.

My treadmill time whips me up into a Kagemusha frenzy more than any other activity. Bopping along to bouncy music, imagining my wackiest scenes to a high-energy soundtrack, my brain starts thinking in words.

Like most people, I don't usually think in words. I think in pictures, physical sensations, emotions, and amorphous "ideas," and if I want to communicate, my thoughts need to get passed to the speech/writing part of my brain for processing. But during treadmill time, my brain articulates my thoughts before I've thought them. It's the same phenomenon as those rare miracles during drafting, when you're surprised by the words that appear on the page.

Often treadmill time ends with me hopping off long before my mileage goal and sitting down, sweaty and smelling like week-old dirty laundry, "just to jot a few things down." Then an hour later I realize I've written half a chapter, I'm shivering, and I'm in desperate need of a bath.

5. Research.

Sometimes I'm reluctant to write because I have to work on a certain scene, but I don't know if I can pull it off because I can't fully imagine it, and I don't even know where to start.

In these cases, I research.

I'd been dreading starting chapter 5 of Kagemusha until yesterday. I knew how it would start: my heroine, Rachel, wakes up. (Staggeringly original, I know.) Okay, where does Rachel wake up? What is the room like? What does she hear, feel, see?

Google to the rescue.

I looked up images of bedroom designs. Glamorous bedrooms, sleek modern bedrooms, goofy kids' bedrooms...Let's narrow it to "classy bedrooms." Chandeliers, artsy paintings...Hey, that bedroom with the ficus trees is awesome. But ficus trees are commonplace. Google "tall potted plants." Rubber plants, dragon trees...Bamboo! What if she had a completely "Zen" bedroom, with bamboo and orchids and an indoor fountain? She wakes up to the sound of the fountain, almost knocks the orchids off the end table, she's not comfortable with her new luxurious life....

And before you know it, I'm a quarter of a chapter in.

Some people think research "gets in the way" of writing, but it actually invigorates me with new ideas. People don't make stories up from thin air. We take ideas and experiences and shake them up, put them together, and spit out some original combination. So the more ideas you take in, the better the ones you spit out will be.

Here are some of the opinions you might have seen trumpeted as facts:

• You're only a real writer if you've written at least one million words of fiction.
• You're only a real writer if you've published at least ten books.
• You're only a real writer if you set time aside to write 1,500 words every day.
• You're only a real writer if your first and only goal in writing is to make money.
• You're only a real writer if you don't care about money.
• You're only a real writer if you treat writing as your most important job, regardless of whether you have others.
• You're only a real writer if there's a story inside you that compels you to write and your soul would die a painful and horrific death if you didn't write every single waking hour of your life.

The Traditional Pubbers and the Self-Pubbers have slightly different criteria for what makes "a real writer," but both are insufferably smug about it.

Yes, it's an insult.

Arguing with someone over whether their stated occupation is a "real job" or "just a hobby" is a very strange and aggressive thing to do. Writers are the only people I have ever seen try to convince their peers that they're not "professionals," they're only "hobbyists."

"So what do you do?"

"I'm a professor."

"Have you made tenure?"

"No, I'm an adjunct. I teach one class per term."

"Oh. So you're not a real professor. You only teach as a hobby."

Would you tell a freelance web or graphic designer that, unless they have an established full-time job, designing is "just a hobby"? How about a self-employed caterer, an event photographer, or a mathematician in grad school? "Um, sorry. If you don't have steady paid work, you're not a real mathematician. You're a bartender who proves theorems on the side."

Of course you wouldn't, because that's an unnecessary and intentionally offensive thing to say. But every day I see writers belittling each other with lines like, "Every long-term professional fiction writer can spot a hopeless want-to-be fiction writer easily" or "Real professionals treat writing as a business. If you just like typing a bunch of pretty sentences, you're an amateur." And for some reason, they think this is totally normal and acceptable behavior.

I'm imagining trooping up to the part-timers at my day job, looking down my nose at them, and saying, "Every long-term professional librarian can spot a hopeless want-to-be librarian easily." They'll stare at me like I'm crazy for a moment, and then they'll tell me to go screw myself. But for some reason, writers will bow their heads meekly and say, "You're right. I must work harder to meet your exacting standards."

When someone goes out of their way to tell you that you aren't a "professional," it is a deliberate insult. Some try to cover it up with, "Oh, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with making art for art's sake," but if they didn't want to mark you as inferior (and, by extension, themselves as superior), they wouldn't say anything at all.

No, it's not about the money.

Some people don't mean to offend you when they say your writing is "just a hobby." They're just a bit insensitive and think they're stating a fact, because jobs make money and hobbies don't. (Or they're related to you and they want you to choose a new line of work that pays the rent.) But even as a "fact," it has no basis.

A "profession" isn't necessarily a job that pays the bills. An architect between jobs is still an architect. A lawyer who's temporarily a full-time parent is still a lawyer. A Buddhist monk is a Buddhist monk, and he doesn't need a paycheck to prove it.

Likewise, a "writer" is anyone who believes they're one. It's like gender—a social construct entirely dependent on self-identification (as opposed to sex, which is whatever the doctors put on your birth certificate). If a biological man identifies as a woman, she's a woman. If a bartender identifies as a mathematician, he's a mathematician. And if a middle school teacher who works on her YA fantasy novel for four hours a week on Saturday evenings thinks of herself as a writer, then a writer she is.

It's not about the time, either.

A profession also isn't necessarily the thing you spend most of your time doing. You'll see snobs around the Internet saying that you're only "a writer" if you spend the majority of your time writing, 9 to 5, M to F, and you can finish ten books and fifty short stories every year.

But most writers, even the "real" writers with long-running series and six-figure advances, don't spend eight hours every day with their noses to the grind. Many of the most famous writers in history had day jobs: J.R.R. Tolkein, Isaac Asimov, and C. S. Lewis were university professors, T. S. Eliot was a banker, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a physician, and Franz Kafka was a pencil-pusher for an insurance company. Kurt Vonnegut worked for about four hours each day, from 5:30 to 10 am with a break for breakfast, and he spent the rest of his time swimming, teaching, drinking, and listening to jazz. Even the prolific Stephen King admitted he only writes for half the day.

"Afternoons are for naps and letters. Evenings are for reading, family, Red Sox games on TV, and any revisions that just cannot wait. Basically, mornings are my prime writing time."

In 1883, Anthony Trollope wrote, "All those I think who have lived as literary men—working daily as literary labourers—will agree with me that three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write."

In this century, with the benefits of new technologies, we can produce the same output at a higher quality in even less time. The five award-winning science-fiction/fantasy authors interviewed here work for one to three hours per day. They work late at night, early in the morning, and in snatches whenever a "rush of ideas" strikes.

If you "only" write after dinner and before bed, or for an hour or two in the morning before work, you are likely just as productive as people who make a living from their fiction. Contrary to what our sneering peers might say, you don't have to glue your fingers to the keyboard to earn the title of "writer."

So why the vehement distinctions?

Why, you might wonder, would some writers go out of their way to put down other writers who generate fewer titles per year, or who prioritize other things above writing, or who haven't yet published their work?

Insecurity.

The writers who feel the need to label themselves "professionals" and others "hobbyists" suffer from the fear that they write badly. Behind this fear is an even worse fear: that their books are bad not because they're rushed first drafts pumped out in manic ten-hour days, but because that's the true extent of their abilities.

"Professionalism" is the only excuse they have for publishing stories they're not proud of. "My books aren't as good as they could be because I write them quickly and don't have time to polish them. I have to write them quickly because I'm a professional and I need to make a living. It's not my lack of talent; it's cold, hard economic reality!"

To protect their egos, they must preserve the illusion that the only way to succeed as an author is to publish a lot of stuff rapidly. And they do that by attacking anyone who suggests otherwise as a "wannabe," "amateur," or "hobbyist" with naive ideals and no business sense.

Note: I'm only talking about the people who say nasty things to and about less prolific writers. There are people out there who can write quickly and well. But the ones who do have no need to go around brandishing the total number of covers with their names on them like a defensive weapon. They don't give a tinker's damn how much time other writers spend with Microsoft Word each day, or feel the need to bash into their more leisurely colleagues' heads that they'd "better not expect to make any money."

The only ones who behave that way think they have something to prove, some unspoken threat to defend themselves against. They feel guilty and vulnerable because they know, not so deep down, that they are not producing good work. And they're scared that if they stop squawking that they're "professionals," someone might notice.

To confident writers, and to readers, there's no difference between "hobbyist" and "professional." They judge by the quality of work, not by how long it took to produce it. If I see an actor who only does community theatre on weekends, and he's good, I say, "That is a brilliant actor." I don't sniff, "Yeah, that one performance was okay, but you can only be a real actor if you've done at least ten productions and spoken a million lines and have at least one Hollywood contract."

Numbers like that are meaningless, and tossing them around to establish superiority over complete strangers is incredibly pathetic. If the only point of pride you have in your words is that there are X hundred thousand of them, that's pretty darned sad.

I'm hacking away dutifully at my comedy novel, Kagemusha, which is maybe, tentatively, halfway finished. It's difficult to tell because I only put a green check mark next to the chapter on my whiteboard when it's 100% finished, but there are many chapters of sort-of finished prose with partial skeleton text. Cumulatively, the finished parts may add up to "half."

It's not a long novel—it will probably be quite short, actually—but it's slow going because being hilarious is hard. Sometimes I get tired of being hilarious, or the muse of hilarity goes out to lunch and won't pick up her cell no matter how many times I call. Then I outline my next project after Kagemusha: a YA series about a rag-tag bunch of teen sleuths solving not-quite crimes.

From the adult perspective, children and teens don't have much to worry about. All they have to do is sit around being taught things and consuming things adults prepare for them. But believe me, young people do a lot of worrying. They probably stress out more than most adults. And they take everything seriously.

Say your heroine is Suzie and her best friend is Charlotte. Suzie has a crush on Mike. But Mike asks Charlotte to the movies. Charlotte says yes.

The average adult reader's reaction: "Okay? So?"

The average eighth-grade reader's reaction: "OMG poor Suzie! Charlotte is the worst person on the planet! I hope she gets into a horrible car accident and dies!"

To many teenagers, every trivial issue is a matter of life and death. Whenever I stumble upon an internet forum with a lot of young users, it's like walking into an emotion tsunami. The smallest slight, like "Um, I think you're wrong," is a betrayal akin to burning an entire family alive and dancing on the ashes. Teens get upset if they're five pounds heavier than the prettiest girl in class, if they remember that one time a classmate made fun of their favorite shirt two years ago, or if there are no more turkey sandwiches in the lunch line and the only option left is ham. Fine, then, they'll just freaking starve to death! Today is the worst day ever! FML!

Children and teens also don't see humor in foolish characters or in awkward or upsetting situations. My mother says when I was little, she'd sit me in front of the TV with a VHS of Winnie the Pooh Bear—the one where he gets stuck in a hole because his tummy's too big. In the beginning of the video, Pooh would be doing his morning calisthenics, bend down to touch his toes, and riiip went his teddy-bear seams. And I would start wailing. I thought Pooh was hurt and his stuffing would bleed out and he was going to die. I'm sure the Disney animators thought it was cute, but to my three-year-old self it was cruel and graphic violence.

When I got a bit older, I bore an intense hatred for the silly antagonists in cartoons. Angelica Pickles from Rugrats, DeeDee from Dexter's Laboratory, Squidward from Spongebob Squarepants...I thought they were insufferable and the shows would be so much better without them. Watching episodes as an adult, however, I found those "villains" to be the funniest characters in the cast. I didn't see it as a child because, to children, characters are like people in real life. They don't see parody or commentary like adults do. Angelica would be annoying in real life, so they find Angelica annoying in the cartoon—they can't see Angelica as an exaggerated caricature, or sympathize with the haggard adults she leads by the nose.

This is how many books for children and teens can get prestigious awards and rave reviews from adults, but the young people they're written for can despise them. The 2001 YA novel Flipped, which made me develop a serious writer-crush on Wendelin Van Draanen, has overwhelmingly positive reviews on Goodreads. But if you filter to the one- and two-stars, they're almost all from children and teens.

I really dont like this book but for one and only one reason. The girl in it is sooooo annoying!!! I dont get how she can be so annoying and so different and not even notice that the boy doesnt like her.

While reading the book, I kept thinking "Bryce is an idiot." And I hate his father. And "Juli should wake up." If I could, I seriously would slap a majority of the characters.

ooh another terrible book.... Just Wendelin Van Draanen should get a new job.. Because writting is NOT working out....

Here we have an Angelica Pickles dilemma. The humor in Flipped comes from the familiar flaws in the two eighth-grade protagonists—the superficial Bryce who acts cool but is really a coward, and the idealistic Julianna who's blissfully unaware of her effect on others and swept up in puppy love. But in order to see the "funny," you have to be a certain distance away from the age group.

One Goodreads teen admonishes, "this book sucks...DO NOT read it if you are over 12." But it would be more accurate to say, "You might not like it if you're over 10 and under 20." Flipped is brilliant if you're 25, remembering being an idiot at 14. But if you're 14, wrapped up in the same mindset Bryce and Juli have, you might just see a stupid boy and an annoying girl.

Even the teens who like Flipped don't necessarily see it for what it is. They coo over it because it's "romantic." But Flipped isn't a romance. It's a coming-of-age story about two kids who start to question the things they've always taken for granted and learn to see beyond the surface to a person's real nature. The ending is left open, but it's clear that both Bryce and Juli still have a lot of growing up to do before they're ready for romantic relationships.

This, to a teenager, is simply unacceptable. Another thing about young people—and adults are prone to it too—is that in any story featuring a male and a female, one question is of first and foremost importance: "Do they get together or not?"

I remember, as a preteen, visiting the Harry Potter fan forums. The young fans didn't talk about magic. They didn't talk about plot. I don't think the name "Voldemort" came up once. The only topic anyone thought worth talking about was who would be romantically paired with whom. You had Harry/Hermione shippers, Ron/Hermione shippers, Harry/Ginny shippers, Draco/Hermione shippers...and people would argue endlessly and with great fervor for their favorite couple. And the fan fiction was all about sex. No magical adventures, no tangos with heinous villains, no comedic jaunts to Hogsmeade—just Harry and Hermione having sex, Ron and Hermione having sex, Harry and Ginny having sex, etc. etc.

Maybe Disney movies teach children that marriage equals happily ever after and vice versa, and they grow up to believe you can't have an ending without couplings. Or maybe preteens and teens are just pumped full of strange new hormones and romance takes up a disproportionate number of their daily thoughts. In any case, from the book discussions held by teens around the world, it seems like every YA novel ever written is a romance with some other stuff as a backdrop. Dystopias, fairies, vampires and werewolves, death, disease, and destruction—it's all just scenery for the real issue here: will Girl A end up with Boy B? Or maybe Boy C? (Spoiler: It's never Boy C.)

You can write whatever you want, but if you write about characters younger than mid-twenties, you may have to choose whether your genre is children's/middle grade/YA, or if you're really writing about young people for adults. The two demographics may react very differently to your story. And if you decide you want to write for young readers, you'll have to do a bit more than simplify your vocabulary to get the effects you want.