Start the week groovy with Terra Naomi "Santeria"

Check out Terra Naomi's timeline.

Writing through the holiday season

If someone were to ask me, in the months of November and December, which writing gift I would most value, I'd say, hands down, what I most need is focus. It's a distracting time of year, with guilt-inducing "should-be-doings" staring me in the face wherever I look.

Working around the holidays requires careful time management, goal-setting, and most of all, realistic expectations. Figure out which holiday routines truly make you and your loved ones happy. Allot these "deal-breakers" a finite amount of time on specific, determined days. If there are traditions that no one cares that much about (or that you're doing 100% of the work for), try setting them aside for one year to find out if they're missed. Then, you and your family can reset your priorities for next year.

A few years back, I was down to the wire on a December deadline, had a book coming out (with the requisite speaking/signing activities scheduled), and had galleys (page proofs) show up as well. That year, I ordered nearly all gifts online (delivered directly to out of town recipients), didn't get out Christmas cards, and (insert loud gasps) never got to the inside decorations, including the tree. And we went out for dinner, too.

The moral of the story is that the world did not come to an end. But in the years since, we figured out which things mattered to us as a family and which no one was willing to pitch in to lend a hand with. And I've learned to put aside the pressure to be the next Martha Stewart and keep myself sane by keeping the writing fires burning to a realistic degree.

So how much writing are you able to accomplish during November and December? How do you balance work and family?

Charlie Haas reads from "The Enthusiast"

Charlie Haas reads from The Enthusiast at Opium Magazine's Literary Death Match. Enjoy!

Colleen's favorite reads of 2009

This year, I'm extremely thankful for a wealth of terrific reading material.

I've read a lot of great books in 2009, but over on the blog Writers Read, I'm discussing some of my favorites for this year.

Check it out and let me know, have you read any of these books? What did you think? And if not, what have been your favorite reads of 2009 (so far, at least)?

(You know, besides Joni's A Little Bit Wicked and my Beneath Bone Lake? ;)

Photo: Burgess Meredith, from "Time Enough at Last," a.k.a. the best episode ever of The Twilight Zone

thanks

The Thankful Writer

Now that I have your attention... this Thanksgiving, I'm pushing aside gripes and worries about contracts, reviews, revisions, and the economy to give thanks for the blessings the writing life has bestowed. I'm thankful for the family who support my efforts, the sharp eyes and good will of my critique partners, and the cameraderie of writing buds.

I'm grateful to have found an agent who not only stands up for me but pushes me to take time and risks, for the editors whose thoughtful suggestions and enthusiasm have made me want to work my tail off, and the readers who vote with their wallets to keep me gainfully employed, recommend me to their friends, and write me sweet notes on occasion.

With its ever-changing challenges, the writing life keeps me on my toes and never offers me a chance to grow bored or complacent. Inspired to always strive for better, I continually feel pushed to - and sometimes beyond - my limits. I feel as if I'm doing the work I'm meant to do, and I'm proud of what I'm producing.

I'm thankful, too, to be living in a place and time where creativity is valued rather than stifled, where women's voices matter. Where individual's voices matter, no matter what the writer's ethnic heritage, socioeconomic background, or education level.

Finally, I'm thankful for the supportive community of writers, along with a community of readers hungering for the next great story.

So what aspects of your writing life are you most thankful for this year?

"My cockeyed Valentine to Japan" (3 Questions for Wendy Tokunaga, author of "Love in Translation")

Japan and Japanese culture have been major influences on the life and writing of Wendy Nelson Tokunaga. She signed a two-book deal with St. Martin’s just as she was beginning the MFA in Writing program at the University of San Francisco in 2006. Midori by Moonlight came out the following year with terrific reviews, and Love in Translation hits bookstores next week. From the press kit:

After receiving a puzzling phone call and a box full of mysteries, 33-year-old fledgling singer Celeste Duncan is off to Japan to search for a long, lost relative who could hold the key to the identity of the father she never knew. This overwhelming place where nothing is quite as it seems, leading her to ask: What is the true meaning of family? And what does it mean to discover your own voice?

So I have to start by asking, Wendy, how did you discover your voice as a writer?
I’d always written stories as a child and even published my own magazine (I think I had three subscribers!). When I was a teenager I plunged into songwriting, playing bass guitar and singing in my own bands. I didn’t start writing fiction until I was in my forties, inspired by colleagues at a technical writing job I had who wrote fiction on the side. I decided to take a creative writing night course at a community college and began writing short stories. Over the years that led to a few published stories, then many stabs at novel writing and then finally a two-book publishing deal.

How did you come to this particular story? Or did this story come to you?
This novel is my cockeyed valentine to Japan, a place I have both adored and abhorred over the years and a place that has had a huge impact on my life. Japan and Japanese culture have been my muses. My first novel, Midori by Moonlight, is about a Japanese woman who finds herself in California. Love in Translation is about Celeste, a Californian who finds herself quite unexpectedly in Japan on a search for a long, lost relative who may hold the key to the identity of the father she never knew. The novel is also about the power of music, another force in my life. I met my Japanese husband when I put out an ad for someone to translate my song lyrics into Japanese. Subsequently he ended up helping me record a demo of my songs with me singing in Japanese. In the book when Celeste, a fledgling singer, learns to sing a Japanese song her life changes in ways she never imagined.

Now that you've hit your stride as a novelist, what do you love and hate about the process?
My favorite part of writing is revision and my least favorite is writing new material. I find it excruciating to write a rough draft, just to get the bare bones of the story on paper, no matter how clearly the story may be outlined and in my head. This is when my inner critic is the most vocal and I must fight with her constantly. The most pleasurable part is when I can revise, sculpt, and polish the prose and also experiment with adding elements and cutting others. This is when I read my work aloud, which I find fun and very helpful, in attempting to get the prose sounding just right.

Click here to read Chapter One of Love in Translation. And look for it in bookstores next week. Here's the trailer...

Best. Pie. Ever. Happy Thanksgiving!

If I'm gonna gain weight (I baked two, heaven help me) then I'll feel much better if everyone else does, too, so I'm sharing our family's very favorite pumpkin pie/cheesecake recipe. Shamelessly ripped from the old classic Great Home Cooking in America (c. 1976 from the editors of Farm Journal - so it has to be good).

I defy you not to love this.

Festive Pumpkin Pie

1 (8 oz.) pkg. cream cheese, softened
3/4 c. brown sugar, firmly packed
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
3 eggs
1 c. canned pumpkin
1 c. milk
1 tsp. vanilla
1 unbaked 9" pie shell, edges crimped high
1 c. dairy sour cream
2 tblsp. sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cream together cream cheese, brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, salt, and cloves. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Blend in pumpkin, milk, and vanilla. Pour into pie shell.

Bake 45-50 min. or until knife inserted halfway between center and edge comes out clean.

Blend sour cream and sugar. Spread over top of pie. Return pie to oven 3 to 5 minutes or just until topping is set.

Chill before serving. Loosen your belt!

A Tip from Twain: Revision

As all you NaNoWrMo folks (and others) finish up manuscripts, here's a great tip from the great beyond to help guide you with what may be the most crucial phase of the writing process.

You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.
- Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, from a letter to Orion Clemens, 23 March 1878

Have a great Thanksgiving week, everyone!

Sunday groove: Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself"

"I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fiber your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you."

Walt Whitman printed 795 copies of Leaves of Grass in 1855.

About two dozen sold.

Seven Deadly Sins of Dialogue

When I'm reading contest entries that fall short, one of the biggest pitfalls I encounter has to do with dialogue. I'm also most at a loss when commenting on this area, which is definitely more art than science. Here are a few things I do know. Since I'm crabby because the dumb dog woke me up way early , they are totally unfiltered for politeness.

Deal with it. ;)

Dialogue should never be:
1. Dull.

"How are you, Alphonse?"
"I am fine, Susie. How are you?"

You're not out to transcribe banal, everyday chit chat. We can all hear that at home. Any dialogue on the page should serve the plot and/or characterization.

2. Stiff.

"I must say, Sue, you are looking especially fetching today in your pretty, red sweater."
Susie's smile turned to a frown. "I am surprised at you, Alphonse. I never realized you were a drug fiend."

Note the overuse of names as a form of address, lack of contractions, use of complete sentences, and bizarre, language that's out of sync with your story's time period.

3. Expository (used solely for the purpose of giving the reader information, especially when it's info the characters already know.

"As you may remember from our high school days together, Susie, I have a rare condition called vocabulus anachronistis, whose major symptoms manifest themselves in bizarre language choices, wolfish eye-goggling, and repulsion of the opposite sex."
"And you may remember, Alphonse, last October's restraining order is still in effect, and my violence-prone daddy's still on the police force."

4. Unintentionally hilarious.

It's definitely not cool when the writer isn't in on the joke.

5. A literal transcription of natural speech (complete with all the "ums," "ers," stammering, and pointless asides.)

Great dialogue is zingy, deep/clever, and makes you wish you could express yourself so well in the heat of the moment. Since the majority of writers I know are introverted nebbishes at heart (no, I don't mean you, personally, of course!) dialogue gives us a chance to shine!

6. Homogenized.

If your book's Harvard-educated philosopher sounds exactly like 82-year-old Daisy from the corner sub shop, you've got yourself a problem.

7. Stupid.

Readers should not be gagging at the cliches, rolling their eyes at the obviousness, or thinking of filing sexual harassment charges against your story's hero.

If you're having trouble with your dialogue, try reading it aloud without the story's narrative, listening to actual human beings talk (eavesdropping in stores, restaurants, and coffee shops is a critical writers' skill), and reading/studying plenty of good books to develop an ear for it. I won't lie to you - a lot of writing dialogue is inborn talent, but you can and will get better at it if you make an effort. And quiz yourself about whether you've committed one of these seven deadly sins.

Not the usual 9 to 5 (looking at the workstyles of creative people)

"Daily Routines" is an interesting little blog that examines the way creative people work.

Simone de Beauvoir
"I'm always in a hurry to get going, though in general I dislike starting the day. I first have tea and then, at about ten o'clock, I get under way and work until one. Then I see my friends and after that, at five o'clock, I go back to work and continue until nine. I have no difficulty in picking up the thread in the afternoon. Most often it's a pleasure to work." (She adds that she works every afternoon, hanging out at Sartre's place.)

Stephen King
“There’s a certain time I sit down, from 8:00 to 8:30, somewhere within that half hour every morning. I have my vitamin pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places. The cumulative purpose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind, you’re going to be dreaming soon. It’s not any different than a bedtime routine.”

C.S. Lewis
"At five a man should be at work again, and at it till seven. Then, at the evening meal and after, comes the time for talk, or, failing that, for lighter reading; and unless you are making a night of it with your cronies (and at Bookham I had none) there is no reason why you should ever be in bed later than eleven. But when is a man to write his letters? You forget that I am describing the happy life I led with Kirk or the ideal life I would live now if I could. And it is essential of the happy life that a man would have almost no mail and never dread the postman's knock."

"Daily Routines" features a diverse selection of fascinating people from Obama and Churchill to John Grisham, Mr. Rogers, and Thomas Friedman, who sums up exactly the way I feel about the writing life: "Honestly, I still can't wait to get my pants on in the morning."

Check it out.

Why Writing Gets Harder

As I labor to revise practically every paragraph of a recent proposal (after rewriting from scratch and then sending off another) I asked myself the same question novelists have been whining since Gutenberg:

When does this %$@#! get easier?

Here's the bad news. I see no sign it ever does.

For the past ten years, I've spent the bulk of my time writing. I've seen fifteen books published and seventeen contracted. Yet I often look back fondly on the days when I was scrambling to squeeze twenty minutes or an hour out of days packed with full-time (plus, if you count the many hours a week spent grading papers) teaching, marriage, and motherhood, days when every time I sat down at my computer, the story spilled out in what seemed like an effortless torrent.

In those halcyon days, it was all about the story and not about the craft. I didn't have time or space enough in my life for worries about reviews, rejection, and sales numbers. I didn't have to care about whether checks showed up late or ever, because I wasn't counting on them.

I do remember wanting "in the club" with an intensity so keen it was painful and the terrible frustration of hovering at the "almost" level for so long. But publishing was the big goal, and I didn't stop to differentiate between starvation-wage, lower-echelon publication and the big-time. I didn't spend much time worrying about advances, royalty rates, or book awards. I just wanted my shot.

And that's all as it should be.

As one crosses over to become a professional, however, the concerns change, the bar rises, and all of this tends to make writing harder instead of easier. What we've learned impinges on the act, and if we're not careful, on the joy of our endeavor.

But here's the good news. Once the writer accepts the inherent challenges as part of the attraction and comes to grip with the constancy of struggle, she can embrace the work itself, in all humility. She can look back at her progress, and based on her own history, take heart in the knowledge that she's faced tough roads in the past and overcome them, that she's slogged through the mire to achieve (however modestly) her goals.

She can tell herself: I've done it before, I can do it again. And this time, I'm taking everything I've learned and using it to make this book a little better.

That's what keeps us going. That's what makes us strong.

So what about the rest of you? What aspects of writing do you find getting tougher? Which come easier?