Radio Silence, or A Giant Lack of Words

My daughter is going camping with friends in three days. Ever since this was decided, just yesterday, we have talked about nothing else. No, wait -- SHE has talked about nothing else. For hours, constantly, enthusiastically. Last night, something snapped, and I told her that if she used up all her words now, she'd have nothing to talk about with her friends on the trip.

For a little while anyway, she clammed up.

(Caveat: I love my kid like cake, but she is a major chatterer. And sometimes I wish there really was a Cone of Silence.)

I've been in the same place, sort of. I'm finishing the followup to Cold Kiss, and that's where all my words are. All of them. I actually grunted at my lovely husband this morning when he asked if I wanted breakfast. New Book has taken All the Words.

Which is partly why I haven't been here, blogging and chatting and being social. I have no words! (I borrowed these from the book, and I'm hoping my editor will understand.)

But later this month, it will be two months until the release of Cold Kiss! And I will have things to say, and contests and giveaways to share, and I will have words again. (I hope.) So stay tuned!

And wish me words.

I'm still not calling it "The Zone."

I crossed a line the other day. It's only a line in my head, but it's a big one.

On one side, anything can distract me from butt-in-chair, words-on-page writing. The way my nail polish is chipping only my thumb, and the idea that changing from My Auntie Drinks Chianti to Blue Me Away! will magically imbue my fingers with more speed, if not inspiration.

The sudden, urgent need to go to the grocery store to buy kale so I can make kale chips, which are supposed to be healthy and easy, truly a magical snack, even though I don't really like the idea of kale, or cooking.

An obsessive need to research the IMdB bios of the cast of Community because ... um, because.

A renewed acquaintance with my vacuum cleaner and toilet brush. Because writing in a clean house will be better than writing in a dusty, cat-hair-covered one!

Even I have trouble buying that last one.

To be honest, deadlines motivate me more than anything else. I need an end point, a fixed goal, or I can noodle around with words and ideas and failed scenes pretty much forever. But even deadlines aren't scary enough to keep me in my seat until something clicks, and I cross that line into the place where the cat could be horking up hairballs a foot away and I wouldn't be able to stop writing.

I'm there now, working on the sequel to Cold Kiss. Some days it's a little weird to raise my head and realize I'm not in the town where I went to high school, and it's not late December, and I actually have a husband, and kids, and a really serious need to take a shower and for the comfort of all involved put on a different sweater. And possibly eat something other than tea and dry Apple Jacks out of the box.

But I'm still not calling it "The Zone." Maybe ... The Fugue. Well, maybe not.

Sort of like a Dyson.

 Nova Ren Suma, author of the forthcoming Imaginary Girls (which I can't wait to read), tweeted this yesterday: 

 

As a reader, I love the download-free-sample option on my Kindle. As a writer, I see how essential it is to have a BRILLIANT first chapter.

I used to be an editor. I know how important those first few pages are -- sometimes I wouldn't even commit to the whole first chapter if the first pages didn't really suck me in. (See post title. You really need the "proper amount of suction.")

Everyone's busy. You can buy a new song in under a minute right on your phone, and if you don't like it, you can buy another one. You can watch movies right on your computer, and the screamingly funny episode of Raising Hope you missed on Hulu. (Well, I think you can. I actually don't ever miss them.)

In other words, if the story isn't demanding that you keep reading in a clawing-your-shirt, look-at-me! way, a lot of readers are going to shut the book and go on to the next one.

Sometimes it's hard to remember that as a writer, though. You know what's coming. You know all of the gut-wrenching and scary and touching and funny things that are going to happen ... just later on. You know everyone should keep reading, because they payoff is going to rock!

But you have to make sure readers know that, right up front.

It's tough, because it makes it seem like every first chapter in the world should be full of explosions and Sophie's Choice style decisions and romance and a cliffhanger or three. And if every book opened that way, reading would get a little exhausting.

It's not always what happens. It's about how it's told.

You have that friend, I bet. The one who can tell you a ridiculous story about the thing with the squirrel and the broken toaster oven in the parking lot of a WalMart, and it doesn't matter that it's ridiculous, because the way she tells it is guaranteed to make you laugh, and gasp, and possibly cry a little. That's what will suck you in, every time.

That's your voice. And in the end, that's what will make your book impossible to put down, from page one.

In other news, guess who's considering rewriting her first chapter today? Go on, guess.

This is Cortez.

 

About two years ago, Cortez showed up on our back porch. We'd seen him around the neighborhood for a few weeks -- he had no collar, and had the wary, lean look of a guy who was out on his own, sleeping rough and eating wherever he could. 

He jumped into my husband's lap as if he was meant to be there, and pretty much just ... moved in. And we're happy to have him. (Even though we did name him after the Neil Young song "Cortez the Killer." If you have a mouse problem, Cortez will hook you right up, believe me.) 

I didn't really want a cat. I'm allergic, so living with cats takes a little effort on my part, and I'm definitely more of a dog person. But Cortez was right there, patient and calm and a little mysterious, and it was hard not to pet him, and scratch him behind the ears, and feel a little proud that he'd chosen us to be his new family. (Spoiler alert: I am so ridiculously fond of him now, it's all a little goopy. We also now have another cat, Switch, so I'm beginning to question the whole "not a cat person" thing.) 

The idea for Cold Kiss showed up the same way, although it landed in my lap instead of my husband's (thank goodness). I was talking with friends online, and the discussion turned, as it does, to vampires and werewolves and ghosts, and someone said, "One day there'll be a book where someone's got a zombie boyfriend." 

And everyone laughed, and started talking about cupcakes and how Lost had taken a left turn into Totally Insano Land, and the moment was gone. But I couldn't shake it. In my head, there was a girl with a zombie boyfriend, and I had to figure out why. 

At the time, I'd been writing romance (after years of editing it), but YA was my first love. My true love. The first book I ever finished writing is an embarrassingly autobiographical YA novel that will live forever under my bed, nestled in dust bunnies. I'd done some ghostwriting for a middle-grade series that was some of the best fun I'd ever had writing. And I thought, screw it, I'm writing this.   

It was like coming home, even though "home" wasn't somewhere I'd really been yet. But writing in Wren's voice came so naturally, I knew I'd made the right decision. And HarperTeen actually liked it! So now I get to write another book about Wren, which is not something I'd ever anticipated. 

The moral of the story is: sometimes stuff just shows up. Sometimes it's germs thanks to your second-grader, and sometimes it's bills thanks to the good people at the electric company, and sometimes it's that girl who was always mean to you in high school and now suddenly expects to be BFF on Facebook. 

But sometimes it's a really cool cat who likes to curl up against your legs at night, and wake you up by licking your hair and putting one paw carefully in the center of your chest. (The hair licking is weird, I know, but it's his ... idiom, I guess.) And sometimes it's an idea that seems really far off your particular reservation, and you write it anyway.

Now if someone would just show up with a lifetime supply of cupcakes and a puppy ...  

Not *exactly* a day to celebrate ...

On this day in 1692,  Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne and Tituba were brought before local magistrates in Salem Village, Massachusetts, beginning the Salem witch trials. (Um, see post title.)

But today also marks just about six months from the release of Cold Kiss! And if anyone could be accused of witchcraft, it's Wren Darby.

Not that she thinks of herself as a "witch." Magic isn't quite that simple or clear-cut in Wren's world, and when the book opens, she's still figuring out what she can and can't do, and why.

Which is a dangerous thing when you're grieving the death of the first boy you ever loved ...

(How's that for a teaser? More to come, when I'm not a) hacking my brains out, b) longing for a NYC bagel, and c) furiously writing the next book about Wren ... )

Someone's going to arrest me for parentheses abuse, aren't they?

In which Amy can't come up with a witty title.

I'm in writing mode, working on the sequel to Cold Kiss (Fall 2011 from HarperTeen, and I should be able to share the cover soon, wheee!), and I'm also sick as a dog*. So blogging has fallen by the wayside again. Sigh.

In the meantime, though, I saw this post on io9, about YA dystopian fiction and why adults aren't so much on board (with adult books, anyway -- they're certainly reading the YA stuff happily).

I love dystopian fiction. LOVE. One of the books listed in the link to dystopian children's classics in the article is The Girl Who Owned a City, which I read when I was ten or eleven, and it  fascinated me. A virus has killed everyone over the age of twelve, and the protagonist has to figure out how to keep herself and her little brother safe (and fed and sheltered).

We don't have to talk about how I sort of viewed it as a survivor manual, right? I was a slightly morbid kid, apparently.

But I think it's true that it might be easier to read a YA book about taking on The Man and changing a crappy, gone-to-hell world than it would be to read an adult version of the same thing. Or maybe not. I haven't read many adult takes on the trope ... which is the point of the article.

I do know that dystopias have figured in some of my favorite books lately, including The Hunger Games trilogy. (Katniss! Peeta! Gale! They got harder and harder to read because the stakes were so. incredibly. high. all the time, but for me the payoff at the end of Mockinjay was completely worth it.)

The nice thing is, I don't have to look for adult dystopias right this minute, because there are so many promising ones coming out, or out already, including Lauren Oliver's Delirium and Ally Condie's Matched and Lauren DeStefano's Wither.

But before I can read those, more writing! And more cough medicine. Yum.

* I've never understood that phrase. Dogs aren't usually sick! This is clearly one of those things I should look up.

Cupid's got my back.

It's Valentine's Day! I'm not a huge fan of the Hallmarkization (it's a word, I'm pretty sure) of love, since I think it's better to tell people you love that you love them all the time, but I'm sort of obligated to celebrate since my parents' anniversary is today. (It's not really as romantic as all that, and a long story, but they have been married 45 years now, so they did something right.)

But I do have a friend who sits on my desk every day. He's one of a trio that I like to have around when I'm writing (or emailing, or goofing around on YouTube, or pretending I don't actually look at lolcats). This is them:

Laughing Buddha (he's my favorite), Cupid (thank you, Red Rose Tea), and Grrr Guy. (Okay, he probably needs a better name.) My mascots! Or something.

Wow, I really need to refinish my desk, don't I?

What's my name again?

I need a character name for a boy, and it's driving me nuts. Character names are something I get a little irrational about, and I wasn't much better when it came to naming the kids.

My middle kid asked me recently where his name came from, for a school project, and I took him through the whole thing (including his dad's streak of crazy when it comes to "No shortened names on the birth certificate!" Some people name their kids after superheros and cleaning products, but he doesn't like to think about that).

All I cared about was that I really liked "Ben." It sounds gentle and kind but strong to me, all admirable things. And I agreed with the other half that we would avoid Benjamin, because I really didn't want him ending up a Benjy, no matter how cute it might be on another kid. We were down to Benedict and Bennett, and since the latter seemed like less weight to carry, we went with that.

But now, even though no one calls him anything but Ben (and Benno, fondly, around the house), it matters that his name is "Bennett" and not something else somehow. There's a simplicity to it, and a kind of elegance (wow, I can hear Ben laughing his head off somewhere right now without knowing why) because it's slightly old-fashioned and polite without being too stiff. 

In my head, anyway. But it's like the chicken and the egg -- did he grow into the name, or did we just pick the right one for him? 

Naming characters is weird, because you *know* (or hope you know) the kind of people they're going to be, and you never really know that with a baby. (I mean, I'm sure Charles Manson's mom didn't look at him in diapers and think, "Oh yeah, crazy serial-murdering guy, that's my boy!") But at the same time, naming a snarky, scheming, boyfriend-stealing girl character Jezebel is sort of cheating, too. You don't want to give away everything right  there in the character's name, and in the world of the story, you have to figure what parents would name their little girl Jezebel?! Nobody, that's who. 

Which brings me back to the boy I need to name, who has been going by, um, BOY, so far. Back to the baby-naming books with me.