Maggie Stiefvater's Blog: Maggie Stiefvater, page 375
June 24, 2014
Eyes Up, Writers
On Twitter today — and everyday — there was some chatter and scuffle about Some Authors’ Careers and Some Authors’ Fame and whether they had deserved it. Some folks invariably said the chatter and scuffle was jealousy. Some others invariably said not everything is jealousy.
Here’s what I think: having a writing career is like driving a race car.
I’m not really a grand race car driver, mostly because I’ve discovered that I don’t really care about winning against anyone but myself, which turns out to be not the point of organized sports. But I have been in race cars, and on race tracks, and have spent many hours doing classwork at over 70 mph.
Enough to know that a writing career is a lot like driving a race car.
One of the things they teach you in every single form of car racing is to keep your eyes up. Up. Upper than that. Upper than even that. Don’t look at the dash, because then you won’t see what’s happening on the road. Don’t look at the road right in front of you, because you won’t see that the turn you’re going into links into another turn and you could set yourself up for both. Put your eyes up as far as you can see down the road, and look there. Only when you see the absolute farthest point can you start to calculate the best way of getting there.
(this is great advice to use when you’re driving normally, by the way)
A writing career is like that. Use your peripheral vision to look at the things that are coming at you day to day, but never forget that every decision should contribute that farthest-away-point you want to get to. Never forget that every tiny success and failure is just a steer or counter steer toward the real point of the thing.
And here’s the other thing they tell you about keeping your eyes up: don’t fixate on the person in front of you. If there’s another driver just in front of you, the tendency is to stare at their bumper and then take the turn just like they do. But guess what? Then the absolute best scenario is that you will take the turn just like they do. So if they’re taking it wrong, you’ll take it wrong too. If there’s a better way, a faster way, a cooler way, a way that involves painting a giant knife on the side of your car and listening to Finnish rap very loudly, you’ll never know.
Eyes up, drivers, they say: look past the car in front of you. All you need to do is to note them well enough that you can pass them when you find a better way to take the turn.
Don’t fixate, writers. Eyes up, writers. I don’t care if x or y is doing a or b. What does that have to do with me? I have my eyes on where I want to go, and no one else matters.
The race is Maggie vs. Maggie. Who are you competing with?
Here’s what I think: having a writing career is like driving a race car.
I’m not really a grand race car driver, mostly because I’ve discovered that I don’t really care about winning against anyone but myself, which turns out to be not the point of organized sports. But I have been in race cars, and on race tracks, and have spent many hours doing classwork at over 70 mph.
Enough to know that a writing career is a lot like driving a race car.
One of the things they teach you in every single form of car racing is to keep your eyes up. Up. Upper than that. Upper than even that. Don’t look at the dash, because then you won’t see what’s happening on the road. Don’t look at the road right in front of you, because you won’t see that the turn you’re going into links into another turn and you could set yourself up for both. Put your eyes up as far as you can see down the road, and look there. Only when you see the absolute farthest point can you start to calculate the best way of getting there.
(this is great advice to use when you’re driving normally, by the way)
A writing career is like that. Use your peripheral vision to look at the things that are coming at you day to day, but never forget that every decision should contribute that farthest-away-point you want to get to. Never forget that every tiny success and failure is just a steer or counter steer toward the real point of the thing.
And here’s the other thing they tell you about keeping your eyes up: don’t fixate on the person in front of you. If there’s another driver just in front of you, the tendency is to stare at their bumper and then take the turn just like they do. But guess what? Then the absolute best scenario is that you will take the turn just like they do. So if they’re taking it wrong, you’ll take it wrong too. If there’s a better way, a faster way, a cooler way, a way that involves painting a giant knife on the side of your car and listening to Finnish rap very loudly, you’ll never know.
Eyes up, drivers, they say: look past the car in front of you. All you need to do is to note them well enough that you can pass them when you find a better way to take the turn.
Don’t fixate, writers. Eyes up, writers. I don’t care if x or y is doing a or b. What does that have to do with me? I have my eyes on where I want to go, and no one else matters.
The race is Maggie vs. Maggie. Who are you competing with?
June 11, 2014
Books Don't Make You Smart
Here is a lie we’ve all been told: books will make you smart.
This week, the Internet churns once more over the latest article denouncing adults who read young adult fiction. The argument is always the same: young adult/ thrillers/ romance/ sci-fi/ chicklit/ picture books/ subway maps are not as good for you as adult literary/ nonfiction/ dead Russians/ the calorie lists on Chipotle menus. Lovers of the former are always ready with a defense — either that the former really are as quality as the latter, or that not everything you put in your brain has to be good for you.
Rather than contemplating a new defense — surely, I could, as I write young adult fiction —I wondered instead why we keep seeing the same scuffle in different hats.
And I think it’s because of this untruth: books will make you smart.
I believe the book industry may be one of the few industries that promises you will actually become more clever if you buy their product. Car companies might swear you’ll look cooler in an Audi than a Kia, but they don’t tell you that you’ll actually become a better person behind the wheel of one. Computer companies might shout that their equipment is smarter, but they stop short of promising that your entire life philosophy will improve if you buy their products. When I bought my office chair, no one told me, “Well done. People who sit in leather chairs turn out to be stronger women.”
But we have this prevailing theory that books will make you smart, and it’s this theory that allows us to judge a book’s quality by how far it stretches your mind. According to this idea, if it doesn’t make you smarter, it’s a lesser book. It becomes a guilty pleasure, like food that doesn’t contribute to your daily vitamin requirement. Cue up the articles on the tragedy of the populace reading young adult, or turning to magazines, or — horrors, shall I whisper it — watching television in lieu of reading.
Don’t they know that reading makes you clever? Don’t they know that television and movies are for non-intellectuals? Hoi polloi turn the TV on. If you’re someone who’s going to be someone, you open a book.
But books aren’t smart: stories are.
Not all stories, of course. There are wise stories and flippant stories, stories that stretch your mind and stories that only make you laugh. Stories that are true and stories that won’t ever be true.
A book is merely a medium for carrying a story. So is a television series. So is a movie. So is a play, or a or a puppet show, a video game, a note from a stranger. The medium itself carries absolutely no promise of intellectual content. There are shallow books and world-changing movies. There are ridiculous non-fiction texts and complex young adult novels.
A book is just words. A movie is just images. These things can’t change you.
Only the story can.
So if we can accept that books can — and are meant to — fulfill all kinds of purposes, we can stop pretending that a good book only means a book that demands probing analysis. If we can further accept that genre is merely a jacket for the story, we can possibly also stop arguing that this shelf or that shelf in the bookstore has the corner on intellectual greatness. Someone who writes smart stories can put them into any form, any medium, any length — and they do. Look at the artists who work across several different forms. Do they grow more or less clever when their stories are filmed or shelved, packaged for grown-ups or packaged for teens? If you long for a mind-bending story, you can find them anywhere, if you look for them. If you’re looking for a stupid story, I promise you that you can find them anywhere, too. If you’re looking for grotesque generalizations, you’ll also find that confirmation bias is a powerful thing.
Books don’t make you smart. Stories do. And that is a truth I’ll defend to anyone.
This week, the Internet churns once more over the latest article denouncing adults who read young adult fiction. The argument is always the same: young adult/ thrillers/ romance/ sci-fi/ chicklit/ picture books/ subway maps are not as good for you as adult literary/ nonfiction/ dead Russians/ the calorie lists on Chipotle menus. Lovers of the former are always ready with a defense — either that the former really are as quality as the latter, or that not everything you put in your brain has to be good for you.
Rather than contemplating a new defense — surely, I could, as I write young adult fiction —I wondered instead why we keep seeing the same scuffle in different hats.
And I think it’s because of this untruth: books will make you smart.
I believe the book industry may be one of the few industries that promises you will actually become more clever if you buy their product. Car companies might swear you’ll look cooler in an Audi than a Kia, but they don’t tell you that you’ll actually become a better person behind the wheel of one. Computer companies might shout that their equipment is smarter, but they stop short of promising that your entire life philosophy will improve if you buy their products. When I bought my office chair, no one told me, “Well done. People who sit in leather chairs turn out to be stronger women.”
But we have this prevailing theory that books will make you smart, and it’s this theory that allows us to judge a book’s quality by how far it stretches your mind. According to this idea, if it doesn’t make you smarter, it’s a lesser book. It becomes a guilty pleasure, like food that doesn’t contribute to your daily vitamin requirement. Cue up the articles on the tragedy of the populace reading young adult, or turning to magazines, or — horrors, shall I whisper it — watching television in lieu of reading.
Don’t they know that reading makes you clever? Don’t they know that television and movies are for non-intellectuals? Hoi polloi turn the TV on. If you’re someone who’s going to be someone, you open a book.
But books aren’t smart: stories are.
Not all stories, of course. There are wise stories and flippant stories, stories that stretch your mind and stories that only make you laugh. Stories that are true and stories that won’t ever be true.
A book is merely a medium for carrying a story. So is a television series. So is a movie. So is a play, or a or a puppet show, a video game, a note from a stranger. The medium itself carries absolutely no promise of intellectual content. There are shallow books and world-changing movies. There are ridiculous non-fiction texts and complex young adult novels.
A book is just words. A movie is just images. These things can’t change you.
Only the story can.
So if we can accept that books can — and are meant to — fulfill all kinds of purposes, we can stop pretending that a good book only means a book that demands probing analysis. If we can further accept that genre is merely a jacket for the story, we can possibly also stop arguing that this shelf or that shelf in the bookstore has the corner on intellectual greatness. Someone who writes smart stories can put them into any form, any medium, any length — and they do. Look at the artists who work across several different forms. Do they grow more or less clever when their stories are filmed or shelved, packaged for grown-ups or packaged for teens? If you long for a mind-bending story, you can find them anywhere, if you look for them. If you’re looking for a stupid story, I promise you that you can find them anywhere, too. If you’re looking for grotesque generalizations, you’ll also find that confirmation bias is a powerful thing.
Books don’t make you smart. Stories do. And that is a truth I’ll defend to anyone.
June 2, 2014
Sinner Book Trailer - with Animation and Singing and Whatnot
I'm revoltingly pleased to announce that I've finally finished animating and recording the music for the Sinner book trailer.
Here it is!
The book itself comes out July 1st in the U.S. (July 3rd in the UK).
The song can be downloaded for free on my Soundcloud account.
You can find full tour date info here.
Here it is!
The book itself comes out July 1st in the U.S. (July 3rd in the UK).
The song can be downloaded for free on my Soundcloud account.
You can find full tour date info here.
May 20, 2014
MY CHARACTERS ARE NOT ME: But They Are The Questions in My Head
Today, a reader asked me about the source of the Gansey family wealth, and as I answered her, I thought about why Gansey is who he is, and why I wrote his family’s wealth, and what was I trying to explore when I invented him. Because there were ten thousand ways to write Gansey, and I chose this one: why?
It's because Gansey is not me — none of the characters are truly me — but they do exist to answer questions in my head. Sometimes I write them because I think I already know the answer, and I'm showing my work. But sometimes I'm hoping to find the answer through my writing. For instance, the characters in the Raven Cycle:
GANSEY: I am not filthy rich. I was not born into old money. But I was born into all kinds of privilege, especially educational privilege. My mother taught me music from the moment I could read. My father has an encyclopedic knowledge of history and a love of reading and made sure that he passed that on. There is so much to be said for not having to reinvent the wheel, and the educational advantages that I took for granted when I was eight are now glaringly obvious to me. So Gansey — well, that part of Gansey, the questions of privilege and what you owe the world when you have it — started there.
RONAN: I am not an angry gay street-racing Catholic boy. But I was an angry street-racing teen who fought with her body, and I grew up fervently Catholic, and I had all sorts of beliefs about myself and gender and everything else that did not play well with Catholicism. Ronan — parts of him — are questions I asked when I was a teen and still ask now.
BLUE: I am not the only non-seer in a family of seers. But I, a consummate non-specialist, a professional dabbler, am so used to finding myself in a world full of language I understand but do not own. When I was in a rally car, I engaged with cars in a very different way from those who lived and breathed rally. When I was in a Celtic band, I did so with a German last name and the knowledge that I couldn’t really claim the music because the blood in my veins was from the wrong place. I am always finding myself places where I possess an encyclopedic knowledge of the elements at play — but know I don’t really belong. But what is belonging? Blue asks that question for me.
ADAM: I was not born in a trailer, nor was I abused. But I have been very poor with very not poor friends. I have been not poor with very poor friends. I have been given opportunities to get ahead by jumping the line and I have watched what happened when I turned them down. I've also given people opportunities to jump the line and seen what happens to both of us when they take them (or not). Adam is the Gansey question turned inside out. Also, I have also been super shitty to friends and had them be super shitty to me — how shitty can you be to each other and still be friends? Can you afford to give your whole heart to a someone who doesn’t have blood ties or other debts to you? Adam — and the rest of the characters in the Raven Cycle, really — ask this question.
NOAH: Asks the question of why glitter and kittens are so great.
So, readers are always asking me which character I relate to the most, but that’s really not the best question. I relate to all of them, or I wouldn’t be writing them — I’d choose a different camera to point at the story. The question, I guess is: why these cameras? What are you trying to look at, Stiefvater?
It's because Gansey is not me — none of the characters are truly me — but they do exist to answer questions in my head. Sometimes I write them because I think I already know the answer, and I'm showing my work. But sometimes I'm hoping to find the answer through my writing. For instance, the characters in the Raven Cycle:
GANSEY: I am not filthy rich. I was not born into old money. But I was born into all kinds of privilege, especially educational privilege. My mother taught me music from the moment I could read. My father has an encyclopedic knowledge of history and a love of reading and made sure that he passed that on. There is so much to be said for not having to reinvent the wheel, and the educational advantages that I took for granted when I was eight are now glaringly obvious to me. So Gansey — well, that part of Gansey, the questions of privilege and what you owe the world when you have it — started there.
RONAN: I am not an angry gay street-racing Catholic boy. But I was an angry street-racing teen who fought with her body, and I grew up fervently Catholic, and I had all sorts of beliefs about myself and gender and everything else that did not play well with Catholicism. Ronan — parts of him — are questions I asked when I was a teen and still ask now.
BLUE: I am not the only non-seer in a family of seers. But I, a consummate non-specialist, a professional dabbler, am so used to finding myself in a world full of language I understand but do not own. When I was in a rally car, I engaged with cars in a very different way from those who lived and breathed rally. When I was in a Celtic band, I did so with a German last name and the knowledge that I couldn’t really claim the music because the blood in my veins was from the wrong place. I am always finding myself places where I possess an encyclopedic knowledge of the elements at play — but know I don’t really belong. But what is belonging? Blue asks that question for me.
ADAM: I was not born in a trailer, nor was I abused. But I have been very poor with very not poor friends. I have been not poor with very poor friends. I have been given opportunities to get ahead by jumping the line and I have watched what happened when I turned them down. I've also given people opportunities to jump the line and seen what happens to both of us when they take them (or not). Adam is the Gansey question turned inside out. Also, I have also been super shitty to friends and had them be super shitty to me — how shitty can you be to each other and still be friends? Can you afford to give your whole heart to a someone who doesn’t have blood ties or other debts to you? Adam — and the rest of the characters in the Raven Cycle, really — ask this question.
NOAH: Asks the question of why glitter and kittens are so great.
So, readers are always asking me which character I relate to the most, but that’s really not the best question. I relate to all of them, or I wouldn’t be writing them — I’d choose a different camera to point at the story. The question, I guess is: why these cameras? What are you trying to look at, Stiefvater?
April 29, 2014
The Giant Sinner Tour & Also Book Wrappers & Guitars
Readers who have followed me for a while will know that each year, I try to do something special to some of the pre-ordered copies of my novels. This year I had a really ambitious idea and Scholastic was lovely enough to help me take this concept and run with it.
First, I did portraits of Cole, Isabel, and a wolf:
and Scholastic is printing them on posters that just happen to be perfectly sized to do this:
Coincidence?
I think not. Scholastic was also kind enough to ship three white electric guitars to my house, and I did things to them too.
The guitars will be raffled off on the first and last event of the Sinner tour. One of them will be given away during a Scholastic/ This Is Teen online thingy. I’ll be sure to pass along info when this happens.
The book wrappers require rather less luck to acquire. Every copy of Sinner pre-ordered from Fountain Bookstore will be signed and come with one of the them. (Also, FB would like to remind everyone that if you pre-order Sinner and Blue Lily, Lily Blue at the same time, both books will ship in October when BLLB comes out — if you want two shipments, you will have to pay two shipping costs).
Also, the book wrappers will be available at every single stop on the Sinner tour.
I’m also pairing up with Seven Stories Bookshop in the UK again this year, and their pre-ordered copies of Sinner will include this signed custom bookplate.
Now, on to the tour! Again, because Scholastic loves me, they are allowing me to do a coast-to-coast driving tour for Sinner in Loki, my Camaro. I did this for the Forever tour back in 2011, and I think it’s sort of nice and circular to head out again in the car for this return to Cole and Isabel. Also, it means I’ll smell like gasoline and exhaust at every event.
Here is the schedule. I’ve done a bit of math and it seems to be 3,964 miles one way.
7/2: Charlottesville, VA
7/3: Baltimore, MD
7/5: Pittsburgh, PA
7/7: Chicago/ Naperville, IL
7/8: Chicago, IL
7/8: Milwaukee, WI
7/9: Madison, WI
7/10: Iowa City, IA
7/11: Omaha, NE
7/14: Denver, CO
7/19: Salt Lake City, UT
7/21: Reno, NV
7/23: San Francisco, CA
7/24: San Francisco/ Menlo Park, CA
7/28: Los Angeles, CA
7/29: Los Angeles/ Montrose, CA
Full details here on the website.
Note: I will also be at BookCon/ BEA in NYC, IRA, ALA, BYU Symposium for Young Readers (Provo), and Decatur Book Festival.
Note, part two: I will not be touring overseas this year because I am going to need every second of spare time to finish the Raven Cycle on time (I trust you’d rather have that book than my body).
First, I did portraits of Cole, Isabel, and a wolf:
and Scholastic is printing them on posters that just happen to be perfectly sized to do this:
Coincidence?
I think not. Scholastic was also kind enough to ship three white electric guitars to my house, and I did things to them too.
The guitars will be raffled off on the first and last event of the Sinner tour. One of them will be given away during a Scholastic/ This Is Teen online thingy. I’ll be sure to pass along info when this happens.
The book wrappers require rather less luck to acquire. Every copy of Sinner pre-ordered from Fountain Bookstore will be signed and come with one of the them. (Also, FB would like to remind everyone that if you pre-order Sinner and Blue Lily, Lily Blue at the same time, both books will ship in October when BLLB comes out — if you want two shipments, you will have to pay two shipping costs).
Also, the book wrappers will be available at every single stop on the Sinner tour.
I’m also pairing up with Seven Stories Bookshop in the UK again this year, and their pre-ordered copies of Sinner will include this signed custom bookplate.
Now, on to the tour! Again, because Scholastic loves me, they are allowing me to do a coast-to-coast driving tour for Sinner in Loki, my Camaro. I did this for the Forever tour back in 2011, and I think it’s sort of nice and circular to head out again in the car for this return to Cole and Isabel. Also, it means I’ll smell like gasoline and exhaust at every event.
Here is the schedule. I’ve done a bit of math and it seems to be 3,964 miles one way.
7/2: Charlottesville, VA
7/3: Baltimore, MD
7/5: Pittsburgh, PA
7/7: Chicago/ Naperville, IL
7/8: Chicago, IL
7/8: Milwaukee, WI
7/9: Madison, WI
7/10: Iowa City, IA
7/11: Omaha, NE
7/14: Denver, CO
7/19: Salt Lake City, UT
7/21: Reno, NV
7/23: San Francisco, CA
7/24: San Francisco/ Menlo Park, CA
7/28: Los Angeles, CA
7/29: Los Angeles/ Montrose, CA
Full details here on the website.
Note: I will also be at BookCon/ BEA in NYC, IRA, ALA, BYU Symposium for Young Readers (Provo), and Decatur Book Festival.
Note, part two: I will not be touring overseas this year because I am going to need every second of spare time to finish the Raven Cycle on time (I trust you’d rather have that book than my body).
April 24, 2014
The Cover & Title of Raven Boys III is . . .
Happy St. Mark’s Eve! Behold the official cover and title of Raven Boys III, which comes out October 28, 2014.
April 7, 2014
Tonight I Tried Sketching Something Different
I have been sketching every evening for an hour or less (you can see them over on my Tumblr) and tonight I decided to try something different.
This was an hour and a half of fiddly problem solving-sketching and I didn't even get to the fun part in this scene from The Raven Boys.
I can see why graphic novels take so long — if I were doing this properly, I'd do this AGAIN with my real human references and actual ink and paper and whatnot.
This was an hour and a half of fiddly problem solving-sketching and I didn't even get to the fun part in this scene from The Raven Boys.
I can see why graphic novels take so long — if I were doing this properly, I'd do this AGAIN with my real human references and actual ink and paper and whatnot.
March 28, 2014
In Which I Am Earnest About the Barns
Here is a confession about the Barns:
No, let me back up.
I started writing The Dream Thieves back when I was 19 — I know I told everyone I began writing The Raven Boys when I was 19, but really, it was it was DT, Ronan’s story. It was only later that I realized I needed to begin with The Raven Boys. Like Ronan, I had (have) recurring dreams and visceral nightmares, but unlike Ronan, I found out that if I wrote them down, I wouldn’t have them again.
I used to go to the Barns in my dreams — nearly every night — and it was precisely as it appears in The Dream Thieves and the later books in the series. Everything Ronan feels about the Barns is how I felt about it.
When it came time to give the Lynch family a kingdom of their own, I knew I was going to give them the Barns, but I also knew that to write it down was to exorcise it from my dreams. Nightmares and dreams really work the same way — the only difference is that you’re afraid of one.
And I was right. I’ve not been back to the Barns since I first wrote it down. Well, not when I’m sleeping, anyway. I guess what I’m trying to say is that every time a reader is pleased to visit the Barns, it makes me feel better about my decision to give it away. So thanks for that.
Here is the music I listen to while writing the Barns:
“She Is Like the Swallow" - Lucia Micarelli
“Through Your Bones" - Lost Lander
“Da Pacem Domine" - Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
“Exile" - Enya
“Taimse Im’ Chodladh" - Planxty
If anyone has any other suggestions for the OP, please let me/ them know! Anyway, here is my confession about the Barns: I miss it, even though there were almost always monsters in the shadows.
(here is the link to my Tumblr).
March 15, 2014
My GoatDay, In Photos
The story of my day was like so:
1. We head to goat farm to procure two more goats. Two. More. Goats. Please note, however, how the world presents us with Many Goats to Choose From.
2. Lover: no I don’t really want this extra goat even though my face says oh please extra goat
3. BrotherAndrew: this goat is also excellent, did you notice?
4. Thing 1 & Thing 2: these goats so great
5. Thing 2: In fact this goat is my spirit animal she has bonded with my soul and so therefore if we leave her you ask me to roam this earth a fraction of a man is that what you really want?*
6. I think there is a goat licking Brother Andrew’s car — oh. I see it started with this side.
7. Four is the same number as two, surely.
8. Lover’s goat and SmileGoat.
9. A portrait of the author posing with the two goats she went to get in the first place.
*Thing 2 has since named his goat Ranger Danger. In case you were wondering.
(larger photos on the Tumblr)
February 14, 2014
You Can Read the First Three Chapters of SINNER
I tried for seven minutes to think of a better title for this post.
But.
You can read the first three chapters of SINNER here! The rest of it comes out in July.
But.
You can read the first three chapters of SINNER here! The rest of it comes out in July.
Maggie Stiefvater
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