pace yourself, please

On Monday I realized that I have no homework due until after Thanksgiving break so what did I do? Read an entire book in one sitting of course! Guys, I haven't read a novel since the summer at which time I was downing those things like water. It's been a long drought.

I was originally looking for some picture books in my college library when I picked up The Runaway Princess and The Aviary. I have since finished both books but as I read The Runaway Princess first I'll start there.

                                                
If you're looking for a fun, silly book with loads of characters, most all lovable, moderately witty dialogue, and a heaping ton of potential this may be the book for you. Princess Meg is not your ordinary princess content to sit in a tower and swoon while princes dash off in search of adventure, victory, treasure, and her hand in marriage as a reward for winning the contest her father has set up. Meg makes her way out of her tower prison with the help of some friends and sets off to win the contest herself! I'm terrible at giving book summaries without ruining the plot so if you're curious about this story of a princess who decides to take her fate into her own hands, go ahead and check out the amazon link :P

*Disclaimer: The Runaway Princess is billed as a middle grade book. The critique that follows hereafter probably leans a little heavy for such a young age bracket but there are some things I am not willing to sacrifice simply due to age range and in this case, either you can keep the plot as is and cut characters or you can fully develop your characters for a book that kicks more butt. I am in favor of the latter.

Now, I did honestly enjoy reading this. While a portion of that comes from the fact that I probably would have enjoyed anything if it was the first book I'd read after almost three months without a novel, the book isn't a bad one. I was duly refreshed by Coombs' take on the damsel not-so-much in distress and Meg's character isn't hard to like but I feel like Coombs fell prey to a problem that many authors fall into [including myself]: she tried to do too much too fast. Sometimes, when writers are early in their career [I could be mistaken but I think this was her first novel], there is this curious pressure at the back of the mind telling you to get the story down on paper as fast fast fast as you can, get everything out before the reader loses interest! It is easy to feel like any time spent describing anything at all takes too much time and that if you don't move from action to action to climax like lightning, your audience will get bored. I've seen this with my own and others' writing rather often in classes I've taken and the conversations usually go the same way:
Reader: I get the idea of what's going on here but I have no idea why your character is doing this, why they said that, what this has to do with the bigger picture. The whole thing is a bit confusing to me and I feel like you rush through it.
Author: Well, he/she did/said that because of [something the author knows contextually and historically about the character but has never been said in the text] and they're doing that because [something the author knows contextually and historically about the character/plot but has never been said in the text].
Reader: Okay...that makes more sense now but you never said that and this scene doesn't tell me any of that. How am I supposed to know?

As writers, we get to know our characters very well and there is always going to be a certain amount of information you retain in your mind but never share with the reader in the text [have you seen any of those interviews with J.K.Rowling?] but there are many things the reader has to know. It can be so easy to fill in the blanks in your mind, to rush through and throw down just the bare bones of a story because your mind holds it all in its completeness but the reader's doesn't. And when you fail to give enough background, enough depth to characters, enough development to make your characters concrete, your reader has to start employing a lot of suspension of belief, let me tell you.

Coombs has amazing characters and a lot of fun wit to share but in rushing through the story she never really developed any of them, hardly pausing to even introduce a handful that then, confusingly, continue on with the rest throughout the book. When I finished I really wanted to know more about the independent princess, her gardener friend, the precocious little wizard, the twin princes, and the bandits. The first thought in my head was that this book would be an amazing starting point for someone to build on. Not, I think, exactly what an author would want their readers to be thinking when they finished their novel.
If you want a fun, silly read that has some really original twists and fantastic lines like: "there is always time for hot cocoa," I do recommend this book. Enjoy the characters and humor and maybe even take away some budding inspiration for your own fairy-tale adventure :)

On to The Aviary. This is a book I want for Christmas.
                                               
I'm not typically your supernatural kind of girl. I don't read a lot of ghost stories, though I am a fan of a good mystery which is probably why I picked this book up. Clara is the daughter of the Glendoveer's housekeeper. She's lived a secluded life in the old mansion that once housed a world-famous musician and his family. Now all that's left is the magician's widow and an aviary of assorted birds that frighten Clara with their unusual racket every time she comes near. Clara avoids the birds whenever she can but when, one day, one of the birds calls out "Elliot!" Clara is drawn into a decades-old mystery full of secrets, tragedy, intrigue, and ambitious plots to discover the truth. O'Dell's book is not your typical ghost story, or your typical mystery though it does combine these with a fantastical touch of magic. It takes place in a historical setting where the language and times are more formal. It is intriguing, then that in this dated setting we find a compelling coming of age story centered on a young girl who has known only women her entire memorable life. Clara has been kept indoors as long as she can remember, forbidden by her mother to exert herself, let alone do normal childhood things like attend school. When she is drawn into the mystery of the Glendoveer's kidnapped and drowned children she has to find the strength within herself and develop ties of trust in a new friendship in order to win the day.

Let's be honest, I couldn't put the book down. O'Dell's approach to the fancifulness and mystic is smooth enough that whether you believe in ghosts or not, you can imagine and step into Clara's world entirely. Clara's world, existing almost solely within the old house, is nonetheless rich with detail and its own mysteries. It is inspiring to think of the things and memories that exist in your own home that you may never have noticed. I particularly enjoyed the way O'Dell constructed the mystery in the plot. The reader learns things all along the way with Clara, it's not one of those constant suspense books in the sense that little answers are given and discovered throughout the book so that by the end you have almost a complete picture of what happened to the Glendoveer's children. There are no cliche'd M. Night Shyamalan twists here. What you do find is wonderful character development, convincing and, at times, gripping descriptions of the anxiety, fear, and sorrow that thread through the book. I stand with Daphne in her conclusion that Clara's life may well be more exciting than any I've yet lived. Perhaps I should shut myself up in an old mansion?

The dialogue in Aviary is wonderful, each character's voice delightfully distinct and consistent. While the pacing is quick, it fits better for this story than it did for Runaway Princess, I think because Aviary is a mystery/suspense story where timing and the feeling of time slipping through ones fingers in paramount. For my taste, there is also just the right balance between fancy and all-get-out creepy as Clara discovers dusty clues to lead her down the proverbial rabbit hole.

Overall, I enjoyed seeing Clara grow from a timid, unhappy girl with little in the way of confidence to a courageous, strong young woman who finds justice for those long since able to seek it themselves. Goodness that sounds dramatic, but I suppose it is, in a good way. So if you're looking for a historical mystery with a touch of  the supernatural and a healthy dose of strong female protagonist, I definitely recommend the Aviary as a future read.

how do you keep secrets?

Within the last two days I have become party to two rather exciting but personal secrets. Both people have requested that I keep their news on the "DL" which I am more than happy to do. Unfortunately, I had unwittingly shared one secret before I knew it was meant to be a secret. Now, I didn't go spreading it around like the town gossip and I doubt it actually made any lasting impression on those I shared it with but it brought the question to mind: how do you keep a secret? And how do you decide which ones to keep?

My mother would always reprimand us for a lack of tact and/or discretion when it came to certain topics. Some of the time I didn't understand what the big deal was about sharing some information with other people. I do have my lines when it comes to sharing secrets, I guess my lines may just be situation-coded.

So, debates about my trustworthiness aside, how do you keep a secret? How good are you at keeping secrets? Do you have different levels of secret keeping or would you keep any secret anyone ever told you, no matter what? What about your MC? Are they on the straight and narrow or do they bend, or break some of those rules of trust? Do they have lines? What are they? How willing would they be to break bonds of trust if they thought it might be in the best interest of the other party?

can you bake a pie? no? neither can I.

Okay, well, actually I can bake pies, but that's not the point. This past week my husband was ill and so, being at home as he was for long stretches of time for recuperation purposes, he happened upon some Netflix viewing, Cake Boss in particular. He became terribly interested in cake baking and decorating, having had limited prior experience with it. So this weekend he took it upon himself to bake a cake from scratch and try his hand at making and using fondant.

[warning, this post may contain excessive use of sarcastic humor]

I've never made fondant personally and I've never been a terribly great fan of the way it tastes but apparently it tastes nasty because bakers use almond extract in it which tastes like road-kill and is actually optional. Turns out you can use whatever extract you like instead as it's just for flavoring. So why on earth do bakers use eau de death when they could use something awesome like vanilla or even root beer extract? Who knows. Maybe it's that final "in your face" moment when you realize you just paid $1,700 for cake.

Anyway, it never got down to deciding between vanilla or root beer for us because to make legit fondant you need glycerin which is obviously only available at specialty bakery stores which for some reason don't exist in Provo. We're in Utah. Mormon-ville central. Perhaps the crafty capitol of the United States. How are there no specialty bakery stores here?! Someone should look into that. So, stuffing my husband's partially crushed dreams under a rug as delicately as possible, we took up Plan 2 which was making fondant the slightly less legit way, using marshmallows. Do you want to know the ingredients in marshmallow fondant? Marshmallow, a teeny tiny bit of water, and powdered sugar. Our recipe called for about 3 cups. Say hello to my lil' friend: we call him diabetes.

It should also be noted that, having decided to color the fondant red, we quickly discovered that our food coloring is not manly enough to actually make the color red [I call false advertising!]. So, despite using approximately 21 drops of food coloring, we ended up with an absolutely lovely shade of pink which reminds us fondly of Tim's niece Catherine who has a penchant for Disney princesses and all things pink. Don't worry though, there is so much sugar in this fondant that even with the addition of an excessive amount of food color which is second in taste only to almond extract, it still tastes exactly like marshmallows. Ah, silver linings.

The cake, stacked, frosted, and fondanted [it's a word, okay?] is now taking up room in our fridge, awaiting it's final decorating touches [yes, more sugar]. We're both pretty excited to see how it turns out and already ridiculously proud of ourselves for the accomplishment [which is almost entirely Tim's. I just sat around taking pictures of him and generally getting in the way]. I'll make sure to include a picture of the final project next time.

But hey! What on earth does this crazy story have to do with writing?


One of the most interesting things about this cake-baking experience for me was watching my generally easy-going, chill husband becoming an intimidating tower of frustration nigh on wrath. Tim can be a perfectionist at times and never have I seen that more evidenced than when he bakes [I love you, honey!]. I grew up baking with my mom so, while set backs can be annoying for me, I'm generally pretty un-phased by mistakes or imprecision - I've had so much experience with both. Tim has baked before but not extensively so when certain things surprised him in a bad way his mind started traveling the "to heck with this business! who needs it? let's just throw the whole thing away, why don't we?" path.

Thankfully, as things pan out, he is fundamentally more level-headed than to follow through on that idea but it was fascinating for me to watch and I got to thinking: how would my characters react if, figuratively [or literally, as the case may be], if asked, or if they set their mind to do something that they aren't totally familiar with? Would they persevere  Shut down? Throw a child-like temper-tantrum? Laugh it off? Become manic depressive?

As writers, I once heard it said that our job is to chase our characters up trees and then throw rocks at them.  Essentially, there is no story if there is no conflict, if our characters live forever within their comfort zone. No one likes reading books like that and I doubt writing them can be considered very enjoyable. So what does it look like when your character has to bake a cake?

In closing, here's an adorable video because I believe everyone needs more of these in their life and this here kitty is a darned good example of encountering an uncomfortable situation and coping with it [okay, maybe not the best example, but it is a funny one :)]

post-it notes

As busy as I find my life, I'm often in inconvenient situations when inspiration strikes me. Places like class, work, or my internship where it would be considered rude to suddenly whip out a notebook and start scribbling furiously, obviously no longer paying attention to the task at hand. That doesn't tend to go down well, especially at work. This brings about the complication of having inspiration, wanting to record it in some way, but being unable to give it your full developmental attention at the time.

Enter the post-it note.

We use these things all the time at work and they have become indispensable in my writing life. Post-it notes are fantastic, for one, because they don't demand as much from you as a blank notebook page or computer screen does. Post-its don't ask that you be a genius or create a ground-breaking, thought-provoking new idea. All they want from you is to fit what you're writing in a small square. This is also advantageous because you can write as small and as much or as large and as little as pleases you and no one will judge, after all, it's just a post-it! [well okay, if you write small enough to fit an entire novel on a post-it people might judge you a little] Also, how convenient is it to carry around a small square of papers? When I'm in the middle of something or just brainstorming along post-its have become my version of other authors' note cards where I can just jot down thoughts for further perusal at a later time. This does meant that I end up with quite a plethora of post-its but their size makes them wonderful to use in organizing plot points and ideas in a physical sense.

I should write the sales pitches for post-its.

While utilizing many of these sticky place-holders for brainstorming today I made another realization aside from the genius of post-its. As I've rambled on about before, I've been spending most of my writing time on developing my characters as I lack the time blocks to really address the writing of the story itself. I've made a lot of progress and discoveries thus far and I'm really enjoying the process of discovery but today I finally faced up to a huge character whole I've been ignoring. My MC starts the story out with a huge load of emotional and traumatic as well as literal baggage. His mother is recently deceased and everything he goes through in the story will, of course, be colored by the fact that he is now an orphan. The problem was that I hadn't yet addressed how his mother's death would make him, specifically, feel. I had been skirting the issue because I have minimal experience to draw on in order to make this feel real. I guess this is where writers really test themselves, exploring things they've never experienced/know nothing about. I realized today that Sam is somewhat flat to me still because I don't know exactly how he'd respond to the only person he's ever counted on in his life being ripped away from him and leaving him alone. I hadn't even considered what the funeral would have been like for him. Such a massive oversight, if uncorrected, would undermine the entire project!

My personal assignment, then, is to put out my feelers and experiment and explore this tragedy, to jump into it with Sam and see what I find. My brain's been on the fritz so I didn't dare push too far today but I did toy with Sam's perception of the funeral and though what I ended up with is post-it note rough, brief, and raw, I'm already feeling a bit more up to this sad task.

location, location, location

Greeting fellow writers! My posting schedule is definitely going to need some adjustment, Tuesdays just don't have the room anymore. I am currently accepting applications from other week days, Wednesday is kindly hosting us this week.

So what's been going on with you? Any great ideas for new stories? For the story you're writing? For new Olympic sports? We don't discriminate between great ideas here.

This week I've delved more into the details of my story's location, as you may have guessed. For this WIP I selected a town that I know of through my husband as the setting of the story and this has proved both a blessing and a curse. I've always considered it so much more effort to create a place from scratch, make it both real, and yet so unique as to be it's own location separate from others readers might think of. What I'm discovering, though, is that if you do use a real place in your story telling, you need to do your research because if someone from said tiny town happens to read your book, you don't want them to get hung up on inexcusable inaccuracies [we have google, guys, come on]. Research is not my forte, never has been, and so even in this context a part of me bristles at the necessity for it but it is necessary. I'm also getting a bit antsy because, optimally, I'd like to be able to visit this town, walk around, take pictures, get a feel for the place so I can better embody it in my writing [maybe a road trip, Tim?].

I've always been blown away by those authors that write their stories around almost generic towns that seem real but have no defining aspects that would help you pick them off a map. I think this is best accomplished when the location of the story isn't a huge part of the story and characters themselves. But the more your characters and plot are tied to a location, the more you have to put into developing the setting aspect of your WIP. I know, I know, more work, always more work. I don't have time for more work! Me either! I just keep reminding myself, baby steps. I decided yesterday where in town my main characters live, including street names, and that was a nice big baby step for me [why yes I'll take another hot-chocolate shot in celebration].

So how about you? What role does setting play in your story? Is it a main or supporting character? Is it a real place, generic hometown [insert country], or a place of your own wonderful imagination? What kinds of struggles or successes have you had with discovering and writing your setting?

it's all about the attitude

           Getting kicked when you’re down sucks, we all know it. But getting kicked when you’re trying to get up can be even worse. As I’ve mentioned, I struggle to be internally motivated in my writing. Thankfully, my WIP has been patient enough to lurk in the back of my mind for months despite my startling neglect of it. For some reason, the last few days have been unusually productive when it comes to at least my mental development of the story [especially considering the start of school and that fact that I don’t have thought room to spare on such “extra-curricular” stuff, I’m supposed to be graduating here!] and today I finally talked myself into pulling out the trusty ol’ notebook and carving out in crude language the scene that had been much more gracefully painted itself in my head.

            Sometimes, that’s all you can manage and I remind myself that all the questions and holes that I discovered in the writing of that scene are positive things because now I know more ways that I can make my characters better. Positive things, right? There are always more of them in our little writing blunders and mishaps than we think.

            So, considering my own relatively low standard for daily writing and the fact that I managed to acknowledge holes as questions I can build on, I was feeling pretty proud of myself. I had started to pick myself off the sticky floor of lazy-bum-writer-dom. And then the kicking came. One of the hardest things to swallow when you feel like you aren’t succeeding? The success of other people, especially if it seems like they didn’t even have to try. A coworker shared the awesome [because it really is awesome] news that her husband is getting published. A book that he wrote over the summer and that she helped him edit has been picked up by the first [and I think only] publisher that he submitted it to. Awesome right? That’s the kind of sudden success that I think all aspiring writers dream of and I really am happy for him.

            But I’m going to come out and say it, a little part of me [okay, maybe a currently significant part of me] is not only jealous, but resentful of his success. I think we’ve all experienced something like this in our lives, whether it is related to writing or some other achievement or recognition that we really want. It happens, but it doesn’t help me at all to feel that way. So what do you do when it happens to you?

            I’m a psychology major so, in keeping with the critical self-analysis that we’ve been focusing on in my classes this semester, I immediately realized that I’m never really upset with the people I hear about who have these great experiences. Instead, what I’m doing is projecting my dissatisfaction with myself and my own failure to pursue and realize my talents and goals with the determination I know I should. It can be easy, when you’re picking yourself up and you get “kicked” by the fortune of others, to just lay back down again and tell yourself that you’ll never be that talented, driven, lucky, etc. But when we do that we are wasting a perfect opportunity for hope. I get so caught up sometimes in comparing my success with that of others as if it’s a competition and there are only so many winning slots. Instead of despair, though, these pieces of news should remind me that success as a writer can happen to me. If it can happen to some random kid who doesn’t even want to pursue writing as a career, then why not me? I know I have lots of things to work on, but that’s going to be true of every area of my life for my whole life, it’s not a bad thing. The only thing standing between me and writing a good book and then getting that book published is myself. GO TEAM!

            Now that we’ve gotten the pep-talk out of the way…

            There’s a step in between realizing that you can do it and actually doing it. Actually, it’s more like a pit of fast-acting quick-sand than a step. In order to make it through said pit alive, we need to actually make changes to the things that aren’t working [you know what those things are, and if you don’t, take some “me time” and think about it, you’ll thank yourself].

If any of you play Portal/Portal2 and don’t have a natural aptitude for video-games [me] then I have the perfect example. Portal is a visual-spatial puzzle game that makes you think outside of the box. The way Portal asks you to problem solve isn’t usually in line with your normal thought patterns and so the game can be frustrating and stop you in your tracks with levels where you can see where you need to be but have no clue how to solve the puzzle of getting there. As my husband is constantly reminding me, an important key in playing Portal is not being afraid to die. This seems counterintuitive but, as you aren’t given a limited number of lives or tries on a level, the purpose of the game is to make you explore visually and mentally. The point is to get you to think in new ways and sometimes you have to try a lot of weird ideas to break out of your old ways of thinking before you find the answer. This relates to writing in a significant way for me because, just as I am inexplicably cautious of dying in Portal, I am also afraid of writing badly. I’ll get inspiration for a new scene in my WIP but when I write it out it doesn’t look as shiny as it did in my mind and I stall out, unable to push past it. Sometimes the expectation of such a let-down keeps me from trying to write at all. But, just as in Portal, this paralysis is pointless. The best thing about writing is that nothing to write is permanent, you can, and probably will change the majority of your first draft and that’s okay. So much of the time, solutions and good books only come from our willingness to dive in, die [not literally] or write crappy scenes that you hope no one ever reads before you get a chance to edit them. The quest for instantaneous perfection is crippling and it’s something that I need to overcome if I’m ever going to give Sam a story, let alone an ending.

What do you need to conquer in your writing? Have suggestions, pep-talks, or success stories to share? Email me at emily.buhler.loveless@gmail.com and we’ll celebrate together!

coming up for air

I really do apologize for missing Tuesday [and almost Wednesday] this an entire week. Classes started last Monday and I've been having my traditional freak-out where I feel like I'm drowning in classes and new claims on my time. Last Tuesday I left my apartment at 7:48am and didn't get home until about 10:20pm. Suffice to say, it was a long day between classes, work, a meeting for my new internship, and major drama with the bank [some of which, thankfully, got resolved]. The difference between two weeks ago and today is like night and day, I feel like the floor's been pulled out from under me. So I hope you can forgive some inconsistencies. As it stands, I have class until 8pm on Tuesdays so I may need to change my weekly posting date to another day but I'll leave that for another week's to-do list to assess.

I don't really have anything specific to talk about this week but I wanted to do a book review that I meant to last time I posted but that post go so long that I actually forgot. That's how bad my memory is. I should link this post to my mom so she can have an example...

I recently read The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender which is about a young girl who, just before her 9th birthday, discovers that she can taste emotions in food, specifically those of the person who made it. This, of course, presents loads of different challenges and opportunities [mostly challenges] for Rose who lives in a rather dysfunctional family. I'd like to just mention a few of the things that caught my attention the most when reading this book.

For one, this novel is incredibly depressing. Don't get me wrong, you won't need to go see a therapist after reading it [probably?] but, while things do, in a way, improve for Rose at the end of the book, it is by little means the "happy ending" that you might expect/wish for. Disappointment is a heavy theme in the book, unfulfilled expectations, jarring glimpses from the childhood of a young girl into the ugly reality of adulthood. I'm doing a poor job of explaining this. Let's see. Rose discovers at a tender age a traumatizing truth about her mother that no one else knows and, through the course of the book, she becomes the only family member to know everything about her current family - all involuntarily. You watch Rose develop from middle-grade, to YA, to adult and all the steps of mental processing involved in taking in her "ability." She doesn't want it and she's never happy about it, the story, in a way, is about a handicap, the handicap of too much knowledge.

Another point that got my attention was Bender's use of, for lack of a better term, magic in the novel. It is immediately apparent that what Rose can do is abnormal, various doctor visits and experimentation proves this is an unusual thing. But you also discover that Rose is not the only one who is different. You see through the character of her brother, the reality that affects us all: that trails and challenges, even some things we consider blessings, come in many forms and that we each deal with them differently. Some people muddle through, struggling to understand why, others become completely incapacitated by them, unable to move forward and unwilling to take a leap that might make them great, and still others are consumed by their trials, finding the fight not worth fighting. The latter is one of the most depressing things about the book for me, if you read it, you'll know what part I mean and you may cry as well. Everything is from Rose's perspective and as she never has a close relationship with any of her family, especially her brother, you don't get to know them very well in the traditional sense, but your heart still breaks for them. The writing is just that good.

The feel of "magic" comes through learning that this predisposition to strangeness is a genetic trait, though not one you learn about in school. I was very satisfied with Bender's skill at intertwining the strange with the normal in such a way that it doesn't stand out like a dragon in an office meeting or something like that. You recognize that something is different but her world building is done so well that it folds right in. [For another example of a good use of magic in a non-fantasy story, I highly recommend Sugar Queen.] The whole story is so haunting and believable, despite the unbelievable, that when I saw a documentary-type show on two siblings whose family trauma remarkably resembled that of this book, I actually had to remind myself that they weren't the same people. Crazy  : )

Anyway, it's excessively late for a girl who hasn't gotten more than 6 hours of sleep a night in the last week and a half so I'm going to apologize for my badly constructed book review skills and say g'night! Hopefully I'll get my feet back under me soon and return to some semblance of normalcy. Sorry, did I say return? I meant begin to exhibit.