Some thoughts on Wolves

Tags

inkpot, joan aiken, writing

Ducking out of the revision cave to say that I have a post up on the Enchanted Inkpot today about Joan Aiken and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.

I’ve loved this book since I was small, and I’m amazed how much I learned by looking at it with a writer’s eye. The book’s backstory is thought-provoking, too. It took ten years from the start of the book to publication, and Joan Aiken had to persevere through terrible loss and some really bad luck to get there. I’m glad she did.

As China Miéville says of Aiken’s books, “If that kind of writing hits you at the right time when you’re a child, the impact is like nothing else ever.”

You can read the whole Inkpot essay here.

I hope to be back soon with a few thoughts on revision and some fun photos of summer!

Who’s in the room?

Tags

publishing, writing

This has been a busy month, bookwise. I’ve just turned in the copyedits – hooray! And the flap copy is just about ready to go. It’s almost another year before the book comes out – April 2013 – but publication feels more real with every passing month.

And that means I’m having to re-learn a central truth of the author’s life: While it’s a joyful thing to have a book published, it’s a scary one, too. And I suspect there’s no cure for that, since part of what makes it so joyful (people will read my book!) is also what makes it so scary (people will read my book!).

Already I’m having to do some fancy mental gymnastics to keep myself in a good place for writing book two. I’m all too capable of lugging a thousand potential critics in my head as I write. Readers, reviews, editor, author, family… it can feel like they’re all looking over my shoulder as I type.

So I’m thinking a lot about these lines***:

Dance like no one’s watching.
Sing like no one’s listening.

And I’m adding one more:

Write like no one’s in the room.

Sign on a staircase at Magdalen College, Oxford

____________________________
***The net credits the lines to Mark Twain, William Purkey, and Aurora Greenway, but that’s the net for you. Whoever wrote them, I think they’re great.

April showers, May flowers

Tags

gardens, seasons, travel

It’s been one of the wettest Aprils in English history – the soggiest in over a century. But at least I can attest to the truth of that old saying: April showers really do bring May flowers.

Our family missed some of the sogginess because we spent much of April traveling in America, where it was so hot I had to go shopping for sundresses. As always, it was wonderful to see friends and family. I even zipped down to New York to meet my editor and agent face-to-face for the first time, which was great fun. But the super-busy busy schedule had our whole family pretty tired by the end… and then I got food poisoning. So lesson learned: The next trip will be shorter and slower-paced. (Dear friends, if I don’t get to see you next time, it isn’t because I don’t miss you! Write a letter, give me a call – we’ll find other ways to bridge the distance.)

My suitcases are unpacked now, and it’s a joy to be home. And those May flowers are one reason why:

My Snake’s Head Fritillaries, aka Checkered Daffodils, Chess Flowers, Frog-cups, Guinea-hen Flowers, Leper Lilies, Lazarus Bells, and Checkered Lilies. They love all the rain we’ve been getting

The Angelique tulips were just coming into bloom when I came home

This clematis brightens our kitchen sink window.

Even the greenery is radiant.

Daffodils in the neighborhood

I’ve been a little mad about daffodils this year, I confess… but truly, how could anyone resist these?

I grew up in the Adirondack Mountains, where it was too chilly on May 1st for most flowers to bloom, so the bounty here is a continual astonishment and delight to me. Of course the weeds grow, too – I started hoeing them down yesterday – but I’ll happily pay that price for flowers like these.

Happy May, everyone!

Thankful Thursday: Writing Retreat

Tags

outings, retreat, travel, writing

My word for this year is GROW, and that means doing some things I thought were beyond me. I did one of them last week: my first writing retreat.

I’ve always wanted to go on a writing retreat, but until now it never worked out. Sometimes money was the problem, sometimes health, sometimes family circumstances… sometimes all three.

Mostly I’ve been resigned to this; I have bad retreat karma, and that’s that. But when I heard that Kindling Words was holding a retreat here in the UK in March 2012, I desperately wanted to go, especially since some very dear friends were going to be there, friends I rarely get to see.

I just didn’t see how I could make it work.

Last fall, when we were supposed to sign up, I was going through a lupus flare. These happen sometimes, and I just grit my teeth and get through them, but this one was bad enough that my doctors decided it was time to try a new treatment… and the treatment just wasn’t working.

But then, in mid-February, I finally started to see some results. It’s not a cure (those are really, really rare with lupus), but the pain finally started to recede.

Unfortunately, the improvement had come too late for the retreat. Or so I thought. But then out of the blue, lovely Alison James of Kindling Words wrote again, just before the retreat began, urging me to come just for the weekend if I could; she said they would find space for me. I pieced together the travel arrangements and snagged the very last room in the hotel. My generous husband offered to cover for me at home and helped me pack. And suddenly I was on a train to the Lake District, headed for the misty hills of Derwentwater:

As you can see, the weather was blustery – perfect for curling up with a manuscript, or for a writerly chat over tea and scones. But we had sunny hours, too:

The lovely jeannineatkins, taking a post-breakfast perambulation with me

The view from the hotel window

My three days there were filled with laughter, hugs, and book talk. I wrote. I meditated. I spooned up sticky toffee pudding. I got soaked to the skin on a soppy lake cruise. I stayed up for late night heart-to-hearts.

The food was incredible, the company even better. An enchanted weekend, right down to the fairy butter sculpture:

Really, truly, she’s made of butter.

Look at those wings!

To be honest, the trip was at the limit of what’s possible for me at the moment, and I’m still in recovery mode back here at home. But as I told a friend the other day, I know the exhaustion will fade – and the memories of that weekend will be with me forever.

Thankful Thursday: Mr. Lynch’s Wonderful Readers

Tags

reading, virginia bound, writing

Recently I had one of the best surprises of my writing life, and it concerned a book that came out nine years ago.

Lots of people judge whether a book is a success by what happens in that first year, or even in the first few months. By that standard, my first book, Virginia Bound — a story about a boy who is kidnapped from London and shipped to Virginia as an indentured servant in the 1620s — barely held its own. There was a recession that year, and I wasn’t able to do a lot of publicity for it, and for a while I feared it would never find its audience.

Turns out, though, that the book was just a late bloomer. The year after it was published, it started showing up on state lists. Sales went up, not down. A few years after that it won a children’s choice award. And now, nine years down the line, I still get some lovely reader mail for it.

Still, I’ve never had a letter quite like the one I received last month from Mr. Andrew Lynch, a fourth-grade teacher at Creighton’s Corner Elementary School in Virginia. He emailed me to let me know that he’d read Virginia Bound to his class, and they’d kept a blog of the experience.

And oh, what a wonderful blog it is! At the end of key chapters, Mr. Lynch would ask them how they felt about what had happened, whether they would have made the same choices, and could they guess what would happen next. Even at the start, their answers are terrific. And as they get farther into the story, you can see how deeply engaged they become with the book and the characters — and loveliest of all, with each other, because there’s plenty of respectful but forthright debate in their blog. I tackle some really tough issues in Virginia Bound, and they were with me all the way.

In reading their blog, I got as close as a writer can to experiencing my book as readers do.

As Madeleine L’Engle once said, “With each book I write, I become more and more convinced that the books have a life of their own, quite apart from me.

It is wonderful to have a glimpse of the life my book is leading in Creighton’s Corner Elementary School. Thank you, Mr. Lynch’s fourth graders! You are wonderful readers, and you are moving and powerful writers, too.

Revisions and courage

Tags

revision, writing

After a month of hard labor, I’m coming into the home stretch with these revisions… hooray!

Revising under deadline is always a fraught process, I find. I’m lucky because my editor wrote me a wonderful letter and lots of notes, which built on what I’d already done and opened up new possibilities. Yet it’s easy for me to doubt myself at every stage of writing, and revision is no exception.

Revising under deadline only ratchets up the anxiety. Do I change this character’s name? Do I put the new scene here or here? Do I jettison a good scene in hope of a great one?

The annotated manuscript

When doubt freezes me up, I remember a story I heard from Frank Cottrell Boyce at the SCBWI-UK conference last November. Apparently, if you look at Mary Norton’s drafts for The Borrowers you’ll see that she made some brilliant late-stage changes, including elements that now strike us as essential, such as the title and the character’s “borrowed” names. The Borrowers only became a classic, in short, because Norton was fearless in revising to the last.

“Fearless” is not exactly my middle name. Yet I’m finding that courage is a good companion as I revise. I’ve pushed myself to dive deep; I’ve had to trust my instincts. But I think Chantress will be a better book because of it.

Wordless Wednesday: Fuel for the last lap of revisions…

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food, revision, writing

… a lemon meringue tart

Wordless Wednesday: First primroses of 2012

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gardens, seasons

Resolutions, growing, and gardens

Tags

gardens, outings, revision, writing

I’m a bit late to the resolution game this year, and that’s only partly because I’m in the middle of revisions. Truth is, 2012 is shaping up to be a challenging year. When I finally sat down to take a look at what I’m juggling, the single-spaced list went on for over a page. And some of those juggling balls are mighty big: WRITE BOOK TWO, for instance.

So challenging is putting it nicely. How about terrifying?

After making that list I felt like cowering under the covers till 2013. Only I’m not sure it’s going to get any easier then. And cowering under the covers isn’t any fun.

Yesterday I decided it was time to reframe things. It’s the beginning of January, and when I look at that list, some of the items on it look darn near impossible. I have no idea how to pull them off. But you know what? I don’t need to know right now. I don’t need to have the perfect game plan. I just need to get in there and try. Because in the very act of doing these things, I’m going to grow. And it’s the growing that will help me find a way through them.

So that’s my word for this year: GROW.

I have to admit, the word was inspired partly by a New Year’s visit to the Oxford Botanic Garden, where I saw these beauties:

Geraniums — aren’t they bright?!

Oranges! In midwinter! Admittedly in an orangery.

Cyclamen blooms, which look so fragile but are surprisingly sturdy

Snowdrops — the earliest I’ve ever seen.

Who knows? Maybe by the end of the year, my word for 2012 will turn out to be BLOOM.

Lucia Day magic

Tags

family, food

For me, Christmas always really began with Lucia Day. From way back, I remember waking in darkness and dressing, then sneaking down to the dim warmth of the kitchen, where I would tie the smooth red ribbons of the Lucia crown under my chin. The crown was heavy, and the evergreens made it scratchy — but what a wonder it was when the candles were lit, and the light moved with me.

Wonderful as Christmas itself was, for me it was Lucia Day that was truly magic. The flaming crown, in all honesty, would have been enough to guarantee that. Yet there were other, subtler enchantments as well: the smell of cardamom, oranges, and chocolate; the glow of red candleholders against green boughs; our wistful recording of the “Santa Lucia” melody and the exuberant folk songs that followed it.

This year, for the first time, my daughter had her own crown of candles — electric ones, for safety’s sake, but still so beautiful. We lit our Swedish candles in the morning darkness; we listened to the same crackly Swedish recording that I used to listen to as a child; we feasted on Lussekatter, julekage, hot chocolate, and oranges.

And it was magic all over again.

Lussekatter (Lucia buns made with saffron and pools of butter) and Swedish candlesticks

Our Lucia Queen in front of the fire

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