Happy Holidays!

Here’s wishing you a fabulous and happy holiday season as well as a great new years! Be well, be safe! Here’s a little Indian Holiday cheer from me to you.

Writers on Writing: Barry Lyga

This guy has helped me out tons with his fabulous writing advice on his blog. I’m thrilled to have author Barry Lyga answer some questions about his writing life. Thanks for joining me, Barry! Let’s get started…



What is your brainstorming process for a new book?



Well, it’s not such much a brain “storm” as it’s a sustained period of brain drizzle. And I think with that, I’ve probably extended the metaphor about as far as is useful. Seriously – I generally allow projects to simmer in my back-brain for a while before I start working on them. Little ideas and notions bubble to the surface and I jot them down, even if I’m not entirely sure what they are or how helpful they may or may not be in the long run. At some point, all of those ideas attain a powerful enough gravity that I feel the pull to start working on the book. Which is when I learn if those ideas make any sense or not!



Can you explain your typical work week day?



I usually work for a few hours in the morning, then hit the gym, grab lunch, and work some more until dinner. If I’m really humming along (or really late on something!), I’ll work after dinner, too.



Tell us about when you made the decision to write.



I don’t remember when I made that decision. I’ve always wanted to write, as long as I can remember. I’ve told this story before, but I’ll tell it again: When I was roughly seven or eight years old, my grandmother asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said, “I want to be a writer!” And she did Jewish grandmothers everywhere proud ’cause she said, “Oh. So you want to starve.” I think she’d be proud to see that I’ve managed NOT to starve.



What suggestions do you have for aspiring writers?



Oh, boy. A lot! In short: Don’t be afraid to suck. Every writer has a million bad words deep inside, and you need to write a lot of stuff that sucks in order to purge those million bad words. Then you get to the good stuff, the stuff people will want to read.



The flip side of that: Realize that you probably DO suck. And that you will suck for a long time before you get good. That’s OK. It’s fine. Everyone goes through it. I see a lot of aspiring writers who try to submit long before they’re ready for it, and the constant rejection wears them down. Be honest with yourself. Be patient. Headlines to the contrary, book publishing will still be around when you’re ready. It will probably look different and come with a rechargeable battery, but it’ll still be here.



Tell us about what you’re working on right now and what we can expect from you in the near future.



I’m working on a bunch of stuff right now. I’ve got a series that will come out in 2010 called ARCHVILLAIN, which is about a 12-year-old kid who gets superpowers and ends up being a supervillain instead of a superhero. I’m also working on my first graphic novel, drawn by the amazing and awesome and astonishing Colleen Doran. And, as if that weren’t enough, I’m also working on a new YA novel that is going to be sort of long and complicated and weird. Is that enough?



Haha, we’re always wanting more from you, Barry so I doubt it will ever be enough! Thanks again for joining me. For those of you readers who want to know more about Barry, check out his website here and info about fanboy and gothgirl here. Stay tuned for the next Writer’s on Writing!

Writers on Writing: Laura Bowers

Today we have hysterical author Laura Bowers joining us to say a little bit about her writing life. I hope you enjoy as much as I have! She’s awesome! Thanks for joining me, Laura! Let’s get started…



What is your brainstorming process for a new book?



Brainstorming? Oh, please. I do not brainstorm. Once an idea pops into my head, I simply float to my computer and tippy-tap the day away.



Yeah, right.



In reality, my process is chaotic, detailed and borderline anal-compulsive. I scribble all ideas—the good, the bad and the ugly—in a notepad. If one of them feels right, I’ll start off with Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method. It’s a fantastic tool to help you figure out the core of your story. Then I do major character sketches. Carolyn Green’s Prescription for Plotting, John Vorhaus’s The Comic Toolbox and James N. Frey’s How to Write a Damn Good Novel, II offer great techniques. After that, I’ll outline, plot, doodle, snowflake, stare blankly at the computer, bash my head against the desk, drool, crumble torn pages from a legal pad, smooth them back out and outline all over again. Then I’ll start to realize that my obsessive plotting is just a means of procrastination and I force myself to begin the rough draft.
http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php
http://www.theplotdoctor.netfirms.com/
http://www.amazon.com/Comic-Toolbox-Funny-Even-Youre/dp/1879505215
http://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Damn-Good-Novel/dp/0312104782



Can you explain your typical work week day?



It depends. If I’m writing a rough draft, I try to crank out 2,500 words daily in between work for my husband’s company and playing chauffer to the kids. Rough drafts are painful for me, so I need a peaceful, quiet setting—and my iPod.



Editing is a different story. If I’m deep in edits, I could work all day and all night—even during my boys’ basketball or baseball games. There have been many times when I had to shield my computer from foul balls!



Tell us about when you made the decision to write.



Would it be inappropriate to say I was on medication when I decided to write?



Okay, I better explain that one. When I was younger, I used to tinker with stories and write a family newspaper, but I never thought that someone like me could be an author. Authors were smart, educated, worldly and sophisticated and I viewed myself as anything but smart, educated, worldly and sophisticated. This attitude followed me into my twenties so I pushed away those pesky fantasies to write, “The Great American Novel.” But when my extremely stressful job and life put me in the hospital with a severe migraine, I realized it was God’s way of telling me that I needed to take a different path in life. So after I was released—and feeling quite loopy from painkillers—I sat down at my computer and started to write a mystery novel.
And let’s just say that what I wrote was hardly The Great American Novel . . .



What suggestions do you have for aspiring writers?



You have one thing that no other writer in the world has: Your voice. Embrace it. Read. Write. Edit. Repeat.



And remember: This is a tough business. It doesn’t matter if you’re a newbie or seasoned pro with ten books under your belt—each and every stage offers new challenges and difficulties. With me, it was the dreaded Second Book Blues that knocked me for a loop, but I’ll never quit. My life would then feel empty and unfulfilled—and all those voices in my head would drive me insane if I didn’t write them down.



Besides. Tom Hank’s character in A League of Their Own was correct when he said, “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. It’s the hard that makes it great.”



Tell us about what you’re working on right now and what we can expect from you in the near future.



I’m hoping, (and praying, begging, living daily on anxious tenterhooks,) to have good news soon about my young adult novel, NINE RULES OF FLIRTING. It’s about one campground, four girls and eight ways to get revenge. Until then, I’ve been working on both another young adult novel and a mid-grade novel about baseball that’s long overdue, seeing how my kids have been playing travel ball for eight years!



NINE RULES OF FLIRTING sounds fabulous! We hope to hear good news from you soon, too! What a great interview. For those of you who want to read more of Laura’s fabulousness, check out her website here. Stay tuned until next time’s writers on writing!

Writers on Writing: Diana Rodriguez Wallach

I know I’ve been pretty crappy about positing Writers on Writing stuff, but I promise the wait has been worth it. Today, Diana Rodriguez Wallach tells us a bit about her writing life. She’s really entertaining and intuitive. I hope you enjoy her answers as much as I did!

What is your brainstorming process for a new book?

I have a small journal where I write down every single book idea that comes to me. No matter how bad. Then usually there is one idea that keeps tugging at the back of my brain for months (or years). And I’ll know even when I’m working on another project, that that idea is what I’ll do next.

For my last WIP, once I hit the writing process, I brainstormed my entire outline in an artist’s sketchbook. I made tons of “mind maps” to plot out scenes, chapters, the entire storyline. I filled the whole book by the end, and I kept adding to it, updating the outline with changes I made as I went along. If the book ever makes it big, I think that notebook could be a heck of a keepsake. It looks like my brain on paper.

Can you explain your typical work week day?

Well, I’m not a morning person. So I start off slow and usually only work on blogs and emails before noon. Then I typically focus on my WIP. If I’m writing something brand new, I try to write 2,000-3,000 words per day. If I’m in the first round of edits, I try to get through 10 pages per day. If I’m in the later rounds of edits, I try to get through 50 pages per day.

Then I spend my nights doing consulting and promotional work in front of the TV—I usually don’t turn my laptop off until midnight, that’s why my agent calls me “prolific.”

Tell us about when you made the decision to write.

I’ll warn you, it’s kind of strange. I started writing my first novel because I had a dream one night that I was a young adult author, and I dreamt the concept for an entire series of books. Seriously. When I woke up and told my husband, he reminded me of a vacation we took five years earlier through New England.

We had stopped in Salem, MA to see the witches’ houses. While there, I decided to visit a psychic (when in Rome, right?). Immediately, the psychic immediately told me, “You’re a writer.” And I was; at the time, I was a reporter. I told her this, and she asked what I wrote about. Intentionally trying to be cryptic (I mean, she is a psychic, shouldn’t she already know?), I told her that I wrote about “business.” She said, “No. I see you writing books, little books, like children’s books.”

I had never considered writing a novel before. But after the dream, and my recollection of that encounter, I figured it was “a sign.” So I sat down and started writing my first book.

What suggestions do you have for aspiring writers?

Sit down and write (or as they say, BIC: butt in chair). If you stare at your first sentence for a month, you’re never going to finish a novel. You have to be willing to plough ahead even if the words aren’t perfect in the first draft. Because the satisfaction you get when you type, “the end,” will give you the motivation to go back and massage the language as needed. Get the draft done, then do several rounds of edits, find some Beta readers, shine the manuscript until it gleams. Striving for perfection should be left for the later drafts.

Tell us about what you’re working on right now and what we can expect from you in the near future.

I’m actually working on two projects at the same time. One is a rewrite of the first novel I ever wrote, the novel that actually landed me my agent. It never sold, but it’s continued to tug at the back of my brain. I knew I could make it better, and I’ve been spending the last few months finally turning it into what I always wanted it to be. Currently, it’s called THE EX BFF and you can read an entire blog I wrote about the experience.

The second project, is a WIP that I’ve been pouring my heart into for about a year now. It’s about spies, and is my attempt at an action-oriented, girl-power book. It’s very different from my other novels—it takes place in Europe, there’s an intense mystery, and I had to do tons of historical research. It’s the novel I’m most proud of, and I’m still plugging away at it. It’s called ANASTASIA RISING, and you can read some sneak peeks on my blog.



So glad you’re working on two projects at once because I love your books! Can’t wait for the next one! For those of you who want to read more about Diana, you can check out her website here. If you’d like to purchase her books, also check out her website for more information or your local bookstore. Thanks for joining me, Diana! And until next week everyone!

Tags: Writers on Writing