Achievement and All That Jazz

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Dancing on the beach . . . 

I've loved this photograph from the minute I found it. It was just what I was looking for to use in my book trailer for Better Than Perfect, my YA novel set in 1970s New Zealand. The scene made me think of "poised for success," which was exactly how I wanted to portray one of the book's central characters, Ravenna St. James. Ravenna is a teenage girl on the brink of adulthood pushed by her mother and family to achieve more than she is emotionally capable of. Her younger cousin and the first-person narrator of the story, Elizabeth Haddon, is forced to live with Ravenna and her family when her own mother dies. Living in Ravenna's shadow as she sails from one glory to the next, Elizabeth begins to doubt her own self-worth and fears she will never do anything in life to equal or surpass her cousin's many achievements.

Elizabeth has always been one of my favorite characters. Her concerns and struggles to get somewhere in life are feelings I believe we all deal with on one level or another from the day we're born: our first smile, our first words and steps, our first "A" for spelling. Woe betide the child who's running a little behind or to a different drumbeat!

What got me thinking about achievement and its accompanying baggage was reading a tweet (what would I do without Twitter . . . ) about how difficult it was to write an author biography, you know, those paragraphs you're supposed to include with your manuscript submission package along with your synopsis and marketing plan. Personally I hate writing them. All I can ever think of is, I lived here, I lived there, I am boring. When I do take the leap and try to include any accomplishments that might make me sound like a more interesting person, I immediately pull back, thinking: Whoa, stop right there. That's way too braggy, tone it down. And cut out all that arty stuff. Nobody wants to read about your bead making or silver clay experiments. Which then leaves me with: I lived here and there and have a BA. Whoopee!

This isn't the first time I've wondered about what is a real achievement. Last year in particular when we were first getting used to lock downs and the lack of genuine social interaction the subject truly troubled me because 2020 was meant to be The Year of Achievement!  I had made so many plans in the weeks prior to the pandemic to put myself forward, to enter art shows, to sell my jewelry at craft fairs, and of course to market and sell my manuscripts. Then practically overnight all the doors slammed shut. Even my agent couldn't get a single response from the publishers she tried to contact. How could I achieve anything locked in my room? 

The answer was to keep going regardless of circumstance and to create my own definition of achievement. In my journal I wrote: 

Achievement doesn't have to be grand, showy, or seen by the neighbors. Achievement is reaching your own self-created milestones, taking on something you love but that also has degrees of difficulty that require dedication. Achievement is sticking to your plan and seeing it through to the very end.

Following that, I then wrote my steps to get there:

• Focus, focus, focus. Be still and pinpoint exactly what it is I can do with limited opportunity.
  
• Choose one project to work on at a time. Just one, and fall in love with it.
  
• Give that project my full attention and effort.
• Commit to finishing, no matter what.
  
• Use and appreciate adversity--find the silver lining. For instance, without my usual daily distractions, classes, and groups I can find loads of extra writing, drawing, and creative time. Seize the day!
  
• Use positive affirmations, e.g., "I wake up happy to focus and continue writing my novel."

My list worked. Looking back over 2020 and now into the wide open space of 2021, I feel I achieved quite a lot. And you can too, one small or large action at a time. The main thing to keep in mind is never underestimate your achievements, and never compare them to others. Each achievement is unique and valuable in its own right. Don't fall into the trap of thinking achievement means publishing a best-seller or getting a six-figure publishing deal. These things are only for the moment anyway, wonderful high points good until it's time to repeat them. More often than not the true achievement is having the courage to write, edit, and polish a 300-page manuscript that may never see the light of day but one you're willing to submit 564 times before you call it quits. (But please don't quit.)

Tip of the Day: Whether you're writing an author biography, an artist statement, or just a daily journal entry, a good first step to evaluating your true achievements is to make a list of every past thing you regard as important to you, great and small. Don't censor yourself. Have fun, be braggy, be silly. Now pick the top three that relate best to whatever it is you're drafting and expand on those. I promise you'll be surprised at just how accomplished and fascinating you really are!

Heroes and Heroines

Just in time for NaNoWriMo: How well do you know your characters? By now you might be familiar with their physical features, their taste in evening clothes, and what they like to eat for breakfast, but what about their personality quirks and motivations?

One of my favorite writing how-to books to help uncover more about my characters' inner worlds and psyches is one by Tami D. Cowden, Caro LaFever, and Sue Viders:

Originally written for screenwriters, The Complete Writer's Guide to Heroes and Heroines, Sixteen Master Archetypes is a great tool for all writers, poets too, I can imagine! Based on the idea that there are 16 character "types" common to all fiction and mythology, the book is a great one to read just for fun as well as for research.

The other day I thought it would be interesting to re-examine where and how the three heroines from my published novels fit into the various categories. I also used the templates to evaluate the Pinterest boards I had created for these books: What kind of pins could I add to each? I started with:

The Great Scarab Scam

See The Great Scarab Scam Pinterest Board!

The Great Scarab Scam is my Egyptian mystery for young readers 8-12 years, so obviously there isn't the conventional male-female interaction you might find in a book for older readers. However, my main character, eleven-year-old Lydia Hartley, definitely falls into the category of "The Spunky Kid," and not just because of her age. Her other traits and story difficulties include:

• She's stuck between two brothers--one a little bit older and one quite a bit younger.  Although neither of her brothers are particularly "heroic." 
• She's a reader--and even enjoys doing homework!
• She's fiercely loyal to her father, a university professor and archaeologist.
• Loves history, especially ancient Egyptian history.
• She's curious about the world around her, but can be shy in social situations.
• She's brave, but a little reckless too.
• And she's very motivated when it comes to helping others. 

Better Than Perfect

See the Better Than Perfect Pinterest Board!

My Young Adult novel set in New Zealand, Better Than Perfect, follows fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Haddon when she is sent from London to live with her wealthy relatives in Auckland. Elizabeth falls into "The Waif" category.  She's:

• Lonely.
• Unwanted.
• The "poor relation."
• Insecure.
• Smart, but without direction.
• Prone to envy, especially when she continually has to make do with second best.
• And she has a serious crush on an unconventional "bad boy."

And although Elizabeth does manage to find her true north and come to grips with real life in the course of the story, she does so with all the handicaps of a victim and lost child.

Overtaken

See the Overtaken Pinterest Board!

Written for an adult audience, Overtaken includes some of my most complex characters, especially my heroine of Sara Bergsen.  I had a bit of trouble discerning exactly which archetype she truly was, but in the end I decided she was "The Librarian."

• She's essentially a loner.
• Her chosen career as a portrait artist reflects her powers of observation and love of order. Abstract painting doesn't interest her in the least.
• Her wardrobe, at least in the beginning of the book, consists of practical pieces in black and gray--great for work!
• And this girl does love work. She's disciplined and dedicated to deadlines.
• At the same time she takes risks because she is confident in her own ability to succeed.
• She's a reader--which has also led her to believe in the possibility of a happy ending.

One of Sara's main challenges is to confront and understand the three men in her life: a Warrior, a Lost Soul, and a Charmer.

Tip of the Day: The Complete Guide to Heroes and Heroines is an excellent reference for any stage of your manuscript, even your published stories. For your WIP's see where your characters match up to the suggested archetypes, and pay particular attention to the sections on how they all work (or don't work) together. For your published manuscripts, you can still use the book to help describe your characters in your marketing material. You may be surprised at what you find!

Overtaken Update (and Another Blog Award--Yay!)

Wow--the last few weeks have been hectic, sending me far away from my blog, my usual social media sites, my life...  Proofing Overtaken has been intense to say the least.  Scary, nerve-racking, and insomnia-producing would be good descriptions of the process, too.

But during all this sturm und drung, there have also been some bright spots along the way, starting with The New Mexico Women Author's Book Festival in Santa Fe where I presented a workshop on making book trailers (yes, it will be a future blog post!) and where I signed copies of Better Than Perfect as well as The Essential Guide for New Writers. 

And,

I received another blog award--this time from the wonderful "writer of creative nonfiction, poetry, and musings" Chris Galvin Thank you, Chris!  I really appreciate you thinking of me.

This is the second time I've been given the Versatile Blogger Award, and it's an award I love.  Versatility is the soul of creativity and I'm grateful that my friends acknowledge how much I enjoy blogging and sharing new ideas with you.

The requirements that come with the award are that I share it with 15 other bloggers, notify them that they have received the award, and that I then list 7 things about myself. 

Because 15 is a rather hefty number, I'm going to break it down over the weeks so that I can include not only some of my favorite blogs, but new ones that I discover along the way.  This week I'm going to start with two:  

suzcatsilverdesigns

doseofcreativity

Congratulations to these lovely and multi-talented bloggers, people who truly epitomize what it means to be a  "versatile blogger." 

As for the "7 things about me," I thought for a change of pace I would list 7 things about Overtaken.  These are:

1. The story is set in London and a privately-owned Greek island.
2. My main character is named Sara Elliott and she is an artist.
3. I started writing the book as an exercise in a workshop at the International Women's Writing Guild summer conference in Saratoga Springs.  Pages 15-16 of the finished manuscript were first written in a morning workshop presented by poet and author of Gifted Grownups, Mary Lou Streznewski, and the last page was written in a class I took later that same afternoon, led by Emily Hanlon, author of Petersburg and The Art of Fiction Writing.  When I got home from the conference I was too busy with other projects to even look through my notebook.
4. But when I did start thinking about turning those exercises into a full draft, I entered the first 50 pages into the Gothic Romance Authors Haunted Hearts contest, the first contest I'd ever entered, and I won 3rd place!
5. Overtaken is the most unusual book I've ever written, a modern literary gothic, part fairy tale, part metaphysical search.
6. It was also the first book I'd ever used my "magazine cut-out" collaging techniques to help develop my plot, setting, and characters.
7. I wrote my entire first draft and all extra material long hand.  I then transcribed it onto paper using my trusty Panasonic KXE-700M typewriter, and then finally transcribed it again onto my computer.  Writing long hand and using my typewriter were definitely my two favorite stages.

So there we are!  Just a few more weeks and with any luck Overtaken will be published at the end of the month.  Whew.  Now back to my proofing.

Tip of the Day:  It was fun for me to make a list of "7 things about Overtaken," making me think it would be a good idea to do something similar for my other books, including those already published and those still in the WIP stage.  Not only is it a good jumpstart to future marketing, but it helped to clarify my thinking for those times when I'm asked, "Where do you get your ideas?" or "What is your book about?" 

In the meantime, do visit the blogs I've mentioned here and say "Hi!" to their writers.  You'll be glad you did.

Make Your Book Trailer Today--Even Before You Write Your Book

It’s been a whole two weeks since I released my book trailer for Better Than Perfect and I have to say it’s been a blast. Thank you so much to everyone who’s viewed and commented. Besides appearing on Youtube.com, the trailer is now also on JacketFlap.com, Blazingtrailers.com, and thenybookjournal.com.
Producing the trailer has definitely opened a brand new world for me, one I’ve enjoyed so much than I’m now making trailers for three more of my existing books, with more trailers lined up for next year based on my current WIPs. Sites I want to thank in particular include:  The Savvy Book Marketer for “how-to” info, Dreamstime.com for their great image library, and Musicbakery.com for not only providing an excellent selection of music, but also for being so ultra-helpful when I had trouble downloading the piece I chose (my fault entirely).

I waited a long time to make my trailer, mainly because I was worried I could never master Windows Movie Maker and I thought I’d be wasting my time trying to learn. Now I’m so enthused about the whole process that I think it’s a waste of time to not start on your trailer as soon as possible—maybe even before you write your book. Here’s why:

-  Editors are always telling us to “show, don’t tell.” Making a trailer is about the best way I can think of to “show” your story with a minimum of images and words. Having those images/words clear in your mind will keep your plot—and your pitch—on track.

-  Making multiple trailers will keep your creativity flowing. For final production purposes you want to keep your “real” trailer under two minutes in length; but there’s no law that says you can’t make draft trailers just for fun and for as long as you want them to be. Create a new trailer draft for every chapter or important scene you write.

-  While I was looking for pictures of my characters, I often found collections of other, unrelated pictures using the same models. To really know your characters and their body language, try creating individual trailers showing just your story people in a variety of poses. 

- Your music choices can become “theme songs” for your books, giving you a unique way to express your theme when both writing and/or discussing your books. 

- While you’re writing your drafts, you can use your trailer(s) to design and build your synopsis: simply write your outline image by image and the whole thing will be finished before you know it.

-  Same thing for your query letter paragraphs. Ask yourself what “feeling” you want to convey to an editor or agent. Having the right pictures and music in your mind can help you describe that feeling.

-  Making your trailer before you start submitting or selling your book means you can begin your marketing before your book is on the shelves. Having something readers can actually see—and become excited about—can create an instant buzz.

-  Digital publications and e-book readers are creating a reading revolution. I have a strong suspicion it’s going to become commonplace for all books to be illustrated with videos and other graphics—and you don’t want to be left behind. Even if your trailer is eventually professionally produced by your publishing company, having a ready-made example of the direction you want can hasten the way to a successful production.

Tip of the day: Regardless of whether you know how to use Movie Maker or any other program, start your image library before you do anything else. Brainstorm a list of pictures you think could illustrate your story, e.g., images of your characters, settings, and scenes, as well as a list of emotions: "confused," "angry," "excited." Then visit a site such as Dreamstime.com and start digging.

Added tip: While you’re searching, be open to happy accidents; key words tagging the photos can lead you to search areas you might not have considered but which turn out to be absolutely perfect—better than perfect! (Sorry—couldn’t resist that one!) Don’t forget to bookmark or save links to your favorite images; you don't want to lose what might turn out to be your very best shots.

My First Book Trailer!

Ta-dah! It's here at last, my first book trailer featuring my Young Adult novel, Better Than Perfect. Set in New Zealand, the story follows a crucial turning point in the lives of two young women, Elizabeth Haddon and her cousin, Ravenna St. James.  

Making the trailer was an absolute blast, something I've been working on in every spare minute I could find both day and night. It was also, I have to admit, much more fun than writing the book. (Uh-oh, don't tell my writing clients/students...) Of course there were some difficult moments too, for instance when I could not, could not figure out how to get my text onto the still photos and wanted to smash my computer screen with a shoe, a hammer, anything handy. But perseverance paid off and now I think I've got Windows Movie Maker pretty well figured out--and I love it. In fact, I'm so excited by book trailers and the fun of creating them that I'm making three more. 

My original intention for this post was to share some of the things I had learned along the way, but I think I will have to make that a post for next week; all this excitement has worn me out. So for now, I'd just like to invite you to enjoy my first foray into the world of video production. Thanks for watching! 

Tip of the Day: There are many, many places where you can watch book trailers. A good place to start is at Jacketflap.com where you can see a wide variety of videos on the JF home page. As you watch, start thinking about making your own book trailer(s). You don't have to have a published manuscript to begin producing. In fact, next week I'm going to discuss how and why a trailer could actually help you tighten and complete your current WIP. Don't forget the popcorn!

All About Better Than Perfect (Sort of)

Good news: Better Than Perfect has now been officially released and is for sale on Amazon.com, my website, Barnes and Noble, and anywhere else that sells books.

From the back cover: Can anyone be ‘better than perfect’? That’s the question lonely teenager Elizabeth Haddon struggles to answer when she is sent from England to live with relatives in Auckland, New Zealand. Arriving in the dead of winter, Elizabeth soon falls under the spell of her beautiful, but enigmatic cousin Ravenna who insists the most important thing in life is to ‘fit in.’ Elizabeth, who wants only to be accepted by her new family and their affluent social circle does her best to comply until she starts to see the cracks; cracks that turn into virtual canyons when tragedy strikes.

Yep, it’s a New Zealand story all right: dark, satiric, and ultimately (I hope) redemptive.

For a long time I’ve battled with “what New Zealand means to me.” For those who don’t know my background, I emigrated there from California a few weeks after my seventeenth birthday when my father, a New Zealander, decided he wanted to return home. For years I suppose he had imagined happy family reunions with me and my little brother being best friends with our extended family. And for awhile I suppose we were. Then real life took over, kind of like when they say that wherever you go you take yourself with you. We might have been thousands of miles from home, but we were still Americans. My mother was angry and depressed by the move, my father did his best to put a good face on things, and my little brother grew up wild. I stayed for as long as I could, eight years, and to this day don’t know if they were the worst or best years of my life. During that time, I was a displaced Persephone; my journey truly one of descent. For a year before I went to the university I studied nursing, until I could no longer bear working with the child abuse victims passing through the hospital wards and I became ill myself. Things I witnessed in New Zealand continue to haunt me: acts of violence borne of frustration from people trapped by weather and circumstance “with nowhere to go.”

My escape during those years was to immerse myself in New Zealand art and literature which I still think is some of the best in the world; precisely, I believe, because of the restrictions living on a tiny island at the bottom of the world can bring. It all started when I was in my one and only year of NZ high school and the late poet James K. Baxter visited the school a few months before he died. There isn’t room here to adequately describe the impact that visit had on me, but Baxter remains one of my most important literary influences to this day. Barefoot, red-eyed, straggle-haired, and draped in an ancient gray thrift-store suit, Baxter was as different from anyone I had known back in the San Fernando Valley could be. He may have been sick and dying at the time, but he could still recite his poetry with the power and madness of some Biblical prophet whirled in from a demonic wilderness. John the Baptist without the favor of God comes to mind. Baxter’s words and images burnt themselves into my memory; it is impossible to forget him and his rendition of “Thoughts of a Remuera Housewife.” I had only been in the country a few months, but already I knew what he was writing about: a suburban world so precisely “New Zealand” and yet so universal in its theme of “going through the motions” that it seemed to contain the whole of human experience in its brief stream-of-consciousness stanzas. I never forgot it and eventually it became the inspiration for me to write Better Than Perfect. I start the book with a quote from the poem: "….No, it’s not/ a world at all, but Pluto’s/ iron-black star; the quiet planet furthest from the sun." A few brief lines that sum up everything living in New Zealand was like for me.

Several meetings ago my writer’s group experimented with a technique adapted from Judy Reeves's A Writer’s Book of Days: write a full page as one sentence. We used the suggested prompt of “It’s all you could expect.” This is the unedited, raw version of what I wrote:

It’s all you could expect, my father said when he carried the sheep carcass up the hill toward my parents’ house, the lights shining like a beacon for the shell-shocked stragglers who still managed to make their ragged way up from the beach below where glass littered the tide pools and my brother caught minnows the size of his small hands when no one was looking and my mother sat in her room all day and night, shutting her ears to the sheep screaming and my father preparing to play Abraham sacrificing his first-born because God had commanded him and it was his right, his role, his dignity that was on the line and not some sob-story about “Daddy please just listen, just give me this one last chance to find the path I’m supposed to take,” and when the tide came in and crashed against the tide pools full of tiny snails and one-legged octopus, when my brother ran outside to hear the commotion and when even my mother unplugged her ears to hear the waves, the crashing, the thunder, the shouts of the drunken tourists demanding their rights on their beach on their land, then it all seemed like a Greek tragedy caught in the wrong place and the wrong century and all I could think of was opening the sheep pens and calling out the animals one by one before there were any more deaths, any more blood sprinkling this holy night of my father’s anger and his wish to follow a jealous God’s commandments.

Is it true? Yes and no. As another writer, Eunice Scarfe, so wisely says, “Any story told twice is a fiction.” This and Better Than Perfect are my stories told twice.

Thought of the day: What are your stories "told twice"?

Revising Revisions

The last few weeks have been consumed with revision work as I get ready to publish my next book, Better Than Perfect, due out this summer. The title alone should give you a clue as to where my head has been! And like my main character, fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Haddon, I’ve had to realize perfection is, at least in the real world, an impossible goal. Especially when you spend 24/7 in pursuit of it, which is why when I pulled the card “Just for Fun” from my Inner Outings, Adventures in Journal Writing deck, I knew something had to give.

Because I’ve always tended to believe in accepting what the universe hands us, I put the manuscript away and decided my holiday weekend would begin on Tuesday; a good decision. These are some of the things I’ve done with my “just for fun” time:

1. Played with http://www.polyvore.com/ all the live long day! It was wonderful. I’ve added a link on my sidebar so you can check out some of the sets I’ve put together there.
2. Went to my book club for the first time in three months. Another good decision!
3. Checked out the next book for the club right away: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. I read it as a teenager. The best kind of "school's-out" reading.
4. Started writing a screenplay for no good reason.
5. Visited an art exhibit featuring two of my friends’ artwork. I nearly missed it from being “so busy.”
6. Bought some gourmet treats to take home from the foreign specialty food store downstairs from the art gallery.
7. Signed up for a collage class next month.
8. Planted a flower garden beside my patio.
9. Invited friends to go to France this autumn! (Yes, really! Check out http://www.nitahughes.com/ for more info.)
10. Went to another friend's celebration of her daughter’s high school graduation.
11. Played with http://www.polyvore/ lots more.

I feel great: rested, relaxed, and creative. This afternoon I’m going to draw with the pencils I bought in Germany. And there’s been a very real advantage to this mini-vacation. Suddenly, after months and months of agonizing over “just the right words,” the entire back copy “blurb” for my book popped into my mind, complete and ready-to-go. What a relief!

Tip of the day: Take a break—and that’s an order!