Come On, You Know You Want To

Source: flickr.com via Miss on Pinterest

As many as you can ... go!

Congratulations, Megan!

Today I just had to pass on some congratulations squeals for my Lucky 13 colleague, Megan Shepherd. Megan's YA debut, Madman's Daughter (Balzer + Bray, 2013), has been optioned by Paramount Pictures. This juicy gothic novel, the first in a trilogy, promises to be a page turner, and if all goes well, it will be on the big screen too! Read more about Madman's Daughter on Megan's site. Variety has the story about the option at this link. Again, kudos and confetti to Megan!

What Writers Can Learn from Lauren Oliver

Here's something I almost never do: Check out a book from the library, read it, and fall so in love with it that I must own it. So yes--I go out and buy a book I've already read.

That's what I did with Liesl & Po by Lauren Oliver. Here was my gut reaction: I read this book, closed the cover, and heaved that delicious but grief-stricken sigh that I do when I know a great book is done but I wish it would live on.


Now I could just write a review of this book, but I thought it might be more helpful to think about why it's so good--and what can we as writers learn from it? I'll break this post into three parts: Writing/Prose, Characters, and Plotting.

First, let's talk about the writing--just the prose. Great writing doesn't have to be flowery--in fact, it really shouldn't be--but it has to be precise. It has to hit you in all the right ways. Consider this sentence, from a scene in which Liesl is trying hard to remember something important:

And so she squeezed her eyes tight and climbed down the tower of months she had been in the attic, reaching back and back into the rooms of her memory that were so dusty and dim she could catch only little, flickering glances of things.

That sentence, like so many gems in this book, resonated with me. It's that aha! moment when you say, Yes, that's exactly how it feels when I'm trying to remember something!

How does Oliver create this image? She goes straight to the heart of the matter. Liesl squeezes her eyes tight. So much is conveyed in that simple phrase--anxiety, the physical sensation, that otherworldly feeling of entering your own mind and closing off the outside world. Then she climbed down the tower of months--what a lovely phrase. Again, Oliver just describes what the rest of us feel. Searching for a memory is like climbing back through time. In this case, it makes even more sense because Liesl has been trapped in an attic, so she must climb down to the real world again in her mind as well as climb through her memory. And then, the memories themselves: little, flickering glances. Isn't that what you see when you try to access long-forgotten scenes from your life? Flashes, bits and pieces, like stills from an old movie?

I don't know what Oliver's writing method is, but if you find yourself writing a bland sentence like, Liesl closed her eyes and tried to remember, it might help to think about what it really feels like to remember. If you had to remember something crucial, what motions would you go through? Would your character go through those motions, or do something different because of who he/she is? Describe the sensations--all of them.

And speaking of sensations, here's another, from the scene where Will visits Mr. Gray:

No matter how many times he came for a pickup, Will could never get used to it: a bitter, scorching smell mixed with the smell of bodies, like a fire lit in the very center of a dirty stable.

I've never lit a fire in a stable, but that sentence resonated too: I could smell it, the warm musk of animals and the sharp sting of smoke as the hay catches on fire. It all makes sense, of course, because Mr. Gray runs a crematorium.

Note how Oliver focuses on one sense, smell, to create this image. Why a stable? Besides having animal scents to mix with the fire, the stable also conveys a sense of being closed in and trapped. A fire in a stable is a dangerous thing--the smoke would choke you (there's no chimney), the straw would ignite like newspaper, the whole flimsy structure would soon collapse. That's how Will feels, and we feel it along with him.

As writers, we too need to look for unusual ways to draw our readers in with scents and sounds and touch. Remember that smell, especially, is the most evocative of the senses, able to waken memories in an instant. I'm not sure why--maybe because it's so primal and instinctual? But we can use that to our advantage. What do scents conjure for you? Think about damp, freshly mown grass; a basket of strawberries; raw garlic; sizzling steaks on the grill; a dog drenched with rainwater. These are strong smells. What memories do they evoke? Use that. Use it all.

A Whole Lotta Bologna

Oh, how I wish I could have joined the crowd in Bologna last week! For those of you who don't know, the Children's Book Fair in Bologna, Italy, is one of the biggest events of the year for kidlit. While it sounds like a great big kids' bookstore, it's really a place for industry pros to mingle and see what everyone else has cooking for the coming season. It's not primarily an authors' event--more of an agents' and publishers' event. One of the big reasons agents like to go is to see if they can sell foreign rights for their properties to publishers from around the world.

So no, I didn't get to go. But The Key and the Flame did! Michael Stearns of Upstart Crow took my baby in his briefcase to see what interest he could drum up. No word yet on whether his drumming proved fruitful, but we did get a little mention in Publishers Weekly, which gives me a shiver of goosebumps. After all, it's the first time my book has been mentioned in a publication! Click on the link to read about TKTF and some of the other new books coming out in 2013.

For more photos of the fair, check out this montage from PW.

Review: THE HIGHER POWER OF LUCKY by Susan Patron

Middle-grade fiction

Atheneum, 2006

134 pages  $16.95

Newbery Medal Winner

One thing I love about certain writers is that they say so much with so little. Susan Patron is one of those writers. In this spare, lovely story, we meet ten-year-old Lucky, who lives in a desert town of few people (Pop. 43) with her guardian, Brigitte, and her dog, HMS Beagle. (How could you help but love a dog with such a name?) Lucky is a unique and lovable character who strives to find a Higher Power to help her make sense of her fractured family and sometimes bleak circumstances. But like all good writers, Patron doesn’t bludgeon us with despair but lifts us up with humor. In many ways, this little girl is lucky—and so are we for meeting her.

Writers will learn what a pitch-perfect voice should sound like and how characters can be so exquisitely drawn in a very few pages. Readers will cheer for Lucky and her friends, who we bond with on first meeting. Parents will love that a serious story can be told lovingly and humorously. Kids will love that Lucky carries a survival backpack and that her friend Lincoln can tie any knot known to man.

Censorship Alert!  Widely challenged for its use of the word scrotum, this wonderful novel contains nothing any sane person would object to. As a point of information, the scrotum in question belongs to a dog, and Lucky herself isn’t even sure what a scrotum is. This is hardly a controversial story.

 

It's a Problem

Source: looking4myradio.tumblr.com via Wallace on Pinterest

It's true. I can't walk into a library and come out with one book. My late fees have paid for at least two or three shelves at my local branch.

Review: Pride and Prejudice

The Annotated Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In this 1813 novel, Austen creates one of literature’s most enduring heroines in Elizabeth Bennett, one of five sisters whose mother is frantic to marry off. But in true Austen style, Elizabeth refuses to hasten her choice of a mate. She will not marry for any reason but love, despite the fact that her family’s fortune is modest and that even the family estate will be entailed to a distant relation on her father’s death. She receives proposals from two eligible bachelors—the ridiculous Mr. Collins and the prideful Mr. Darcy—and disdains them both.

Mr. Darcy is, of course, Jane Austen’s most beloved hero. It is no coincidence that he was voted the Austen canon’s most eligible bachelor on the pbs.org website, where viewers were encouraged to pick their favorites. His aloof manner, his struggle against his love for Elizabeth, and his eventual redemption make him a far more attractive catch than even Mr. Bingley, whose easy manner and jovial nature win over Elizabeth’s sister Jane.

It is said that some women—most women?—love a project, and Mr. Darcy certainly qualifies. His first proposal to Elizabeth outlines all the reasons he should contain himself, despite his feelings, prompting his beloved to ask why “you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character?” (My husband summed up this proposal as “I love you, but you suck.”) But, as Elizabeth concedes later, Mr. Darcy “improves upon closer acquaintance.” He is in fact somewhat prideful, but also a socially uncomfortable person; some of what Lizzy mistakes for pride can be attributed to the fact that, as he admits, he has “not the talent which some people possess … of conversing easily” with strangers.

Eventually, Elizabeth will realize that her own pride and prejudices have been at least equal to Mr. Darcy’s, and that she is not as infallible a judge of character as she thought. And Mr. Darcy will, of course, get the girl.

The modern reader will need to slow down the constant chatter of the world that has shortened our attention spans. This is a book to be savored in its complex plot (only lightly traced here), its beautiful language, and its subtlety. No character screams, throws fits, or snatches up a pistol. Insults are veiled in civility; in some cases one must read between the lines. Read slowly by the fire and you will be satisfied.

One edition I recommend is The Annotated Pride and Prejudice, edited by David M. Shepard (Random House, 2004). Presented with the text in a side-by-side style, the annotations are helpful in understanding certain mores of the times as well as obscure vocabulary. Sometimes the notes are superfluous (don’t most of us know what effusion and stately mean?), but not intrusive. This edition also includes maps, a chronology of the story, and an interesting bibliography.





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