R.L. LaFevers's Blog, page 11

For Budding Cartographers!

One the things I thought would be fun here is to occasionally post pictures of the various elements that inspired me in the writing of my books. As I researched the Nathaniel Fludd books, I became fascinated with all the different maps that man has made over the years. Here is a picture of the world's oldest map:


It is Babylonian, and you can read more about it HERE on Wikipedia.

Summer Hiatus!

Hello! You've probably noticed all the remodeling going on here. That's because my poor author website is so old and outdated that it WAY past time to update it. However, being the Miss IndecisivePants that I am, I have not been able to decide on what I want the website to be like, so I have been playing around here, trying to get some idea. Thus all the updating and remodeling. I actually quite like it, with all the little literary sidekicks smiling at me from the fringes.

In related news, as it stands now, it appears I will be publishing my YA under Robin LaFevers rather than R. L. LaFevers, so I have to start thinking about another website (and blog!)

Not to mention that I have a whopper of a book due and I want to complete a solid first draft by the end of the summer so I have LOTS of time to tinker with multiple revisions.

So instead of feeling guilty for not posting more here, or flailing around in public trying to finalize my website/blog, I think it will be smarter if I just take a two month hiatus, write the book, talk to web designers, and enjoy my son's last summer at home before he transfers away to college. (::sob::!)

I will be at the SCBWI National Conference in August, so if any of you are planning on being there DO try to find me in the crowd and say hi!

Here's wishing you a summer filled with lazy days, lots of (not too hot) sunshine, and tons of writing!

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Hello! You've probably noticed all the remodeling going on here. That's because my poor author website is so old and outdated that it WAY past time to update it. However, being the Miss IndecisivePants that I am, I have not been able to decide on what I want the website to be like, so I will be making this blog my author website for the time being. In the next week or two, my domain name will redirect to this blog. Thus all the updating and remodeling. I actually quite like it, with all the little literary sidekicks smiling at me from the fringes.

In related news, as it stands now, it appears I will be publishing my YA under Robin LaFevers rather than R. L. LaFevers, so I have started a new blog here and I wanted to give those of you who are regular followers here to jump on over there before this place becomes a more static, reader oriented environment. I will blog here occasionally, but it will be more like website updates rather than writing talk.


So that's the plan! I hope I'll see some of you over at the new place!

Best Friend Festival and Book Signing!

Carpinteria's First Ever Best Friend Festival & Book Signing!


Theodosia has Sticky Will.Nathaniel Fludd has Greasle.
And Effie Malone has two best friends!
Not to mention that Mary and Robin have been BFFs for over a decade!


In honor of Best Friends everywhere,
you and your best bud are invited to
a special celebration and book signing on
Sunday, June 26th, 2011
2pm- 4pm at the Curious Cup Bookstore
929 Linden Avenue, Carpinteria.

Featuring Real-Life BFF
R.L. LaFevers & Mary Hershey
signing their new books,
each packed with BIG adventure
and BIG friendships.

Love and Pollywogs from Camp Calamity
Theodosia & The Last Pharaoh
Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist: The Unicorn's Tale

You don't want to miss the F-U-N!

Take the BFF Compatibility Quiz
Share your best story about your best friend
Pose for a special photo together
Enter to Win the Best Friend Prize Package!
Refreshments and giveaways.


(A BFF is not required for admission,
and best friends of all ages, genders and species are welcome!

A Couple of Must Read Posts On Writing

Just in case you missed the big kerfuffle last week about the misguided reporter's article in WSJ about how the current crop of YA books is just too dark and despairing for today's teen, I wanted to link to a couple of responses to her (rather ill-formed) thoughts.

The first is Sherman Alexie's rebuttal in the same publication about why YA books are written in blood. (If you ever get the chance to hear this man speak, do grab it, because he is so eloquent and articulate!) A choice excerpt:

When some cultural critics fret about the "ever-more-appalling" YA books, they aren't trying to protect African-American teens forced to walk through metal detectors on their way into school. Or Mexican-American teens enduring the culturally schizophrenic life of being American citizens and the children of illegal immigrants. Or Native American teens growing up on Third World reservations. Or poor white kids trying to survive the meth-hazed trailer parks. They aren't trying to protect the poor from poverty. Or victims from rapists.

No, they are simply trying to protect their privileged notions of what literature is and should be. They are trying to protect privileged children. Or the seemingly privileged.

The second great response to this, and one of my personal favorites, by Laini Taylor.

Characters in books can make us yearn to be powerful -- some of us become fantasy junkies because of the exhilaration of embodying that power vicariously -- but they can also teach us to be brave. In the general sense, they can impart values like persistence, self-belief, integrity. And in a specific sense, they might actually teach a young person how to seek help for abuse. They might send such a powerful message of "you are not alone," as to prevent suicides. 
Fiction has a power that a news article can never have, because readers inhabit fiction.

A Tarot Collage

I've talked before about how I make collages for my books using pictures from the web or magazines or my inspiration folder (where I have hundreds of images from old magazines that I save because they speak to me for some reason.)

One fun thing I did that made a great artist's date/writing exercise was create a tarot collage of my hero and heroine's journey. There's no real trick to it. You just pick a tarot deck with imagery that appeals to you (this was The Secret Tarot by Marco Nizzoli*), spread the cards out on the table, then pick those that resonate with your vision for your protagonist. That's what I did for GRAVE MERCY.





So the top row was the major influences impacting the two main character's lives, and then the second row was the  hero's journey and the bottom row was the heroine's.

Or, you could be even more official and do an actual tarot reading for your characters or story. 

Mostly just a fun way to get in touch with the story at the intuitive level. Sometimes the cards you pick can surprise you.


*I have used my paltry photoshop skills to cover up some of the images so they would be work (and MG!) safe.

How (Not) To Make A Video

Another thing that kept me busy over the last couple of weeks was that I was asked to make a short video of me talking about the inspiration for GRAVE MERCY for my publisher's sales meeting. I was excited and thrilled to be asked, until I realized, I'd have to make a video of me talking!!



So just in case any of you are ever asked the same thing, here's how to do it. (Not!)


Have heart palpitations just because of the general excitement of it all.Begin working on a script, because god forbid one should speak off the cuff, even though if you know your subject upside down and backwards.Rewrite the script four times because the first three were too preachy. Really don't need to tell the sales force WHO SPENDS THEIR DAYS SELLING YA BOOKS why this book is relevant to teens.Begin panicking over what to wear.Frantically clean office so that it will only look as if partially drowning in clutter (albeit writerly clutter—books and papers and notebooks. Cool clutter.)Realize you know absolutely nothing about how iMovie works and decide to make a little test run.Become distracted by the fact that, You look like that when you talk?? Gah.Practice real talk five times.Go put on makeup.Get dressed.Put on a little more makeup.Change shirt. Add scarf.Sit in front of camera.Begin taping.Stop taping.Go change scarf.Resume taping.Mess up.Start over.Rinse and repeat at least four times.Decide there is enough raw footage to piece something together and hope the swearing at the flub ups can be cut.Watch raw footage.Decide no one wants to watch a person talk for four whole minutes so scramble around looking for photos that can be overlaid on the video.Learn how to do that.Screw it up seven times.Become distracted by how tight Romeo's breeches are (really, they classify as tights) and wonder where a fig leaf is when you need it most.Decide to crop said breeches in case anyone in the sales meeting is easily distracted.Wonder why that one picture won't resize the way it needs to to.Try to cut out all tongue clacking, lip licking and eye rolling. Wince when you realize it is impossible.Cut too much.Decide to cut that whole section, insert a picture, and do a voice over.Realize you can do that for all the parts where you hate yourself on tape.Wonder why you didn't just do that for the entire thing.Insert a dozen more pictures and two minutes of voice over.Decide it is good enough.Spend an hour trying to figure out how to get the title thing to work the way you want it to.It never does, so settle for second choice of titling effects.Realize it is now dinner time.Call it good.Order pizza. Decide to figure out how to send the mammoth file tomorrow.

Looking for Themes In All The Wrong Places

Hello!

I was going to come back here and tell you all how I've been so busy that I haven't had two seconds to rub together, let alone time to blog, but you know what? You all are smart cookies. I bet you figured that out on your own. Plus? It is fairly boring to talk about.

So instead I thought I'd talk about something that's been occupying quite a lot of my mental space lately, namely themes. As in the core themes of our work.

[Warning: Possible navel-gazing ahead.]

Part of this was brought about by the fact that I am having a teensy bit of an identity crisis, genre-wise. I was able to straddle a young middle grade and an older middle grade series fairly well. But I am now pulling a dark, older YA into the mix and it kind of tipped me over in terms of understanding who my audience is, what my relationship to my readers is, how I pull all of those various wildly different parts of the authorial me together. Do I talk about the book that's out now or the one that I'm working on? Does it matter if they're two separate age groups?

The inside of my head has felt far too much like a hamster wheel for my liking. However, one can only flounder so long before it gets way old and all that's left to do is get over it and move on. So here I am. I will be having my identity crisis in public and hope that it will be a learning experience for the rest of you.

My website is also due for a massive makeover, and before I could do that, I had to understand the answers to some of the above questions. Actually, I had to figure out the right questions to even ask.

When looking for a story theme, the questions I use are:

What life lesson does your protagonist need to learn?
Where, in her/his emotional landscape, will this journey take her? Will she/he be facing old fears? Discovering new ones? What will they be?
What issues will most of the book's conflict be arising from?
What direction is her/his growth going to take? Learning to accept, forgive, redeem oneself, stand up for what they believe in?
What will they have struggled with by the end of the book?
Also, look at your protagonist's goals and motivations. What direction are they pointing in?


And while those questions work well for finding themes in a given book, they weren't helping me step back and get a better picture of how all the various themes I work with tie in.

So I had to go looking for new questions.

What truth am I telling? What is my core truth, the one I go back to time and again. I searched my books, the school talks I give, my work on Shrinking Violets and over on GeekMom. Hell, I looked high and low. I kept stepping back, further and further away thinking if I could get a distant view, I could see the patterns and landscape better.

But I neglected to look deep, deep inside, to that place we all try to hide from the world. Which is highly ironic since that's one of my biggest messages to kids when I do school visits—that their unique quirky self is their biggest most powerful weapon. Even if it's the part of themselves that gets them in the most trouble or they find most embarrassing—that core is where all the best stuff in their life will come from.

And then I stumbled on this quote from Caroline Myss (found via Justine Musk's Tribal Writer blog) "You cannot live for prolonged periods of time within the polarity of being true to yourself and needing the approval of others."

And my immediate thought was, you can't? Because I have been doing that since I was old enough to breathe.

And it occurred to me that I have been engaged in a battle between being true to myself and pleasing others my entire life. An epic struggle for self acceptance.

Duh. There's my core theme. Once I named it, I could recognize it in all of my work. It wasn't just about accepting our quirks or turning our weaknesses into strengths, but the constant polarization of opposing needs: that for self acceptance and that for pleasing others. Poor little Nathaniel Fludd, struggling between his innate timidity and wanting to please the intrepid Aunt Phil; Theodosia, needing to do something about all the magic that swirls around her, but not wanting to upset the apple cart with her parents.

Gawd! No wonder I'm exhausted all the time!

The other thing that occurred to me was that I will likely never have this fully mastered. Like a recovering alcoholic, it will be a one day at a time kind of thing. Maybe, at some point, it will be a week at a time or I will even be lucky enough to have a month long reprieve from this struggle. But I suspect it will always be a part of me, and even more, that that is a good thing because that is where my core story juice and passion come from. Putting characters in situations where they can experience transformative change that brings them one step closer to true self-acceptance.

So that is my core truth and one that all of my characters struggle with as well. I also think it's why my stories tend toward middle grade and YA—because those first steps towards self acceptance and separating ourselves from our family and peers' expectations for us come at those ages. (Also, clearly I am emotionally stunted. But in a productive way at least.)

The thing is, by recognizing our core journey, every daily challenge can have deeper meaning and be one more step on an ongoing path to the next stage of transformational change.

So that's what I've been thinking about a lot the last couple of weeks. How about you? Are you guys all way more evolved than I am and have known for a long time your deepest, most core themes?

L.A. Times Festival of Books

Just a quick note to say I'll be signing at the L. A. Times Festival of Books on Saturday, April 30. I'll be in Mysterious Galaxy's booth, #372, at 1:00. Hope to see some of  you there!

We Have A Winner!

And the winner is . . . #5, wldhrsjen3! 
(Chosen by Random Number Generator*)

Jen, email me with your address and I will get those in the mail to you! 

Also? Because my publisher is pure awesome, they have sent me a few extra ARCs so I can give them to any teachers or librarians who entered this drawing. From looking at the comments, I think that means Mrs. Katz and Kari. If you two will also email me, I can get those ARCs in the mail to you!

Thank you so much for participating everyone! And for your enthusiasm for the new books. :-)

*I numbered all the comments here and over on GoodReads one through forty-one, then hit generate.