Liz Michalski's Blog, page 13

Nobody Likes A Wet Dog, And Other Catch Phrase Creepage

We're doing some spring cleaning here, and I'm trying to wrangle all the books back into their respective homes.  The baby books we can't bear to part with go in the basement (Carl's Birthday, anyone?), the books we love the most go in the living room bookcase, the kid books and the books I don't want to part with but probably won't read again go upstairs.  We'll sort through the stacks on the coffee table and by everyone's bedside and fit them in where we can, but in a few days they'll start creeping out and multiplying on every possible surface.

It's not the house they take over, either — key phrases and lines have infiltrated daily speech around here, too.  I realized this the other day when I asked one of small fry how they were feeling, and they answered "Respectabiggle." (We'd just finished listening to "The Silver Chair" by C.S. Lewis.) It's become the new catch phrase, joining several others that have become a part of our daily speech. Favorites include:

"Word of knightly honor," from Igraine the Brave (Cornelia Funke)

"Nobody likes a wet dog," slightly changed from To a Stranger Born in a Distant Country Hundreds of Years From Now(Billy Collins)

Not even damp, just a gratuitous cute pic from the puppy days.

"Hop it!" spoken by the mother trying to get the kids moving.  I think we stole it from Peter and the Starcatchers (Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson)

The last two are cheats, coming from movies based on our favorite books:

"You think that, Jane, if it gives you comfort," from the A&E production of P&P.  (Used by my husband when I am being overly optimistic about someone.)

And,

"What about second breakfast?" Elevenses? Luncheon? Afternoon tea?  Dinner?  Supper? He knows about them doesn't he?" (Said when the small boy is complaining about being hungry.  Again.)

What phrases have made it out of the pages and into your life???

Once More With Feeling

I hate revising.  I put it off by doing everything else possible – I clean the bathrooms, fold laundry, ask for more freelance work, write my blog posts in advance.  The cleanliness of my house is inversely proportional to how much I need to revise, and man, is my house clean right now.

My office is a whole other affair.  Want to see?  Here:

And the piles just keep growing...

It seems so grossly unfair, doesn't it?  You write, and write, and write, get the words down perfectly (at least in your head) and then, are you finished?  Nope.  You have to write them all over again.  So, in the interest of procrastinating some more, I thought I'd share my process with you.

1) Every time I sit down to write, I start at the beginning of the chapter I'm working on.  I read through slowly, often out loud, changing a word here or a sentence there, until I get to where I left off.

2) Every 50 pages or so, I go back to the beginning of the book and do the same thing.

3) When I get to about 150-200 pages, wherever I have a natural break but also feel confident enough to keep writing, I do a more serious revision, which is where I am now.  I print out the whole manuscript, sit down with a new pack of sticky notes, and read through the entire thing.  Every time I have a question, think something could be made more clear, find a plot hole, etc. I write a comment down on the sticky and slap it on that page.

4) I break the manuscript up into chapters, put each chapter on the floor, and add any feedback I might have received that deals with that section of the book.  Digression:  I have awesome beta readers, who shall remain anonymous, but whose critiques I really trust, and who write me notes like: "ACK, LIZ ACK THIS IS THE TOTALLY WRONG PLACE FOR THIS.  WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!!!!!  and in general whip me into shape.  We write completely different genres, which I think helps, and they are  more than generous with their time.  I'm very, very lucky.

Further digression:  I send my beta readers 50 pages at a time.  One reader works very well like this, and one of them seems to prefer to read the whole thing at a stretch, so I tend to value the latter's opinion more once the whole manuscript is finished.  Both of them totally rock, and I liken their comments to getting a really good deep tissue massage — it hurts like crazy when you are going through it, but it makes everything so much better later on.  I'd be lost without them. My agent, too, is fabulous and gives me terrific feedback, although he respects my delicate writerly feelings and usually refrains from writing ACK in the margins.  (That's only because he's super professional.  There's no doubt at times he must be thinking exactly that.)

5) I go through each chapter, taking into account my notes and my beta's feedback, and make the necessary changes.  Around this time, it starts to be kind of fun, like putting together a puzzle and wondering if you have all the pieces. Any changes I can't make in that chapter but that I feel need to be done somewhere, or that relate to a larger plot point, go on a sticky note and are posted at eye level above my desk, where they stare accusingly at me each time I sit down to write until I make the changes, at which point I happily throw them away.

6) Once I've gone through all the chapters, I check the wall for any outstanding notes, address them if necessary, and then read through from the beginning again to check for typos, continuity, etc. etc. etc..

7) I write another 150 pages, wash and repeat.

This time around I'm also making brief summaries of each chapter on index cards, placing them on top of the pile, and trying to evaluate how much action takes place in each chapter, and then in each segment.  (I'd tried doing this on notecards in Scrivener, but it wasn't working very well and I was using it as a major procrastination tool, so I stopped and went the old-fashioned method.)

So that's what I'll be doing over the next few days.  How do you revise?

Resolved: Or Death by Family

How to lose five pounds in my house.

We had a lovely holiday, and are still digging out and trying to find the floor, which is covered in mounds of presents from the generous family and friends who seemed to think Santa needed a little help.  My kids are lucky enough to have been 'adopted' by several close friends, and now own enough Star Wars gear, gorgeous clothing and toys to pay for college.  I'm waiting for the day my daughter announces she wants a pony, because I know exactly who will buy it for her and who will supply the fashionable equestrian outfits she'll need.  (Note to those I'm talking about: The pony is living at YOUR house this time.)

I'd planned to come back refreshed and ready to talk about New Year's goals and resolutions, but I'm feeling a little frazzled so I'm going to make it quick: in 2012 I want to run 12 miles without stopping, write more, and lose those last sticky five pounds.

I'm halfway to the first goal, so adding just a mile a month should get me there, right? (I'm not trying to break any speed limits — I just want to run it without passing out or falling over.)  For the second, I'm using the advice in this article.  And for the third?  I'm going to have to move.

I made the mistake of mentioning the goal in front of my family on Sunday.  On Monday, they bought me a gingerbread birthday cake a week early, served pizza and lemon truffle cupcakes at lunch, and decided to hold a sundae-making party before our regularly scheduled family movie night. Next year, I'm getting smart — I'm announcing that I'm giving up buying shoes, and seeing what that gets me.

I hope your holidays were lovely, and that your own resolutions are proceeding smoothly.  Feel free to share them, if you like!

All I Need is a Reindeer…

The Grinch looked around, but since reindeer were scarce, there was none to be found.

Did that stop the Grinch?

No!

The Grinch simply said "If I can't find a reindeer, I'll make one instead!"

A dog with his dignity intact.

Happy Holidays!  See you in the New Year!

Christmas in Books

I love the holidays.  I love the scent of pine, the cold air, the way the houses look when we drive around at night.  But maybe most of all, I love the books.

Over the past 10 years, we've amassed quite the collection of holiday stories.  Most of the year, they live in a box in the basement, but on December 1st, I start bringing them up, just a few each day.  And almost every night (except on those rare occasions when one of the under-four-foot members of the family are wretched enough to need extra sleep) we curl up on the couch and read one (or two) by the light of the Christmas tree.

Here are our favorites in no particular order.  Any of them would make a wonderful gift:

A Pussycat's Christmas by Margaret Wise Brown.  Given to us by friends who knew my daughter's cat-mad ways, this simple story has beautiful language and illustrations. It would make a lovely gift paired with a stuffed animal.

The Story of the Snow Children by Sibylle van Olfers.  An old-fashioned tale with charming pictures. Put it in a gift bag with a pair of cherry-red mittens and a promise to play outside in the first snow.

Baby's Christmas Treasury by Kay Chorao.  Donated by a family member whose kids had outgrown it, this contains everything from The Velveteen Rabbit to little tree by e.e. cummings (one of my favorite poems ever).

Emma's Christmas by Irene Trivas .  I have a soft spot for this book because of the main character's name.  It tells the tale of how a farm girl turns down a prince's proposal, and how he seeks to woo her with an ever-increasingly eccentric display of gifts.  The ending is great fun.

My Penguin Osbert by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel.  You know that holiday gift you always wanted as a kid, but were told it was too impractical?  The little boy in this story gets it, with hilarious results.  A stuffed penguin or a snow globe would make a nice finishing touch.

The Secret Life of Santa Claus.  We found this book years ago on a layover between flights and before kids.  Every year, my husband and I take turns reading  a few pages to each other at night.  The wry, sardonic humor is a little too much for those under 10, so of course my daughter has been sneaking into our room and reading it since she was seven.

And of course, The Night Before Christmas on Christmas Eve.  My copy, from the 1960s, has an inscription written by my grandparents in gold ink, and illustrations by Gyo Fujikawa.

This year I'll be adding a lovely small hardcover I've been eyeing at my local bookstore.  It has the simple story of the first Christmas, with black, red, and gold illustrations.  I think my family will love it.

What's on your holiday must-read list?

No Gift With Purchase

John Scalzi, a writer I really like, did a very kind thing this week: He gave writers and editors the chance to share information about their books in his blog's comments.  A type of writerly gift guide for the holidays, if you will.

I thought it might be fun to do something similar.  So I'm going to use this post to highlight five businesses that have wonderful products.  They are all local (to me, or to places I visit frequently) and small, but they produce some of my very favorite things.  If you are looking for the perfect holiday present, hostess gift, or stocking stuffer, you can't go wrong with any of these. (Aaaand in the interest of full disclosure, I have no ties, connections, or relatives in any of these businesses.  I get nada from recommending them, other than the chance to share them with you.)

Plum Island Soap Company.  My pediatrician affectionately refers to one of my children as "the creature from the blue lagoon" because said child has such dry, scaly skin.  The only thing I've ever found that helps is this company's baby balm.  I started applying it as a diaper cream (no more diaper rash!) and moved on to coating said child from head to toe with it at night.  Then I stole the jar and started using it myself.  Great for chapped hands, dry elbows, or any other area.  The company also makes soap that smells so good, my babies would try to eat it.  Finally, they have a black licorice line of products, which means I am a customer for life.  And unlike the products mentioned in this scary article, Plum Island Soap Company's stuff doesn't have any frightening ingredients, so you can use it as often as you like.

Three Sisters Farms In summer, our first stop at the farmer's market is at this stall. Glenn, who owns the business with his family, is remarkably patient with all of us as we ask questions and handle products.  Their beeswax candles smell like heat and flowers mixed together, and in winter I light them just to remember the sun's glow.  (Last year, my son saved his money all summer long to purchase an enormous dragon-shaped candle, which he refuses to burn.  He keeps it next to his bed to scare the dark away.) I'm a particular fan of their lavender honey — I dole it out in cups of tea like a miser — but their raw wildflower honey is pretty sweet too.  A jar would make an awfully nice gift for your favorite writer, don't you think?

Bridgewater Chocolate.  Back in the day, I would send these chocolates to clients, and a box of Bridgewater truffles was the best possible gift I could think of for my agent and editor.  Their candies are  rich and dark and sinful and if you buy them, plan to have them shipped to their final destination.  Otherwise your family will find you hiding in a dark closet, clutching the box meant for Great Aunt Mabel to your chest and eating them as fast as possible.  (I, of course, would never be found in such a position.  I wait till the kids are at school to open the box.)

Norm's Atomic Barbecue Sauce.  I put barbecue sauce on food instead of ketchup, and Norm's has the best I've ever tasted.  It's smoky and sweet with just enough of a kick to let you know this isn't kid stuff.  I bought two jars last year, meaning to give one as a gift, and by September I'd gone through both of them.  His sauce is good on eggs, on french fries, on cheese sandwiches … this summer, I got smart and bought three bottles.  Only one is left, so I guess I need to decide how much I really like a certain family member.

Sunny Window.  Every year, I attend the same holiday craft fair, and one of the highlights is walking into the room and inhaling the scent of

Sunny Window's products.  Lavender, lemongrass soap, sage lotion … it's all gorgeous and gorgeously displayed, and there is always something new and unique.  This year, it was tiny boxes made out of orange peels, beautifully decorated and faintly scented with citrus.The owner, Nancy, also does workshops, and I'm thinking the lavender class might be just the thing to chase the winter blues AND the writer's block away.

[image error]Batch Ice Cream.  Let's just put it out there — I'm not a fan of ice cream.  Oh, I'll eat it in summer, but give me a choice of how to spend my calories and chocolate and cake win, every time.  Except that a few weeks ago my husband brought home a pint of Batch's Ginger Ice Cream.  And I ate the whole thing.  By myself. I think I showed remarkable restraint by not running to the store immediately to sample their Cinnamon and Chocolate Bits, or their Salted Carmel, but one can only be strong for so long.  Showing up at a holiday gathering with a few containers of this ice cream and an attractive scoop might make you very popular indeed.

My local indie bookstore.  I have three that I consider 'mine' — two within driving distance of my home and one that I can visit only in summer. All offer personal customer service, and have turned me on to writers I might never have discovered on my own.  Books are the perfect gift — they're compact, yet they contain the world inside, and there's one for almost everybody on your list.  (And if you are buying Evenfall this year for someone, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.)  Plus, you can pair the book with a meaningful experience to make it a unique event the receiver will treasure forever.  Here's a great guide to help you get started, updated for 2011.

Whew.  So that's my contribution to your gift list for this year.  Now I'd love to hear your suggestions!

Snowdrift Saplings

Change.  I'm not a fan of it.  My daughter's not either.   It used to be that I was the only one who tried to hold on to the way things are with both hands, but now I see that tendency in her, too.  I'd like to save her 40 plus years of stress and tell her to relax, that change is inevitable and she can't control it, but I'm still working on that lesson myself.

Sometimes, the changes are big and obvious.  The trees I wrote about a few weeks ago, for example, now look like this:

The sad oak stump

Even though we planned it, it's a shock every time we look out the window.

But sometimes, change just sneaks up on you, so stealthily you don't even notice, and there's nothing you can do. Day by day, I tell her, the saplings that we planted to replace the oaks are growing, are stretching and reaching tall.  In a few years, they'll be big, even though the changes are happening so slowly  it looks as if no change is taking place at all.

Little snowdrift crabapple sapling has a lot of growing to do.

When she asks me how I know, I just shrug.

Trust me, I tell her. I just do.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like …

It's time to stock up on wine.  : )

What, you were expecting something else?

I'm lucky.  For the most part, holidays around here are drama-free.  On Thursday, I can honestly say 'Thanks" for all my family members, extended and otherwise.  But even drama-free holidays can still be stressful.  So over the years, Bill and I have come up with our own rituals.  On Wednesday, after the kids are in bed, we'll pull out "Home for the Holidays" and watch it.  Imagining Robert Downey Jr. as your relative helps put everything in perspective.

Later, I'll speed read through a few chapters of Amy Bloom's A Blind Man Could See How Much I Love You. The beautiful, dysfunctional family celebrating Thanksgiving at the heart of this collection of short stories never ceases to enthrall me.  (True story:  Many years ago, I got to interview Ms. Bloom.  I prepped for a week and she still managed to scare the bejesus out of me.)

What are your pre-holiday rituals?

Guest Post! Creating Characters That Grow

For me, one of the most interesting and challenging parts of writing character-driven books is making sure my protagonists stretch and change in a believable way.  Frodo from The Lord of the Rings series is my shining example of this:  He starts off the series as a happy-go-lucky little hobbit with good intentions, and ends it fundamentally changed in spirit and in body.  (I've always wondered if he would make the same choices if he could go back to that famous birthday party in the Shire.)

To evoke this kind of change in a novel is one thing.  To sustain it in a believable way across multiple books is another.  That's why I'm thrilled to have K.A. Stewart here to talk about how she does it.  Stewart is the creator of Jesse James Dawson, a slender, ponytail-wearing demon slayer who wields a samurai sword by day, but moonlights in a funky retail store to pay the bills.  (Apparently demon killing doesn't come with great dental coverage.) A dad and husband, Jesse consistently faces tough choices that tug him in directions he might not always want to go. How he reacts and changes is what keeps me reading.

Jesse is a wise-cracking slayer worthy of Buffy herself, and I was delighted to discover him in A Devil in the Details.  I'm looking forward to seeing where the next book, A Shot in the Dark, takes him. Please welcome Stewart as she shares her secrets for character development in the first-ever Secrets and Obsessions guest post!

Creating Characters That Grow

K.A. Stewart

It is a fairly well-recognized fact that character development (ie: emotional/spiritual/mental growth on the part of a character) is essential to stories in general, and to series in particular.  Face it, nothing will lose reader interest so fast as a character that does exactly the same thing for books and books and books and books.  Stagnation is never interesting.

Ergo, change = good, yes?  Well, hold your horses.  While an unchanging character can lose reader interest, a character that changes too drastically, or without logical cause, can make a reader run screaming in the opposite direction. After all, the reason that people stick with the same series for multiple books is because they've found something in one of the characters that they identify with, and they've come to care about them.  If their favorite is suddenly not the same person at all, it's hard to still care.  It's like learning to love a total stranger all over again.

So how do you find this happy medium, the narrow trail between stagnation and making your character unrecognizable?

First off, let's think about our favorite character.  Mine is (and I know yours is too) Jorge, the psychotic zombie marmoset.  (Just play along, 'kay? I swear this will all make sense.)

We love Jorge.  He has a dark past, but strives to do good.  He has friends around him who remind him all the time why he wants to help others and leave his wicked ways behind.  He might, just might, even be falling in love again, even though that witch Denise broke his heart years ago.  We like his new girl, Penelope.  She's good for him.

Now, if Jorge hovered at this point forever, eventually we'd get bored.  We'd know that in every book, he'll have a deep meaningful conversation with his mentor, Harvey the June bug.  He'll have a charmingly awkward exchange with Penelope, without ever asking her out, and he'll defeat the bad guy of the week by using some bit of dark knowledge from his past that he's now put toward the forces of good.  Sure, it's fun for now, but by book five, you're thinking, dear gods man!  DO something!

Conversely, let's say that in book three, Jorge suddenly wakes up and instead of inhaling his first cigarette and black coffee like always, he suddenly opts to have orange juice and start jogging. Wait, what? Healthy foods are anathema to the Jorge we know and love.  Next, he rescues a kitten from a tree and pats the impish-but-mischievous neighbor boy on top of his curly little head with a smile.  Why? Jorge barely tolerates that kid!  Dear lord, the entire world has gone insane!  Now, if this were to lead into a storyline where Jorge had been taken over by the Pod People from Alpha-Gamma 12, that could be cool.  But if he's just suddenly different, with no explanation… Well… That's just not Jorge.  It's some other character, with Jorge's name slapped on him, and that's not what we want to read!

BUT, I'm willing to bet every one of you would like to find out what would happen if Jorge asked Penelope out, only to have her kidnapped by his arch nemesis (long thought dead, of course).  What lengths might Jorge go to, to get her back?  Not just because she might be the new love of his life, but because she is the one truly good thing that keeps him walking the straight and narrow.  How far into his dark side is he willing to go, to preserve that light?  And let's say he has to kill a few innocent bystanders to get there…  That kind of thing leaves a mark, mentally, emotionally…grammatically…  Let's say he saves the girl, defeats the bad guy, but he's also learned just how bad a guy he is himself.  We the reader are intrigued!  Will Jorge truly slip back to the dark side?  Will Penelope leave him if she finds out?  And OMG, he picked up the Cursed Sword of Nathmazaaaaaaar!  We ALL know what THAT does!

Now, what if in the next book, Harvey was also killed, and Jorge had no one left to be his conscience?  Left to his own devices, can Jorge still cling to the path he's chosen?  And in the book after that, Jorge is betrayed by the one guy he thought he could trust.  His faith in the goodness of humanity is forever shattered.  In the face of that, will Jorge continue to fight his own demons, or will he slip back down into the shadows where he came from?

These are the questions that keep us coming back to series.  We love these characters, yes, but we also want to see what happens when they are stretched to their mental and emotional limits.  And in the end, though the road may be long and twisty and dark and possibly paved with the skulls of a thousand sacrificed pygmy shrews, we are satisfied to see that Jorge fights through and comes out the other end, perhaps scarred and battered, but whole.  We get to see that Penelope loves him just for what he is, dark corners and all.  And we get to finally see him kiss her, so that's just a bonus.

For this, we would tune in again.  Put a character through their own personal hell, and the reader will certainly come back to see just who walks out on the other side.  Because deep down, we can't say that we would have done differently in his place.  We lived through it with him, walked that road, fought that fight at his side.  It gives us that connection to him, that desire to see if he (and therefore we) could conquer such adversity.

Character development is one of those things that must be handled carefully, yes, but it is also something that can develop quite naturally, organically even.   It's all about how your character reacts to situations, both good and bad.  Your character should never live in a vacuum.  There is STUFF around them, and that stuff shapes who they were, who they are, and who they could become. If you just let it.

Want more?  Learn more about Stewart, Jesse, and the books  at Stewart's blog, On Literary Intent.

A Forest in the Trees (For Norman)

Before we moved to the suburbs, we lived on a run down horse farm in a town with a population of maybe 3,000 people.  I do not joke when I tell you that the cows often outnumbered the human residents.  My husband probably deserves sainthood for staying there with me for that long, but I loved it.  Everywhere you looked, there were trees. You could stand on the back deck and look out and literally not see another house anywhere.

When we moved to our current residence, there was a stand of scrub oaks in the front of the yard.  My husband suggested we take them down — they're not particularly attractive and they shed leaves in fall like crazy — but I was adamant that they stay.  If you look carefully — if you squint and blur your vision a tiny bit — those trees block out the neighborhood from the front of the house.  When we first moved here, I did that quite often. Later, when I'd adjusted to being back in civilization, I'd put a baby monitor, sealed in a plastic bag, under those trees, and fill the feeders that hung in front of them.  My children would come down for breakfast, sleepy-eyed, and listen to the chatter of the birds, the fat flickers and the cheerful chickadees, as they ate their oatmeal.  If I couldn't give them a forest in their backyard, I could at least let them hear what one sounded like.

Later still, I found out that the land on which my neighborhood is built used to be a sawmill.  The man who sited our house grew up riding his bike here through the trees.  His grandfather owned the land, and every now and then, he'd talk about how it used to be, and he'd sound just a tiny bit wistful.  He'd used the last boards harvested here for beams in his barn, which is where I kept my horse when we moved.  I liked the idea that although Centurio was no longer in my back yard, a part of my yard was in his stable.

During last week's storm, we lost big branches from our scrub oaks.  A few more dangle precariously from their tops.  The oaks are no longer just unattractive nuisances — they're dangerous, and they must come down.  We went out this weekend and marked the ones slated for execution with duct tape, which turned out to be almost all of them.  My husband, good sport that he is, promised me we'd replace them with  dogwoods, with japanese maples and weeping cherries and white spruce, all the trees that I love.  It will be much prettier, and I find I'm okay with it.  But a tiny part of me will miss those scrub oaks, and the forest they contained.