Rachel Hawkins's Blog, page 2
December 8, 2011
Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time
Bonjour, mes Anges! And happy holidays! I am in Deadline Zone, which is why this blog has been kind of quiet here lately. however, I had a little free time tonight, and since I probably won't be back until my big Rachel Recaps 2011 Blog (spoiler: It'll go something like, "2011! HOW COULD YOU BE SO RAD AND SO AWFUL ALL AT THE SAME TIME? GTFO!), I thought I'd best blog NOW. And besides, I've been wanting to talk about Holiday Music foooorevvver.
First off, let me say that I am a recent convert to The Awesome of the Holidays. I mean, loved it when I was a kid, OBVS, but as I got older, I was never really one for traditional Xmas stuff. Part of that was because, after my dad passed away, the holidays felt weird for me and The Mama. So my aunt and uncle, who are awesome, decided to help us combat The Weird by taking us to Paris that first year after Daddy was gone. And then THAT became something of a tradition, so we spent several Christmases in a row overseas. I KNOW, I HAD TO SPEND CHRISTMAS IN PARIS AND SALZBURG AND LONDON PLEASE WEEP FOR ME.
Hardships, I suffered them.
But the traveling, while super-duper fun, meant that I kind of got out of the Regular Holiday Stuff. We never put up a tree because we wouldn't be there to enjoy it, and there wasn't a lot of Present Exchanging because, duh, going to Europe, GIFT ENOUGH.
And then I married The Husband, who comes from a family that is ALL ABOUT SOME CHRISTMAS. Seriously, come the day after Thanksgiving,he magically transforms into Buddy the Elf.
LOL J/K! He's always Yukon Cornelius.
We're spending our 10th Christmas as married people this year, and while it's taken me awhile, I am now FULLY ABOARD THE HOLIDAY TRAIN. And one of my favorite things about the holidays is the music.
I make a MOST excellent Holiday Playlist every year, and while it's grown to like 35 songs, I thought I'd share my 10 Favorite Holiday Songs with y'all! SO! In no particular order...
1) "Last Christmas"- Wham!
Fun Fact About Marriage: You know how when you're dating, you just want the other person to think you're awesome and you cook fancy dinners every night and you get up in the morning with make-up on and you never, ever go to the bathroom? Right, when you get married, that changes. Something flips once that ring is one your hand, and suddenly, you find yourself going OUT OF YOUR WAY to do things that slightly annoy your spouse. EXAMPLE: The Husband hates this song SO HARD. And so what did I do a few years ago? Made a mix that was NOTHING BUT COVERS OF IT. He didn't catch on until the 3rd one, and I will never forget his exasperated cry of, "RACHEL!" as he decorated the tree. Good times.
I think we can all agree this is the greatest music video of all time.
2) "Ave Maria"- The Carpenters
I guess technically this isn't a Christmas song, but I don't care. It makes it onto the playlist EVERY YEAR. Partially because, despite the whole Not Being Catholic Thing (The Mama was Baptist, my Daddy was Jewish, I decided to be Episcopalian...), any version of this song will make me Feel Feelings. But this one especially gets me because Karen Carpenter's voice is SO gorgeous and sad and resonant. Siiiiigh.
3) "River"- Joni Mitchell
As you will soon see, I have a MAJOR thing for melancholy holiday songs, and I don't think ANYTHING is more melancholy than, "I wish I had a river I could skate away on." As I recently said on Twitter, if you can listen to this song and not feel like weeping, you've never been homesick in the winter.
4) "Song For A Winter's Night"- Sarah MacLachlan
The last year before me and The Husband got married, I spent Christmas in Vermont with The Mama and the rest of my fam.
I'd wanted The Husband (then The Fiance) to come with us, but he couldn't, and because this was BEFORE we'd reached the I Will Spend An Hour Burning A CD Just To Irritate You Stage, I missed him soooooo muuuuuuch. This song always makes me think of that time, watching the snow fall and wishing he were there.
5) "All I Want For Christmas Is You"- Mariah Carey
Finally, a happy one! We won't even TALK about that horrible new version she has with The Biebs. Give me Original!Flavor Mariah every time! This song is so happy, and bouncy, and sweet, AND it always makes me think of my Favorite Christmas Movie EVER, "Love, Actually."
6) "Patrick Swayze Christmas"- MST3K
I... I really, think this one is self-explanatory.
7)"Fairytale of New York"- The Pogues
Easily my favorite Christmas song to crank up in the car. Now, admittedly, it is not, um, particularly SFW or PC (although, one of the insults the girl singer uses does not mean the same thing it means here.) Still, this song manages to be sad and funny and joyous and bitter all at the same time. And really, that's what the holidays are all about. ;-)
8)"Hard Candy Christmas"- Dolly Parton
This song isn't really that much about Christmas, but IT'S DOLLY PARTON SO I DON'T CARE. Speaking of, if you haven't seen Dolly's "Smoky Mountain Christmas" featuring a mountain man, a witch, and like a billion orphans, I FEEL VERY SORRY FOR YOU.
9) "O Come, O Come Emmanuel"- Enya
In addition to liking Christmas Songs That Make You Feel Sad, I also like Christmas Songs That Are From the Middle Ages (Or At Least Sound That Way.) Stuff like Greensleeves, The Angel Gabriel, and this. I especially like Enya's take on this song because it sounds like it should be used in a video game commercial. Seriously, listen to that and tell me you DON'T see a soldier trudging through the snow and picking up, like, a kid's doll or something.
10) "Winter Song"- Ingrid Michaelson and Sara Bareilles
Not TECHNICALLY a Christmas song, but still. So sweet, so pretty, and the video makes me happy every single time I watch it.
And there you have it! Ten of my favorites! However you spend the holidays, I hope they're filled with food and love and happy times and, yes, ALL THE VERSIONS OF LAST CHRISTMAS. ;-)
The newest addition to my Torture The Husband Playlist.
XOXO!
First off, let me say that I am a recent convert to The Awesome of the Holidays. I mean, loved it when I was a kid, OBVS, but as I got older, I was never really one for traditional Xmas stuff. Part of that was because, after my dad passed away, the holidays felt weird for me and The Mama. So my aunt and uncle, who are awesome, decided to help us combat The Weird by taking us to Paris that first year after Daddy was gone. And then THAT became something of a tradition, so we spent several Christmases in a row overseas. I KNOW, I HAD TO SPEND CHRISTMAS IN PARIS AND SALZBURG AND LONDON PLEASE WEEP FOR ME.
Hardships, I suffered them.
But the traveling, while super-duper fun, meant that I kind of got out of the Regular Holiday Stuff. We never put up a tree because we wouldn't be there to enjoy it, and there wasn't a lot of Present Exchanging because, duh, going to Europe, GIFT ENOUGH.
And then I married The Husband, who comes from a family that is ALL ABOUT SOME CHRISTMAS. Seriously, come the day after Thanksgiving,he magically transforms into Buddy the Elf.
LOL J/K! He's always Yukon Cornelius.
We're spending our 10th Christmas as married people this year, and while it's taken me awhile, I am now FULLY ABOARD THE HOLIDAY TRAIN. And one of my favorite things about the holidays is the music.
I make a MOST excellent Holiday Playlist every year, and while it's grown to like 35 songs, I thought I'd share my 10 Favorite Holiday Songs with y'all! SO! In no particular order...
1) "Last Christmas"- Wham!
Fun Fact About Marriage: You know how when you're dating, you just want the other person to think you're awesome and you cook fancy dinners every night and you get up in the morning with make-up on and you never, ever go to the bathroom? Right, when you get married, that changes. Something flips once that ring is one your hand, and suddenly, you find yourself going OUT OF YOUR WAY to do things that slightly annoy your spouse. EXAMPLE: The Husband hates this song SO HARD. And so what did I do a few years ago? Made a mix that was NOTHING BUT COVERS OF IT. He didn't catch on until the 3rd one, and I will never forget his exasperated cry of, "RACHEL!" as he decorated the tree. Good times.
I think we can all agree this is the greatest music video of all time.
2) "Ave Maria"- The Carpenters
I guess technically this isn't a Christmas song, but I don't care. It makes it onto the playlist EVERY YEAR. Partially because, despite the whole Not Being Catholic Thing (The Mama was Baptist, my Daddy was Jewish, I decided to be Episcopalian...), any version of this song will make me Feel Feelings. But this one especially gets me because Karen Carpenter's voice is SO gorgeous and sad and resonant. Siiiiigh.
3) "River"- Joni Mitchell
As you will soon see, I have a MAJOR thing for melancholy holiday songs, and I don't think ANYTHING is more melancholy than, "I wish I had a river I could skate away on." As I recently said on Twitter, if you can listen to this song and not feel like weeping, you've never been homesick in the winter.
4) "Song For A Winter's Night"- Sarah MacLachlan
The last year before me and The Husband got married, I spent Christmas in Vermont with The Mama and the rest of my fam.
I'd wanted The Husband (then The Fiance) to come with us, but he couldn't, and because this was BEFORE we'd reached the I Will Spend An Hour Burning A CD Just To Irritate You Stage, I missed him soooooo muuuuuuch. This song always makes me think of that time, watching the snow fall and wishing he were there.
5) "All I Want For Christmas Is You"- Mariah Carey
Finally, a happy one! We won't even TALK about that horrible new version she has with The Biebs. Give me Original!Flavor Mariah every time! This song is so happy, and bouncy, and sweet, AND it always makes me think of my Favorite Christmas Movie EVER, "Love, Actually."
6) "Patrick Swayze Christmas"- MST3K
I... I really, think this one is self-explanatory.
7)"Fairytale of New York"- The Pogues
Easily my favorite Christmas song to crank up in the car. Now, admittedly, it is not, um, particularly SFW or PC (although, one of the insults the girl singer uses does not mean the same thing it means here.) Still, this song manages to be sad and funny and joyous and bitter all at the same time. And really, that's what the holidays are all about. ;-)
8)"Hard Candy Christmas"- Dolly Parton
This song isn't really that much about Christmas, but IT'S DOLLY PARTON SO I DON'T CARE. Speaking of, if you haven't seen Dolly's "Smoky Mountain Christmas" featuring a mountain man, a witch, and like a billion orphans, I FEEL VERY SORRY FOR YOU.
9) "O Come, O Come Emmanuel"- Enya
In addition to liking Christmas Songs That Make You Feel Sad, I also like Christmas Songs That Are From the Middle Ages (Or At Least Sound That Way.) Stuff like Greensleeves, The Angel Gabriel, and this. I especially like Enya's take on this song because it sounds like it should be used in a video game commercial. Seriously, listen to that and tell me you DON'T see a soldier trudging through the snow and picking up, like, a kid's doll or something.
10) "Winter Song"- Ingrid Michaelson and Sara Bareilles
Not TECHNICALLY a Christmas song, but still. So sweet, so pretty, and the video makes me happy every single time I watch it.
And there you have it! Ten of my favorites! However you spend the holidays, I hope they're filled with food and love and happy times and, yes, ALL THE VERSIONS OF LAST CHRISTMAS. ;-)
The newest addition to my Torture The Husband Playlist.
XOXO!
November 1, 2011
For Those Of You About To NaNoWriMo, I SALUTE YOU!
Oh, Mes Anges, today is an EXCITING day! For it is the day that some of you may start NANOWRIO, aka That Time In November When A Whole Bunch Of People Attempt to Write a 50K Word Novel in a Month, and Lo, It Is Awesome.
I LOVE NaNoWriMo. Like, Pink Puffy Heart Love. Love ALMOST as much as I love Jon Snow.
[image error]
Oh, that Jon Snow. Always saying the sweetest things...
Now saying that, I should add that, much like Jon Snow, NaNoWriMo remains undone by moi. (Bah-dum-BUMP!)
Mostly because my deadlines for the past few years have been November 1, so I've always spent the month of Thanksgiving (and my birthday and my anniversary...)frantically FINISHING a book, not starting one.
But I love it nonetheless! There's something about the spirit of NaNoWriMo I find really appealing. People are SO EXCITED! About WRITING! And for one whole month, so many more people are learning that secret that all of us who take pen to paper or fingers to keyboards know: That writing, even when it's hard, even when it sucks, even when it HURTS LIKE SOMEONE IS PULLING YOUR SOUL TEETH is the Greatest Thing In The World.
I mean, how many people get to live in TWO WORLDS ALL THE TIME? And not wear straight jackets and only be allowed to eat with spoons?
This dude cannot be trusted with forks, OBVS.
I also love that people do NaNoWriMo for all kind of different reasons. Some of you really want to become authors, and are using this month as the time to finally, finally, FINALLY write that book you've always dreamed about. And that, my lovelies, it BAD ASS. GO FORTH!
And then some of you are already published authors, using this month as a kind of "Writing Vacation," giving yourselves permission to write that book you NEVER thought you'd write. Maybe because it's not in the genre you usually work in, maybe because the idea seems too big, too crazy, whatever. This, incidentally, is what happened to my friend Chantel. She talks about it here, and guess what? That book she wrote for NaNo 2 years ago? You can buy it HERE. (And you should, because it's SO GOOD, and I want everyone to read it so that we can fight over Team Galen vs. Team Nikolas, and talk about how we love/hate Zoi. GET ON THAT.)
This? Using NaNoWriMo as a time to go crazy and write The Impossible Book? ALSO SUPER RAD. DO IT TO IT!
Maybe some of you attempting NaNo have absolutely no interest in being published. You just want to do something fun during November, something that will give you a good excuse to hide from obnoxious relatives on Thanksgiving.
"Eff OFF, Nana, I'm writing my NOVEL!"
You wanna play around with words, with ideas, with stories, and do so at a time when thousands of other people are doing the same thing. Guess what, you guys? THAT IS AMAZEBALLS! GO GO GO!
And then, of course, there are those of you who are like, "NaNo is dumb, and in no way fits the way I write. 50K words in a month would kill me dead, and all my words would be crap." And to that I say...wait for it... AWESOME! No, really! Because knowing what does and doesn't work for you as a writer is an important part of the process. And NaNo is supposed to be FUN. If it won't work for you, DON'T DO IT! And don't let anyone make you feel bad about that! Just don't poop on everyone else's fun, either, okay? Because when you're all excited about doing something, nothing makes you feel worse than having someone go, "Oh, that? It is Made of Stupid and you are Doomed to Fail."
So now that we have established that Whatever You Choose To Do During NaNoWriMo (Even If It Is Not To Do NaNoWriMo) is Super Mega Ultra Valid, let's get on to some of the finer points.
1) RACHEL! I have heard that you cannot write a good novel in one month? So, forsooth, whateth be the point?
Okay, first of all, stop yelling at me. Secondly, when a writer uses the collective "you" to talk about any part of writing or publishing, what they should really write is "I." So when someone says, "You cannot write a good book in a month," they mean, " I cannot write a good book in one month." Which is fair enough! It all depends on what kind of writer you are, what kind of book you're writing, etc. I tend to draft relatively fast because my books are more plotty and dialogue-y, and that goes more quickly. But I totally believe a good book CAN be written in a month.
2) RACHEL! This is excellent! I cannot wait to start querying agents with my 50K word draft on December 1!
I said stop yelling! And as The Husband would say, "SLOW DOWN, BUCKWHEAT ZYDECO." (I don't know why he says this, BTW. He just does. He often refers to Small Son as "Buckwheat," too, but Small Son, in his Small Son way, has misunderstood this to be "Butt Wink," and he now calls people this and gets in trouble because that is both a nonsensical AND horribly graphic insult. I digress.)
First off, most novels are longer than 50K. 50K is really closer to novella size. Yes, there are some YA books that length, and lots of MG books come in around 50K, but still. It is SHORT. For example, HEX HALL is around 63K, DEMONGLASS is like 66K, and SPELL BOUND came in near 70K. The standard length for adult novels is close to 100K.
Also, THINK about how many people dash their books out on December 1! Do you want to be part of that wave, inundating agents with books that the agents KNOW ARE NANOWRIMO BOOKS? Or do you want to spend Christmas editing your 50K words under the tree, knowing that in January or February, you'll have a much shinier, tighter, LONGER book to send out into the world?
"YES, Nana, I am STILL WORKING ON MY NOVEL! Jeez! And bring me some cocoa!"
3) RACHEL! I have done NaNoWriMo before, but when I get to around 20-30K, the book suddenly gets REALLY HARD. This means I should quit because my idea is bad, right?
Mes Anges, let me tell you something. That 20-30K stretch? It is hard FOR EVERYONE. Seriously. I'm working on my 5th book right now (FIFTH! HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!), and I'm there, and it is only the knowledge that I have pulled four other books out of this stage that keeps me going. Otherwise, I would listen to that voice in my head that tells me, "HOLY SHIZZ, YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO WRITE A BOOK." I hear that voice every. time, Mes Anges. You'll hear it every time, too. Soldier on!
4) RACHEL! What if I don't get to 50K words, and lo, am marked as a FAILURE?
Did you try? Did you get words onto paper, and spend several consecutive days working on one idea? Then you know what? You've already done what SO MANY PEOPLE have not. Do you know how many people talk about writing a book, but never actually WRITE? So many! But you made an attempt! you put butt in chair, and hands on keyboard or pen or iPad or whatever, and WORDS ON PAPER. You win, my friend!
So, for those of you doing NaNoWriMo this year, I hope you kick ass! I hope you write books so good that I stay up at night worrying about them. I hope you have fun. I hope you get a peek into why this is the best job in the world. I hope you don't let anyone tell you you can't do it. I hope you dance. No, wait, that's that lame country song, isn't it? Yeah, I don't hope you dance.
Shut yer face, Womack! I will dance when and if I see fit, damn it!
And without getting sappy or earnest (two things I am allergic to), know that I believe you can do it, that I love you for trying. Or for not trying! I AM VERY FREE WITH MY LOVE!
But not in the, shall we say, Amber Way.
NOW GO WRITE ME SOME BOOKS! XOXO!
I LOVE NaNoWriMo. Like, Pink Puffy Heart Love. Love ALMOST as much as I love Jon Snow.
[image error]
Oh, that Jon Snow. Always saying the sweetest things...
Now saying that, I should add that, much like Jon Snow, NaNoWriMo remains undone by moi. (Bah-dum-BUMP!)
Mostly because my deadlines for the past few years have been November 1, so I've always spent the month of Thanksgiving (and my birthday and my anniversary...)frantically FINISHING a book, not starting one.
But I love it nonetheless! There's something about the spirit of NaNoWriMo I find really appealing. People are SO EXCITED! About WRITING! And for one whole month, so many more people are learning that secret that all of us who take pen to paper or fingers to keyboards know: That writing, even when it's hard, even when it sucks, even when it HURTS LIKE SOMEONE IS PULLING YOUR SOUL TEETH is the Greatest Thing In The World.
I mean, how many people get to live in TWO WORLDS ALL THE TIME? And not wear straight jackets and only be allowed to eat with spoons?
This dude cannot be trusted with forks, OBVS.
I also love that people do NaNoWriMo for all kind of different reasons. Some of you really want to become authors, and are using this month as the time to finally, finally, FINALLY write that book you've always dreamed about. And that, my lovelies, it BAD ASS. GO FORTH!
And then some of you are already published authors, using this month as a kind of "Writing Vacation," giving yourselves permission to write that book you NEVER thought you'd write. Maybe because it's not in the genre you usually work in, maybe because the idea seems too big, too crazy, whatever. This, incidentally, is what happened to my friend Chantel. She talks about it here, and guess what? That book she wrote for NaNo 2 years ago? You can buy it HERE. (And you should, because it's SO GOOD, and I want everyone to read it so that we can fight over Team Galen vs. Team Nikolas, and talk about how we love/hate Zoi. GET ON THAT.)
This? Using NaNoWriMo as a time to go crazy and write The Impossible Book? ALSO SUPER RAD. DO IT TO IT!
Maybe some of you attempting NaNo have absolutely no interest in being published. You just want to do something fun during November, something that will give you a good excuse to hide from obnoxious relatives on Thanksgiving.
"Eff OFF, Nana, I'm writing my NOVEL!"
You wanna play around with words, with ideas, with stories, and do so at a time when thousands of other people are doing the same thing. Guess what, you guys? THAT IS AMAZEBALLS! GO GO GO!
And then, of course, there are those of you who are like, "NaNo is dumb, and in no way fits the way I write. 50K words in a month would kill me dead, and all my words would be crap." And to that I say...wait for it... AWESOME! No, really! Because knowing what does and doesn't work for you as a writer is an important part of the process. And NaNo is supposed to be FUN. If it won't work for you, DON'T DO IT! And don't let anyone make you feel bad about that! Just don't poop on everyone else's fun, either, okay? Because when you're all excited about doing something, nothing makes you feel worse than having someone go, "Oh, that? It is Made of Stupid and you are Doomed to Fail."
So now that we have established that Whatever You Choose To Do During NaNoWriMo (Even If It Is Not To Do NaNoWriMo) is Super Mega Ultra Valid, let's get on to some of the finer points.
1) RACHEL! I have heard that you cannot write a good novel in one month? So, forsooth, whateth be the point?
Okay, first of all, stop yelling at me. Secondly, when a writer uses the collective "you" to talk about any part of writing or publishing, what they should really write is "I." So when someone says, "You cannot write a good book in a month," they mean, " I cannot write a good book in one month." Which is fair enough! It all depends on what kind of writer you are, what kind of book you're writing, etc. I tend to draft relatively fast because my books are more plotty and dialogue-y, and that goes more quickly. But I totally believe a good book CAN be written in a month.
2) RACHEL! This is excellent! I cannot wait to start querying agents with my 50K word draft on December 1!
I said stop yelling! And as The Husband would say, "SLOW DOWN, BUCKWHEAT ZYDECO." (I don't know why he says this, BTW. He just does. He often refers to Small Son as "Buckwheat," too, but Small Son, in his Small Son way, has misunderstood this to be "Butt Wink," and he now calls people this and gets in trouble because that is both a nonsensical AND horribly graphic insult. I digress.)
First off, most novels are longer than 50K. 50K is really closer to novella size. Yes, there are some YA books that length, and lots of MG books come in around 50K, but still. It is SHORT. For example, HEX HALL is around 63K, DEMONGLASS is like 66K, and SPELL BOUND came in near 70K. The standard length for adult novels is close to 100K.
Also, THINK about how many people dash their books out on December 1! Do you want to be part of that wave, inundating agents with books that the agents KNOW ARE NANOWRIMO BOOKS? Or do you want to spend Christmas editing your 50K words under the tree, knowing that in January or February, you'll have a much shinier, tighter, LONGER book to send out into the world?
"YES, Nana, I am STILL WORKING ON MY NOVEL! Jeez! And bring me some cocoa!"
3) RACHEL! I have done NaNoWriMo before, but when I get to around 20-30K, the book suddenly gets REALLY HARD. This means I should quit because my idea is bad, right?
Mes Anges, let me tell you something. That 20-30K stretch? It is hard FOR EVERYONE. Seriously. I'm working on my 5th book right now (FIFTH! HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!), and I'm there, and it is only the knowledge that I have pulled four other books out of this stage that keeps me going. Otherwise, I would listen to that voice in my head that tells me, "HOLY SHIZZ, YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO WRITE A BOOK." I hear that voice every. time, Mes Anges. You'll hear it every time, too. Soldier on!
4) RACHEL! What if I don't get to 50K words, and lo, am marked as a FAILURE?
Did you try? Did you get words onto paper, and spend several consecutive days working on one idea? Then you know what? You've already done what SO MANY PEOPLE have not. Do you know how many people talk about writing a book, but never actually WRITE? So many! But you made an attempt! you put butt in chair, and hands on keyboard or pen or iPad or whatever, and WORDS ON PAPER. You win, my friend!
So, for those of you doing NaNoWriMo this year, I hope you kick ass! I hope you write books so good that I stay up at night worrying about them. I hope you have fun. I hope you get a peek into why this is the best job in the world. I hope you don't let anyone tell you you can't do it. I hope you dance. No, wait, that's that lame country song, isn't it? Yeah, I don't hope you dance.
Shut yer face, Womack! I will dance when and if I see fit, damn it!
And without getting sappy or earnest (two things I am allergic to), know that I believe you can do it, that I love you for trying. Or for not trying! I AM VERY FREE WITH MY LOVE!
But not in the, shall we say, Amber Way.
NOW GO WRITE ME SOME BOOKS! XOXO!
October 31, 2011
Happy Halloween!
Huzzah! It's Candy and Costume Day! I'm sure the kids at Hecate Hall are putting the finishing touches on their outfits for the annual All Hallows Eve Ball.
[image error]
I hear Sophie's peacock dress actually started a trend in ballgowns at Hex Hall!
Next year, once y'all have read SPELL BOUND, I MIGHT have a short All Hallows Eve Ball story to put up. ;-)
But that's for NEXT year. This year, here's a spooky story I wrote LAST Halloween. It's a little different from my usual stuff (no kissing! No jokes!), but it's set in the Hex Hall universe, and now that you've read DEMONGLASS, maybe you can see how it's kind of connected to Sophie and Co.! Please to enjoy! And HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
ALSO please to enjoy the MOST TERRIFYING PART of my favorite Halloween cartoon, Garfield's Halloween Adventure. PIRATE GHOSTS GAH!!
[image error]
I hear Sophie's peacock dress actually started a trend in ballgowns at Hex Hall!
Next year, once y'all have read SPELL BOUND, I MIGHT have a short All Hallows Eve Ball story to put up. ;-)
But that's for NEXT year. This year, here's a spooky story I wrote LAST Halloween. It's a little different from my usual stuff (no kissing! No jokes!), but it's set in the Hex Hall universe, and now that you've read DEMONGLASS, maybe you can see how it's kind of connected to Sophie and Co.! Please to enjoy! And HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
ALSO please to enjoy the MOST TERRIFYING PART of my favorite Halloween cartoon, Garfield's Halloween Adventure. PIRATE GHOSTS GAH!!
October 27, 2011
Now He Is Six
Today is Small Son's birthday! It is so hard to believe that six- SIX!!- years ago today, that he came into our lives and changed us forever. Last night, I was telling him my favorite memory of that day. Right after he was born, after he'd been cleaned up, and wrapped up, they handed him to me. He was crying and red and pissed off, as newborn babies usually are. As I held him, I looked at him, and said, "There you are, [Small Son!]" And he immediately turned to the sound of my voice, like he was thinking, "Hey! I KNOW that person!" His tiny eyes looked into mine, and man, that was it. I knew that I'd never love anyone as fiercely, as all-consumingly as I did this little dude.
But one of the coolest things about watching him grow is how that love has changed over the years. He's still my baby (or my Beh-Beh, as I call him), but now, I don't just love him because he's mine. I love him for the loving, funny, frustrating, weird, totally unique person he is.
I still see traces of me and The Husband in him, but there are new parts emerging now, quirks of his personality that are all his. He's had an adventurous spirit ever since he was very little. When he was three, we drove from Alabama to Maine. At one stop, we had to get up at 4:30 AM to get on the road. The Husband and I were blurry eyed and half asleep as we got in the car, but Small Son hopped up into his car seat, grinned, and yelled, "LET'S DO THIS!"
He is fearless about so many scary things (the ocean, airplanes, heights), but still timid when faced with crowds, or people he doesn't know. When he's mad at you, he tells you that he is, "not in your heart right now!" He is hilariously funny, both intentionally and unintentionally. For example, I was bemoaning the lack of a parking space last week, and from the backseat, complete with a world weary sigh, comes, "Welcome to my life." He will do anything for a laugh, including a routine as "Robot Justin Beaver (his term for Justin Bieber)that literally made me cry, it was so funny.
When he's excited, he hugs SO HARD that he grits his teeth and shakes. It's like he's having a Love Seizure, and it cracks me up every time. He feels things very deeply, which makes me wish I could put bubble wrap around his heart.
He loves music, and stories, and the water, and every night, he asks us what our favorite part of the day is. And even though we always tell him it was some event, or some activity, the truth is, he's my favorite part of the day. Every day.
Happy Birthday, Small Son!
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But one of the coolest things about watching him grow is how that love has changed over the years. He's still my baby (or my Beh-Beh, as I call him), but now, I don't just love him because he's mine. I love him for the loving, funny, frustrating, weird, totally unique person he is.
I still see traces of me and The Husband in him, but there are new parts emerging now, quirks of his personality that are all his. He's had an adventurous spirit ever since he was very little. When he was three, we drove from Alabama to Maine. At one stop, we had to get up at 4:30 AM to get on the road. The Husband and I were blurry eyed and half asleep as we got in the car, but Small Son hopped up into his car seat, grinned, and yelled, "LET'S DO THIS!"
He is fearless about so many scary things (the ocean, airplanes, heights), but still timid when faced with crowds, or people he doesn't know. When he's mad at you, he tells you that he is, "not in your heart right now!" He is hilariously funny, both intentionally and unintentionally. For example, I was bemoaning the lack of a parking space last week, and from the backseat, complete with a world weary sigh, comes, "Welcome to my life." He will do anything for a laugh, including a routine as "Robot Justin Beaver (his term for Justin Bieber)that literally made me cry, it was so funny.
When he's excited, he hugs SO HARD that he grits his teeth and shakes. It's like he's having a Love Seizure, and it cracks me up every time. He feels things very deeply, which makes me wish I could put bubble wrap around his heart.
He loves music, and stories, and the water, and every night, he asks us what our favorite part of the day is. And even though we always tell him it was some event, or some activity, the truth is, he's my favorite part of the day. Every day.
Happy Birthday, Small Son!
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October 13, 2011
In Which I Make A Tortured Metaphor (And Show Off My Horrible Knitting)
Bonjour, Mes Anges! Long time, no blog, but I have been EVER so busy! There's that whole "Writing a bunch of books" thing, then I also did a trip to NYC (which was SO FUN, and hopefully more on that in another blog). I also had the Auburn Writer's Conference last week, and that was SUPER AMAZEBALLS. The AWC always makes me feel so proud of my hometown and all the glorious creative people I'm lucky enough to call friends.
This is the trailer for this year's conference. Watch it, and I DARE you not to Feel Feelings at the end. Also, yes, I am in it. And yes, that is my real bedroom/office. My bedroffice.
Anyway, all of this means not much time for blogging! But then, if you've been hanging around here for awhile, you already know how that goes. ;-)
The other day, someone on Twitter mentioned knitting, and how she wished she could do it, and I was like, "Hey! I knit! REALLY, REALLY HORRIBLY, but I do" And for some reason, that got me thinking about creating and writing, and how we should approach such Scary Things. So please, enjoy this tortured metaphor I'm about to make!
Some background: I am freaking terrible at anything remotely resembling crafts. I mean, it's EMBARRASSING how little artistic talent I have, especially since The Mama is CRAZY talented at craftiness and actually used to TEACH ART.
Just looking at this makes me break out in hives. Hives that, oddly enough, resemble that paper flower thingie Martha is holding while she judges me.
So when my friend Chantel was like, "Hey! Have you ever knitted?" I was all, "UM, NO, I CANNOT EVEN SEW BUTTONS BACK ON THINGS." (Which is true. Whenever I lose a button, I have to get The Husband to deal with it. Yes, ladies, my man fixes cars, chases reindeer, digs for rocks, and SEWS. And no, you still can't have him.)
HANDS OF MY YUKON CORNELIUS!
But Chantel was not daunted by the panic in my eyes! Chantel was BRAVE, and said, "Come! Let us go to Michael's, buy supplies, and I shall teach you to knit!" Chantel, it turned out, had learned to knit several years before when she was doing her Fulbright in New Zealand. Which, I mean, can we take a minute an appreciate how that is like The Most Bad-Ass Learning To Knit Story EVER? Most people are like, "Oh, my grandma taught me," but Chantel gets to say, "Oh, I was in Middle Earth because I'm terrifyingly smart, and there's lots of wool there so...knitting."
It is also possible she battled Orcs there. I do not know.
I picked out some yarn I liked, and I got some reasonably priced needles, and Chantel taught me to knit, despite the fact that I did, like, EVERYTHING wrong at first. Y'all should have heard how nice she tried to be saying things like, "Oh, I...yeah, I don't even know how you did that. How are you ADDING more stitches?"
Seriously, you guys.
How bad am I at craftiness? So bad that when I texted The Mama to tell her Chantel was learnin' me some knitting, The Mama text back, "Does she KNOW you?" And when The Mama, who basically follows me around all day playing THIS SONG:
is like, "LOL U SUCK AT TEH KNITTING!!1" you know I really, really suck.
But here's the thing. I really ENJOYED knitting. Even as I was adding stitches, and then dropping stitches, and creating Inexplicable Holes, I was having a good time. And I wasn't trying to make a coat, or a hat, or even a scarf. I was just playing around with the yarn until I felt more comfortable with it.
I went back to Michael's. I had plastic needles, but I wasn't crazy about those, so I bought some metal ones and some pricier bamboo needles (which ended up being my preferred needle, BTW.) I got several different skeins of yarn, picking all of them just because I thought they were pretty. I knitted watching TV, and I knitted while I thought Plotty Thoughts- BOOK Plotty Thoughts, not World Domination Plotty Thoughts-, and I knitted just for the fun of knitting. And I STILL sucked at it, but I started to suck a little bit less. Here are a few examples:
[image error]
Now, as you can see, I am still not what ANYONE would call "good." But that's to be expected. I've only been knitting for a few months, and before Chantel got that knitty gleam in her eye, I'd never so much as held a pair of knitting needles before. The main thing is, I'm learning, and I'm practicing, and I'm ENJOYING it.
And now, for the Tortured Metaphor portion of the blog, it strikes me that this is what Beginning Writers need to do. So often, when we want to write, we sit down and go, "I wanna write a BOOK! A big one! Maybe even a SERIES of books with, like, SEVEN SEQUELS and ELEVENTY BILLION characters!"
But if you've never written anything before, that's a SERIOUSLY tall order! It would be like me buying all that yarn and a pattern book and going, "IMMA KNIT A COAT AND MATCHING SCARF AND BOOTIES FOR SMALL SON! So we can MATCH, CREEPY-STYLES!"
YAY THERAPY!
And would I have ended up with matching coats and hats and scarves and booties? No. I would have ended up with a pattern book shoved in a corner, and several balls of yarn, and maybe like one half of one sleeve or something. And I would've felt frustrated, and vaguely pissed off, and very, "BAH KNITTING I HATE YOU YOU ARE TOO HARD."
Instead, I didn't put any expectations on myself. I bought yarn just because it was pretty. I tried lots of different needles until I found the ones that felt best for me. I didn't sit down with any other goal besides, "Knit." Not knit a SCARF, not knit something to GIVE SOMEONE, just...knit.
And I hope that all of you starting out in writing will give yourself the same freedom. Just WRITE. Don't worry about making it a BOOK, or getting an AGENT. At least not right away. Play with ideas or characters or themes that are "pretty" to you (this is why I'm very Pro Fanfic. I feel like Fanfic can be a great way of writing with training wheels, as it were.)
Write in a notebook, on a laptop, a regular computer,an iPad, whatever until you discover what feels best. Try out different writing software. For example, I know now that I can only write books from beginning to end, and I have to write them in Word on a laptop. I have friends who ADORE Scrivener, but it makes me wanna punch baby kitties.
Yup, even you, Adorable Sad Kitten. That is how much I loathe Scrivener.
Have fun. Play. Don't worry if you drop plots, or add plots, or have Inexplicable Holes in your story. Just keep trying new stuff. And if writing is ONLY ever play for you, that's fine, too. I mean, let's me honest, I will never have my own knitting show on the DIY network.
And even if I did, it wouldn't matter, because the GREATEST NAME EVER for a knitting show has already been taken.
But until you try, until you get in there and give yourself permission to be BAD at something while you're learning, you'll never really know. So go! WRITE!
And don't expect a scarf from me for Christmas. ;-)
XOXO!
This is the trailer for this year's conference. Watch it, and I DARE you not to Feel Feelings at the end. Also, yes, I am in it. And yes, that is my real bedroom/office. My bedroffice.
Anyway, all of this means not much time for blogging! But then, if you've been hanging around here for awhile, you already know how that goes. ;-)
The other day, someone on Twitter mentioned knitting, and how she wished she could do it, and I was like, "Hey! I knit! REALLY, REALLY HORRIBLY, but I do" And for some reason, that got me thinking about creating and writing, and how we should approach such Scary Things. So please, enjoy this tortured metaphor I'm about to make!
Some background: I am freaking terrible at anything remotely resembling crafts. I mean, it's EMBARRASSING how little artistic talent I have, especially since The Mama is CRAZY talented at craftiness and actually used to TEACH ART.
Just looking at this makes me break out in hives. Hives that, oddly enough, resemble that paper flower thingie Martha is holding while she judges me.
So when my friend Chantel was like, "Hey! Have you ever knitted?" I was all, "UM, NO, I CANNOT EVEN SEW BUTTONS BACK ON THINGS." (Which is true. Whenever I lose a button, I have to get The Husband to deal with it. Yes, ladies, my man fixes cars, chases reindeer, digs for rocks, and SEWS. And no, you still can't have him.)
HANDS OF MY YUKON CORNELIUS!
But Chantel was not daunted by the panic in my eyes! Chantel was BRAVE, and said, "Come! Let us go to Michael's, buy supplies, and I shall teach you to knit!" Chantel, it turned out, had learned to knit several years before when she was doing her Fulbright in New Zealand. Which, I mean, can we take a minute an appreciate how that is like The Most Bad-Ass Learning To Knit Story EVER? Most people are like, "Oh, my grandma taught me," but Chantel gets to say, "Oh, I was in Middle Earth because I'm terrifyingly smart, and there's lots of wool there so...knitting."
It is also possible she battled Orcs there. I do not know.
I picked out some yarn I liked, and I got some reasonably priced needles, and Chantel taught me to knit, despite the fact that I did, like, EVERYTHING wrong at first. Y'all should have heard how nice she tried to be saying things like, "Oh, I...yeah, I don't even know how you did that. How are you ADDING more stitches?"
Seriously, you guys.
How bad am I at craftiness? So bad that when I texted The Mama to tell her Chantel was learnin' me some knitting, The Mama text back, "Does she KNOW you?" And when The Mama, who basically follows me around all day playing THIS SONG:
is like, "LOL U SUCK AT TEH KNITTING!!1" you know I really, really suck.
But here's the thing. I really ENJOYED knitting. Even as I was adding stitches, and then dropping stitches, and creating Inexplicable Holes, I was having a good time. And I wasn't trying to make a coat, or a hat, or even a scarf. I was just playing around with the yarn until I felt more comfortable with it.
I went back to Michael's. I had plastic needles, but I wasn't crazy about those, so I bought some metal ones and some pricier bamboo needles (which ended up being my preferred needle, BTW.) I got several different skeins of yarn, picking all of them just because I thought they were pretty. I knitted watching TV, and I knitted while I thought Plotty Thoughts- BOOK Plotty Thoughts, not World Domination Plotty Thoughts-, and I knitted just for the fun of knitting. And I STILL sucked at it, but I started to suck a little bit less. Here are a few examples:
[image error]
Now, as you can see, I am still not what ANYONE would call "good." But that's to be expected. I've only been knitting for a few months, and before Chantel got that knitty gleam in her eye, I'd never so much as held a pair of knitting needles before. The main thing is, I'm learning, and I'm practicing, and I'm ENJOYING it.
And now, for the Tortured Metaphor portion of the blog, it strikes me that this is what Beginning Writers need to do. So often, when we want to write, we sit down and go, "I wanna write a BOOK! A big one! Maybe even a SERIES of books with, like, SEVEN SEQUELS and ELEVENTY BILLION characters!"
But if you've never written anything before, that's a SERIOUSLY tall order! It would be like me buying all that yarn and a pattern book and going, "IMMA KNIT A COAT AND MATCHING SCARF AND BOOTIES FOR SMALL SON! So we can MATCH, CREEPY-STYLES!"
YAY THERAPY!
And would I have ended up with matching coats and hats and scarves and booties? No. I would have ended up with a pattern book shoved in a corner, and several balls of yarn, and maybe like one half of one sleeve or something. And I would've felt frustrated, and vaguely pissed off, and very, "BAH KNITTING I HATE YOU YOU ARE TOO HARD."
Instead, I didn't put any expectations on myself. I bought yarn just because it was pretty. I tried lots of different needles until I found the ones that felt best for me. I didn't sit down with any other goal besides, "Knit." Not knit a SCARF, not knit something to GIVE SOMEONE, just...knit.
And I hope that all of you starting out in writing will give yourself the same freedom. Just WRITE. Don't worry about making it a BOOK, or getting an AGENT. At least not right away. Play with ideas or characters or themes that are "pretty" to you (this is why I'm very Pro Fanfic. I feel like Fanfic can be a great way of writing with training wheels, as it were.)
Write in a notebook, on a laptop, a regular computer,an iPad, whatever until you discover what feels best. Try out different writing software. For example, I know now that I can only write books from beginning to end, and I have to write them in Word on a laptop. I have friends who ADORE Scrivener, but it makes me wanna punch baby kitties.
Yup, even you, Adorable Sad Kitten. That is how much I loathe Scrivener.
Have fun. Play. Don't worry if you drop plots, or add plots, or have Inexplicable Holes in your story. Just keep trying new stuff. And if writing is ONLY ever play for you, that's fine, too. I mean, let's me honest, I will never have my own knitting show on the DIY network.
And even if I did, it wouldn't matter, because the GREATEST NAME EVER for a knitting show has already been taken.
But until you try, until you get in there and give yourself permission to be BAD at something while you're learning, you'll never really know. So go! WRITE!
And don't expect a scarf from me for Christmas. ;-)
XOXO!
August 5, 2011
Behind The Curtain
Happy Friday, all! First things first, before I forget, if you are in the Nashville area, I will BE THERE THIS MONDAY NIGHT! Yes! August 8, from 6:30 until 8:30, me and some of my Author Buddies will be at the Brentwood Barnes and Noble. Come see us! Details here!
Okay, so I had ALL THIS STUFF I wanted to talk about today as we near the end of the summer. This summer has been a weird one for me, although far, far better than last summer, AKA That Time The Husband Had To Live In Norway For 2 Months and a Reindeer Nearly Killed Him And Oh Yeah, He Also Grew This Beard:
And did he purposely save this beard until he could get a new driver's license photo, thus preserving it for all time or at least the next four years? Yes. Yes, he did.
Hmmm... Looking at that picture, I now realize that The Husband bore a striking resemblance to Yukon Cornelius from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
Anyway, last summer was sad because The Husband was far, far away and I like having him around and stuff. THIS summer was weird because I was coming off an INTENSELY weird spring, wherein several AMAZING things happened. DEMONGLASS came out! And you guys got to READ IT! And then I got to travel 'round the country with my New BFF, Sarwat! And then DEMONGLASS spent 2 weeks on the NYT list, and made me feel a combination of :D and 0_o for nearly a month!
But, as is the way with life sometimes, all this amazingness had to be balanced by some sucktasticness. In this case, the sucktasticness was every drop of my Writing Mojo going, "PEACE OUT, HAWKINS!"
"Where the f*** are you going, Writing Mojo? I NEED TO WRITE BOOKS, YOU KNOW."
I've said before that I don't believe in writer's block, and I hold to that. In this case, I wasn't BLOCKED so much as every word I typed felt like someone was pulling teeth in my soul. My soul-teeth as it were.
This is what happens when you do a Google Image search for "soul teeth."
There are lots of reasons for that, and it the first two drafts of this post, I went into them at length. But then I was all, "Eh, this feels slightly self-indulgent, and also I am Southern, and therefore anything that feels like Revealing My Bizness makes me break out in hives." So I'll give you the condensed version and say that I suspect my Writing Mojo deserted me for the following reasons.
1)The past few years have been full of Change, and while 99.9% of that change was RAD, it was still Change, and Change=Stress, and Stress Is The Word Killer. Or something like that.
"It's actually 'Fear Is the Mind Killer.' We are so kicking you out of the Bene Gesserit now, Rachel."
2)I am still new at this and it's taken me this long to figure out how to balance the author/writer parts of myself, as I've discussed before. Also, the way I wrote books before I was a Published Author Type Person was not a particularly sustainable process, and that eventually bit me in the gluteus maximus.
This was basically my schedule for HEX HALL:
Monday: Write 4K words
Tuesday: Futz with those words
Wednesday: Pretend to be working by making a playlist/reading a baby name book/researching various kinds of supernatural beasties/translating random words into Latin (Fun Fact: That's actually how I came up with the term "Prodigium.")
Thursday: Write 5K words
Friday-Tuesday: Sit on the couch and rest because brain is leaking out of ears.
Wednesday: Write 6K words.
Thursday: Scrap those 6K words, write 6K MORE BETTER words.
And so on.
Now just repeat that schedule for three months, add an extra month where I abandoned the book altogether, then throw in the last day where I wrote 10K words in under 24 hours, and you have what writing HEX HALL looked like. Do you see where that might not be the BEST way to write a book when you ALSO have to edit a 2nd book, and promote a third, and also try to maintain some degree of sanity?
3)I carried a lot of fears/beliefs over from my Pre-Published days without taking into account that now writing was FER SERIOUS MY JOB AND STUFF. Namely that you can NEVER EVER EVER work on something else except your current WIP because then you will ABANDON your WIP, and NEVER FINISH and then you will NEVER BE A WRITER OMG. But the thing is, once writing is your actual career, I think those little side projects and fancies are actually a really necessary thing. I love writing. It is the best job in the world. But you know what? It's still a job. And that means some days it isn't fun. I think that if I'd sat down at my computer and said, "Okay, you can have 30 minutes/500 words/whatever you deem appropriate to write WHATEVER you want," I probably could have gone into the writing I had to do that day a lot happier. When you don't let yourself be free sometimes, your WIP becomes less that fun world you get to create and more like that lame friend your mom MAKES you hang out with because she and the Lame Friend's mom are in Sunday School together, even though you'd MUCH RATHER go play with your AWESOME NEW FRIENDS who have COOL HAIR and smoke CLOVE CIGARETTES and are just generally MORE WINNING AT LIFE.
The Fun WIP. Also, Responsible Adult Note: Do not smoke clove cigarettes. They're kind of gross and they will make you smell like you just celebrated Christmas in Hell.
4)SPELL BOUND was really hard to write. Like, harder than I ever thought it would be. It was the first book I wrote as a Published Author Type Person (DEMONGLASS was turned in before HEX HALL ever came out), and it was the end of the series, and I wanted to be SURE I was leaving all of you with a fabulous ending, and because I STILL hadn't developed an especially sustainable writing process, I struggled with it a lot. In the end, everything worked out and I actually think this book may be the best of the series. But at the time, fighting with it so hard really, really rattled my confidence. And it meant that when I turned around to work on my NEXT book, I was nearly having panic attacks just opening the Word document.
RWAR I'M YOUR NEXT BOOK AND IMMA EAT YOU, RACHEL!
Anyway, all of this is to say that while I've been a FT writer for nearly 4 years, I've only been a Published Author Type Person since March 2010, and it's taken me this long to finally start figuring some stuff out. That's what this summer was about for me: getting my feet back under me as a writer. Learning to have fun again and to shut out the voices in my head that were screaming, "YOU ARE A LOSERY LOSER! PEOPLE WOULD KILL TO HAVE THIS JOB SO WHY IS IT MAKING YOU SO FULL OF THE SADS? OH, RIGHT BECAUSE YOU ARE A LOSERY LOSER."
I also had to accept that the days of 5K words/day were probably gone forever. Heck, the days of 2K words/day are gone. From now on, it's 500-1000 words a day, five days a week. It's slower, and it's a weirder way for me to work because I think my natural inclination will always be towards the Furious Flurries of Words, but that was clearly not working. Honestly, it took me nearly 2 years and four books to realize that my writing process had to change, but there you go.
And I'm also ridiculously grateful to work with such amazing people who, when I said, "Okay, this train is moving a WEE BIT FAST, can we perhaps slow down a touch?" all said, "Alrighty then!" Okay, they didn't actually say "Alrighty, then!" because that is a lame thing to say, and all the people on Team Hex/Team Belle are, as previously implied, Amazeballs. And I'm super-glad that if I had to have a mini-burnout, it came now when there was a little wiggle room, and that SPELL BOUND was already turned in! It DOES mean that REBEL BELLE probably won't come out until 2013 now, but at least there's not a 2 year gap between books in a series.
Or a FIVE YEAR GAP. Don't think I've forgotten, George R.R. Martin.
So there you have it! I kind of feel like I just showed y'all my Writing Panties (I will not even ATTEMPT a Google Image search for that one), but I wanted to let y'all know what's been going on with me and, if any of you are Published Author Type Persons or Aspiring Author Type Persons, to let you see a little peek behind the curtain. I think we talk so much about the struggle TO get published that we don't always realize there are struggles ONCE we're published. Or if we DO talk about things that are rough post-publication, it tends to be about the Author Side Struggles (bad covers, bad sales, bad reviews, no new sales, etc.), and less about the Writer Side Struggles.
But this story does have a happy ending! Yes, it took tears, and hair pulling, and the most emo journal entries this side of 7th grade, and more cookies than I'm comfortable talking about, but over the course of this summer, I've found my way back to having fun with writing, so much so that the other day, The Husband noticed I was staring into space and asked, "What are you smiling about?" And I realized I was sitting there, day dreaming about the book I was working on, grinning like an idiot. So if anyone else is out there in the Dark No Man's Land of No Words, they'll come back. And lo, life can be all flowers and sausages once again.
Yup.
Until next time! XOXO!
Okay, so I had ALL THIS STUFF I wanted to talk about today as we near the end of the summer. This summer has been a weird one for me, although far, far better than last summer, AKA That Time The Husband Had To Live In Norway For 2 Months and a Reindeer Nearly Killed Him And Oh Yeah, He Also Grew This Beard:
And did he purposely save this beard until he could get a new driver's license photo, thus preserving it for all time or at least the next four years? Yes. Yes, he did.
Hmmm... Looking at that picture, I now realize that The Husband bore a striking resemblance to Yukon Cornelius from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
Anyway, last summer was sad because The Husband was far, far away and I like having him around and stuff. THIS summer was weird because I was coming off an INTENSELY weird spring, wherein several AMAZING things happened. DEMONGLASS came out! And you guys got to READ IT! And then I got to travel 'round the country with my New BFF, Sarwat! And then DEMONGLASS spent 2 weeks on the NYT list, and made me feel a combination of :D and 0_o for nearly a month!
But, as is the way with life sometimes, all this amazingness had to be balanced by some sucktasticness. In this case, the sucktasticness was every drop of my Writing Mojo going, "PEACE OUT, HAWKINS!"
"Where the f*** are you going, Writing Mojo? I NEED TO WRITE BOOKS, YOU KNOW."
I've said before that I don't believe in writer's block, and I hold to that. In this case, I wasn't BLOCKED so much as every word I typed felt like someone was pulling teeth in my soul. My soul-teeth as it were.
This is what happens when you do a Google Image search for "soul teeth."
There are lots of reasons for that, and it the first two drafts of this post, I went into them at length. But then I was all, "Eh, this feels slightly self-indulgent, and also I am Southern, and therefore anything that feels like Revealing My Bizness makes me break out in hives." So I'll give you the condensed version and say that I suspect my Writing Mojo deserted me for the following reasons.
1)The past few years have been full of Change, and while 99.9% of that change was RAD, it was still Change, and Change=Stress, and Stress Is The Word Killer. Or something like that.
"It's actually 'Fear Is the Mind Killer.' We are so kicking you out of the Bene Gesserit now, Rachel."
2)I am still new at this and it's taken me this long to figure out how to balance the author/writer parts of myself, as I've discussed before. Also, the way I wrote books before I was a Published Author Type Person was not a particularly sustainable process, and that eventually bit me in the gluteus maximus.
This was basically my schedule for HEX HALL:
Monday: Write 4K words
Tuesday: Futz with those words
Wednesday: Pretend to be working by making a playlist/reading a baby name book/researching various kinds of supernatural beasties/translating random words into Latin (Fun Fact: That's actually how I came up with the term "Prodigium.")
Thursday: Write 5K words
Friday-Tuesday: Sit on the couch and rest because brain is leaking out of ears.
Wednesday: Write 6K words.
Thursday: Scrap those 6K words, write 6K MORE BETTER words.
And so on.
Now just repeat that schedule for three months, add an extra month where I abandoned the book altogether, then throw in the last day where I wrote 10K words in under 24 hours, and you have what writing HEX HALL looked like. Do you see where that might not be the BEST way to write a book when you ALSO have to edit a 2nd book, and promote a third, and also try to maintain some degree of sanity?
3)I carried a lot of fears/beliefs over from my Pre-Published days without taking into account that now writing was FER SERIOUS MY JOB AND STUFF. Namely that you can NEVER EVER EVER work on something else except your current WIP because then you will ABANDON your WIP, and NEVER FINISH and then you will NEVER BE A WRITER OMG. But the thing is, once writing is your actual career, I think those little side projects and fancies are actually a really necessary thing. I love writing. It is the best job in the world. But you know what? It's still a job. And that means some days it isn't fun. I think that if I'd sat down at my computer and said, "Okay, you can have 30 minutes/500 words/whatever you deem appropriate to write WHATEVER you want," I probably could have gone into the writing I had to do that day a lot happier. When you don't let yourself be free sometimes, your WIP becomes less that fun world you get to create and more like that lame friend your mom MAKES you hang out with because she and the Lame Friend's mom are in Sunday School together, even though you'd MUCH RATHER go play with your AWESOME NEW FRIENDS who have COOL HAIR and smoke CLOVE CIGARETTES and are just generally MORE WINNING AT LIFE.
The Fun WIP. Also, Responsible Adult Note: Do not smoke clove cigarettes. They're kind of gross and they will make you smell like you just celebrated Christmas in Hell.
4)SPELL BOUND was really hard to write. Like, harder than I ever thought it would be. It was the first book I wrote as a Published Author Type Person (DEMONGLASS was turned in before HEX HALL ever came out), and it was the end of the series, and I wanted to be SURE I was leaving all of you with a fabulous ending, and because I STILL hadn't developed an especially sustainable writing process, I struggled with it a lot. In the end, everything worked out and I actually think this book may be the best of the series. But at the time, fighting with it so hard really, really rattled my confidence. And it meant that when I turned around to work on my NEXT book, I was nearly having panic attacks just opening the Word document.
RWAR I'M YOUR NEXT BOOK AND IMMA EAT YOU, RACHEL!
Anyway, all of this is to say that while I've been a FT writer for nearly 4 years, I've only been a Published Author Type Person since March 2010, and it's taken me this long to finally start figuring some stuff out. That's what this summer was about for me: getting my feet back under me as a writer. Learning to have fun again and to shut out the voices in my head that were screaming, "YOU ARE A LOSERY LOSER! PEOPLE WOULD KILL TO HAVE THIS JOB SO WHY IS IT MAKING YOU SO FULL OF THE SADS? OH, RIGHT BECAUSE YOU ARE A LOSERY LOSER."
I also had to accept that the days of 5K words/day were probably gone forever. Heck, the days of 2K words/day are gone. From now on, it's 500-1000 words a day, five days a week. It's slower, and it's a weirder way for me to work because I think my natural inclination will always be towards the Furious Flurries of Words, but that was clearly not working. Honestly, it took me nearly 2 years and four books to realize that my writing process had to change, but there you go.
And I'm also ridiculously grateful to work with such amazing people who, when I said, "Okay, this train is moving a WEE BIT FAST, can we perhaps slow down a touch?" all said, "Alrighty then!" Okay, they didn't actually say "Alrighty, then!" because that is a lame thing to say, and all the people on Team Hex/Team Belle are, as previously implied, Amazeballs. And I'm super-glad that if I had to have a mini-burnout, it came now when there was a little wiggle room, and that SPELL BOUND was already turned in! It DOES mean that REBEL BELLE probably won't come out until 2013 now, but at least there's not a 2 year gap between books in a series.
Or a FIVE YEAR GAP. Don't think I've forgotten, George R.R. Martin.
So there you have it! I kind of feel like I just showed y'all my Writing Panties (I will not even ATTEMPT a Google Image search for that one), but I wanted to let y'all know what's been going on with me and, if any of you are Published Author Type Persons or Aspiring Author Type Persons, to let you see a little peek behind the curtain. I think we talk so much about the struggle TO get published that we don't always realize there are struggles ONCE we're published. Or if we DO talk about things that are rough post-publication, it tends to be about the Author Side Struggles (bad covers, bad sales, bad reviews, no new sales, etc.), and less about the Writer Side Struggles.
But this story does have a happy ending! Yes, it took tears, and hair pulling, and the most emo journal entries this side of 7th grade, and more cookies than I'm comfortable talking about, but over the course of this summer, I've found my way back to having fun with writing, so much so that the other day, The Husband noticed I was staring into space and asked, "What are you smiling about?" And I realized I was sitting there, day dreaming about the book I was working on, grinning like an idiot. So if anyone else is out there in the Dark No Man's Land of No Words, they'll come back. And lo, life can be all flowers and sausages once again.
Yup.
Until next time! XOXO!
July 28, 2011
In Memoriam
Hey, Mes Anges. So today is kind of a sad day for me since it marks the 14th anniversary of my Dad passing away. It's nearly impossible to believe it's been 14 whole years. I was 14 when he was first diagnosed with melanoma, and 17 when he lost that fight. (And I always feel like I should add that when he was diagnosed, he was given around 6 weeks to live. He made it 3 years. I will always be so, so thankful for those 3 years.)
Anyway, I wrote a blog post about Daddy a few years ago, and I think it still says all I'd like to say. You can read it here.
And if you're lucky enough to still have both your parents, give them an extra hug today. :)
Me and Daddy, circa 1983. I stand by that choice of floatie.
Anyway, I wrote a blog post about Daddy a few years ago, and I think it still says all I'd like to say. You can read it here.
And if you're lucky enough to still have both your parents, give them an extra hug today. :)
Me and Daddy, circa 1983. I stand by that choice of floatie.
July 20, 2011
SPELL BOUND has a cover!!
And lo, it is BEAUTIFUL!! Seriously, feast your eyes upon THIS:
Once again, the amazing people at Hyperion have hit it out of the PARK, if you ask me. I cannot WAIT to see this one next to the other two, even though the thought of that makes me kind of sad because once I have the final copy, it will mean the trilogy is *sniff* OVER. Yes, there are more adventures to come in the HEX HALL universe, but Sophie's story wraps up in SPELL BOUND. That meant that this book was probably the toughest book I've ever had to write. I wanted to give my beh-behs a fitting send-off, and while y'all can decided whether or not I've done that in March, for now I CAN say that the art department at Hyperion has DEFINITELY delivered on a gorgeous going away present. :)
As for the actual stuff happening on the cover...hmmmm....is that a SWORD Sophie is holding? Whoever could THAT belong to? And there in the bottom is that...is she...why, YES, I DO believe she's wearing a rather rumpled looking Hecate Hall uniform. What is THAT all about? Here are a FEW clues in the description from Amazon:
Hailed as "impossible to put down," the Hex Hall series has both critics and teens cheering. With a winning combination of romance, action, magic and humor, this third volume will leave readers enchanted.
Just as Sophie Mercer has come to accept her extraordinary magical powers as a demon, the Prodigium Council strips them away. Now Sophie is defenseless, alone, and at the mercy of her sworn enemies—the Brannicks, a family of warrior women who hunt down the Prodigium. Or at least that's what Sophie thinks, until she makes a surprising discovery. The Brannicks know an epic war is coming, and they believe Sophie is the only one powerful enough to stop the world from ending. But without her magic, Sophie isn't as confident.
Sophie's bound for one hell of a ride—can she get her powers back before it's too late?
LET THE SPECULATING BEGIN. ;-)
Also, let's give one last final farewell to the cat who, as you can see, is taking a little break this go round. I like to think he's all, "Guuuurl, I am TIRED! And in this book you go to [redacted], and you meet [redacted], and you find out that [redacted] is [redacted], and [redacted] DIES. Aw, hell no! Sitting this one OUT!"
So cat or no, I hope y'all love this one as much as I do! Now come on March!!
XOXO!
Once again, the amazing people at Hyperion have hit it out of the PARK, if you ask me. I cannot WAIT to see this one next to the other two, even though the thought of that makes me kind of sad because once I have the final copy, it will mean the trilogy is *sniff* OVER. Yes, there are more adventures to come in the HEX HALL universe, but Sophie's story wraps up in SPELL BOUND. That meant that this book was probably the toughest book I've ever had to write. I wanted to give my beh-behs a fitting send-off, and while y'all can decided whether or not I've done that in March, for now I CAN say that the art department at Hyperion has DEFINITELY delivered on a gorgeous going away present. :)
As for the actual stuff happening on the cover...hmmmm....is that a SWORD Sophie is holding? Whoever could THAT belong to? And there in the bottom is that...is she...why, YES, I DO believe she's wearing a rather rumpled looking Hecate Hall uniform. What is THAT all about? Here are a FEW clues in the description from Amazon:
Hailed as "impossible to put down," the Hex Hall series has both critics and teens cheering. With a winning combination of romance, action, magic and humor, this third volume will leave readers enchanted.
Just as Sophie Mercer has come to accept her extraordinary magical powers as a demon, the Prodigium Council strips them away. Now Sophie is defenseless, alone, and at the mercy of her sworn enemies—the Brannicks, a family of warrior women who hunt down the Prodigium. Or at least that's what Sophie thinks, until she makes a surprising discovery. The Brannicks know an epic war is coming, and they believe Sophie is the only one powerful enough to stop the world from ending. But without her magic, Sophie isn't as confident.
Sophie's bound for one hell of a ride—can she get her powers back before it's too late?
LET THE SPECULATING BEGIN. ;-)
Also, let's give one last final farewell to the cat who, as you can see, is taking a little break this go round. I like to think he's all, "Guuuurl, I am TIRED! And in this book you go to [redacted], and you meet [redacted], and you find out that [redacted] is [redacted], and [redacted] DIES. Aw, hell no! Sitting this one OUT!"
So cat or no, I hope y'all love this one as much as I do! Now come on March!!
XOXO!
June 24, 2011
HEAR YE, HEAR YE!
This is a quick post today, Mes Anges, because I have to go to the doctor this morning. Apparently, all the pool time I've been logging with Small Son has resulted in an ear infection for yours truly. Blah.
BUT LESS BLAH! Announcement-y things!
First, HEX HALL 3: TRIPLE HEXXX, THIS TIME IT'S HEXUAL has an actual title! And it is....
SPELL BOUND.
I hope you love! I love. And I can say I love because, as has been WELL EVIDENCED, I suck at coming up with titles, so I didn't come up with that one. :) Also, I've seen the cover, and it is GORGEOUS!! Will probably be sharing around August!
SECONDLY: If you've ever wanted to come hear me ramble in person, you will have your chance tomorrow, Saturday, June 25 at 1:30PM. I'll be at the Homewood Public Library in Birmingham, AL with Rosemary Clement Moore, Jennifer Echols, Chandra Sparks Taylor, and R.A. Nelson. We'll be talking book-y things, and YA things, and I will try not to say amazeballs. NO PROMISES. ;-)
THIRDLY: If you are sad because you don't live close to Birmingham, AL and you wanted to see me, FEAR NOT. I have MUCH travel planned this year. I'll be at the Decatur Book Festival, which I'm SO EXCITED ABOUT I MIGHT DIE. And then, just a few weeks later, I'll be at the Brooklyn Book Festival!
Joyce Carol Oates will also be there. I'm going to attempt to make her my Beffie. I'm sure that will go super-well.
And then there MAY be something out west in November, and there will be more places in the Spring once SPELL BOUND comes out, so...yeah, many chances to hang with me!
FOURTHLY: I...actually don't have a fourthly. OH! Except that I am DEVASTATED because Game of Thrones is off the air for a YEAR. A YEAR MES ANGES. I love that show so hard. Probably because I loved the BOOKS so hard, and the show is a downright perfect adaptation of them, IMO. Sure, some things are left out or condensed, but the overall tone is spot-on, and I'm going to miss it TERRIBLY until it returns in 2012.
The show ALSO reminded me that Jon Snow is one of my Literary Boyfriends. Shut up, his shirtlessness has NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. It's because he's sensitive, yet badass, and he's loyal and quite muscular and looks like he would hold me tenderly-okay, perhaps the shirtlessness has a WEE BIT to do with it.
Hope to see some of you soon!
XOXO!
BUT LESS BLAH! Announcement-y things!
First, HEX HALL 3: TRIPLE HEXXX, THIS TIME IT'S HEXUAL has an actual title! And it is....
SPELL BOUND.
I hope you love! I love. And I can say I love because, as has been WELL EVIDENCED, I suck at coming up with titles, so I didn't come up with that one. :) Also, I've seen the cover, and it is GORGEOUS!! Will probably be sharing around August!
SECONDLY: If you've ever wanted to come hear me ramble in person, you will have your chance tomorrow, Saturday, June 25 at 1:30PM. I'll be at the Homewood Public Library in Birmingham, AL with Rosemary Clement Moore, Jennifer Echols, Chandra Sparks Taylor, and R.A. Nelson. We'll be talking book-y things, and YA things, and I will try not to say amazeballs. NO PROMISES. ;-)
THIRDLY: If you are sad because you don't live close to Birmingham, AL and you wanted to see me, FEAR NOT. I have MUCH travel planned this year. I'll be at the Decatur Book Festival, which I'm SO EXCITED ABOUT I MIGHT DIE. And then, just a few weeks later, I'll be at the Brooklyn Book Festival!
Joyce Carol Oates will also be there. I'm going to attempt to make her my Beffie. I'm sure that will go super-well.
And then there MAY be something out west in November, and there will be more places in the Spring once SPELL BOUND comes out, so...yeah, many chances to hang with me!
FOURTHLY: I...actually don't have a fourthly. OH! Except that I am DEVASTATED because Game of Thrones is off the air for a YEAR. A YEAR MES ANGES. I love that show so hard. Probably because I loved the BOOKS so hard, and the show is a downright perfect adaptation of them, IMO. Sure, some things are left out or condensed, but the overall tone is spot-on, and I'm going to miss it TERRIBLY until it returns in 2012.
The show ALSO reminded me that Jon Snow is one of my Literary Boyfriends. Shut up, his shirtlessness has NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. It's because he's sensitive, yet badass, and he's loyal and quite muscular and looks like he would hold me tenderly-okay, perhaps the shirtlessness has a WEE BIT to do with it.
Hope to see some of you soon!
XOXO!
June 17, 2011
WTF? Friday, Part IV
I think the REAL WTF? Friday is that I have blogged THREE TIMES THIS WEEK ZOMG. I feel all proud and accomplished!
Okay, so this installment of WTF? Friday comes to you from The Husband. Now, first off, a bit about The Husband. Actually, about the spouses of writers in general. they are the true unsung heroes of the publishing industry. Whenever people ask me for writing advice, I usually tell them, "Marry Well," and then they're like, "LOL BECAUSE WRITERS ARE POOR!"
But that's not actually what I mean. (Although hey, it WOULD NOT HURT. Rich people need love, too, yo.)
What I mean is to marry someone who gets you. Gets that being a writer is not just your job, but actually part of your chemical make up. Understands that sometimes you will forget to pay the water bill because you used up too much hard drive space in your brain. Knows and doesn't mind- too much- that you will probably cry and have a mini-breakdown (heck, sometimes a MEGA-breakdown) at least once during every book you write. Someone who when you pout about a bad review immediately goes, "That person can SUCK IT," and not, "Well, he DOES have a point about Chapter 3."
(Side Note: I just text The Husband and asked him what it was like being married to a writer. His response: "It's like being a human white board, but one who also has to go buy beer on his way home." SO NOW YOU KNOW.)
All of this is to say that The Husband is basically the perfect Writer Spouse (and NO, NONE OF YOU CAN HAVE HIM.) But even HE is sometimes dismayed in the extreme by some of my more...um...eccentric behavior.
The term, "Cracked Out Monkey" has been bandied about.
So here's the setting: It's a Friday night. Small Son is in bed, The Husband and I are watching TV, all is quiet and peaceful in Chez Hawkins. The Husband, as his his wont, gets up to make himself a PB&J sandwich. Now, as soon as The Husband goes into the kitchen, something flips inside my admittedly strange brain.
"Hey!" I think. "I didn't tell the Husband about that sweet ceramic knife I got at Publix the other day!"
For yes, Mes Anges, I had fallen victim to one of those As Seen On TV end caps and purchased a $20 ceramic knife.
Specifically, one of these. It's pretty amazeballs.
And it was indeed as awesome as TV had made it appear to be! So of course The Husband must see it RIGHT NOW! And OFF I leaped!
Let us take a minute to envision The Husband again. There he was, in his nice quiet house, contentedly fixing himself a sandwich. Much like this:
For the purpose of this story, the role of The Husband is being played by a 6 year old boy.
I imagine his thoughts were happy, peaceful ones as he stood there, lovingly slathering his bread with that weird expensive jam he likes ever since he got back from Norway and declared that all American jelly is horrible. Little did he know of the chaos and bloodshed about to rain down on him.
Bounding into the kitchen, shouting things like, "As Seen On TV!" and "I cut like a bajillion squashes!" and "$20 is actually kind of reasonable when you think about it!" I whipped my knife out of the drawer with one hand, while the other grabbed a lime. Exulting, "CHECK THIS OUT!", I put the lime on the cutting board and brought my new knife down on it with a flourish.
According to The Husband, I looked something like this.
And.... promptly cut off the very tippiest tip of my thumb.
The Husband, who mere moments ago had been like this:
Was now more like this:
And while I'm pretty sure I was, as usual, all classy and pretty and stuff like THIS:
The Husband insists that to him, it was more like THIS:
All of insanity had happened in maybe 10 seconds. As as I stood there, blood and lime juice dripping on the floor, The Husband simply cried, "WTF???" (Only, you know, he said the words.)
Later, after I'd bandaged my wound (which, I must confess DIDN'T EVEN HURT A LITTLE BIT BECAUSE MY KNIFE IS SO AWESOME), The Husband turned to me and said, "You should tell that story on your blog so that people will know what it's like being married to you sometimes."
And so I have. ;-)
XOXO!
Okay, so this installment of WTF? Friday comes to you from The Husband. Now, first off, a bit about The Husband. Actually, about the spouses of writers in general. they are the true unsung heroes of the publishing industry. Whenever people ask me for writing advice, I usually tell them, "Marry Well," and then they're like, "LOL BECAUSE WRITERS ARE POOR!"
But that's not actually what I mean. (Although hey, it WOULD NOT HURT. Rich people need love, too, yo.)
What I mean is to marry someone who gets you. Gets that being a writer is not just your job, but actually part of your chemical make up. Understands that sometimes you will forget to pay the water bill because you used up too much hard drive space in your brain. Knows and doesn't mind- too much- that you will probably cry and have a mini-breakdown (heck, sometimes a MEGA-breakdown) at least once during every book you write. Someone who when you pout about a bad review immediately goes, "That person can SUCK IT," and not, "Well, he DOES have a point about Chapter 3."
(Side Note: I just text The Husband and asked him what it was like being married to a writer. His response: "It's like being a human white board, but one who also has to go buy beer on his way home." SO NOW YOU KNOW.)
All of this is to say that The Husband is basically the perfect Writer Spouse (and NO, NONE OF YOU CAN HAVE HIM.) But even HE is sometimes dismayed in the extreme by some of my more...um...eccentric behavior.
The term, "Cracked Out Monkey" has been bandied about.
So here's the setting: It's a Friday night. Small Son is in bed, The Husband and I are watching TV, all is quiet and peaceful in Chez Hawkins. The Husband, as his his wont, gets up to make himself a PB&J sandwich. Now, as soon as The Husband goes into the kitchen, something flips inside my admittedly strange brain.
"Hey!" I think. "I didn't tell the Husband about that sweet ceramic knife I got at Publix the other day!"
For yes, Mes Anges, I had fallen victim to one of those As Seen On TV end caps and purchased a $20 ceramic knife.
Specifically, one of these. It's pretty amazeballs.
And it was indeed as awesome as TV had made it appear to be! So of course The Husband must see it RIGHT NOW! And OFF I leaped!
Let us take a minute to envision The Husband again. There he was, in his nice quiet house, contentedly fixing himself a sandwich. Much like this:
For the purpose of this story, the role of The Husband is being played by a 6 year old boy.
I imagine his thoughts were happy, peaceful ones as he stood there, lovingly slathering his bread with that weird expensive jam he likes ever since he got back from Norway and declared that all American jelly is horrible. Little did he know of the chaos and bloodshed about to rain down on him.
Bounding into the kitchen, shouting things like, "As Seen On TV!" and "I cut like a bajillion squashes!" and "$20 is actually kind of reasonable when you think about it!" I whipped my knife out of the drawer with one hand, while the other grabbed a lime. Exulting, "CHECK THIS OUT!", I put the lime on the cutting board and brought my new knife down on it with a flourish.
According to The Husband, I looked something like this.
And.... promptly cut off the very tippiest tip of my thumb.
The Husband, who mere moments ago had been like this:
Was now more like this:
And while I'm pretty sure I was, as usual, all classy and pretty and stuff like THIS:
The Husband insists that to him, it was more like THIS:
All of insanity had happened in maybe 10 seconds. As as I stood there, blood and lime juice dripping on the floor, The Husband simply cried, "WTF???" (Only, you know, he said the words.)
Later, after I'd bandaged my wound (which, I must confess DIDN'T EVEN HURT A LITTLE BIT BECAUSE MY KNIFE IS SO AWESOME), The Husband turned to me and said, "You should tell that story on your blog so that people will know what it's like being married to you sometimes."
And so I have. ;-)
XOXO!
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