REINVENTING LAUREN

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

The theme at GBC this cycle is reinvention.

My debut novel, The Thin Pink Line, came out a decade ago next month. Since it was published by Red Dress Ink, it was immediately categorized as Chick Lit, as were the next few books I had published.

In September of 2006, a different book was published by a different publisher, Vertigo, a dark Victorian suspense novel. It had only a few arch moments in it, nothing like the madcap comedies that I was in the process of completing five of for RDI, and the overall tone could best be characterized as one of impending doom.

Later in 2006, Simon and Scuster published an earnest novel of mine called Angel's Choice, about a teen who becomes pregnant in her final year of high school. I hadn't set out to write a YA novel when I first got the idea, but it turned out that's what I'd created, and so I broke into the YA market. More YA books would follow over the next several years, no two alike: a revisioning of a classic fairy tale, a comedic mystery, a slender comedy-drama about a Victorian girl who wants a decent education, a Victorian murder mystery and, oh yes, a time travel story.

In march of 2008, my first middle grade novel was published by S&S, Me In Between, about a generously endowed girl who's conflicted about her physical attributes. At the end of that year, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt published the first two of the nine books that comprise The Sisters 8, a series for young readers that I created with my husband and daughter.

Oh, and in 2011, I started going the ebook route with several new books for adults, no two of them sharing anything in common save for The Bro-Magnet and its sequel, Isn't it Bromantic?

Was there ever any intent, in all this industriousness, to reinvent myself? No, nor am I sure I ever have. I've only ever suceeded in following the ideas that have excited me, trying my hardest to produce the best individual book I can for readers. There's no one area I've ever stuck with to the exclusion of all else. I am something of a publishing nightmare, the opposite of a brandable author. In fact, the only brand I have is my improbable name.

I think, sometimes, that the only way I could truly revinvent myself would be if I were to change that name. More than a few author friends, tired of the tyranny of sales track records, have done that, some to great success.

So, what do you think? Do I need a reinvention? And if I ever change my name, what should it be to?

Lauren Baratz-Logsted is the author of over 30 books for adults, teens and children. You can read more about her life and work at www.laurenbaratzlogsted.com or follow her on Twitter @LaurenBaratzL

Writing is in the Details…

by Barbara Claypole White

I have a favorite line in my debut novel, The Unfinished Garden: life is in the details. For my birthday, my husband put it on a bumper sticker, so now it goes wherever my rusty, dented CRV takes me.  Why do I love that line? Because I’m all about character, and that one, short sentence sums up my beloved hero.

James has obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which means he’s detail-obsessed. His world spins on order and control. Everything has to happen in the right way, at the right moment, and when he speaks, he chooses his words with care. As he turns to the heroine and says, “Life is in the details,” I imagine a slow smile spreading from the corner of his mouth, and I hear a touch of self-deprecating humor. The reader—although not the heroine—also knows that James is fighting an OCD fear, so the context makes an important statement about James’s attitude to his anxiety disorder. The second I typed those words, my writer’s gut tingled, and I knew I had found the real James. “Life is in the details” is James’s voice.

Finding the right words, and using them in unexpected ways, is how we reveal character.  For example, last month my family went to see one of our favorite bands—The Airborne Toxic Event. Through a quirk of fate, we ran into the lead singer before the show. Afterward, I heard my son on the phone with his best buddy: “I hugged Mikel, and he smelled of miracles.” Is that not a perfect image?  (Confession time—yes, I stole it for the hero of my second novel, The In-Between Hour.)

If my son were a fictional character, what would those words tell the reader about him? That he has a dream—which he shares with his best buddy—to be a rock star. Had he said, “I hugged Mikel, and he smelled of sex and drugs,” the reader may have made the same assumption…but without gaining any sense of my son’s voice. 

The Beloved Teenage Delinquent is an award-winning poet and lyricist. When I ask him to read my work, I know he will focus on individual words in a way that none of my other readers do. He has the eye of a poet. In poetry—Every. Single. Word. Counts. Part of my learning curve as an author has been to realize the same is true when creating character’s voice. Finding that voice is all about the right word at the right moment….

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Barbara Claypole White is the author of The Unfinished Garden*, a love story about grief, OCD, and dirt (Harlequin MIRA, August 2012). The In-Between Hour follows in January 2014.

* winner, 2013 Golden Quill Contest for Best First Book

Are You Ashamed of Your Writing? by Karin Gillespie

 Shame is a trendy emotion right now. Brene Brown did a hugely popular TED talk on it. Oprah’s been bandying it about. People are buzzing about it on social media. Certainly I’ve had my share of shameful moments, mostly in my twenties, but until recently I hadn’t given shame much thought. 

A week ago I started re-reading the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, and suddenly I realized that for years, shame and I have been constant companions; I wasn’t aware of it because I’d been numbing it.      

  

Cameron reminded me that writing (or any type of art) is often associated with heaps of shame. It begins when you’re taking the first baby steps to owning your identity as a writer. At first, you don’t want to say it out loud to anyone, because the next question is always, “Where have you been published?”

 And, of course, if you aren’t published, then time spent writing feels shameful. People feel free to interrupt you because it’s not like you’re doing anything important. They look upon writing as a luxury akin, to sitting around eating Cheeze whip and Ritz crackers and watching the Kardashsians.   

The shame doesn’t stop when you’re finally published. Some reviewers act personally affronted by your efforts and have no reservations about publically shaming you. “I’ll never get those six hours of my life back” they say, as if you’d been holding a gun to their heads while they read your work.

Shame can also come during royalty check time. Very few authors have not experienced the pain of selling below expectations.  Shame will also sweep in if you’re in a transitional period and haven’t sold anything lately.

And perhaps most painful of all, people will occasionally shame you for what you’re writing. If you’re a genre writer, you might be shamed for writing junk If you’re a literary writer, your navel-gazing is subject to attack. Even people close to you will sometimes shame you. A friend once said to me, “I’m waiting for you to write the serious book I know you’re capable of.”

Recently I got some insight into the reason for all this art-associated shame. I was talking to a friend named Billy  about a mutual acquaintance, who is a beginner painter.  Billy was complaining about our friend because she refused to help him move one Saturday. She told him Saturdays were her painting day.

“She’s just a dilettante, pretending to be Georgia O’Keefe,” Billy said. “Like it would kill her to take one day to help me out.”

   

And that’s when it hit me. Bully, I mean Billy, has always been a frustrated artist. Sadly for him, he’s never pursued his creative impulses because he claims he doesn’t have time. That’s a convenient and common excuse for blocked artists but the real reason Billy doesn’t paint is because he can't bear the idea of being a less than perfect painter and perhaps falling on his face a few times.  

The truth is, people who are happily creating art don’t have time or the inclination to shame other artists. They know that creating art is our birthright; it’s as a natural as breathing, sleeping and loving, and all efforts have validity.                 

  

It’s the creatively frustrated people who delight in the shame game. It’s as if they are saying, ‘How dare you make art when I’m going through so much artistic turmoil?” On some level they hope they can shame us enough so we quit creating, and then they won’t feel as uncomfortable.

 As long as there are blocked artists, shame isn’t going away. The only thing we can do is change our reactions to it. It seems so obvious but it took me years to learn that when someone shamed me, I didn’t have to internalize it. 

The Right Word At The Right Time

by Maggie Marr

The right word at the right time?  How about, yes.  As writers, yes seems to be the word we strive to hear.

Yes, that word is perfect.

Yes, that sentence is ideal.

Yes, the chapter has tension.

Yes, the characters are well-rounded.

Yes, I will represent your book.

Yes, we want to buy your book.

Yes, I loved your book.

Yes, you are a writer.

We spend most of our careers struggling to get to that magical YES!  But here is the thing, I learn more as an author, as a professional, as a person from hearing, no.

No.

No, the book was not a best-seller.

No, you can't make your mortgage only by writing.

No, your pilot didn't get picked up.

No, I couldn't sell this book.

No, while not a word I often want to hear, is the word that always gives me direction.  No, points me the way I need to go, because every time I hear the word no, I have two options:

1.  Give up.

2.  Try harder.

The hard no helps me make a decision.  With that no, I decide whether I need to pursue the story, the path in my life, the  relationship, that received the no.  I must decide if I want to dedicate the time and the energy--my precious resources--to turn that No into a Yes.

Many times--the most brilliant times--no knocks me on my ass.  No then becomes the catalyst for hard work, persistence, patience, craft, dedication....all those things that I utilize to get to yes.

While yes, is most always the right word at the right time, and often my favorite word, no, is a hard reality that often leads to my greatest successes.  I am thankful for both.

Maggie Marr is an author, an attorney, and an independent producer.  She is the author of Courting Trouble, Can't Buy Me Love, Hollywood Girls Club, Secrets of The Hollywood Girls Club and the soon to be published Hollywood Hit.  She writes for film and television and is a member of The Vero Law Group.  Maggie lives and works in Los Angeles.   

A Simple Word by Melissa Clark

Sometimes the right words at the right time are as simple as, "Welcome". And that is what I heard Sunday upon arriving at the Obras Foundation in Evora Monte, Portugal. You see, sometimes when life is utterly distracting in your home town, you have to go far, far away to a different continent, a different country, a different culture to get the job done. And it is here, among the chickens, pigs, sheep, castles and a handful of other artists that I hope to do just that.

Tiled trolley in Lisbon

cute chickens

hiking, not writing (yet)

Melissa Clark is the author of "Swimming Upstream, Slowly," and "Imperfect." You can follow her adventures in Portugal at Connections Clark.

My Summer Reading List

by Maria Geraci

It's summer! Which means hot beach weather, vacations, barbeques, and reading.

When I was a kid, the first day of summer vacation was marked by a visit to the local library. Reading list, in hand. You remember those, don't you? The list the teacher gave you the last day of school with the books you were expected to read before classes resumed again in the fall (In my case, the list was tucked inside our report card envelope).

Along with the required books, we always picked out the books we wanted to read (Nancy Drew mysteries when I was younger, a bit more sophisticated stuff when I was older). Maybe it was the geek (or the future writer) in me, but I came to look forward to those " required books ". Without those lists, I'm not sure if my pre-teen self would have had the smarts to have picked up Anne of Green Gables (Oh, Gilbert!)  or Little Women (Oh, Laurie!) or later, read classics like The Count of Monte Cristo. I still remember the summer I was *forced* to read Pride and Prejudice. Talk about a life altering book.

Like most writers, I'm a voracious reader. I try to read within all genres: a) Because you never know what gems you are going to come across, and, b) if you only read within the genre you write in, then you're never going to be exposed to the richness of other worlds.

Lately, I've been reading a lot of YA. I recently finished What I Saw and How I Lied, a book I probably would have never have picked up on my own, except that the leader for my local writing group used excerpts from the novel to discuss writing dialogue. I guess you could say it was on my "adult reading list."  I began it at 10 pm one night and finished it by 4 in the morning. Who would have guessed I wouldn't be able to put it down once I started reading? Not me, that's for sure. But boy am I glad I did. The novel itself was a lesson in how to write tight.

A few summers ago, I decided to go back to my "reading list" roots and create my own list, of sorts. It had been years since I'd read The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye and I decided to reread them at the beach during vacation. Interestingly enough, my reaction to both novels as an adult was similar to my reaction as a teenager. Hated Gatsby, loved Catcher. But I did come to  appreciate the beauty of Fitzgerald's prose and understand the simplicity of how a sympathetic character (Holden Caulfield) can carry a novel.

Since then, I've done the same every summer. This year's list includes: To Kill A Mockingbird (shamefully, I've never read it) and Persuasion (yes, I've read it many times, but I'm convinced, you can never read Jane Austen often enough).

What's on your summer reading list?

(And if you want to put a smile on your face, click on the video below. I promise, if you love books, you won't be disappointed!)


 

Maria Geraci writes contemporary romance and women’s fiction with a happy ending. Her fourth novel,  A Girl Like You, was released last August by Berkley, Penguin, USA and is a 2013 RITA nominee. You can connect with Maria by visiting her website, www.mariageraci.com

 

If you didn't come to sweat--you need to leave right now!

by Michele Young-Stone

Roll!  Work!  Advice to all wannabe published novelists: SWEAT!  Don’t sell out!  SWEAT!  "Work!"  Don’t write something because you think it will make money.  This sounds like a no-brainer, right?  Not really.  Desperate times can call for desperate measures.  Be strong.   

After being rejected by every New York literary agent (accepting unsolicited queries) from A-W in The 2004 Writer’s Market, I tried to write a more “reader friendly novel.”  I tried to write linearly, which is all but impossible for me to manage because my brain simply does not work in a straight-line kind of way.  I can go back to a manuscript and move things around, but my mind translates to the page in images that connect, usually in subconscious ways.  The linear book SUCKED.  It is somewhere now, but I'm not sure where.  500 pages of "this is what I think people want to read..."  Not good.  

Whereas...

my latest novel, currently in the editorial process, the story of two women separated by oceans, generations and war, but connected by something much greater--the gift of wings, was not planned, not linear, not fathomed.  It is the tale of one woman born in 1925 in Lithuania, Europe, and the other woman born in 1973, northern Florida, in these United States.  This novel started with the image of a girl carrying handmade feather-pasted cardboard wings onto a bus, her boots on the black tread, the wings pressed against the metal bar, the bus driver telling her to hurry up, but she didn’t know where to sit. 

The question of where to sit and with whom is metaphorically at the core of this novel.

Excerpt:

My parents do not recall my birth as particularly pleasant.  As a matter of fact, I think that as a fetus and then a baby and then a human being, I came between them.  Before I emerged, they were in love, and they probably would’ve remained that way if it weren’t for me.  But it’s not my fault that they had unprotected sex.  It’s not my fault or my doing that they mixed this mad concoction that produced a Prudence Eleanor Vilkas.  That’s my name.  My father chose the first two and the last one is my surname, my Lithuanian birthright.  I am a Vilkas.

When I started, I imagined a sixteen year-old girl riding a bus.  Other factors at play, the death of two World War II survivors, one German and one Lithuanian, while I was pregnant with my son—factored into, and formed this novel.  Their voices spoke through me.  Strange coincidences kept happening.  For example, the German woman, Mac (Inge Rosemarie Kischel McGarrity) used to give me German marzipan every Christmas.  I was not particularly fond of marzipan, but she didn’t have to give me anything—so I bit my tongue.  Plus, my mother would’ve killed me if I was rude.  My mother and Mac were best friends. 

As an adult, I would give Mac jelly jars so that she would keep giving me some of her amazing blackberry preserves.  She was my surrogate grandmother, my oma.  Anyway, spinning round and round, while writing a scene in Germany for the novel, I wrote about a rose garden and marzipan.  I later found out that it is a custom to flavor marzipan/the almond paste with rose water.  Little things.  All the time.  Everywhere.  Things I couldn’t know about places I hadn’t been, but filled my head just the same.  And then, this year, just as I was finishing the novel, my pastry chef friend who made my son's birthday cake, made the decorations from marzipan.  I guess that when you are willing to see the incredible, it's there.  

I love this novel so much that even if no one buys it, I don’t care.  I am elated to have brought the characters and story into being.  It was a cathartic endeavor, a nearly three-year journey, excluding the life experiences that came to the forefront of the book.  I am grateful for the gift and pleasure of writing, and as one of my professors advised, “If you are writing to become rich or famous, stop now!"

As the rapper Lil' Jon would say (for all my Zumba buddies), “If you didn’t come to sweat, you need to leave right now!”  It’s true.  Like all great endeavors, writing is something that you have to do for the sheer joy of putting those words and ultimately that story on the page and into life.  If it’s good enough, someone will read it.  I promise you!

Michele Young-Stone is the author of the Target Book Club novel, The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors.  Her next two novels are under contract with Simon and Schuster.  When Michele is not writing, she is volunteering in her community, Zumba-ing and paddling around in her pink kayak.  She likes to bird watch and color outside the lines.

www.micheleyoung-stone.com, www.micheleyoung-stone.blogspot.com www.obxbird.blogspot.com, https://www.facebook.com/michele.youngstonefanpage https://www.twitter.com/micheleyosto