Motivation-Mania

*Phone rings*
*Glances at number*
*Recognizes a NYC area code*
*Panics*
*Imagines the feelings of bliss you're about to feel*
*Presses answer*
Me: Hello?
Caller: Hi, I saw that you had recently inquired into...

NOOOOO! But I can't be the only person this has happened to. An excited writer waiting for "The Call" and getting a salesperson who so cruely is calling from New York City.
April Fools Day indeed.

It can be so easy at times to feel like that call is never going to happen. To feel like you're drowning in a sea of "no's" or "almost-but-not-quite-theres."

In an effort to live a life of transparency, I'm going to be honest and say I've been struggling with my motivation hard core. I poured my heart and soul into a book that has failed to capture that "yes." I've gotten a lot of "almosts," so many that it can break your heart much more than if everyone was just a big ol, "nope."

I've been trying to focus on my next book, but my self-confidence and motivation have taken a beating over the last few months. Trying to refill the well, I picked up Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert.

It slapped me around with the truth that creative living is not tied to goals, it's tied to a journey. A journey I'm privileged to be on. I loved this excerpt:

“Creativity is sacred, and it is not sacred. What we make matters enormously, and it doesn’t matter at all. We toil alone, and we are accompanied by spirits. We are terrified, and we are brave. Art is a crushing chore and a wonderful privilege. Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us. Make space for all these paradoxes to be equally true inside your soul, and I promise—you can make anything. So please calm down now and get back to work, okay? The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes.” 

Good stuff, huh? Then you add it to this:

“But to yell at your creativity, saying, “You must earn money for me!” is sort of like yelling at a cat; it has no idea what you’re talking about, and all you’re doing is scaring it away, because you’re making really loud noises and your face looks weird when you do that.” 

 Love that!

So here's where we're at now: Creativity can't be tied to a goal. It can't be forced to perform on demand. It must be fed. It needs to allow you to feel.

So if you're running on empty, it may be time for a perspective change.

Want to connect?

Find me at www.destinycole.com

or follow me on Twitter or Instagram: @destinywrites

Getting Swept Away by New Beginnings

Hi fabulous readers of YAtopia! I’m Rosanne, a YA author and scriptwriter who loves writing about new worlds or unfathomable situations. I’m really excited to be contributing to YAtopia, and you can expect posts about querying, editing and staying in love with your writing from me for the next year.

Since Jan 1^st, I’ve been excited about all the new beginnings I promised for myself back in 2016: New gym routine; revised writing routine; creating time for ‘me’; hitting my day-job goals, etc., which is ace. But with all this concentration on new beginnings, I started losing love for the writing projects I had already started.

Getting swept away with new writing ideas isn’t a bad thing, but it can be damaging if, like me, you do it all the time. Stored away in my mental WIP folder I currently have 60k words of a YA historical, 20k words of a YA sci-fi, and 0 words for a sparkly new idea… guess which one I want to write about?

The new one.

Yet that only makes me happy for so long, because in the back of my mind I have those other MSs staring at me, sulking that they haven’t been chosen to come out and play. So, in the face of all these beginnings, here’s some tips on how to fall back in love with your (older) beginnings…

·        

•  Re-read the opening, concentrating on the way you felt when you first started writing the MS.
•  Look over your notes and think about how far you’ve come since you started with just a grain of an idea.
•  List all the reasons you wanted to write that story in the first place. Cross off any ones that no longer apply, add new ones, and see if what you have left is enough to carry you through to the end.
•  Make an aesthetics board to reflect the mood/characters/theme of your novel - there are lots of collage apps that let you do this, just make sure your images are copyright free if you want to share them on social media.
•  Ask yourself: will your characters ever leave you alone if you don’t finish their story? WILL YOU HEAR THEIR VOICES BEFORE YOU GO TO SLEEP?! (Really hoping this last one isn’t just me…)
•  Research agents or publishers who you think would be a good fit for you and your story – this always gets me excited about finishing and submitting something.
•  In a similar vein to above: research any competitions you’d like to compete in once you’ve finished – I’d recommend Brenda Drake’s website for this.
•  Set yourself writing rewards: do another 10k words on your old WIP, then allow yourself to start your new idea! After this, even if you haven’t fallen back in love with your old WIP, at least you know you gave it a go.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with using a WIP as a stepping stone to the story you are REALLY meant to write, so if it’s not working, break up with it and move on to your true heart’s desire (until something shinier takes its place!)

Showing Character Reaction

It’s pretty tricky when writing character body language and facial expression to avoid being repetitive. As an editor I see a lot of authors struggling with this. I read an abundance of eye rolling, shrugging and lip biting and numerous times by different characters in the same manuscript. Of course, these are absolutely fine to use because they show and don’t tell.

·        Eye rolling perfectly demonstrates that ‘Urgh, this is sooooo embarrassing’ reaction.

·        Shrugging is a clear ‘I don’t know’ or ‘Whatever’ response.

·        Lip biting shows a ‘How am I going to get out of this?’ concern.

So, yeah, use them, but don't over-use them. It figures that the more extreme emotion – like fear, delight, shock – the easier to put a reaction into words. But, what about the more subtle reactions? Like intimidated or offended. Those that need ultra fine detail to let the reader know precisely what the character is feeling.

The best sure-fire way to help is to grab yourself a mirror...

 

 

And be the characters in the scene you’re writing!

Or, if you are just too embarrassed to behave in this manner or are defunct of human emotion, then analyse the actors in a movie or TV show (the lower budget and tackier they are the more helpful they can be because the actors are nearly always over-acting) or just look up some GIFs/pictures on the internet.

Like here...

Intimidated

There is a fine line between showing intimidation and fear. Because even though they are different, they definitely stem from the same receptor.

·        There could be cowering, instantly making their body smaller, rolling in on themselves.

·        The arms come in, the body turns away, the face the same, but the eyes might stay with the intimidator; maybe darting away but coming back to check where the person is, what they are doing and saying.

·        The knees might bend, backward steps are taken, even a seat.

·        If another person is there they may move closer to them, try to blend into their body, or just touch them in some way, grab their hand for protection.

·        Fidgeting, or perhaps the opposite, they stay statue-still.

And here...

Offended.

So this reaction has a number of tell tale signs and can often depend on the exact situation in which the character is offended. Like, for example, if it’s by their boss and they have to maintain ‘face’ in front of their colleagues isn't the same as when it occurs on a drunken night out with mates.

Here are a few possibilities:

·        An immediate dip of the eyebrows to create a slight frown.

·        The head could come forward just slightly like a tortoise’s head pops out its shell, but then it goes back. Or the chin comes up as if the person’s absorbing the verbal punch there. Or maybe the opposite and the head is driven back.

·        The eyes could get a little wider, maybe even the eyebrows pop up then back down in disbelief as the person moves their head to the side so they can’t be seen.

·        The mouth might open just slightly as a small intake of breath occurs. Nasty words want to come out, but it might not be the right time to react; the person might need to swallow their thoughts and move on. Or they might just grit their teeth, thin out their lips.

Or, you know, they might just do this...

It's clear when you start writing reaction and from these options that every character and situation you as a writer put them in is going to be unique, so how you convey visible reaction is going to vary tremendously. Giving your character habits they fall back on when feeling certain emotions is a great help. But also, to accompany the physical, external movement, as shown above, the best weapon you have to get a character’s true emotion across to the reader is their mind. Access your character’s thoughts so the reader can hear exactly what’s being felt and how it’s being processed.

Intimidation

‘John strides toward me, his mouth curled into a smile only I can see. I turn my body away and fold my arms. I try to keep eye contact but I can’t. His penetrating stare is boring deep, right into my grey matter. I lower my head and study some old breadcrumbs from my sandwich on the tiled floor. I would give anything not to be here right now.’

Offended

‘My hand freezes mid-restyle, my fine hair tickling my skin. Did he really just say that? How dare he? My heart is thumping like horse hooves on turf; a tingle moves up my neck as I grit my teeth. I finish my plait and swallow down my reaction. I’ll get him back. Not here, not when he’s expecting it.’

Have fun!

Putting “Write What You Know” into Practice

We’ve all heard the adage “write what you know.” In her latest book, the upcoming Young Adult novel, MAP TO THE STARS, which releases on July 14, author and former YAtopia blogger, Jen Malone, does just that.

The book, which I was lucky enough to read early, follows fifteen-year-old Annie as she travels through Europe as part of a teen movie idol’s promotional tour.

Is Jen a movie idol? No (but she could be!). The “write what you know” comes in as Jen not only worked in publicity for 20th Century Fox, but she also traveled around the world after she graduated, hitting a whopping forty-three countries over ten months. Awed yet?

Jen’s here to tell us a bit more about writing what you know…

Q: Does Annie encounter anything you experienced in your role at 20th Century Fox?

A: Soooo much of it!! For example, in one early scene in the book Annie gets roped into helping out at a press junket (which is where a movie studio will fly in reporters from around the country and gather all the stars of a movie in one hotel for a full weekend of interviews). In the book Annie’s in charge of timing Graham’s (the teen movie idol) TV interviews to five minutes each and then ushering one reporter out of the hotel room and the next one in. 

When the questions become really repetitive as the day wears on, Graham entertains her by coming up with really offbeat answers that differ wildly from what the previous reporter was told. This actually happened to me, when I had the same job at the press junket for Star Wars: Episode One. I can’t reveal the movie star but let’s just say he could handle himself just fine on a plane full of snakes. Anyway, if he answered one reporter saying he and George Lucas had creative differences during filming, the next was told he and George had spent Christmas together and were arranging the marriages of their children. So hilarious! Also, it should be noted, in the book Graham does this to flirt with Annie. That was NOT the case in the real-life scenario -- he was just trying to crack up those of us stuck in a tiny hotel room with him and all this camera equipment all day. As a fun aside, in the book Annie’s mom (who is a makeup artist) gets cornered in the hallway by an obnoxious publicist wanting to ask her how she should do her makeup for her upcoming wedding. That was a direct dig at me, because I did exactly this to Natalie Portman’s makeup artist (who happens to be the founder of Stila!). I figured if she was getting paid five figures a day to put makeup on the flawless NP, she’d probably be grateful for more of a challenge. J She was pretty awesome with her advice, actually!

Q: What’s the most fun/craziest thing you did as part of your movie job?

A: Craziest: I once met LL Cool J and his entourage at the airport after midnight and he decided he wanted Chinese food before heading to his hotel. Except he wanted it from a specific place in a not-so-great area of Boston and he’s not sure exactly where it is, but his friend will “know it when we see it.” Eventually we roll down the window of the limo at a light and ask a few kids on dirt bikes, who immediately offer to escort us there. So now we’re cruising at 8 mph through housing projects in a limo and people are coming out to point and the kids on the bike are yelling, “Hey, it’s LL in there!!!!” By the time we stop at the restaurant about fifty people are running behind the limo. He got out and signed autographs (on all kinds of body parts) for every last one of them and when one guy told him he couldn’t afford to see the new movie LL was promoting, he handed him $20 and said, “Now go peep it.” I break this story out at every dinner party, by the way!

Q: I was hoping that was the story you were going to tell! Now, as glamorous as it sounds to work in the “biz,” I’m sure there were mundane tasks, just like the ones Annie has to do. What were some of the least fun aspects of your job?

A: I had one actor who insisted on quadruple stuff Oreos (Double Stuff just wasn’t enough “stuff”) so I spent an afternoon picking apart and smooshing together Oreos. Another would only drink bottled water from a particular area of France and it took me hours to find someone there who would ship me some. Before I collected the actors from the airport, I would first have to go check into their hotel rooms for them and make sure all the light bulbs worked in their lamps and the toilets flushed, so they wouldn’t have to endure the hassle of calling the front desk (can you sense my eye roll here?). So I was literally getting paid to flush toilets!

Q: Is there a celebrity you met who stands out? Why?

A: Strange as this might sound, the A-list actors were always, always the sweetest. I think they’d had time in the industry to just “get over themselves” in a way the newer, less secure actors hadn’t yet. The absolute nicest of the nice were Jamie Lee Curtis and Oprah Winfrey (who, for security reasons, had to come in through the hotel’s employee entrance and then spent considerable time chatting genuinely with each third-shift worker she encountered in the kitchen and laundry rooms she passed through on the way to the elevator).

Q: Having visited so many countries, I’m sure it’s hard to pick a favorite place. What are your top three? 

A: Hmmm. Yup. Definitely hard, and constantly changing! Top is Nepal, both for having the nicest people and for being so exotic and yet so accommodating to English-speaking travelers (although I always made sure I knew the local words for please and thank you and some other basics so I wouldn’t be the obnoxious American; it’s a huge bonus when you can read an occasional street sign or a menu!). Next up is Prague. I just love all the cobblestone paths and the castle and the architecture -- it’s beyond atmospheric. Rounding it out, I might have to say Australia for combining beautiful surroundings with such a laid-back vibe.

Thank you, Jen!  

Get more of Jen's former life via Annie in MAP TO THE STARS!

About Jen

Jen Malone writes books for tweens and teens. Her debut At Your Service published with Simon & Schuster/Aladdin MIX in 2014 and her new series, You're Invited (Simon & Schuster), co-written with Gail Nall, released on May 19, 2015. Map to the Stars is the first of three young adult titles forthcoming from HarperCollins. Jen lives outside Boston with her husband and three children, teaches at Boston University, loves school visits, and has a "thing" for cute hedgehog pictures. You can learn more about her and her books at www.jenmalonewrites.com.

Lori Goldstein is the author of Becoming Jinn (Feiwel and Friends/Macmillan, now available!!, sequel, Spring 2016). With a degree in journalism and more than 10 years of experience, Lori is a freelance copyeditor and manuscript consultant for all genres. She focuses on the nitty-gritty, letting writers focus on the writing.

Twitter

Author Web site

Goodreads

Facebook
Tumblr
Instagram