Susan Juby: Traps for Writers

Being a writer is a wonderful thing. However, the path of the writer is strewn with distractions and dangers of all sorts. Here are two you should watch out for.

1. The Internet.
Here's how it starts. You're writing away after school in the time you've set aside. You're going strong. Onto something good. Then it occurs to you that you haven't checked your email in a while. So you stop mid-sentence and check your email. There's a message from your friend, who just posted a video of herself impersonating Céline Dion on Youtube. So you click through and watch. Then you discover that hundreds of other people have put up their Céline Dion impressions and you watch them all and you post links on your blog and Myspace page. Then your parents call you down for dinner and that's it. Céline Dion and the Internet have ruined your writing session.

2. The phone.
You're writing away one night. Burning the midnight oil, writing something quite powerful, and the phone rings. Ring! Ring! It's your friend, the Céline Dion impersonator. She's calling about the backless dress she just sewed for her next Youtube appearance. She's already called you six times to update you on her progress. "I cut out the pattern!" "I sewed a side seam!" "Did you know my dress is a size 0? JUST LIKE CÉLINE DION!" You pick up because you want to be sure that she hasn't had a serious sewing accident. It turns out she's calling to report that her boyfriend is getting weirded out by the Céline Dion thing. He doesn't find Ms. Dion that attractive and wishes your friend would imitate Gwen Stefani. Obviously he doesn't understand that Céline is an artist. A chanteuse! You talk her through it and when you finally get off the phone you realize it's midnight and your writing session is over.

I shut off my modum and turn off the phone when I write. What methods do you use to deal with distractions?

Susan Juby
Author of Another Kind of Cowboy, Alice, I Think, and Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last

www.susanjuby.com

Susan Juby: Traps for Writers

Being a writer is a wonderful thing. However, the path of the writer is strewn with distractions and dangers of all sorts. Here are two you should watch out for.

1. The Internet.
Here's how it starts. You're writing away after school in the time you've set aside. You're going strong. Onto something good. Then it occurs to you that you haven't checked your email in a while. So you stop mid-sentence and check your email. There's a message from your friend, who just posted a video of herself impersonating Céline Dion on Youtube. So you click through and watch. Then you discover that hundreds of other people have put up their Céline Dion impressions and you watch them all and you post links on your blog and Myspace page. Then your parents call you down for dinner and that's it. Céline Dion and the Internet have ruined your writing session.

2. The phone.
You're writing away one night. Burning the midnight oil, writing something quite powerful, and the phone rings. Ring! Ring! It's your friend, the Céline Dion impersonator. She's calling about the backless dress she just sewed for her next Youtube appearance. She's already called you six times to update you on her progress. "I cut out the pattern!" "I sewed a side seam!" "Did you know my dress is a size 0? JUST LIKE CÉLINE DION!" You pick up because you want to be sure that she hasn't had a serious sewing accident. It turns out she's calling to report that her boyfriend is getting weirded out by the Céline Dion thing. He doesn't find Ms. Dion that attractive and wishes your friend would imitate Gwen Stefani. Obviously he doesn't understand that Céline is an artist. A chanteuse! You talk her through it and when you finally get off the phone you realize it's midnight and your writing session is over.

I shut off my modum and turn off the phone when I write. What methods do you use to deal with distractions?

Susan Juby
Author of Another Kind of Cowboy, Alice, I Think, and Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last

www.susanjuby.com

Kim Harrison: Becoming a Writer

"I love reading. Do you have any advice on how to become a writer?"

I can't tell you the number of times I've been asked this question, and though every author's path to publication is different, I do have a few tips for the young (or new) writer that can help.

Writing is just about the only job I can think of that is still pretty much self-taught. To help, there are lots of classes available both at the high school level and higher, and I always suggest taking as many creative writing classes you can. I didn't, and when I sat down to write, I had a lot of catch-up to do. Which goes to prove that even if you miss those early opportunities, you can make up the difference. When it comes right down to it, it's you and the keyboard and lots of practice.

Write every day. You don't have to write for a long time--just twenty minutes or so--but make them good twenty minutes. You might ask, why write every day and not for an hour once a week? Writing every day teaches you how to flick on your creative process fast and make it work for you. If you want to write for a job, treat it like one and write whether you're in the mood or not. This is hard work, or everyone would be doing it. Or should I say, everyone would be finishing their manuscript.

Which brings me to the next suggestion. Finish what you start even if you've lost interest in it. Find a way to rekindle the spark, and then do it. A lot of people confuse true writer's block with a lack of planning. There are many people who write by the seat of their pants. (Called pantsers) That's what works for them and it is a perfectly acceptable way to write--if you finish your manuscript. If you have six stories started and haven't finished one, then you're not a pantser, you're a plotter who hasn't plotted enough. I'm a plotter with a pantser's need to follow my instincts. I have to have an outline when I work, but I'm always changing it. If you have a hard time finishing a story, you might want to consider spending some time outlining to the end--and then finish writing it, even if it is painful. The confidence you will get from that will astound you. If you can finish one, you can finish them all.

Another piece of advice I love to give out is to do lots of research, but by that I mean reading your favorite books, not once or twice, but several times over the course of a couple of years. Pick your favorite author's work apart to see how he or she handles character growth or plot development. See how she hid clues in the prose so that you missed its significance until the end when you hit your head and say, "Oh! That makes perfect sense now!" Watch how she built the world and drew you into it. Was it the love the main character had for her pet that first drew you to understand her? Or her friends? Or maybe the trouble or success she had at school?

Okay, so what if you have the pattern of writing every day and you've finished something? Now you're ready to start sharing your work. Sharing your writing with others is one of the best ways to get over your love affair with your own words. Loving your work is a positive thing, but it can stand in the way if you love it so much that you think it can't be improved upon. Try to join a writer's group that meets face to face. Not only will you make great strides in polishing your voice and developing that thick skin needed, but there's usually a published author in the group who can open doors and make introductions to help get that first publishing credit.

One of the best things about wanting to be a writer is that if you write, you are one. It's that simple. The only sure way to fail to find publication, is to stop trying. Success is simply a matter of time, effort, and maybe a good whack of luck to get it all going.

--Kim Harrison

Browse Inside:The Outlaw Demon Wails

www.myspace.com/kimharrisonbooks

Suzanne Harper: Fact in Fiction

It's surprising how much research you sometimes have to do when writing fiction. You'd think that, if you're making stuff up, you could just sit in front of your computer all day, lost in your own world, preferably wearing pajamas.

But no.

My next novel, THE JULIET CLUB, is based on a real organization, so that's where my research started. (You can read about it here.) Then I started creating my fictional world, which involves three American teens (Kate, Lucy and Tom) who travel to Italy to take part in a Shakespeare seminar, along with three Italian teens (Giacomo, Silvia and Benno). As part of the plot, they have to perform an Elizabethan dance and a scene that involves stage sword fighting.

When I started to write those scenes, I realized that I had a major problem since I do not dance or fence. So I asked a couple of friends (Anneclaire, a dancer, and Dan, a fight director) to tutor me in the basics. (Check out Dan's web site here.)

Now I'm creating videos of the lessons for my website. I'm curious to see whether readers like learning about the facts behind the fiction.

What do you guys think? Do you think behind-the-scenes info like that would be interesting, or would you rather just stay in the world of the story?

Suzanne Harper
Author of  The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney

Paula Yoo: Good Enough

Let's get one thing straight. GOOD ENOUGH is a FICTIONAL NOVEL. I'm not as smart as Patti, and I don't play the violin as well as she does!

But eagle-eyed readers caught real life tributes, like my "random name generator" technique using real friends' names for many of the minor characters.

My real life and fictional worlds collided on Thanksgiving when I attended my 20th high school reunion. I was nervous because I was a geek outcast amongst Beautiful Perfect People who attended Prom while I stayed home to practice my violin. Would everyone stick with their cliques and ignore me? Would my teen angst bubble to the surface again?

To my surprise, I had a BLAST! Gone were the cliques. Everyone was genuinely happy to reconnect on equal footing. I even met the real-life "Ben Wheeler"! Still as cute as ever... and we had fun bonding over our memories. My teen angst was replaced with pride in having survived high school. Turns out everyone - even the Beautiful Perfect People - felt at one point they weren't good enough. So congratulations to everyone in the Avon High School Class of '87 - you guys are MORE than good enough!

Paula Yoo
Author of Good Enough

www.myspace.com/paulayoo

Paula Yoo: Good Enough

Let's get one thing straight. GOOD ENOUGH is a FICTIONAL NOVEL. I'm not as smart as Patti, and I don't play the violin as well as she does!

But eagle-eyed readers caught real life tributes, like my "random name generator" technique using real friends' names for many of the minor characters.

My real life and fictional worlds collided on Thanksgiving when I attended my 20th high school reunion. I was nervous because I was a geek outcast amongst Beautiful Perfect People who attended Prom while I stayed home to practice my violin. Would everyone stick with their cliques and ignore me? Would my teen angst bubble to the surface again?

To my surprise, I had a BLAST! Gone were the cliques. Everyone was genuinely happy to reconnect on equal footing. I even met the real-life "Ben Wheeler"! Still as cute as ever... and we had fun bonding over our memories. My teen angst was replaced with pride in having survived high school. Turns out everyone - even the Beautiful Perfect People - felt at one point they weren't good enough. So congratulations to everyone in the Avon High School Class of '87 - you guys are MORE than good enough!

Paula Yoo
Author of Good Enough

www.myspace.com/paulayoo

Cherry Cheva: Writing a Book vs. Writing for TV

So I'm psyched that She's So Money just came out, but writing books actually isn't my only job-- in fact, it's kind of my second job, since my day job is writing for the TV show "Family Guy." I wrote the book almost entirely on nights and weekends, because my days (when the WGA isn't on strike, that is) are spent at the office, sitting around with fifteen or sixteen guys and doing the following in no particular order: watching youtube, deciding what to eat for lunch, messing with our cellphones, arranging the various toys and figurines on the table into obscene positions, surfing for celebrity gossip on the internet, making fun of each other, making fun of ourselves, going out on the balcony to get a better look at hotties walking by on the street, and oh yeah, occasionally writing some jokes and gags involving the Griffin family, talking trees, Swedish bakers, gay sharks, vomiting, and anything else we can think of. It is, without exaggeration, an *awesome* job.

Of course, writing a book is awesome too, because I can do it at home and in pajamas and if I get stuck on something (or just plain bored), I can walk away from the computer and take a nap, or start a spontaneous one-woman dance party, or watch a Top Model marathon on MTV, or go to the mall.

But really the biggest difference between my two jobs is that in writing for TV, there is lots of free candy. Writing a book, there is no free candy.

Unless I stole some from work.

So how about you guys -- is there room for both books and TV in your lives? What books would you love to see as shows…or what shows do you think would be cool to read?

Cherry Cheva
Author of She's So Money

Enter for a chance to win a $500 gift certificate and a copy of She's So Money signed by Cherry!

www.myspace.com/cherrycheva
www.myspace.com/familyguy