Author Thoughts from a Figment live chat

I participated in my first "live chat" the other night. It was like sneaking a peek at somebody's Gchat (although apparently 500 other people were doing it, so I guess I'm not that big a creep). The chat, run by This Is Teen and Figment, went down between two of my very favorite authors: Maggie Stiefvater and Lucy Christopher. It was supposed to be about voice, but their answers spanned a whole range of writerly topics that had me taking avid notes. 

On Character:

- You don't always have to know how the story ends, but you should know the end of the characters' emotional arc. In other words, what do they learn? Everything that happens to a character in the story leads to the realization they come to by the end.

- It's OK to steal people. (I liked this one...because I'm constantly stealing sayings and nervous gestures from people from strange and familiar). Keep writing fresh by watching how people react to things; their speech patterns and movements; their turns of phrase.

- Read out loud to see how a character's voice is shaping up; it's great for objectivity and for 'hearing' what isn't working for your characters.

- The most important thing is that your character be consistent and believable and true to themselves...

- I think it comes back to being true to the individual you're writing. You don't ask "would a teen say this?" you ask "would my character say this?"

- Ask yourself: who is it that your character projects? Who are they really on the inside? You need to know the 'why' when you're the author. WHY are your characters acting the way they do? Don't worry about the physical things like eye color and hair length...worry about motivation, what propels them.

- Reading out loud helps you to know if you're being yourself, or if you're being your character.

Quotables:

From Maggie: "...the key to true storytelling is to be specific". You can find a character's 'truth' when their reactions become predictable, and you know what it is that drives them

LC: "I write stories about places I want to explore / think about more / have issues with / have an interesting cultural resonance."

MS: "Absolutely. A setting is like a character where you have to ask yourself, why are things that way HERE. Not anywhere else, but HERE."

MS: "So if there is something peculiar and interesting about you, something cool you've done, that is what you should mine for your novels."

MG: "In my head, the story already exists, and my job is to dust carefully away until I find it beneath all the silt. And if I smash too hard and impose my will and bust past writer's block without thinking about what is really stopping me from writing, I'll smash off the statue's arm. So I need to go carefully and trust my gut, and when they are right, I can FEEL it. I see it right there. The story I always meant to write."

MS: "If you know how a character is going to react, you know what they're going to say."

It was a fantastic chat, and well worth sipping wine through. If you want to replay it in all its glory. go here! 

April Photo Collection: Tripping Through The South

I recently went on a stellar road trip through the South. Besides slaking my general thirst for travel, it allowed me to flirt with my ever-growing love of the South. When I was a kid, I moved from D.C. to Northern Virginia. When friends would tease me about the fact that I was now Southern, I would grow very grave and maudlin. "I am NOT A Southerner," I'd say. As if being Southern were akin to having shingles. I don't know what that was about; now, I like the South a lot. I like that it has retained so much local flavor and cultural heritage. I like that people say hello to strangers instead of assuming they want to mug you.

Here are some trip highlights, photo montage style.

The view over our first morning's coffee in Atlanta, Georgia.

Spanish moss in one of Savannah, Georgia's many squares. I love this stuff!

A fantastically crowded second-hand bookstore in Savannah. Hello, lover. 

Tori and I discovering sweet tea vodka in Charleston, SC (and looking a little bit devilish)

Outside our B&B in Charleston. The whole city smelled like this Confederate jasmine, which was, in a word, glorious.

Sitting in our garden patio on our second morning in Charleston. 

Our boat ride through the amazing Cypress Gardens, SC. For five bucks you get to paddle yourself around a stunning swamp and wave to the alligators!

This swampy smelled quite nice. The water's black because of all the tanins, but when you stuck your hand in it, it was actually quite clear. 

Something happens to me when I am behind my camera. I decide that whatever I'm  shooting isn't actually a threat to me. So despite Tori's protests about toothy grins and that whole "don't bait the gators" rule, I convinced her to paddle up to it. We started out this close...

...and ended up this close. Actually, this is as close as we got before I dropped my camera and we ran into its log. Now I know what an angry, hissing gator looks like. Whoops.

Should Do vs. Driven To Do

The amazing driftwood teepee that, sadly, is no more.

I have been so absent from the blog this month. A part of me has missed it, but another part of me didn't like the fact that it was starting to fall into the dreaded category of something I really "should be doing". 

Having lived an oddly nomadic, sporadic, all-over-the-place lifestyle for the last year or so, I've had a lot of time to think about the difference between the things you think you should be doing versus the things you feel driven to do. There are always things that you should be doing (paying taxes, say...or brushing your teeth). But to me, those are things you have to do. I'm talking about when the things you once loved to do start to feel like obligations. When a job you were excited by becomes an obligation. When this happens to me, it always seems like an ominous feeling. I don't ever do my best work when I come to it begrudgingly: a part of me is wondering why I'm doing it at all. Of course, just because something isn't inspiring you, doesn't mean you should stop doing it. I'm pretty sure bosses don't think "I'm just not feeling motivated and inspired today" is a good enough reason to skip out on work. I'm pretty sure that it doesn't get novels finished, either. 

Still, I recently read Stephen King's On Writing and was stuck by something he said. “They pay me absurd amounts of money,” he observes, “For something that I would do for free”. I think when something you started for fun starts to feel like an obligation, it's starting to lose its point and purpose. Maybe it's time to spend time away from it, to let it become a thing you feel inspired to do. If there's anything I've learned this year, it's that passion and conviction are necessary to make any part of your life thrive, and that "should do" and "driven to do" should overlap as often as possible.

Here are some of the things I've been doing, and that I'm still excited about:

1. I took a week-long Southern road trip with one of my oldest, dearest, craziest friends.

2. Signed a teaching contract.

3. Found an awesome place to move this summer.

4. Made many cards and envelopes out of old book pages/illustrations and started on online Etsy shop.

5. Made dinners and toasted glasses of wine with amazing friends, old and new.

6. Watched my brother graduate.

7. Wrote almost 30,000 words of my new WIP, currently known as UndergroundNovel.  

 8. Taking pictures of Mom's local woods and beach as they get dressed for summer.

Current song obsession: From The Woods!! by James Vincent McMorrow