Posts by Robin LaFevers
It is a truth rarely acknowledged that the act of writing often comes with an entire catalog of weighted expectations attached to it. For published writers, it is SO easy for our self worth to become wrapped up in our commercial performance; it is almost inevitable that the weight of those hopes and expectations will leak out into our work. Maybe this book will bring us the coveted significant advance, or maybe this is the one the publisher will throw the entire weight and heft of their marketing and promotion machine behind. Maybe this will be the book that hits the list or earns a starred review or finally—finally—causes that elusive fame and recognition to appear.
Published authors don’t have the corner on the expectation market. Pre-published authors are often just as weighed down. This will be the manuscript that lands me the Famous Agent, or grabs the attention of the Rock Star Editor, or at the very least gets me that damned contract I’ve been dreaming of for YEARS.
This will be the book/manuscript that validates me in the eyes of
my family,
my friends,
or my peers.
This will be the book that brings me the recognition I crave. The recognition that will finally allow me to feel that I’ve made it, that I’ve achieved something of worth and value.
This book/manuscript will—at last!—make me a Real, Fully Licensed Writer instead of the impostor I’ve actually been all these years.
Dear reader, let me share with you a truth I’ve discovered the hard way—none of those things will bring you what you seek or make you feel validated. Or, if they do, it will only be for the most fleeting of moments.
As Anne Lamott so brilliantly said: “Expectations are resentments under construction.” In truth, they are one of the surest fire ways to suck the creative joy our of our lives and work.
Read MoreOver the years, I have heard people talk about writing being excellent therapy. Not writing in personal journals mind you, but writing fiction.
I will admit it–I laughed. Long and resoundingly. How self indulgent, I thought, to presume one’s inner struggles would be remotely interesting to anyone else. How narcissistic, to have yourself in the starring role of every piece of your fiction.
But dear reader, after sixteen books and over 17,000 logged hours of writing time, I am no longer laughing. Turn’s out, the joke’s on me.
Writing has been incredible therapy, albeit not in the way people told me it would.
It has not provided me an avenue to work out my past and my own emotional baggage on the page. Or at least, I should say it did not knowingly provide that. Looking back over my work now, it is somewhat humbling to be able to clearly see the stepping stones of my own personal growth.
But even more than that, the hard work we do to make our writing better spills out into our non-writing life. How could it not? One of the first lessons we learn about characters is that whatever conflict they are going through affects all aspects of their lives. So when we as writers push ourselves to strive and grow, of course that is going to spill out into other aspects of our lives as well.
One of the things that I’ve discovered over the years is that writers must not only be keen observers of human nature, but must also understand what they see. They must be able to put it in a larger context, not just record the details. In order to create satisfying, transformative character arcs and journeys, we must become intimately acquainted with the human psyche.
After years spent pouring over books discussing archetype and theme, character traits, and the psychology of story, we cannot help learning about ourselves in the process. What motivates us, what role story has played in our lives, what our passions are, and where our hot buttons are hidden.
As we struggle to drill down to our most important core themes, to find our most unique voice and worldview, we have no choice but to discard all the masks we wear for the world, to set aside all the roles we play and pare down to the essence of our Self. Not to be self indulgent, but to create work as uniquely our own as we can. To serve the Story rather than the teller. To get the hell out of the way so that the characters can come to life on the page.
Read MoreOne of the hardest stages of your writing journey—one that will take the most dedication, commitment, and self exploration—is the ‘nearly there’ stage. This is the stage where your critique partners love your work, you’re getting personalized rejections from agents or editors and highly complimentary reports from your beta readers, and yet . . . no sale or offer has materialized.
Remember those old cartoons, the ones where the character is in the desert, hot sun beating down on him, parched throat, covered in dust, nearly perishing of thirst as he slowly drags himself to the enticing oasis that is just within his reach—only to have it disappear just as he reaches it because it’s a frickin’ mirage?
That’s what the ‘nearly there’ stage feels like. Especially if you’ve been stuck in it more than a couple of years.
But the nearly there stage is a vital, absolutely critical part of our writerly development. In fact I know many agents and editors who would argue that this is exactly the stage that is missing from so many aspiring authors’ journeys and that lack has held them back. So I thought I’d share some thoughts on how to not only survive, but hopefully thrive during this stage.
Yes, I said thrive, because the truth is, this ‘nearly there’ stage where you’ve mastered the basics of craft can be a really, really fun part of your journey—especially if you take your focus off the finish line for a while and throw yourself into the spirit of experimentation and improving.
It can be a gift, a chance to strengthen your writing and your voice so that when you do get published, you have a greater chance of being published well, rather than simply being published.
The critically important tasks of the nearly there stage are mastering the craft at an advanced level, enriching the depth and quality of your stories, and coming to terms with the relationship between you and writing.
Most of us expect to take some time to Master The Craft. A year or two, maybe three. But when our apprenticeship starts to draw out far, far beyond that, it can become dispiriting and discouraging, and all too easy to throw in the towel.
We are so in love with the idea that someone is so naturally talented that they can sit down and write a book in six months, their first book, mind you, and have it published to great fanfare. Those are the publishing stories that get retold the most, so often that they almost become urban legend and that then becomes the expectation rather than the true outlier it is.
Read MoreYes, I’m talking to you. The one over there, not meeting my eyes for fear I’ll see the self doubt and despair that have begun to edge out your sense of purpose and confidence.
And you, there in the corner, looking everywhere but at me, afraid to believe that your time is almost here. It is. You’ve been working hard, for long years, carving out time, pouring your heart and soul into your work, perfecting your craft, and, maybe most important of all, not giving up. So yes, your turn is coming. It’s just around the corner there where you can’t see it, but it’s heading your way. It might be here in two months or maybe two years, but it will be here. Unless you give up. Then it will never arrive, so whatever you do now, don’t give up.
I would like to sneak in before the crowd and be the very first to congratulate you on your impending publication, so CONGRATULATIONS!!
However, since I probably won’t be there when you receive the actual news, I’d like to take this moment to share a few survival strategies with you, ones that have served me well over the years.
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“To create, one cannot be constantly other focused.” Gail Sheehy
The pressing demands of daily life have a rather sobering ability to suck all of the creative oxygen out of a room. They don’t even have to be big, catastrophic type demands. Sometimes simply the endless dripping of life’s mundanities can wear away our reserves until there is nothing left. There are just so very many ways to be pulled in the direction of others–in spite of how necessary facing inward is in order to give free voice to our creativity
The first place my mind went when I read that quote was of that stage of life when noisy, adorable children or loud, boisterous teens are always around. I have such compassion and sympathy for frazzled parents out there who sometimes despair of having two minutes to call their own, let alone actually produce anything anyone might want to read. It is certainly no accident that my own strongest work was produced once my kids left for college.
But within about five minutes of their departure, I quickly discovered there are lots and lots of additional ways to be pulled outward and become other focused.
Extended family
Financial pressures
Mental and emotional clutter
The internet
Social media
Gatekeepers: critique partners, agents, editors, reviewers
The “market”
Readers
To create, we have to go inward and listen. One needs freedom to get lost in the flow. To get bored. For some, this can be easy to accomplish, for others, not so much. A lot will depend on our temperament and stage of life.
Our inability to go inward might very well be because we’re stuck in a stage of life where more immediate needs overwhelm us so thoroughly that we despair of ever writing again. When this happens, it helps to remember that while it is highly possible we can do everything, we very likely won’t be able to do it all at once.
The other mistake we often make is in thinking that because someone we know can do it, that all of us should be able to do ALL THE THINGS AT ONCE as well. Or vice versa—we think that because we can do everything at once, that everyone has that option if they just get serious and disciplined about it. But that completely ignores the reality that all of us have different support systems, temperaments, coping strategies, and radically different family dynamics. Some people, the lucky, lucky few, will be able to do everything they desire precisely when they desire it, but they are most emphatically the exception. (And yes, I know those lucky few work hard as well, but there is no question that luck is also involved.)
Often, finding the time to write isn’t only about the physical, butt in chair time, but about the more difficult task of finding the mental space and sustained concentration needed for creating.
Read MoreWhen I was growing up, in addition to avoiding the traditionally forbidden topics of sex, politics, and religion, my family added money to that list. I suspect my family was not alone in this.
The thing is, it’s nearly impossible to make solid, informed decisions about our careers when so much of the financial realities are clouded in uncertainty or hyperbole. There has been a lot written recently discussing the earning potential of self published authors, but what do the earnings of a slow build, mid-list, traditionally published author look like?
Before we get into the nitty gritty of that, it’s important to keep in mind that ebooks are still only a relatively small percentage of overall books sold—somewhere between 15-25%, depending on who you talk to and which numbers you go by, and Amazon sales as a percentage of total books sold is 27-30%. So while self publishing and e-only publishing numbers are by all accounts going up and up, there are still some places where traditional book sales are stronger. These percentages will depend a lot on your genre, as well as your publisher and their sales strengths. Interestingly, this is reflected in Bookscan numbers, with some titles’ Bookscan numbers only being 25-35% of their total sales, and other titles’ Bookscan numbers being fairly accurate for total books sold.
Real, solid numbers and info on advances and traditionally published earnings information can be hard to come by, in part because few people like to discuss their finances in so open a manner, but also because of the nature of publishing. Many contracts preclude the author discussing their advance, and even if it’s not forbidden, many are hesitant to do so, afraid they will dispel the romance and mystique of their actual place in the publishing pecking order.
Since my own experience is with middle grade and YA, that is what I am most familiar with. If there can be said to be any averages in publishing, then the average kid lit advances look something like this:
Middle grade (ages 8-12) advance $4,000-$10,000
YA advance $7,500-$25,000
There are other resources out there for other genres such as Brenda Hiatt’s Show Me the Money which is a survey of Romance advances and earnings, and Tobias Buckell’s survey on the advances of SF/F.
Which brings us again to the question of what those numbers might translate into over time. Well, Dear Reader, they probably look something like this . . . (prepare to be underwhelmed)
I sold my first book in 2002, and my writing income over the years has been as follows:
2002 $ 5,187
2003 $ 8,353
2004 $27,500 (Yay! Sold a trilogy)
2005 $ 4,142
2006 $ 12,841
2007 $15,282
2008 $28,470 (I had to augment that writing income with 2nd job because we had two kids in college that year. Ouch.)
2009 $58,516 (This was a BIG school visit year and I sold a second series. I also quit that second job.)
2010 $ 47,590
2011 $ 64,579
Not exactly a nice, steady stream, is it? Lots and lots of dry years, definitely. (2005 was particularly grim.) One of the saving graces was that in our family budgeting, I was only responsible for bringing in […]
Read MoreNone of us makes it through life without some kind of pain and loss and heartache. We are all of us, broken or wounded in some way. Some of these wounds arise from tragic circumstances: the loss of a loved when far before their time, abuse, neglect, betrayal.
But sometimes brokenness happens simply in the way any much used item becomes broken: a handle falls off after too many years of lifting too heavy a load, we crack due to extreme variations in temperature or weather, our insulation no longer insulate, or maybe we’ve just rusted through. Some of our wounds will be self inflicted as we humans have an astounding ability to get in our own way.
The thing is, these wounds and losses are necessary—as much a part of life as breathing, for without them it’s hard to make the case that we’ve been truly living.
It is in the acquiring of those wounds that we become truly human. As painful as they are—they can also bring wisdom and strength, compassion and humility. If we let them.
They can also bring bitterness and calcification, close us down and shut us up tight.
That is what makes stories so essential to the human experience—they take the creators’ wounds and turn them into something more—a gift that we dare to give the world.
I first came across this concept of wounds as gift in a book by Robert Rohr while researching theology for assassin nuns. And while he writes about spiritual matters, it occurred to me that the concept was equally true and relevant for writers.
While wounds bring suffering, they also allow us to grow and change and transform ourselves into something more. That is one of story’s most important roles—showing us how to do just that with the circumstances that life has thrown us.
This is why books and paintings and drawings and music are so important to us, not only individually, but as a society: it illuminates the pain and joy of life and renders it fascinating and compelling, but also healing.
As writers, I believe this is at the very core of what we do—we take the raw stuff of our pain and doubts and fears transforms them into something that is, in turn, transformative to others.
Read MorePhoto: Chris Halderman
Once upon a time in a galaxy far away a dead end job three lifetimes ago my boss had a motivational speaker come in. The man said two things that day that have proved more beneficial than the entire five years I spent in that job.
The first was that Algebra equals Life in that we are always trying to balance the equation and solve for the unknown. But for those of you who have mathphobias, don’t worry, I will not be talking about that today.
The second thing he said, and something I think is particularly useful for writers, was this:
That which is unspoken defines the relationship.
Think about that for a moment.
Those things you won’t talk about.
The apology never given.
The explanation never provided.
The promise never followed through on.
The secret never shared.
Those are what define the boundaries and contours of our relationships. The lines we will not cross. The conversations we will never allow ourselves to have. The intimacy we will never share. All the restrictions that will be imposed on our relationships because of the unspoken things that lie between us.
We humans are very, very good at not saying what truly bothers us and instead attack tangentially.
When we fight with our spouse over whose turn it is to do the dishes, it is rarely about the dishes. It’s more often about:
Even if the fight doesn’t have its roots in a big issue, it can often still not be about the dishes. Instead, it can be the equivalent of a stress tic. When we’re stressed, we kvetch, grumble, and find ways to siphon off that unhappiness without having to actually deal with it.
Any argument is usually rife with this sort of subtext.
Read MoreTwo days ago, I turned in a manuscript that I truly feared I would never finish. That has never happened to me before, and to have it happen when the final installment in a trilogy was DUE NOW, was as potentially disastrous as it was unacceptable.
Keep in mind that I am one of those people who does not subscribe to the belief that you must write every day; for me, forced writing does not always equal useable writing and can often times derail the story. I also believe that sometimes fallow periods and distance from our manuscripts are the best thing for them and those philosophies have served me well in the past. However, there are times when you simply have no choice.
My first option is always to try and coax the muse out to play, using music, collage, artist dates, whatever I think will work. But sometimes, she just isn’t coax-able. In this particular case, I think she was simply exhausted. And that’s okay, but as a writer with contracts and deadlines, I can’t always wait for her.
Here are eighteen tips I use to help me produce words when my creative muse packed up and left me, leaving no forwarding address. You can, in fact, get an entire book written this way, although it is not the most joyful of processes.
Some of the things on this list are about assembling the raw materials you will need to write the story. Others are about priming the writing pump to get the words flowing. Often, the suggestions will do both. But all of them are about building forward momentum and finding a way—any way—to get those damn words on the page.
I tend to think of them as the equivalent of hauling the bricks, bag of cement, mortar, etc. over to where I am going to build the wall, assembling all the things I will need. Sometimes, having them all there and ready provides motivational juice. Other times I still have to build brick by brick, but at least I don’t have to go hunting for all the parts.
And look! Just in time for NaNoWriMo!
1. Write in short bursts of 20-30 minutes or 500 words.
2. Take a short 10-15 minute walk. Bring a small notebook or recording device.
3. Even if you’re not an outliner see if you can at least find your story’s turning points. It is much easier to build drama and write across shorter distances and can seem more doable. Exploring either of the internal or external turning points can often produce scene ideas and help propel you forward.
External turning points are those moment when everything shifts for your character; surprises or twists are revealed; or the stakes suddenly become higher. (And if none of those happen, then brainstorm some immediately.)
Internal turning points—think about your character’s emotional arc, who she is at the beginning of the story and how she will be different at the end. Be sure there is enough there there, then look at the incremental steps she will need to take in order to achieve that emotional growth.
4. Assemble the story’s descriptive details and building blocks. Map out the world […]
Read More(I am on mad, crazy deadline and traveling this week, and so posting a ‘re-run’ from the old, Shrinking Violets blog. Forgive me! Hopefully it will be helpful to some of you. I will be back next month with our regularly scheduled original posts. <g>)
Save the Cat: A Bridge To Story
Much like the budding individualists I write about, I have a love/hate relationship with structure. A closet rebel, I get twitchy whenever told I must follow rules or take a particular action. And what is structure, other than a cohesive, integrated set of rules?
When I am writing, I want to create and play and not be encumbered by this banal concept of rules and structure. I want to be freeeeeeee. Or at least until my Work In Progress becomes a sprawling formless mass that threatens to envelop the entire west coast. Right about then is when I acknowledge that a little structure, judiciously applied, can actually be MORE freeing than an absolute absence of structure.
It’s kind of like a baby who is at the crawling stage. You can let him have free reign of the house, but you will have to intervene every 30 seconds and wear yourself out and crush his soul in the process. But! If you were to put up baby gates, well then, you are free to step back and let the little fellow roam freeeeeee, just as he was born to do—knowing that the gates will keep him in place.
Blake Snyder’s SAVE THE CAT plotting template, referred to by those in the know as the Beat Sheet or the “BS2,” is my writerly version of baby gates.
As consumers of story, we all have a very strong, intuitive sense of the elements that need to be in place to make a book or film satisfying. But as writers, sometimes intuitive knowledge isn’t enough to create a gripping, compelling narrative drive. For that we need help.
One of the things that I especially love about the beat sheet is that it takes narrative structure out of the lofty realms of literary criticism or writer’s workshops and puts the structure in terms that any reader would understand. Which is exactly as it should be, for that is who we are ultimately writing for—the reader—and Blake’s terminology and definitions help remind us of how the reader will experience the various stages of our story.
There is a question that many writers like to ponder: Which is more important, plot or character? Of course, the correct answer is that they’re both equally important; in fact, plot = character, for if you change one, you change the other.
I have come to believe that there is a similar correlation between narrative and structure. Story = structure. If you change one, you change the other. Without structure, there is no plot and without plot, there is no story, only a character study or an existential experiment. Without plot, characterization fizzles, since characters are best defined through their actions.
A story is an ephemeral thing—ideas, make-believe characters, things that never happened. It is all illusion and lies. What makes it all hang together in a believable, cohesive unit is structure. And if you get […]
Read MoreI’ve been thinking a lot about discipline as my current deadline comes screaming my way and contemplating the different ways we can approach writing. Although it is the one most talked about—and brandished with Puritan-like pride—discipline is not the only relationship that writers can have with their work. There are two others approaches as well: dedication and devotion.
But first, let’s talk about discipline.
For me, the word conjures up parochial school and the military, riding crops and rigidity, grim determination and lots of slogging.
Discipline is sterile, harsh. Discipline is the barbed wire fence that corrals our creative enthusiasm in order to force to actually flow in a meaningful and productive way.
I absolutely believe that discipline plays an important role in our growth as a writer, and seems especially important and useful at the very beginning when we’re flirting with this whole new seductive idea of writing. At its most positive, discipline is the building of new muscle stage. Discipline is the axle grease we apply to our flighty, frivolous perception of what is actually involved in learning how to create something.
Dedication is another thing entirely. Dedication suggests voluntary commitment rather than rigidity. Dedication is calm and measured. There is no element of harshness or punishment in dedication. If discipline is the stick, then dedication is a voluntary willingness and desire to reach for the carrot without the threat of that stick.
Dedication implies a level of mastery. It is the point at which you no longer need to apply discipline because your creative work flows out of your own organic desire to do that work.
Dedication is the point you reach where you understand that a hard day writing is far more satisfying and rewarding than a hard day at just about anything else. It is also about creating your identity as a writer, seeing what marvelous things you can do with those newly built muscles.
Read MoreAh, writers. We cling to our rituals and discipline as firmly (and as desperately) as any major league pitcher on a winning streak, and often with as much deeply held belief that they are the only thing allowing us to get words on the page or to make progress toward our dreams and aspirations.
But the truth is there isn’t one lesson that, when learned, will guarantee success. Rather, the lessons we learn on our creative journey are an intricately braided and overlapping matrix that create a safety net for us to fall back on when the inspiration, the muse, and the words fall silent. Furthermore, that safety net will differ for each and every writer.
For those of us trying to walk a creative path, it’s important we don’t mistake the deep wagon ruts we’ve created as a bona fide guaranteed path to success, or even happiness. Sometimes they are just that—ruts.
So how can we tell the difference?
I’m a big believer in the Universe as the ultimate teacher. I didn’t always feel that way. In my 20’s and 30’s I openly scoffed at such nonsense. It is probably safe to say that I scoffed one too many times so that the Universe itself staged a smackdown (or two) of epic proportions.
This is where stepping back from the immediacy of our own lives can sometimes be a big help. Take a deep psychic breath and just . . . step back, let go for a moment. Release the stranglehold we have on our goals and just sit with them.
In fact, you probably shouldn’t even accept that your initial goals or definitions of success are the right ones. How we define success will likely change—should change—as part of a healthy, vibrant creative path.
So how do we tell the difference between acquiring the necessary disciplinary muscles to achieve our goals from being stuck in a rut or having a stranglehold on our own creativity?
We get quiet and we listen. To ourselves. To our work. To the universe. And we especially listen to our heart. Our minds can trick us with rationalization and intellectual reasoning, but an artist’s truth tends to reside in her heart.
Read MoreThis is the fourth Writer Unboxed post I have started in as many days. I now have all these partial posts, each of at least 800 words, sitting on my desktop and determinedly not being the post I need them to be.
That seems to be happening to me a lot lately. If you follow me on Twitter or FB, you probably heard my cyber-bellow of frustration and gnashing of teeth when I had to cut 7,000 words from my manuscript. The manuscript that is due in less than two months and is only partially baked—and that’s being kind.
What you did not hear was my silent primal scream that lasted two whole days when I woke up to the fact that I was writing the wrong damn book and had to delete the FIRST TWO HUNDRED PAGES OF THE MANUSCRIPT.
(Have I mentioned it’s due in less than two months?)
So it comes as no surprise really, that I keep making false starts with my WU post. It’s the mode I appear to be stuck in.
I even know why. It’s Fear. Not only is fear the great mind killer (thank you Frank Herbert!) it is the great word killer, and creativity killer, and all-sorts-of-things killer.
I keep asking myself how I, a seasoned writer with fifteen books under my belt, could have taken such a wrong turn, how I could have gotten so utterly sidelined. And again, the answer is Fear.
My first clue was the painful slogging part. Yes, writing can be difficult—like figuring out an especially tricky puzzle can be difficult. But this time it was if I had to hike 100 miles to a distant quarry, dig each word out of the rock with my bare hands, then cart it back over the 100 miles (of rugged terrain, mind you) and wedge/hoist it into the manuscript. And sure, there are stretches of writing in each book that feel like that—but never, for me, the entire process.
My second clue should have been that nothing felt organic to the characters or their situations. That wonderful, alchemical process of turning ideas into living, breathing characters on the page simply wasn’t happening. It was a series of constant, conscious decisions as opposed to ever finally beginning to flow out of the characters themselves.
It’s easy (and oh-so-satisfying) to gash my teeth and rail at the writing gods, wondering why this had to happen. And why it had to happen NOW—with this deadline bearing down on me like a freight train. But of course, neither the timing nor the why of it is a coincidence.
Fear sauntered into the room, made itself comfortable, and refused to budge.
Read MoreI’m often asked why I write books for kids and teens instead of grown up books, and my answer is always this: I write for kids and teens because the books we read when we’re young begin to shape and define not only our reading tastes, but our very selves. Rarely do the books we read as adults become a part of our emotional DNA in quite the same way.
As many writers quickly learn, once we become a writer it can be much more difficult to simply read for pleasure. I am too aware of the craft, too attuned to what makes a book ‘work’, too well-acquainted with my own internal editor, to fully lose myself in a book. So when that does happen, it is a big, big deal; something to be celebrated but also—because I’m a writer—studied.
When I deeply love a book as an adult it’s usually because it has managed to rock my world in such a way that I know it has permanently changed how I look at and approach the craft of writing itself.
It occurred to me that these books become a part of my writerly DNA just as surely as the books of my youth became a part of my emotional DNA. Much like the books of my childhood, these stories open me up to the world of possibilities—not just in stories, but in craft. They show me what amazing things can be done within the scope of story. They give me a moment of true astonishment where I often think, “Oh, we’re allowed to do that?” and my writing world tilts on its axis.
As writers, it can be hugely eye opening to sit down and really look at which books have formed our writerly DNA.
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