The story of my life. I think it is for anyone who writes, published or not. It seems that when the writing bug bites you, it holds on tight and never lets go. When a day goes by and I don't write, I feel unfinished. I feel like one of the most important things on my to-do list hasn't been crossed off. It nags at me as I fall asleep at night and remains a dull ache in the morning that I shake off with coffee and my children's sounds both wonderful and irritating depending on how the morning goes. Then it's another day and I get another lucky chance to complete myself. By the way, there are many days that I don't write. So I feel like this a lot. It's a state of being I'm trying to make peace with. I just don't know if that peace will come from writing every day rain or shine, or being more okay with not writing.
If I have a deadline, then I do write on a schedule hitting a daily word count and it takes a lot of unexpected chaos for me not to write. Deadlines are magic. So the short answer to the question of making time to write is to create a deadline if one is not imposed on you. Take a class or start a writing group. Or simply tell a trusted friend what your deadline is. Be accountable to others. It's harder to procrastinate in public. When I have a contracted deadline, the fear of knowing I'm too old to pull all-nighters keeps me going at a steady pace. But when I don't have a deadline, sometimes I give myself a hiatus to take care of other things and sometimes I just get lazy, but either doesn't feel great. This last month was a true test of my writing resolve. We just moved from an old, charming, quirky house that cost a bundle to heat to a bigger, old, charming, quirky house in a nicer and more convenient neighborhood that will cost even more to heat. But I love it. I love connecting with a new space. As far as I'm concerned, houses are living things. I've been lucky to deeply love every space I've lived in, from a tiny one-bedroom in the city over a subway station with only enough space in the kitchen for a dorm-sized fridge and no freezer, to this one--a hundred year-old, beautiful, and slightly ridiculous house. My house and I get to know each other a little more when I find out on the first cold morning that the hundred-year old living room windows are probably as energy efficient as plastic wrap and that I can actually see the twinkling of the GW Bridge from my bedroom at night. I'm falling in love with this house, with all it's flaws and delights. The flaws are actually where the pull is, as long as it's balanced by beauty. Beauty without flaws is air-brushing. It's fake. It doesn't even exist. Even if you only move a mile a way, packing up your whole life in boxes, and moving with two kids who are fresh out of camp, a husband who has to work late hours, and a looming book deadline is not very, how shall I say this...relaxing? I didn't understand if we just moved into our "dream-house" why I was so stressed-out and miserable? First, I wasn't writing when I needed to be because of all the moving and child-care logistics. It also felt like I had time-travelled. That we became another family in the future. How could we be us in this new space? Like we were pretending and that our real lives continued somehow in the old house where everything was still unpacked and arranged into a home. But as more boxes got unpacked and the rooms started to define themselves and I cooked my family their first meal in our new kitchen, and I wrote my first words in my new office, I started to see it, our old lives and our new lives merging. It was really the moment though when I plunked down my laptop at 5:00a.m. so I could get in a few writing hours before my husband went to work and the kids were up, on my newly cleared desk surrounded by cardboard boxes, that my house became real to me, that I became a full person inside it. Flawed beauty. My fingers played on the keyboard in the dawn and the inspiration finally started to drip like brewing coffee. My heartbeat slowed. I felt such peace afterwards (not during, mind you). I will probably never write every day, but the secret to making time to write for me is propelled by two things: a deadline, or misery. So create a deadline for yourself or choose peace instead of misery, and write. Don't wait for inspiration or a muse or everything to be just right. You'll never write anything good if you do. Just write through it. Allow both the flaws and the beauty to show themselves. It works. Good coffee helps too.
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More exciting book news here for THE WHOLE STORY OF HALF A GIRL. It was recently selected as a Sydney Taylor Notable Book. Do you remember Sydney Taylor and her All-of-a-Kind Family series about a Jewish family living in New York at the turn of the century? Do you remember Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte, and Gertie? I do. I was obsessed with these books growing up. I remember when Henny dyed Ella’s dress with tea to cover up the stain she got on it and how Ella went to a restaurant for the first time on a date and didn’t know what to do and how exotic and long their Passover seders seemed to me. In fact, Taylor’s books in some ways gave me more information about Jewish identity and culture than my family did.
I also find it interesting that this honor is only for books writing about the Jewish experience and since WHOLE STORY’s Jewish content is certainly not typical, I loved that my book and the diversity it represents was recognized. The honor came at the same time a newspaper called India Abroad, which is published in the U.S. for the Indian community, contacted me about doing a story on the book which I’ll post when it comes out. How perfect for a book about a character trying to come to terms with both her Jewish and Indian identity. Also, the paperback of WHOLE STORY comes out February 12! I hope this will bring a new group of fans who are excited to pay the lovely paperback price ($6.99). All this has me thinking, though. I worry about my little book‘s future. I do. I worry that it will disappear too soon and won’t reach its full potential, whatever that may be. Then I remind myself that no matter how many tweets I tweet or blog posts I write or schools I visit, my book will have the life it will have. And hey, I’m not a publicist, I’m a writer. So I take a deep breath and send that thought out into the air and start to think about my future, and the stories (there are so many) I want to share with the world. I heard of this study once where children were led into two different rooms. One room had lots and lots of toys. One room only had a few. The children were told they could play with any of the toys in each room. The researchers found that when the children played in the room with lots of toys, they jumped from toy to toy and didn't seem to have a pleasurable or satisfying experience. The children who only had a few toys to choose from played for much longer and seemed happy and engaged.
I’m not sure about the details of the study, how it was controlled and all that, but it doesn't matter. I think about the message a lot. So how does this relate to writing? Everyday, when the blank screen hums back at me and I fight the urge to check my email, go on Facebook, or Twitter, or Google and FINALLY steer myself back to that blankness, it’s a triumph. I used to have a word processor in college. All I could do was write on it. I love my computer and the web, but honestly, back then it was easier to get to work. I recently read that the writer Paul Auster doesn't have a computer or a cell phone. I think he might have hit on something, at least for anyone trying to get anything done. After I pull my mind away from all the choices I have, which of course seem so much more exciting than the blank page, the trick is writing. I’m actually a pretty disciplined writer. I get my butt in that chair almost everyday and make myself produce something. If I’m on a deadline, I stick religiously to my daily word count. But even after I've evaded all the choices my little laptop offers me and start writing, then I have a different obstacle. Sometimes the choice of what I can actually write about slows me down or freezes me up. This can happen even when I know what the general story is. The characters could do anything, right? That’s where outlining comes in, even just a sentence for each chapter or a plot summary consisting of a few pages. It’s my road map. I don’t like to outline too heavily. I like taking some unexpected turns on my journey. I like the characters to surprise me. But if I don’t do any outlining at all, I find myself overwhelmed with the thought of all the roads I could take. I think narrowing down your choices is a good thing. Not every road works for every character. In life, I think it’s a good thing too. Not every toy works for every kid. Not every major works for every college student. Not every career works for every person. We tell our children they can be anything they want to be, that the world is their oyster. But I don’t know if that’s what I’m going to tell my kids. In this world, that list is way too long. Maybe they’ll need me to help them rule stuff out, rather than tell them they can choose from a million different lives. Taking a single road less traveled is great. If you go down one wrong road, you can always turn back, but if you have twenty to choose from, you just might get lost. I like to make fall resolutions. Since I have kids in school and I’ve worked on an academic schedule, fall always feels like a new beginning. I start to turn inward and get in touch with my senses. I cook more. I fix up my house. I notice scents like dry leaves and wood smoke. I enjoy the happy chaos of school starting and holidays brewing. It’s a good season.
One of my fall resolutions is to blog more. I miss the immediacy of taking my thoughts and news and sending it out into the world like a little boat made out of twigs. So here, I’m sharing now. I have lots of good news too, so much good news that in the neurotic corner of my mind, I sometimes wonder what bad luck is about to descend on me as I swim around in all this excitement. Crazy, I know, but true. WHOLE STORY keeps selling, which is a wonderful thing. I’m delighted with the emails I get from readers all the over the country--even internationally since I just heard from a reader in Canada! It’s a miracle to me that my little book has traveled so far. So keep on reading and sharing your thoughts on my contact page! The biggest news is that my brilliant agent, Sara Crowe, recently sold my chapter book series to the lovely people at Grosset & Dunlap (Penguin Group). I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. It’s the kind of thing that I think about all the time, except for when I forget about it. Then when I remember again, it’s like discovering a special gift left for me on the kitchen table. The working (and possibly final) title is PHOEBE G. GREEN, about a spunky third grader who actually likes to eat interesting things and slowly discovers she just might be a foodie when she befriends a new girl from France. Phoebe’s kind of the anti picky-eater who’s not afraid to be herself. This gets her into some trouble sometimes and I hope young readers will enjoy her unique adventures in food and in life! The first books will be out in about a year and a half. Recently, I’ve also been lucky enough to contribute to the middle-grade series DEAR KNOW IT ALL. All books are published under the pseudonym, Rachel Wise, and I’ve written books #5, #6, and #8, the first of mine appearing in January 2013. The first two books by another writer are out now. It was a lot of fun and I wish I had been more like the brave, smart, but slightly anxious narrator Samantha Martone when I was in middle school! I’m also working on another middle-grade novel. More to come about that… Because of all this good stuff, I have decided to pause my Montessori teaching career, but I know I’ll always carry what I’ve learned with me into my life and parenting and future writing classes. I’ve had many career paths, writing being the only constant, and now to have that part of my life move to center stage is quite amazing. I never thought it would happen and yet I always believed it would. So thanks for reading, thanks for sharing your thoughts, and I’m certainly enjoying the ride. It’s finally here, pub day, the day when you can walk in a bookstore and buy THE WHOLE STORY OF HALF A GIRL. When I sold the manuscript back in 2010, I wondered where I’d be when the book actually came out. Well, I started teaching at a Montessori school. I’m a little older. My family is a little older. My daughter, who was a baby when I started writing this book, can now read the book. That in my mind is the most stunning milestone so far. When I received my box of shiny new copies a few weeks ago, I just kept running my hand over the front of it. This is it, I thought, the moment I hoped for since I started writing short stories in college. And it feels…great!! It is as awesome as I wanted it to be. My family and friends continue to cheer me on. I got some great reviews, from magazines, from bloggers, and from community reviewers. But what I haven’t experienced yet is feedback from my youngest readers.
I’m so looking forward to hear from the middle-grade readers that I wrote this book for. So if you’re out there, and this book rings true for you in any way, or if you have questions about the writing process, or the characters, please let me know! I’d love to hear from you. I remember how important reading was to me at that age. I hope this book can provide some, even just a drop, of the same companionship and pleasure all those books I read back then provided me. So thank you Roald Dahl, E.B. White, Judy Blume, Madeleine L’Engle, Lois Lowry, Patricia Reilly Giff, CS Lewis, Beverly Cleary, Katherine Patterson, Sydney Taylor, and J.R.R. Tolkien, just to name a few. I’m not putting myself in the same company, just saying thanks for all they gave and still give me. And a future thank you to my new readers who will honor me with their time and attention. I hope I can live up to your expectations! Some people associate creativity with art. They think if you make art, you’re creative. If you don’t, you’re not. I think that every person is creative or has creative potential. It has nothing to do with how well you draw. You can be a creative teacher, a creative doctor, a creative business owner, and in this fast-paced, fickle world, creative abilities are more crucial than ever. Creativity allows you to adapt to your environment. It allows you to create new ideas when the old ones aren’t working.
If this creative power isn’t nurtured in childhood, I believe it can result in an adult that is less flexible, less imaginative, and less able to solve problems and create their own destiny. That’s why art programs in schools are so important. As a new Montessori teacher, I’ve learned that the best way to nurture creativity is to let children color outside the lines and guide them through solving their own problems. If you always tell a child what to make and how to make it, they never enter the space that allows them to discover their own creative powers. My mother is an artist, and I’ve always been thankful that my parents gave me the chance to nurture this side of myself. Because of this ability, I’m never bored. I’m always thinking about the next thing I want to create for myself, whether it’s a small drawing I thumbtack to my cork board, a new chicken dish for dinner, a story, or a new career. Yes, I’m restless, impatient, a little lost when I’m not creating something, and make LOTS of mistakes, false starts, and unfinished projects—but I’m never bored. Speaking of new creations, I’ve started writing a new book. Now that my novel, WHOLE STORY OF HALF A GIRL, has been copyedited (the publishing version of hair and makeup) and is getting ready to go on stage (but not until Jan 2012), I’ve had the mental space to start something I’ve been turning around in my head for a while. It’s a young girl’s diary that takes place during the Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. That’s all I’m ready to share now. I’ve never written a historical piece, so it’s a new experience for me and causes the writing to go a bit slower since I have to do heavy duty research. Starting a new piece of writing is kind of like falling in love. It’s exciting and scary. I get obsessed and filled with energy. Then the glow wears off and I start to wonder if the project is what I thought it was, if I’m who I thought I was. We either get through it to a better place, or we break up. But I think we’ll make it, this book and I. So celebrate your own creativity in whatever form it takes. Maybe it’s a flower bed, a cake, a new way to organize your papers, a painting, rearranging furniture, a secret business idea you like to think about before you fall asleep. Go for it. Create something new! |
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