Nuclear Code

Oldest Daughter . . . if there is an EASY way to learn something and a hard one? She will always pick the latter. But then once it is learned, it's really learned. Hence, she seems a LOT older than she is. As a parent, having a child like this is sometimes heart-rending. And still, every once in a while, she will ask me, "WHY didn't you TELL me x or y?" And I say, "But I did!" "Yes, but you didn't INSIST." "Because I know better. You won't listen."

Oldest Son . . . he may be absent-minded . . . but generally, if I tell him something, he'll listen (usually). If there is an easy way, and a hard way, he will generally, in essence, say, "Save me the trouble, Mom. What should I do?"

So it is with writing. I have a writer friend whose drafts take years. I have a writer friend who generally does a dozen drafts. I have one who will deconstruct his entire novel multiple times (you know who you are). I have a friend who writes, I am fairly sure, for therapy. And there are times I would like to say to Dozen Draft Donna, "You know, couldn't you have figured most of this out by, say, Draft #4?"

Except I don't.

I am fairly certain that I know a tiny little bit about writing--whether that's novels, nonfiction, or synopses and queries. And yet all I can do on this blog is say, "This is what works for me." I presume, with time, Dozen Drafter will figure out a new process, a new path through the woods, that works more efficiently. If she ever sells a novel and has another under contract, guess what? She'll have to. With Deconstructing Harry . . . each time he does this, I see him move hugely forward in leaps and bounds in ways I am not sure I do.

Which is why I have only so much patience with the writers who tell you HOW to DO it FOR SURE. As if they have the nuclear code. Trust me, they don't. I don't. YOU don't.

Oldest is going to take a lesson this summer and get the exact bowings and finger instructions that Itzhak Perlman used for the concerto she is learning. (She is taking a lesson with his former student.) But I can guarantee you she'll have to work with it for a while to make the piece her own.

So goes it for writing advice. And don't let anyone convince you otherwise.

Thoughts?

Coach

When I was 9, I wanted to play baseball in my town's rec league. The problem was baseball--back then--was only for boys. My parents told me to write to the mayor. They helped me draft a letter, and my mom typed it. (Which in and of itself shows you what kind of parents I had, and firmly lodged in my mind that you CAN fight City Hall; hence my radical roots.) I got back a detailed response of "We DO have sports for girls, like ice skating. You can also take needlework or knitting." This response was . . . frankly . . . bullsh*t.

Shortly after that, we moved to Bermuda, where I learned weird British sports like netball (sort of like soccer combined with basketball--but no backboard), and then field hockey. But I still wanted to play baseball.

Eventually, however, with my nose always buried in a book, I forgot all about PLAYING baseball. I then wanted to write about it. My sophomore year in college, I worked the night desk of UPI as a stringer in the sports department. I was in my glory. But eventually, further down the line still, I wanted to make stuff up for a living and sports reporting drifted away.

However, in my dreams, I would still love to coach the Yankees. And considering their standings right now in the AL (American League East) . . . maybe that's not such a bad idea. Now, I am not sure, as coach, what I would tell them to do. After all, this is a fantasy, not a reality. I think I would make a better boxing trainer, or even coach of the NY Giants . . . finessing baseball . . . not so sure.

Which brings me to . . . writing. Here we are, Boys (and Gals) of Summer. If you were coaching the Yankees Writers in the AL (American Literary league), what is the single best piece of coaching advice you offer?

Mine is get out there on the field and get the damn job done. WRITE.

Now play ball.

Then Come Talk to Me

I was at a cocktail party a couple of months ago and was asked to recount my best Demon Baby story. At the end of it, a woman who lives a block over from me sniffed and said, "CLEARLY you don't supervise your child enough." Then she turned her head and moved on to the next person she wanted to insult. I've seen her in action enough to know she's . . . well . . . just mean. I took a deep breath and then decided to leave the party. I don't really need to be around the cocktail crowd in this neighborhood. Heck, I'd much rather be around my children and watch Wow Wow Wubzy than talk to people like her. Hence . . . I'm pretty isolated. Intentionally.

However, had I decided this Queen of the Snotty Suburbs was entitled to an explaination, I might have said, "You have a child that bright (!!) and that active, building robots at age 3, and then come talk to me." And that's generally my attitude toward a lot of things in life.

You think I shouldn't (or should) do x or y . . . with process or with character or with my housework or with my lovelife or with my . . . wait until you have some experiential view and THEN come talk to me. Don't think I should panic when I get a new editor? Live through having one of your editors take off on maternity leave and orphan your book. Then come talk to me. Think I should self-edit with your method? Um . . . complete a novel and then come talk to me.

When I meet kids I have tremendous patience to talk to them about writing. I will spend whole DAYS in classrooms. But when a writer comes barrelling at me with advice and about the furthest this person has reached is two chapters and an idea . . . sorry. You've got to get down YOUR process before you can offer advice on process. Worse, nonwriters who have no grasp on this business offering advice--face it, this is one of the strangest careers in the world. (I've had nonwriters say, "Just write x or y, people always buy them," like selling a book is that easy, number one . . . and number two, like I can just switch and write a techno-thriller when I haven't any sort of background in it.

Which isn't to say you have to be pubbed to chime in with advice that makes me stand up and take notice!! Not by a long shot. But there is something EARNED in the trenches. The same can be said of anything I say on this blog. I can blah-blah-blah all I want about what works for ME, but in the end, you are in the trenches with your own book. You're gonna have to tough it out, figure it out, THEN come talk to me.

Maybe this is why writers tend to congregate with their own kind. Yeah, we like being around people who get the rejection, the trenches, the loneliness, the agonizing over pacing--'cause yeah, THEY are the ones we want to talk to.

I don't tell perfect mothers of perfect children about my child. He is PERFECT just the way he is. But I know they won't get me. And they won't get him.

And I love that you guys come around and talk to me. Yeah . . . come talk to me.

Thoughts?

Whatcha Got?

In Diary of a Blues Goddess, Georgia has her heart broken. Her best friends, a motley assortment of a drag queen, an Irish blues bassist, her guitarist, and her drummer, assemble in the kitchen of her grandmother's house in New Orleans. Her grandmother, nearly 90, makes them hot toddies. Then the drag queen, Dominique says something along the lines to Nan, "You've lived a long time, what do you have to say to Georgia? What advice?" And Nan tells about her own heartbreaks and widowhood, and losing her daughter to breast cancer and having to raise her only grandchild. And she says that the sum total of what she's learned, is "If the good Lord takes you to it, he'll take you through it." To which Dominique shrieks, "That . . . That's the best you've got?"

In life, I have pretty much learned that what I know about it can be summed up something along those lines. My friends in real life know most of the time, no matter what sort of heartbreak or pain I have, I say, "It is what it is." I don't wish for what I cannot have. I try to live without regret. I have learned that life is full of joy and full of extraordinary pain, and the more you love people, likely, the more pain you have. So really, would you have it any other way?

And that's the best I got.

But I thought about writing. The publishing industry. The ups and downs of careers. Of writer's block. Heck, of commas. And so today . . . you gotta show what you got. What is it? One pithy sentence that's the best you got. Advice. Truism. Whatever. About writing. And . . . here's the catch, gang.

It can't be a quote from a famous writer.

Like Nan's "he'll take you through it," you gotta earn this one.

And to make it interesting . . . anyone who posts their truism today, Demon Baby will select two names at random for a copy of one of my books from my backlist. So let me have it. The best you got.

Mine is being a writer isn't something you become. It's something you are.

Now go.

The Most Important Thing My Mom Ever Taught Me

Yesterday was Mother's Day, and I spent it with my mom. And in pondering it . . . I wrote her something in her card thanking her for the most important thing she ever taught me. Because ALL the advice my mom ever gave me, over all these years, from birth until now, can be summed up with these ten words:

PUT ON YOUR BIG GIRL PANTIES AND DEAL WITH IT.

Yup. Frankly, this advice from mom applies to everything in life.

Because in the end, what choice do we have? Suck it up or die whining.

I have converging deadlines.

See mom's advice.

I can't get this scene to work.

See mom's advice.

I got two rejection letters in one day.

See mom's advice.

I have a cold and don't feel good but my editor needs these galleys back.

See mom's advice.

I have a Demon Baby who was up no less than 13 times in the night and I haven't slept more than two hours and it was SUPPOSED to be Mother's Day, but I was up at 5:30 a.m., and was still cooking for Oldest Son's confirmation party at 8:30 p.m.

See mom's advice.

Today, after all that and no sleep again last night, I am really, really, really tired.

You know the drill.

So tell me, is there any bit of advice that seems to apply to all areas of your life? To writing?

Share.

Happy Monday!