It’s Not Just Words.

It’s Not Just Words.

Back in the day, almost as far back as when man was first learning to harness fire for his benefit, I used to write screenplays. I started my writing career with a stage play, then immediately switched to writing movies (yes, the play was that terrible). I wrote movies for many years. Had some very small successes, many huge failures, but I loved the heck out of it.

Now I write books. My debut novel, Untold Damage, came out on April 8^th of this year. Next April will see the second Mark Mallen novel, Critical Damage.  A lot of people liked my debut novel, and that is super-duper awesome as it took me about ten years to learn my craft, get an agent, and then get a publishing deal. One thing that everyone who reads the book agrees on, outside of liking Mallen (which bodes well for a series, right?), is that the book is very visual. And that’s where we come to the point of this post: writing with a visual style.

And just how do you do that, you ask?

You write in all forms.

Screenplays. Plays. Even poetry can teach you something. Screenplays are all about movement and action, with as little dialog as possible. Plays are the opposite, they’re mostly dialog, BUT, you also have to have a sense of where you want the actors, what you want them to do as they’re talking. That’s great practice for setting your scenes and writing about things as simple as a character moving from one room to the next. Poetry can teach you how to find the right metaphors, find the BEST possible word to draw your word picture.

You can find screenplays all over the Internet. It’s not a hard form to get the hang of, but it’s a very difficult form to master. Very few ever do. Obviously you can also find plays everywhere on the ‘net. Through writing screenplays, I learned not only how to write in a visual manner, but also how to tell a story that contains a strong forward movement and pacing. Through writing the one stage play that I mentioned earlier I learned SO MUCH regarding what good dialog is, and isn’t. (mostly isn’t). Through writing poetry, I learned how to better use metaphors to make the scene in my head match the scene I was writing.

I’m being very serious here, if not a bit convoluted, hahaha. Bottom line: If you want to be the best, most visual writer you can be, open yourself up to writing in different forms. Heck, even spend some time writing Haiku. Writing a Haiku REALLY shows the power of just the right word.

It’s this looking at words, sentences, and the story form in entirely new ways that will take you far. 

Bay Area resident Robert K. Lewis has been a painter, printmaker, and a produced screenwriter. He is a contributor to Macmillan's crime fiction fansite, Criminal Element. Lewis is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, the International Thriller Writers, and the Crime Writers Association. Untold Damage is his first novel. Visit him online at RobertKLewis.com and at needlecity.wordpress.com.

Are You a Plotter or a Pantser?

By Erin Cashman

I am a pretty organized person. I love my to-do lists. Sometimes I write things on my to-do lists that I’ve already done just to cross them off! I love the immediate feeling of accomplishment. I also make to-do lists for my husband and children, which largely go ignored. In high school, college, and law school I was the queen of outlines. I felt in control, knowing what I needed to know. Everything was boiled down nice and neat, with bullets, highlighting, and Roman numerals.

So when it comes to writing, I want, no I yearn, to be a plotter. Each time that a new story idea pops into my head and won’t go away, filling my mind with dialogue and settings and characters, I sit down with a crisp, clean pad of paper, and start my outline. I make a list of characters with brief descriptions, and I write not one, but two outlines -- one of the entire book, and then I outline the first five or six chapters in detail. I keep this notebook next to my laptop, and then I start to write.

And then I never look at the outline again. The characters hijack my brain, and I follow them down dark and twisty paths that lead me into unchartered territory. My villain is actually just a bit of a rogue. The nice, milk-commercial cute guy has a dark side.  My main character isn’t flawed in the way I thought. And secondary characters evaporate. New ones pop up. I dream about these characters, their voices fill my head during quiet moments, and months later I have a draft. A terrible, awful, messy draft. I have not followed my neat outline, or even glanced at it. My story arc is more of a zigzag.  But I know my characters better.  I know what their deepest desires are, and what they are trying to hide from me.

So I revise, and revise and revise some more. I write huge amount of back story that I cut. I write tangents that I cut. I write endings that I cut. I write and write and write, and I cut and cut and cut. But with each draft my characters reveal more of themselves, and I learn what makes them tick. Right now I am actually on my eleventh draft of a novel! But I’m not sick of it yet, and with each pass I like it better. By the time I’m finished I am pretty sure I will have cut as many words as I’ve saved. It is a very time consuming, inefficient, torturously painful way to write a novel. But it’s the only way I can.

So, I have come to realize that in most areas of my life I’m a plotter. And I really want to be a plotter when it comes to writing. I love the orderliness of it. I love starting on page one and knowing where I’m going to end. But try as I may, I’m not a plotter.  I’m a pantser.  The only way I can really know my characters is by writing about them. It’s everything I don’t like – messy, unorganized and chaotic. But it’s just how I write.

What are you?


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Erin Cashman is a YA author. Her debut fantasy novel, THE EXCEPTIONALS, was published by Holiday House in 2012 and named a Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year. You can find her at the group blogs The Enchanted Inkpot, BookPregnant Blog, and on Twitter,Facebook, and her Website

Run, Baby, Run. Write, Baby, Write.

by Amy Franklin Willis

2013, I completed my first half-marathon.  That’s 13.1 miles.  I am not a runner.

I do not possess the classic “runner’s body”—i.e. all hard, pointy edges of lean muscle and solid compactness.  At forty-one, I am round, curvy, soft, fleshiness.

In college I was on the rowing team.  But that was twenty years and three children ago.  Over the past decade I ran short distances to forestall the middle-age gut intent on wrapping itself around my waist.

As 2012 drew to a close, an ad for the Bay Area women’s running store See Jane Run’s half-marathon featuring Champagne and chocolate caught my attention.  Champagne and chocolate are among my top all-time combinations, above Laverne & Shirley re-runs and below “beach cottage.”

When my eldest daughter expressed interest in doing the marathon together, I committed, entranced by visions of us crossing the finish line simultaneously, cue Chariots of Fire theme music.  Those visions evaporated in to the mist—discarded next to my fantasies of a perfectly clean and organized home and a bottomless well of maternal patience--when our training runs proved that my fourteen year old ran at a slightly faster pace.  In short, she left me in the dust.

For the first half mile, I maintained contact with Georgia, her slender, classic runner’s shape always just ahead in the distance.  But then her muscles would warm and her pace would quicken and my muscles would warm and my pace would stay the same and I would have to content myself with a shouted, “Make sure your cell phone is on!”

Two months before the race, we got serious and tackled a nine-miler around Lake Chabot and then a relentlessly boring, unmarked 11.5 mile trail along the Hayward Shoreline—for the first four miles I told myself it was the Cornish coast of England and I was running towards my thatched roof cottage but my rational self caught on quickly and said, that is the San Francisco Bay, Amy, and you are running this trail so you can run the race and not embarrass yourself.

We logged over one hundred and fifty training miles.  And during those interminable stretches of aloneness and unpluggedness—running at Lake Chabot offered preening wild turkeys, a great egret surveying the water, and a brush rabbit huddled alongside the trail that distracted me enough not to require pulsing digital beats in my ears—I recognized the singular truth of running.

The only way to fail was to stop.

To cease putting one foot in front of the other.

And, in fact, the only way to rest the burning, fatigued muscles was to run faster, to reach the end more quickly.

Before 2013, I had never run distances longer than three miles but this business of just slogging through, quarter mile after quarter mile, struck me as very similar to writing novels.

Novels are the marathon of the writing world.  People, generally short story writers, argue that other types are more difficult and I think this is complete and utter nonsense.  Sustaining a coherent and interesting fictional story over the course of eighty-thousand some odd words is a uniquely challenging endeavor not meant for the meek.  It takes days, weeks, months, and more often than not, years to get a novel done.

You begin with an idea—a character who intrigues you, a situation that puzzles you, a setting you want to memorialize within a story.  The writer has no guarantee she will finish.  No assurance the idea can grow and stretch and bear the weight of three hundred pages without collapsing in to the ash of might-have-been stories.  One never knows what obstacles narrative will present us.   A character who does not perform as the plot requires.  A structure that is impossibly complex.  An unsatisfying resolution.  

In the beginning, the writer can also not anticipate what the outside world will throw at her.  She may be diagnosed with a life-threatening disease.  She may divorce her spouse.  She may lose her job.  She may temporarily take leave of her senses.  Her children may experience physical or mental crises.

Each one diverts her from the writing.  From the story.  From finishing.

On race day, the weather report predicted record highs for parts of the Bay Area and, most troubling, no cloud cover. Georgia and I trained in low 70s temperatures with abundant cooling fog.   The See Jane Run course was set on the quasi-island of Alameda, a small city attached to Oakland by drawbridges and fragile stretches of land, and thus typically prone to breezes off the San Francisco Bay and the Oakland Estuary.

As I hit the first mile and a half of the race, three truths emerged:  in my nervousness, I neglected to put sun screen on either myself or Georgia; the sun appeared intent on burning stubbornly hot and bright for the first half of the course; and lastly, the race was going to be much more difficult than I imagined.

Novel writing is a grind.  The only way to complete one is to make the pages pile up.  I force myself through this by using daily and weekly word count goals.  Printing the pages and seeing their vertical height grow is the only way I know to push forward through the story.  It’s the structure I impose on a task that feels all too loose and magic-like, subject to the idle winds of procrastination and despair.

The middle is the worst part.  In the race, miles six through eleven felt like twenty.  I was beginning to tire—hamstrings pulling ever tighter; multiple water blisters forming on my right foot, disappointment that the course wound through bland office parks and covered acres of steaming blacktop, the sun leaving a swath of my right arm blazing.

Mile thirteen nowhere in sight.

In writing, the middle is where I lose my mind and my faith.  It’s the point in the story where everything gets complicated and is not at all like you thought it might be and the ending you originally had in mind is now, clearly, not going to work.  The writer may say to herself, What have I done?

And this is the dangerous part.  The part where she is most likely to give up.  To stop because it has become too hard.

At the start of the race, I found a pacer—a person who carries a sign with the miles per hour pace she promises to keep and who functions as your beacon in the midst of five thousand running bodies trying to throw off your pace.  I thought, yes, this is a pace quicker than my usual but surely I can do it.  And won’t it be better to run with this group connected to her?

I couldn't keep up.  My race pace ended up two minutes slower than my normal training pace.  Why?  No idea.  The heat?  Concern about failing to finish?

Around mile seven I settled in to a pace far behind the last of the pace ladies.  It was just me and a small Wonder Woman doll tucked in to my belt for inspiration.  It was the speed I could manage.

When I hit mile eleven, I rejoiced.  I knew I could finish the last two miles.  The course curved next to the bay and nearby home owners held hoses over their yards to give runners a cooling mist.  A young girl of seven pointed a hose at me and I ran through it grinning, my arms thrown open wide.  People held up signs of encouragement as we passed—“U Hella Inspire Me”--and the clang of cowbells rang out.  A man in his forties and his teenage son gave me a high-five, yelling, “Finish strong.  You’re almost there.”

A novel requires fortitude.  And when one passes through the valley of the shadow of the middle, if you can keep going, keep putting one word after another, the end will rise up before you.

If you are lucky enough to have people cheering you as your near it, all the better.  If not, you cheer yourself.  You see the end coming.  You write it.  You collapse.  You celebrate.

Fifty feet from the finish line I caught sight of my six and ten year old daughters and my seventy year old mother.  The long wait finally over, they hooted.  They hollered.  They jumped up and down.  In that moment, the six stinging blisters and the tight hamstrings disappeared from my consciousness, making room for joy.

And then I saw my wife and my oldest.  Georgia had arrived fifteen minutes earlier.  The “I Ran for Chocolate” medal already around her neck.

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Amy Franklin-Willis's debut novel The Lost Saints of Tennessee is out in paperback now.  She is writing more and running less this summer.

The Road to Publication Is A Long & Bumpy One

by Erin Cashman

I gained a lot of weight with my first pregnancy. So much that I closed my eyes during weigh-ins at the doctor’s office. I didn’t want to know the numbers on the scale. After I had my third child, I started dieting and exercising, and after many months of limiting my chocolate and ice cream intake (torture!), enduring aerobic classes, power walks, etc., I finally lost most of the weight. Many people asked me how I did it. Surely I knew some secret. A half a grapefruit before meals? Eating anything I wanted but stopping at 4? Eating only purple food? No one wanted to hear the truth. Lately several people have asked me about how I became published. But, like my weight loss, what they really want to know is what’s the secret. These writers (and I used to be one of them) have written a book, queried countless agents and editors, and still have no publishing deal. There must be a secret they don’t know about. Well, I’m here to tell you that there isn’t. The road to publication is a long one, filled with pot holes, detours, and road blocks.

My debut novel, The Exceptionals, was published last year. It was my third finished novel. It took eight long years from the date I started writing my first novel until my third one was published. And six years of writing, revising and editing two different manuscripts, querying agents and submitting partial and fulls until The Exceptionals sold. I asked the writers here at Book Pregnant what their experiences were. Most of us have written at least one other (often several other!) book that never was published. So, like me, our “debut” novel is really our third, fourth, fifth . . . you get the idea. Several BPers (as we call ourselves) found an agent, but the agent couldn’t sell that manuscript. One author worked on writing and revising her book for seventeen (yes, seventeen!) years. Two different agents tried to sell her manuscript but were unable. Finally she sold it herself. Another worked on her novel for eleven years, and she had two different agents and two different editors. In fact, many of the authors in this blog have had more than one agent. As Lydia Netzer, author of Shine, Shine, Shine told me: “Shine was not my first book, or even my second or third, that I got through a FIRST draft of, however it was the first book I got to a FINAL draft of.”  One writer told me that the reason he thinks his debut novel (not his first finished manuscript) sold was that he had thirty years of rejection behind him, to learn from.

And that’s the key. To learn from the rejections. Maybe the novel needs more revising, maybe the plot is too convoluted, maybe the characters aren’t compelling enough. Take a long, hard look at your book and try to find areas for improvement. Why do I tell you all this? To depress you? No. Exactly the opposite. There is no trick. There is no a secret that we published authors know that you don’t. If you hope to be published one day, work tirelessly on your manuscript. Revise and edit, and then revise and edit again. Join a critique group or find a critique partner if you can, a fresh set of eyes (not a friend, or a family member, but another writer!) can make a huge difference. Sometimes I know the story I’m writing so well that it’s hard for me to see the problems with it. Read everything you can get your hands on. Devour books. It will help you “know” if something doesn’t ring true or is stale or cliché. And most importantly, don’t give up.  We didn’t!
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Erin Cashman is a YA author. Her debut fantasy novel, THE EXCEPTIONALS, was published by Holiday House in 2012 and named a Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year. You can find her at the group blogs The Enchanted Inkpot, BookPregnant Blog, and on Twitter, Facebook, and her Website

How Does Your Garden Grow? The Ugly Monsters Hiding In Your Plot

by Mindy McGinnis

Spring has most definitely sprung, and I'm going to follow up Barbara's wonderful gardening post with one of my own.

We've all got 'em. Those ideas that spring up in the middle of the night from a dream, or right before bed, and suddenly it's like somebody poured MiracleGro on your brain and those seeds of a story have turned into a novel without a lot of help from your gray matter. And sometimes, a seed that we purposely planted sits there calmly looking back at us, unsure of what it's supposed to do, while we stare back at it, wondering what happened to the MiracleGro nozzle. For everyone's benefit, I decided to share a picture of my garden.

So you'll notice the planned stuff - strategically placed clumps of daffodils and tulips (story ideas), a carpet of muscari to set it all off (little blurbies of dialogue flying out all over the place), a stone bench for me to rest on when I can't make it those last two steps to the car (chapter end). Those tulip and daffodil type stories are the best. The idea went down into the dirt of my brain and came out a season later in boom and ready to go - all I had to do was enjoy it.

But if you look close you'll also notice things like - THIS GUY:

In the Midwest we call that a "barn cat," which means a wandering stray who eats my food and lives in my barn, and I let him, cause he keeps down the mice population. But this particular fella has tangled with something bigger than a mousey once or twice, which is why (as you can see) he no longer has any ears. He's feral as hell and ugly like Satan, and he just loves to plop himself down in my nice garden and ruin the view. I've got a name for him, but I can't share it on the blog.

I've got a few stories like that. They've taken up residence in my brain, among the daffodils and tulips. They eat my food and I try to give them medicine but they spit at me and refuse any kind of assistance. They're always going to be ugly, and feral, and they're always going to be taking a crap in the flower bed of my brain and then looking at me like, "What you go gonna do about it?"

If you look again you can spot: THIS LADY:

She's another rover, a wandering butthead that decided my five acres should be her home. I got close enough to ascertain she was female and caught her skinny rear in a live trap and had her fixed.  She shows her thanks by refusing to acknowledge my existence. When she wandered onto my property she was all bones and big eyes - crazy big eyes, oogly-googly. So I named her Ugly. Over the years Ugly has turned into a sleek machine. A groomed, efficient hunter, Ugly's midsection now sets off her eyes nicely and she's turned into the best looking outdoor animal I have.

I've had one or two ugly, unmanageable ideas morph into something awesome once or twice. I just had to set that trap and show them who was boss. After that, they fed off what was leftover in the brain and took their time evolving into something better than what they were. They like to show off by setting themselves down nearby THAT GUY and saying, "See? And you thought I was bad?"

In the end, I prefer those tulips and daffodils that are naturally beautiful, and require little work. But those irritating, ugly ideas have their place too - if nothing more than to remind me of the effortlessness of the first type.
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Mindy McGinnis is a YA author and librarian. Her debut, NOT A DROP TO DRINK, is a post-apocalyptic survival tale set in a world where freshwater is almost non-existent, available from Katherine Tegen / Harper Collins September 24, 2013. She blogs at Writer, Writer Pants on Fire and contributes to the group blogs Book Pregnant, Friday the Thirteeners, From the Write Angle, The Class of 2k13, The Lucky 13s & The League of Extraordinary Writers. You can also find her on Twitter, Tumblr & Facebook.

10 Not-So-Great Steps of A Writing Ritual

by Mindy McGinnis

A lot of people ask me how I write, or even how does one start writing. Unfortunately the answer to that last question is incredibly simple and horribly difficult at the same time.

You just sit your ass down and do it.

Beyond that, I know a lot of writers have different rituals that they go through before they dive in for the day. Some like to have music playing. Some must have a cup of tea or a particular kind of snack before they begin. Others light the same kind of scented candle, or write in the same room at the same time of every day.

But the pain in the butt thing about writing is that no one trick works for everyone. It's not like your baseball swing where someone can say to you, "Look, you've got your feet set wrong," or, "Your not turning your hips." Writing doesn't work that way. Every one of us has to find our own set of rules or rituals that can turn us into successful authors.

Too often I hear aspiring authors asking those with agents or deals how they do it. And that particular person's trick probably isn't going to work for you... because it's theirs. For example. I'm going to share with you my tips and tricks for writing success, and you'll probably see right off the bat that my ritual is not for you. Or probably really anybody besides myself.

1) Nap often. Once you get sleepy there's no point trying to write anymore. I don't care if it's 1 PM or 1 AM. You need your sleep. Take a break.

2) When you reach a critical scene, make a random phone call or check your email because you're absolutely certain that you can't deliver this time.

3) Write in your bed, right before bed. Ignore the clock. It's 3 AM and you have to work tomorrow - screw it. You had a nap earlier.

4) Don't name your characters right up until the moment you have to type their names for the first time. Then just sit back and say, "Hi, what's your name?" They'll tell you.

5) Let your cat sleep right on top of your chest while you're writing, so that you have to peer over his fuzzy ass to see the laptop screen. It keeps you warm and builds harmony. Also, it will sharpen your typing skills.

6) Pretend other people don't exist for long periods of time. They actually don't, because you're in fantasy land now. You can text them later. This won't build friendships or strengthen family ties, but it will make your ms longer.

7) Resist getting up to pee right up until the moment when you damn well better. Some people don't like the distraction of a full bladder. I call it inspiration.

8) Make sure you drink a lot of water before you lie down to write, so that you won't make the excuse of having to get up later because you're thirsty. Sure, it leads to the bladder problem mentioned in number 7, but the bathroom is closer than the kitchen. Think time management.

9) Randomly check your Twitter feed every now and then. If you hit a dead spot, or aren't sure how to bridge to the next scene, pop in on your Twitter buds. If you follow a lot of fellow writers, chances are someone else is having the same problem, or else has become convinced that they suck. Return to your ms knowing that you're not alone in this. We all suck sometimes. It's OK.

10) Read back over the last 3 or 4 pages that you wrote the night before to place yourself, but don't edit as you go. This is your first draft, your "word vomit," as I call it. Get all that out of your stomach -- apply your brain to it later.

That's it, friends. That's how I write. It's a collection of anti-social, UTI-inspiring, sleepy logic, but somehow... it seems to work for me!
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Mindy McGinnis is a YA author and librarian. Her debut, NOT A DROP TO DRINK, is a post-apocalyptic survival tale set in a world where freshwater is almost non-existent, available from Katherine Tegen / Harper Collins September 24, 2013. She blogs at Writer, Writer Pants on Fire and contributes to the group blogs Book Pregnant, Friday the Thirteeners, From the Write Angle, The Class of 2k13, The Lucky 13s & The League of Extraordinary Writers. You can also find her on Twitter, Tumblr & Facebook.

Weighing in on Writing and Publishing

Brenda Bevan Remmes

by Brenda Remmes 

I have had a lifelong fixation on publishing a book.  At the same time I’ve fantasized “skinny” as somewhere in my future. The two ideas co-habitat together in a strange sort of paradigm.

The book writing thing…it ebbs and flows.   I go through moments of brilliance (at least in my thinking) and then suddenly sink into jabberwocky as if I live in Wonderland.  In fact, Wonderland is an ideal place for fleshy authors.

I get up every morning and flip on the computer in one continuous motion as I walk by my writing desk to the bathroom. I live by the rule that extra pounds of dirt and grime have mysteriously weighted down my body during the dark hours of the night and I take a long hot shower to rid myself of what I know will tip the scales unfairly.   Then, unclothed (completely stripped down…. …I’ve stopped even wearing nail polish) I mount the scale and get my first daily dose of  “Whew, it’s not too bad”,  or  “OMG, that can’t be.”

 My husband duplicates this morning adventure on the truth monster in a much more whimsical fashion, fully clothed.  What a show-off!   After forty years repeated morning after morning, the same words always follow.  He climbs on the scale and I mouth with him, “Oh, down another two pounds.  I wondered how I did that after all that ice cream I ate last night?”  I’ve considered divorce over that one morning exchange, but habits are hard to break and dissolving a marriage requires far more time and energy than I  have.  I am much too busy writing jabberwocky. 

My computer is now humming, even if I’m not. I clothe myself in weighty garments that add an additional fifteen pounds and proceed to read the last few pages that I wrote the day before. “P-lee-se, tell me it ain’t so.  Did I really write that?  What was I smoking?”  I start to slash and burn wishing that I could delete excess fat as fast as I can a days’ worth of work on one chapter.

I’m weighing constantly.  Too many words here, not enough description there.  Did I show or tell?  Are the words dank and stale or shimmering with their own individual pearls of imagery or symbolism?  I know I write as well as many commercial writers, and not as well as literary MFAs who annually attend the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. But I’m getting better.  Even Hemingway gets three out of five from some Amazon readers.

Success came fast and easy for me and then vanished overnight one day last October when  my editor broke a two year contract.  It was all too good to be true. Like winning the lottery, and two years later being told your game was rigged.   It hurt, of course, but I’m not as naïve as I once was to the publishing business.  Everyone has to make money and if the numbers don’t work, then neither does the novel…at least not for that publisher. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad novel.  It means the publisher put it on a scale for potential profit and the book didn’t carry enough weight for the long haul.  The irony, of course, is I’ve always looked for a scale that would mitigate weight.   Be careful what you wish for.

Adam Gopnik writes in a recent Talk of the Town in The New Yorker, (3/18/13) “The future of writing in America – or, at least the future of making a living by writing – seems in doubt as rarely before.  Thanks to the Internet, the disproportion between writerly supply and demand, always tricky, has tipped:  anyone can write, and everyone does, and beginners are expected to be the last pure philanthropists, giving it all away for the naches.   It has never been easier to be a writer, and it has never been harder to be a professional writer.”

I have been a convinced Quaker for more than thirty years now.  Quakers have taught me the value of patience.  I didn’t get it right away, but I’ve learned in the presence of weightyQuakers much more humble than I.   When you’re not sure what to say, say nothing. When you’re not sure what to do, step back, seek clearness.  Over the years I’ve found this to be a healthy process every time I begin to doubt myself.  Philip Gulley, one of my favorite Quaker writers, wrote on his web site last week, “The world cares little for our convenience.  It does not care that we expected one thing and were given another.  Reality is no respecter of our expectations and demand. I pray this year, for myself and for each of you, that the gift of flexibility, for that wonderful gift of elasticity, for the ability to deal constructively, bravely and lovingly with the unexpected changes we face in  life.”

Thank you, Philip, for that gentle reminder.  Regardless of the way the scale tilts, I hear your prayer.

Just Say No!

by Mindy McGinnis

From a young age we're taught a very simple phrase- Just Say No.

Don't be afraid to reject drugs. Stand up for yourself. Make it clear you're not interested. Walk away. But it seems that if you continue to apply this lesson to innocuous solicitations as you get older, you risk social alienation.

What am I talking about?

Random Kind Person: How would you like to be on The Something That Really Matters A Lot Committee this year?

Mindy: No.

Someone With No Time Constraints: We'd love to have you in the Collection of Various Sorts of Folks, we meet right after school, so surely you could come, right?

Mindy: No.

Really Cool Book-Type Person: I'm starting an adult book club, would you be interested?

Mindy: No

When you read the above statements, I kinda come off like a bitch, don't I? And while that's a debatable point, what it comes down to is that there are only so many minutes in an hour, hours in a day, days in the week, weeks in the month, and months in the year. I've got time constraints like a sassy nun's got a chastity belt, and adding more shit to the shinola in order to make nice doesn't fit into my worldview.

I started out trying to say it nicely, and be polite, the way my German momma wants me to.

Mindy: Well, that doesn't really work for me. Wednesday nights I have a knitting class. 

Gleeful Response: Oh but that's OK! We can move to Tuesdays or, meet in the mornings even!

Mindy: I'm not sure. I'm awfully busy right now.

Cheery Smile: Oh it's not all that time consuming, half hour meetings at the most!

I've even tried honesty:

Mindy: I don't think I can. See, I'm a writer, and I need that time to write.

Oblivious: You can just bring your paper and pencil with you, and write during the presentations!

So, I let my Irish side have a go and I went with the concise, slightly rude, you-can't-explain-me-away answer that those anti-drug assemblies taught me years ago: No.

While our amazing e-friendships and networking reminds us that we are not alone in our journey towards authorship, the fact remains that the act of writing is a solitary endeavor. We need our time, we need our space, we need to get into the groove and hit our stride to make the words start flowing. 

So don't be afraid that you won't be invited to the next Nice People Gathering or Coalition of Really Useful People. Stick to your guns, write your books.
_________________________________________

Mindy McGinnis is a YA author and librarian. Her debut, NOT A DROP TO DRINK, is a post-apocalyptic survival tale set in a world where freshwater is almost non-existent, available from Katherine Tegen / Harper Collins September 9, 2013. She blogs at Writer, Writer Pants on Fire and contributes to the group blogs Book Pregnant, Friday the Thirteeners, From the Write Angle, The Class of 2k13, The Lucky 13s & The League of Extraordinary Writers. You can also find her on Twitter, Tumblr & Facebook.

101 Tips for Writers

We're celebrating our 101st post here on Book Pregnant with 101 tips for writers! Dive into our past posts for some great pointers, and look for more from all of us in the months to come.

1-9 Nine New Year's Not-Resolutions for Writers

• No one sticks to resolutions--but hopes for the new year? Sure. 

10 Stop Writing

• Sometimes the best way to move forward with your WIP is to walk away from the computer and stop writing. The best ideas and solutions may come when you're taking a drive or a walk, and you can listen to your imagination and not focus on your word count.

11 The Best Piece of Writing Advice-Thanks to My Mentor

• How to find your way back to the story in your novel.

12 The Next Big Thing

• Where do you find inspiration for your novel? Don't discount your own family history which can inspire your novel.

13 The Ghost of Novels Past

• Write What You Love! Love what you write, write what you love. 

14 What Cancer Has Taught Me About Writing And Living 

• Seize your passion and write your heart out. Laugh, love and live. Live deeply. Smell the salt air, caress the butterfly wing, stare into the October sky. The more you live, the more you will be able to write.

15 Write Naked

• The second book comes with a whole set of new pressures and it's hard to write from that gutted-open place once your first book is out in the world, but we have to figure out a way to write like no one's watching. 

16 Why Not All Books Should be 50 Shades of Grey 

• Although erotic fiction is, pardon the pun, hot right now, not all books should be titillating. Almost all people have sex, but that is not what every story is about. When writing you have to decide what is important to include and what is important to exclude. What would the point of view characters share? How would they experience that moment? Would they tell their secrets? 

17-20 Three Ways Non-Writer Job Skills Can Help as You Publish Your Novel 

• Did you have other jobs before you sold your book? So did most of us! Here are three ways you can apply the skills you learned in previous positions to your author career!

21 Getting Book Pregnant 

• Most writers don’t enjoy querying—but you can’t find an agent without this process and that means writing the dreaded query letter. REMEMBER a query letter is a tool and tools need to be USED to get a job done--so stop over working your letter and send it. 

22 So You Found An Agent? Yay! Welcome to Hell 

• Finding the agent is the least stressful part of the publishing process. 

23 Books, Blogs and BFFs: How One Thing Leads to Another 

• Once you have a concept for a book find a community of other "pregnant authors" to support you! 

24 Writers Write 

• When you're discouraged about rejection after rejection, remember why you're a writer! Writers write because they love to. So don't give up! 

25 Once You Sign With An Agent, The Wait Is Over (Oh, I Crack Myself Up!) 

• It may take a very long time, but the perfect agent for your book is the one who loves it and sees its potential as a saleable book in the current market. Keep trying, keep querying, and wait for that right agent. 

26 Being Unreasonable 

• It takes an unreasonable person to make the journey to publication. You must accept staggering odds, rejection, criticism, and bad reviews. And you must want it enough to persevere. As unlikely as it is, you must be unreasonable in order to succeed. 

27 Confessions of an Anxious Novelist 

• Anxieties on the eve of publication are normal.

28 The Importance of a Great Editor 

• A great editor can take your book and make it better in many ways. Trust her advice, but also trust yourself. 

29 Evolution Of A Book Cover 

• Get the Cover you want. Don't be afraid to push for the cover you like.

30-40 You’ve Sold Your Novel and Don’t Have ESP? Ten Things You Should Do ASAP

• A list of ten things you should do as soon as your novel is sold! 

41 Rabbit Test, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Me 

• Reasons why--or why not--to have a blog. 

42 Premature Delivery 

• Once a book is bought writers have less control than they think - make sure to find a community to support you! 

43 Setting Priorities on the Journey Towards Publication 

• You're finally published -- learn to put Amazon rankings, reviews and sales in perspective. 

44  Conquering My Fear of Book Presentations 

• Use your passion for your novel to get over your fear of public speaking. 

45-56 Writing Anxiety 

• Eleven tips for controlling your inner critic. 

57 DIY Promotion 

• How to promote your book without losing your mind. 

58 Book Baby Two 

• It’s very common for writers to have a weak second book; publishers refer to it as a ‘sophomore’ book. Some ideas for making that second, stressful pregnancy a success. 

59 The Waiting Game 

• Publication day will come and then you will have to find something else worth waiting for. 

60-70 Live Author Appearances 

• Ten Tips to Surviving A Book Signing 

70-73 And Now The Book Store Reading... 

• Three Ways to Survive A Book Store Reading

74-81 AUTHOR INTERVIEWS: Staple of the Blog Tour and Terror of the New-book Mother 

• Seven tips to help you through a blog tour.

82 A Debut Author Learns About Libraries 

• Don't forget the importance of libraries to your books success! Make sure to introduce yourself at your local libraries. 

83 On Being Nice 

• Be nice. Always good advice, but especially when your trying to spread the word about your book! 

84-89 How To Get The Crap Out of Your Book 

• 5 tips for editing the extraneous out of your WIP 

90 Why Does It Take So Long to Publish A Book Anyway? 

• Be realistic about the length of your journey. 

91 Blubs-What Are They Good For? 

• It's nice to have complimentary comments on the front of your book, but there's more to the picture than this. 

92 NEIBA and NAIBA & Independent Bookstores

• If you have an opportunity to go to one of the trade shows for booksellers, jump on it. This is an opportunity to meet the people who will sell your book. 

93-101 Writing The Reader's Guide 

• Eight tips to help you provide that extra-special something for your readers.

Thank you to everyone for following us through our birth pangs, we hope you'll continue on the journey with us as we learn more along the way - from second books to third books... and onward!

The Next Big Thing

by Anne Barnill

Everybody wants it.  You know what I mean--the ‘big’ book, the one that sells like glasses of lemonade in the desert at high noon, the one that buds, then blossoms into a mega-book. A phenomenon.  Something like the Harry Potter books or Fifty Shades of Gray.  I’ll admit it; I’d love to come up with the next big thing.  My agent would love it even more and my publisher, well, I’m sure they’d be over the moon should it happen.

Chances are, though, it won’t.  Those ‘big books’ are a pretty rare occurrence and, unfortunately, completely unpredictable.   Not that people don’t try to guess which book is going to go viral.  After all, publishers are betting on books all the time; it’s part of the job.  They select books they believe will make money.  They pick books they hope will succeed beyond the writer’s wildest dreams.  But, even at its best, it’s a guessing game.  Try as they may, no one really knows what the next big thing is going to be.

The publishing world is changing so rapidly--ebooks, independent publishing, the internet, Amazon, fewer brick and mortar stores--publishers and agents aren’t quite sure what will happen next.  Some folks say the days of said agents and publishers are numbered as more and more writers take total control of their work, from creating the story to binding the book.  Others believe books themselves will disappear completely.  With publishing companies as one dish in a corporate smorgasbord, the pressure grows greater each day to satisfy the bottom line, to publish books that will make money—sure-fire hits.

Where does all this uncertainty leave the writer?  It leaves this writer confused and unsettled.  It also leaves me convinced that chasing after the ‘next big thing’ is akin to searching for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow—sure, it may be there but it’s unlikely I’m going find it.  So, what to do?

Years ago, before I had published any books, I came to the realization that, for better or worse, I am on this planet to write.  It’s what I do and how I make sense of the world.  Last year, while under treatments for cancer, writing is what kept me sane.  The minute I could drag myself from the bed to the computer, I did so, knowing that, somehow, if I could write even one paragraph—chemo-brain and all—I was a step closer to being my true self, rather than the ‘invalid.’  The writing often felt like wrestling a bear because my brain didn’t work the way it had previously—I couldn’t remember words and often lost the sense of a sentence.  The work was frustrating because I forgot what I had written the day before and had to start at the beginning each time.  With all that, I am convinced I healed faster because I wrote.  I know my spirit healed faster.

Not only am I a writer, I write for the audience of One.  Once I accepted it was my job to mine my little vein of whatever talent I might have for telling a story, I realized the work was important to one person other than myself—The Great Creator.  And, whether or not my work was ever published, I was to write for the pleasure of this Creator. 

I still believe that.  I have certain stories deep in my soul that I want to write.  These stories are not the stuff of blockbuster hits—at least, I don’t think they are.  Who knows?  But they are my stories, tales that bubble up inside of me.  And I will write them.  I will write them because they are important to me, not because I expect to become wealthy as a result.  I will write them with love and respect, using everything I have to make them as rich and deep and beautiful as I can.  Most likely, they will be ‘little novels,” stories about people and what happens to them, how their hearts break open, how they mend, or how they are left with ragged edges.  I will never have time to write them all.  But I will try.  And I have made peace with the fact the next big thing will likely belong to someone else.  I will content myself with my stories; I am a writer.

What's In Your Diaper Genie? Revisions: How to Get the Crap Out of Your Book

by Mindy McGinnis

I recently finished a massive revision. When I say revision I mean that I took a deep breath, popped the top on the Diaper Genie and dug in to try to figure out what was making everything stink so bad.

It's not easy to be critical of your own babies. But there also comes a time when we have to be realistic and acknowledge that fact that, hey - babies can stink. And there's usually a very good reason why the nursery doesn't smell as awesome as it did the day you brought brand new baby home.

Here are some tips for getting the crap out of your baby:

• Take a good hard look at your plotting. Are you introducing major points a little late? Sure, you thought it would help build suspense and give a nice one-two punch combined with Plot Point #2, but are you sure you aren't just asking your readers to slog through 100 pages of backstory before they get some kibble?
• Be realistic about what you're asking your reader to bring to the table. Yes, you know that what Character #1 said has some serious underlying implications, but of course you know - you planted them there. Make sure you're not asking your readers to dissect every little sentence in order to create Ooh and Aah moments later on. Sure, in retrospect it might make you look like a plotting genius, but if it's too vague it'll just look like you can't write organic dialogue.
• Be realistic about what your reader is bringing to the table. It might seem like a counterpoint to #2, but it's not. Don't try to control every aspect of the scene in order to force the reader to visualize your character or setting exactly the way you do. You provide the canvas, but let them do the painting. Over-explanation and detailed information dumps about appearances and / or settings is just going to make them wonder if somebody else's watercolor might be easier to digest.
• Filler smells bad. No, really. Anybody who just made the jump to solid foods can attest to this. There are plenty of words you simply don't need. My biggest offenders are just and that. Do a Ctrl+F on these words in your ms and then read the sentence aloud to yourself without those words. Nine times out of ten, you won't need them.
• Duh. If you're writing in first person, little phrases like I see, I think, I feel are extraneous. For example, "I see my mom picking her nose over by the window." If this book / scene / chapter is from 1st POV, it's implied that the reader can only see it if the narrator does. "My mom is picking her nose over by the window." Look at that! You cut down your word count!

These are just a few of the problems I encountered when I looked back at a manuscript I finished years ago. Although, it seems I haven't learned much because I used the word "just" in the sentence right before this one. Pssttt! Read it again, leaving "just" out - see! It still makes sense!

___________________________________________________________________

Mindy McGinnis is a YA author and librarian. Her debut, NOT A DROP TO DRINK, is a post-apocalyptic survival tale set in a world where freshwater is almost non-existent, available from Katherine Tegen / Harper Collins September 9, 2013. She blogs at Writer, Writer Pants on Fire and contributes to the group blogs Book Pregnant, Friday the Thirteeners, From the Write Angle, The Class of 2k13 and The Lucky 13s. You can also find her on Twitter, Tumblr & Facebook.

Setting Priorities on the Journey Towards Publication

I’m writing this on the day of the tragic shooting in Connecticut, searching for the desire to do anything but shut off my computer and drive to my son’s house, to kiss and hug my grandbabies and never let them out of my sight. My mind is numb, my thoughts with the innocent victims and their families. I haven’t watched the news and I don’t need to; Facebook has become the new face of instant information. I know all I need to know. As a mother and grandmother, just thinking about those murdered children and the unbearable grief that the parents and grandparents will have to live with for the rest of their lives is almost too much to bear. I feel like I have a boulder in my chest.

And yet I have a job to do, one that today, requires me to write two blog posts and finish an author Q & A. With my novel coming out on Christmas Eve and a new grandson due any day now, I need to cross as many things as possible off my to-do list whenever I can.

So here I sit trying to think of something useful to say to other debut authors, to offer sage advice or a helpful tip so they will know what to expect on their journey towards publication. But words escape me. 

And yet, maybe on this day of all days, the most important lesson of all can be learned.

As authors, we’re consumed by reviews and blog posts and Amazon rankings and SALES. We give up sleep to finish copy edits. We say no to time with family so we can make our weekly word count. We stay inside on warm summer days, hunched over our computers while our children play and laugh in the backyard. We write just one more page instead of going for a walk or lingering over the newspaper and pancakes on Sunday mornings.

I once read about a famous author who said that the months leading up to the release of his first novel were the hardest of his life. I’ve heard that the stress of launching a book has been known to bring famous celebrities to their knees. I’ve been told that it will be one of the most exhausting things I’ll ever do, that it will give me more problems, not fewer.

   

And yes, waiting for my novel to drop is terrifying, all consuming, and has kept me busier than I could have ever imagined. There is so much to do: write book two on a deadline, network on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads, answer the daily landslide of emails, contact reviewers, mail out ARCs, assemble a street team, set up a website, make a book trailer, visit bookstores and libraries, write personal notes to book reviewers, sellers and readers, design postcards and business cards, write blog posts, answer interview questions, set up giveaways, schedule book club visits, and keep track of expenses. All this is to be done while keeping my house clean, doing laundry, cooking, and trying to be a good daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother. (I’m in complete awe of anyone who becomes a published author while holding down a fulltime job!) To add to my stress, my husband and I are trying to recover from near financial ruin, and I need to know if this is going be my career or if I should start applying at the nearest WalMart. I don’t need to make a lot of money, just enough to supplement my husband’s meager income. The hard reality is that the course of my life will be determined by how well my first novel does. It’s a lot of pressure.

But I’ve been through worse.

I think that’s why, overall, I’ve been handling the journey towards publication pretty well. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have days when I felt like I was going to have a meltdown, when I wondered what possessed me to pursue this career. I think that’s normal for any author.

But I’ve made a decision, and I was reminded of it today by what happened in Connecticut.

When I feel on the verge of crying or pulling out my hair in frustration, I think about my grandparents trying to keep their children fed and alive during WWII. I think about my mother watching my sister being kept alive by life support after she suffered a severe head injury in a car accident. I think about my mother taking care of my sister at home, feeding and bathing and dressing her comatose body, a body that refused to die even though my sister was long gone—for twenty-three gut-wrenching years. I think of the millions of people in this world who have it so much worse than I can even imagine.

I remind myself that my Amazon ranking or forgetting a blog post isn’t worth losing sleep over, that missing an opportunity to get the word out about my novel is not worth a panic attack, a rise in blood pressure, or an upset stomach. What matters is reading a bedtime story to my grandkids, having drinks with my friends, making love to my spouse, hugging my neighbor, or taking my elderly mother out to lunch. My book comes out on Christmas day, but I won’t let myself obsess over the fact that amid the holiday chaos, The Plum Tree might not make it onto bookstore shelves until after New Year’s, or how much better it might have done had it been released before Christmas instead of after. Instead I’ll be snuggling my new grandson and watching my granddaughters’ eyes light up when they open their presents. I’ll be cherishing their giggles, rosy cheeks, and soft, sweet voices. I’ll be sitting at the table with my family, drinking in their beautiful faces and telling them how much I care. I’ll be grateful for every moment in the kitchen with my mother and brother, talking and laughing while we cook and wash pots and pans. Those are the things that make this life worth living.

So I guess my advice to debut authors is this: If you want to stay sane through this journey and survive it without any regrets, your priority has to be family and life. Getting a novel published is pretty amazing and I plan to celebrate my accomplishment. But life is too short to be consumed by reviews and rankings and sales. The unthinkable can happen. To any of us. I think if the children and parents of Newtown could tell us one thing, it would be this: Live life to the fullest.

You can make that decision now.

Five Good Reasons You Won't Finish Your Novel

This dude was so proud, he
named his novel FINISHED.

by Lydia Netzer

In November, lots of people start new novels, as participants in National Novel Writing Month. Few people will finish those novels. That's a fact. Finishing a novel, slapping your hand down on a stack of papers and shouting, "DONE!" either literally or metaphorically -- that's something pretty rare. Why? Why do most people who start novels lose their way? Statistically speaking, if you're writing a novel right now, at some point before the end you will slow and stop. Why?

I do not believe that the reason you won't finish your novel is that you're not a writer. 

Novels are just words. We all have access to the same ones. I don't believe everyone can write The Old Man and the Sea or Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell or Ulysses or Geek Love. But I do believe that you and everyone else who wants to can write a perfectly good novel that brings fulfillment to you and enjoyment to readers. So why are you not done? Here's a list of possible reasons.

1. You're writing the wrong book. 

Your idea is fabulous -- everyone says so. It exists as a beautiful crystalline work of art in your mind, so perfect in all its facets, so gloriously fresh and interesting and flawlessly structured. But you just... can't... seem to write it.

Truth: It can look like the right book, and still be the wrong book. The wrong book can sound great when you talk about it! You might be telling yourself how easy it will be to pitch, how neatly the plot comes together, how cute that one scene is, when she gets the phone call about going to the marina and what? -- she's already there. But if it's not the right book for you, for this year, for this moment in your life, then you need to grab your valuables and abandon ship right now. Write something else. If it makes you feel better, you can tell yourself you'll come back to it. Whether or not that's true doesn't really matter -- what matters is getting you out off the slowly sinking vessel that is this manuscript. Do something else. Swim away. Even if you've spent ten years working on this wrong book. Even if it's the only idea you think you're ever going to have. Because you know what? You're never going to finish it anyway.

Find the book you're supposed to write. It might be underneath the one you're working on, or beside it. It might be on the other side of a wall you've built to protect yourself from it -- maybe you've put the real storyline in the past, or you've killed off a character forty years ago that should be the star of the book, or you've shirked on telling a backstory that should be center stage. Look for the real story. If it looks perfect and easy and like it will write itself, that's probably not it. If it looks hard and awful and kind of makes you sick to your stomach, guess what? You found it.

Can this many people really care
about zombies all at the same time?

2. You're writing to be on trend. 

If your novel contains a school for children with special abilities, godlike qualities, or magical powers... If your novel contains werewolves, vampires, zombies, or trolls... If your novel explores a post-apocalyptic landscape where a remnant of humans struggles to rebuild their world... If your novel follows a plucky group of strangers through a zombie onslaught...

Examine your motivation.

This is not to say that a new book cannot be written about vampires or special kid schools or the earth after the apocalypse or zombies. Obviously it can. I'm saying that if you're writing about one of the above scenarios, or one of a dozen other trendy elements we all could name, and you find yourself faltering and failing to make progress, consider the possibility that you're writing to be on trend and you don't really care about your book.

Write about something you care about. Not about something that's popular.

Third time's a charm.

3. You've grown away from your book. 

I started writing Shine Shine Shine in spring of 1999. I started over twice: two times I was looking at a blank page, thinking let's-take-another-run-at-this-thing. Why? Two major changes happened in my life over the course of writing the book: I became a mother and my own mother died. Each of these changes caused me to start the book over. The final product bears little resemblance to the first draft -- except that it's still about motherhood and love and death. There are a few stray paragraphs that made it back into later drafts from that first effort, but calling it the same book is really sort of disingenuous.

Had I held on to those first characters, that first plot, and kept trying to make it work, I would never have finished. I changed radically in 10 years -- I could not have stayed with the same book during those changes. I grew up, and the book had to grow up too. That necessitated some painful cuts, and trashing a lot of words that I'd slaved over and loved. But eventually I did finish, because I let the book change with me.

4. You want to say everything. 

This is a big factor for first time novelists and it was a big factor for me. A major problem, really, especially as I neared the end of my final first draft. I felt like I would maybe, if I was lucky, if I could manage to swing it, have one chance to say everything I've ever wanted to say about life, death, humanity, space travel, parenthood, robots, love, the world. I wanted to open up my brain and remove the whole thing, cram it into the pages of a book, and anything less than that felt like I wasn't doing my job.

That was dumb.

For one thing, saying everything you can possibly think of makes a lot of noise. It's hard to hear any one good idea in a deluge of 50,000 ideas. For another thing, looking at this writing thing optimistically, you're going to want to write a second novel and even a third, and if you've unloaded all of your crazy -- excuse me all of your ideas -- into one book, you may find yourself looking at a blank page on book two and thinking, dang, what am I going to write about now?

Consider this a permission slip: You do not need to say everything in your novel. You can leave some things out. You can say some things in your next book, or the one after that. Pick one thing, or maybe two or three things, or even four or five, to say in this book. Focus. There is a long life ahead of you in which you can write many books. Don't let the burning need to include everything that's important to your world cripple you and prevent you from finishing this book. Don't.

5. You don't have time. You're sick. Your mother died. You have a good excuse.

You have a good excuse. We all have a good excuse. You have a special needs kid, you have a sick husband, you yourself are sick, you are working two jobs, your laptop broke, your desktop broke, you lost 95,000 words of your manuscript in a hard drive failure, you had to move, you had to change jobs, you got divorced, your mother died, your sister went insane, your leg got chewed off in a lawn mower accident.

These things happen, and they are really valid excuses for not writing a novel. They're all real. They're not insignificant. Life sucks sometimes and it can really harsh your writing buzz. People die. People need you in ways you cannot avoid. You get sad, you get sick, you get life circumstances you have to deal with. No one can deny that.

And no one will deny it.

When you don't finish your novel, and your excuse is one of the above, everyone will understand. Everyone will say, "I understand." And they'll go on with their lives. Because ultimately, they don't really care. The only person who really, really cares about your unfinished novel is you. Not your wife. Not your kids. Not your parents or friends or coworkers. It costs your friends and family nothing to understand all the reasons why your novel isn't done. They can be understanding all day long, all your life long. But then, you're someone who, in the end, did not write a novel and had really good reasons for it.

Novel writing is lonely. It's serious. At 1 o'clock in the morning, in the middle of your kitchen, when you're tearing your hair out over a scene you can't get straight, and you just want to go to bed, the only person who's responsible for persevering through that situation is you. Excuses are social, they're dependent on other people. Writing is insular. Your progress is between you and your book: you do it or you don't. You get it done or you don't. All the understanding in the world isn't going to get you to The End. It's up to you to decide whether your excuses are good enough for you. If you accept them. You're the only person that matters.

I hope this blog post pissed you off a little. I hope it put a burr under your saddle. I want you to finish your novel -- maybe not this month but soon. It is a great feeling, an addicting feeling, one that will get you pushing past your excuses, past the pain of abandoning drafts, and past the discomfort of writing something that really matters to you. You can finish, no matter what your circumstances. And when you do, you're going to really have something to celebrate. Finishing a novel is rare. Get out there and be someone who does it anyway.

Lydia Netzer is the author of Shine Shine Shine, which the New York Times called "A stellar, thought-provoking debut" and People Magazine called "a delightfully unique love story." It was recently chosen by Amazon as one of their Editor's Picks for the Top 100 Books of 2012, by Library Journal as one of five Top Women's Fiction Titles of 2012, and by Nancy Pearl in Publisher's Weekly as one of her ten favorite books of 2012. Written over ten years, two attempts at Nanowrimo, and many despairing moments, it's a novel about robots, motherhood, space travel, true love, and the perils of fitting in. Find her on her blog, Facebook, and Twitter.