The Revision Cave

 I understand that the Internet is striking against bad people that want to censor the Internet today, so I'm supposed to be blacked out and whatnot. But I'm posting for a few reasons:

1. Alexa called me on not posting on Monday, and I felt like a loser,
 2. I need to announce the winner of the Brodi Ashton Classy Author Giveaway, (scroll to the bottom)( Decided I'm doing that tomorrow instead) and
3. I need to explain why my blog posts might be kind of sub-par (or occasionally absent) in the next few weeks.

Oh! And, lastly, I think this insipid post will illustrate how pointless everyone's blog posts might be if the internet got all censored. So that's worth something, right?

Ohhhkay. Let's go.

Well, folks, it's that time of the manuscript again. The amazing, magical, heartbreaking, devastating, depression-tailspin-sending time when I have a ton of revisions to do and so do half my CPs.

Everyone's gearing up to query, which is a wonderful, exhilarating thing which basically translates to I HAVE TO GET THESE REVISIONS DONE AND THESE 3 OTHER MSs READ AND THOUGHTFULLY COMMENTED ON AND ALSO COULD YOU PLEASE LOOK AT MY QUERY ONE MORE TIME BECAUSE I'M WORRIED ABOUT THAT COMMA YOU KNOW WHICH ONE.

I'm on edge, we're all on edge, let's hole up in our rooms and hunch over our computers and occasionally burst into tears and maybe also send each other 75 emails a day which may or may not consist largely of exclamation points (!!!!)

Yeah. It's insane, and hilarious, and draining. So, for lack of a coherent post today, I thought I'd show you where I'm going to be doing the most hours of insanity/hilarity on the next couple of weekends: The Revision Cave.



1. There's the Harry Potter crew. Love them. Below them to the left is a quote from Robbie Coltrane about making the movies: "Nobody thought, 'Oh, it's just a kids' film.' Everyone treated it as seriously as Ibsen." Damn straight.

2. Pictures of the fam and me and my sweetie. Because, well, obvious.

3. Flowers. Even caves need flowers.

4. The little corner I keep with love notes from my CPs. Even if Gina's are mushier and flowerier and more quote-filled than Chessie's, I know they love me the same.

5. A giant bag of peanut butter M&Ms that I keep for the sole purpose of letting my kids get their grubby little hands into when they manage to sneak up to my office. It's cute to watch them feeling like they naughtily won something.

6. Mug my sister got me with quotes from TWILIGHT. If I ever lose confidence in my writing ability...well, you can imagine how this helps.

7. Headphones. Obvious.

8. The pretty paper notebooks I bought back when I thought I would actually do some longhand in there. Sometimes they help when I need to scribble manuscript-wide notes.

9. My tape dispenser that I wallpapered the the UGLIEST flowery stuff so no one would want to steal it and pretend it was always theirs. Because seriously, why are people always stealing tape dispensers?

10. My crew of guys. Edward, Thor, and Professor X. They help. Edward loves me unconditionally and eternally, Thor will smash anyone who gets in my way, and the Professor is...well...THE PROFESSOR.

11. The netbook with Underwood skin. Because my husband calls it a "glorified typewriter."

12. The paper copy of ONE, God help me.

13. The cast of characters. You can see Nik and Davis, Joey and Brian (let's take a moment of silence may they rest in peace) and Merrin and Elias are up there too (still haven't found a better one than Corey Monteith, sorry G, except that guy I stalked in Starbucks and my picture of him sucks.) Still haven't found a perfect Leni and Daniel so they're down for now.

14. Superheroes growth chart. It might look like I've grown a lot, but I put "Full Request" almost halfway up the chart when I thought that if I was getting full reqs I was basically halfway to published. HAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I know. I was so cute.

I'm almost grown up to "Second complete MS" and the next step will probably be "sign with agent" which I'm too superstitious to even put up there. But that will be at Daredevil level, which is apropos, and now I'm hovering at Human Torch. Which is WAY apropos.

15. Fab author inspiration. There's another growth chart about growing with critique from Beth Revis and the printout of the first time ELANA JOHNSON COMMENTED ON MY BLOG OMG. Telling me not to stop dreaming. She's so awesome.

16. A bracelet my writing buddy Jean gave me that's engraved with "the heart of a writer." I'm gonna engrave the title of every book I get published on the other side.  So, it's like optimistic and whatnot.

17. This picture reminds me of an Israeli kids' song that says, "To the giraffe, all of our problems look very, very small." I love it.

18. More pictures of the fam. Me and my sister up top, me and my baby girl below, and to the left, a snap of my grandmother at 23, who I think I was probably cloned from. Probably should write a book about that.

19. A handwritten and illustrated version of Shel Silverstein's "Listen to the Mustn't's" from my Israeli bestie Hela, which always makes me weep, and a necklace she made me to go with it.

20. A story from Jewish tradition about the importance of telling stories, which ends: "God made people because God loves stories." It helps remind me that all this insanity isn't really as silly and pointless as I sometimes worry it is.

Welp! That's the tour. Thanks for visiting, hope you enjoyed it, and if you ever come over, there's a second desk in the same office, so we can TOTALLY have a writing date with enough workspace AND without having to look at/talk to each other. Good times.

Will 2012 Be Your Year?

I'm just gonna say it right now: 2012 is going to be My Year.

How do I know? Because I'm going to make it My Year. Just like I did with 2011.

Here's how I made 2011 My Year:

• I wrote. Every. Single. Day.
• I blogged. A lot.
• I read. A lot.
• I finished THE TRAVELERS.
• I met handfuls, bunches, and scads of amazing, kind, and brilliant writers.
• I got very, very lucky, and some of those writers agreed to critique TT. I listened to their suggestions for how to make it better. Then I made it better.
• I attended WriteonCon in August.
• I learned how to write a query letter. And a synopsis. And a two sentence pitch. And a one sentence pitch. And a Twitter pitch. And a logline. And I learned how to make a first page sparkle.
• I sent almost a hundred queries and entered lots of blog contests for TT. I even got some requests!
• I learned to deal with rejection. A LOT of rejection. (I even cried the ugly cry!) Then I learned to accept that no matter what, it's not easy.
• I started writing ONE as soon as the first query went out on TT.
• I got super, extra, turbo lucky, and some of those writers became dear friends to me (and Aunties to my kids!)
• I wrote ONE much better than I wrote TT, in more ways than I can count.
• I decided to stop querying TT. (That hurt. A lot.)
• I critiqued six-ish projects from other writers while I was doing all of the above.
• I assembled an amazing team of 6 (six!) critique partners in two rounds for ONE (hi ladies, I love you all so much.)
• I started revising ONE according to their suggestions. 

"But, Leigh Ann," you might say. "You didn't sign with an agent, or sell a book, or or or or or."

Nope. I sure didn't. Would I have liked to? Absolutely. I mean, yeah. That would have put me over the moon.

But I took every single step I had to in order to get there.
I learned, I pushed myself, I worked my butt off, I failed (kind of spectacularly,) I learned some more, I worked my butt off some more.

So, how am I going to make sure that 2012 is My Year?

I'm going to do exactly the same thing.

More specifically, here's what's on tap in my writing world for 2012:

• Revise and polish ONE.
• Write, rewrite, and rewrite again all the queries, pitches, and other agent-seeking accouterments for ONE.
• Query and contest the heck out of ONE.
• Attend WriteOnCon.
• Outline manuscript #3.
• Write manuscript #3.
• Rewrite, revise, and polish manuscript #3
• Attend SCBWI NYC (okay, I know that's technically 2013, throw me a bone. I'm excited.)
• Read a lot.
• Blog a lot.
• Critique a lot.
• Write. Every. Single. Day. (except maybe the day that I'm supposed to help this new little human get out of my body. But I'm sure I get a pass for that, right? And honestly probably I'll write that day too. Labor can get boring.

Will I get requests for ONE?
Probably, though I wouldn't place bets on it.


Am I going to sign with an agent? 
Maybe not.

Will I sell a book?
Probably not.

Will I attain widespread fame and fortune?
In a parallel universe, maybe.


But that's okay. Because I know I'm trying my absolute hardest to get there.


So, what about you? Will 2012 be YOUR year?

The only one who can decide whether 2012 will be your year is you.  And, as Sugar says, no one is going to give you a thing. You have to go out and get it for yourself.

So, if you want 2012 to be your year, my dear writing loves, then set your mind to buckling down and getting to work. Make it happen no matter what. Because you're the only one who really can.


Now, please tell me, because I really want to know. How are you going to make sure 2012 is Your Year?

Flaw 'Em Up! (Crit Diaries)

Before we get started: A request. I'm totally psyched that I get to guest post over at Zap's Lobster Tank next Friday for "F---ing Awesome Friday." I'm going to be writing about how F---ing Awesome UNAGENTED (/unpublished) WRITERS are. 

So. If you are an unagented and/or unpublished writer, send me something you're proud of.  Could be a concept, an excerpt, a sentence, a TITLE for crying out loud.  Just...whatever you have that your agent-seeking fingers have toiled over that makes you say, "Yeah. I am F---ing Awesome." I know you have it.

I'm going to do my best to work everyone's contributions into the post. Because you are F---ing Awesome, unagenteds. Don't forget it.

(Oh! And if you are an unagented writer and you know that I think you're F---ing Awesome - i.e., I have harassed you for your manuscript, synopsis, kissing scenes, or anything PLEASEGOD that lets me read more of your book...don't think you can get out of this. I'm coming after you. Yeah, Jamie Gray and Marcy Kate. That's you.

Because, after all - if you don't have rabid fans, what DO you have? )

Now, on with the post.

Well, friends, it's that time of the manuscript again.

Chessie and Maggie are plowing through crit at a pretty impressive clip, and along with the "break the paragraph here"s and "What made you fall in love with run-on sentences this year?"s and "Elias sounds like an old man"s, I'm also starting to sort through the novel's meta-questions.

When I sent the ladies my manuscript, I asked them to keep a lookout for a few things.

To avoid my second lead, Elias, being a douchebag (not least to avoid Gina's wrath), I didn't give him any really STRONG flaws. At least, not any obviously egregious ones.  And I wanted to know if it was a problem.

We all know that a main character must have identifiable flaws. For one thing, they make her believable, and for another, they clarify her character arc - how she's going to grow and change throughout the story - for the reader.  So, we writers worth our salt get to work flawing our main characters up. Maybe they have low self-confidence, or they are are really rude, or stuck-up, or can't handle their tempers, or maybe they don't believe in Love (*happy sigh*.) 

But what about secondary leads? How flawed must secondary leads, or any supporting characters, be in order to be believable - in order for us to root for them?

Before critique on ONE even got rolling, I posed this question to my patient writing coach Jean, and then after Chessie had hung out with Elias for a bit I asked the same of her. And they both answered the same way:

Every character must have a flaw, but the reader only needs to see it to the extent that it interacts with your main character's arc. Mostly because your character can't go this story on her own. She has to have people doing stuff and causing events for her to react to, and without flaws, other characters won't do that. 

In other words? Your cast of characters is kind of like Voltron. One unbelievably-unflawed link, and it all goes to hell.

So, in other words, the more involved your characters are with the main character's story, the more of their flaws the reader should be able to see.  For example, I'm pretty sure that Merrin's biology teacher spends too much cash on comic books and too little saving for retirement. But we don't see that, because they only thing he does in this book is look at Mer and Elias scoldingly for breaking curfew on a school trip. No problem.

But Elias has a pretty major, if quiet, flaw that ends up causing kind of a lot of trouble in its own way. Now, I could give him no flaws, so that he could just skate through the story holding Mer's hand and boosting her self-confidence, but then people would throw my book across the room. Because a perfect character is unbelievable, especially one that we see so much of,  the whole STORY would become unbelievable.

Okay, readers. Your turn! Please regale us with stories of how you've flawed your supporting characters up, and what that meant for the way you wrote your story.

Make Them Obsessed and Tear Their Hearts Out

So, I got to read the sequel to THE NOCTURNIAN, the YA Sci-Fi novel Francesca's querying right now, over the past couple of weeks. 

(I know. You're seething with jealousy. And you should be. Here's why:)

I finished the book and I felt like I needed a moment to be alone, just so I could deal with it being over.

Chessie's asked me what I thought about it, and I feel bad that I can't really put it into words any better than that. But it's true. There was a sense of completion, victory and hope, underlaid with a very acute feeling of loss. Something irreparable. Something life-changing.  It felt like there was sort of an emptiness, where the book had taken a little piece of my heart that I couldn't really ever get back.

What I could say about the book was this: The last book  that made me feel that way at the end was POSSESSION by Elana Johnson. The one before that? CATCHING FIRE, the second book in THE HUNGER GAMES trilogy.

Yeah.

Now, there have been plenty of books I've really really enjoyed that did NOT make me feel like that. Those books fall into the (much more easily definable) category of "Obsessed." That means, to me, that even when I'm not reading, I'm thinking about the story. Songs  I hear on the radio make me think of that-one-chapter-when. I see someone at a coffee shop, and think, "Oh! That looks just like Alexis." I can't hear something about Paris on the news without thinking of the fictional hi jinx that occurred there in that one book I loved so much.

So all my CPs' books fall into that category, (duh)  right along with HARRY POTTER and TWILIGHT.

All these books are ones I am passionate about, for one of two reasons:

1. I'm obsessed with the world and/or the characters and/OR
2. I feel like my heart got torn out and trampled on by the end.

Of course, I want to write a story that others are passionate about. After all, a book's not going to sell too well if people pick it up, read some pages, say, "eh," and put it down again.

This is only my second project, and so I'm still not quite sure how to go about inspiring obsession.  But I think I have some idea of how to tear hearts out.

This brings me to a post my CP and writing-life coach Jean made recently about war in fiction. In the blog, she discusses her WiP,  and how even though it's about kid assassins (I know! Awesome, right?) it's really about war.

Then I commented that  reading about war is so gut-wrenching, because at the end, no one wins. And that's the worst part of the whole thing.

And then I thought, well, that's really how real life is, isn't it? There are no one hundred percent happy endings. For stories to feel real, and identifiable, and to tear the readers' hearts out and put them back in again not-quite-whole...there has to be a sense that no one really won here. Even if there was a literal win, like of a battle (oh hey HARRY POTTER) there's still going to be a lot lost.

The same sense we feel in our own lives.
The same things that build us up and tear us down.
The same things we know to be true.
The same things that make us human will make our characters and our stories human too.

Quite frankly, this is something I think is a little flawed about my first project. Sure, there's a bit of loss, and it's something that punches me in the gut every time. But I'm not sure it's something every reader would care about. In writing ONE, it was one of my hopes that, in achieving some of her goals, my MC also had to sacrifice a great deal. I think I'm getting a lot better at that with this second project.

So, what makes you crazy-in-love with a book? And what are you doing to make that happen in your own writing?

What's the rush?

My dear friend and writing-life coach, Jean, asked me an important question last week. I was in the midst of one of my work/life/family/writing balance breakdowns (which happen every 14 days like clockwork), struggling to figure out how I was going to do my day job, keep my house non-condemnable, get decent meals cooked, love on my kids, AND finish this draft.

After all, I had promised it to my first round CPs at the beginning of November. Then the beginning of December. And here I was, staring at December 9th on the calendar, and wondering how it had taken me five and a half weeks to finish a simple first-pass edit.

So I typed Jean a tear-filled email (I believe Gina was the one to get it about a month ago, you ladies are troopers) about the laundry and crumbs in the carpet and trash that needed to be taken out and bathtubs that needed to be bleached. And how it wasn't possible to do all the things that needed to be done AND hug my babies AND sleep AND get any writing done.

She wrote back a long email that showed that she heard what I was saying and that she sympathized, but what she really wanted to say was right there at the end:

"What's the rush?"


So that question stayed on my mind for several days, as the dear patient lady continued to correspond with me via novel-length email after novel-length email. After all, I know very well that I don't have an editor or even an agent to put me on deadline. (Believe me. I KNOW.) And I know that, as an unagented writer, it won't make a difference whether my project takes days, weeks, months, or even years longer to complete. So why should I rush?

RUSH

verb (used with object)

5. to perform, accomplish, or finish with speed, impetuosity, or violence.

Okay. Well, I obviously shouldn't do that. We all know that an impetuously sent query (or a violently sent one, yeesh) is the kiss of death for a writer. But even at this stage of the game, I don't want to waste my CPs' time by sending them a hastily, haphazardly thrown together manuscript.

So, I asked myself again, "Whats' the rush?" (Because Jean is wise, you know.) 

I started to realize that it wasn't necessarily a sense of rush I felt, but a sense of drive. The feeling that I wouldn't be able to think about anything else, rest easy, or even breathe unless I made a least one little step every day on this draft.

I could convince myself that I'd be okay without writing a little bit every day, but after four or five days of ignoring ONE, I started to get mighty cranky, and resentful, and just generally down in the dumps. (Also my main character would start to scream at me, and you don't want to be near her when she's angry.)


What I learned from this was: I know there's no rush to finish any project, any time. But for me? There's definitely a rush when it comes to writing:

RUSH

noun 

2. the immediate pleasurable feeling produced by a drug (as heroin or amphetamine)

Yep. My name is Leigh Ann Kopans, and I am a writing addict. 

What about you? Do you feel a sense of rush when it comes to your projects? Help me feel not-so-crazy down in the comments.

One Year On

One year ago today, I woke up with an idea in my head and frantically typed 5,000 words of a story that would become THE TRAVELERS.

That day, I thought a lot of things about my writing self.

I thought that writing was some silly endeavor I had to try to get out of my system.
I didn't know that writing was something absolutely ingrained in me, desperate to be let free.

I thought that those 5,000 words were captivating, stunning, AWESOME.
I didn't know that they weren't (but I'd learn to make them better.)

I thought that I'd just write this one book and be done with it.
I didn't know I'd write this book, then write another one, then dream up the skeleton for a third, before the year was out.

I thought there was no way I'd ever show my book to anyone.
I didn't know that the handful of people I ended up showing my book to would become absolute lifelines for me, writing and otherwise, and very dear friends.

I thought that, when those people gave me constructive criticism, I would curl up in a ball and die.
I didn't know that the critique-and-revision stage would turn out to be my absolute most favorite part of the whole process.

I thought that writing and blogging about it would make me even more disconnected than I already planned to be.
I didn't know that so so many of you would find my little blog, like reading what I have to say, and support me along the rocky road that I've only just started out on. (Hi, followers! I really do love each and every one of you.)

I thought that writing was ridiculous because it didn't match up with all the career goals I'd had (and achieved!) before.
I didn't know that becoming an author was a dream living deep inside me that I never knew I had.


I thought that all writing this book would accomplish was losing me sleep and buoying me through a tough year.
I didn't know writing would become part of how I think, the way I look at the world, and who I am.

And, just because you might be wondering....

I thought my book would suck.
It doesn't.


Oh! And those five thousand words? Only one sentence out of them survived to make it to the manuscript I'm querying now. (Yeah. I had a lot to learn.) But that sentence, still perfectly intact, is one of my favorites in the whole book - and looking on my first notes dated one year ago today, I know it was in me from the very beginning:

Could it be possible to belong to someone she had never met?

So, even though I was hating on Past Me something fierce on Monday, today, on my one-year-writerversary, I want to give Past Me a great big hug. She's absolutely changed my life.

Your turn! Tell me what reflections and revelations you've had on your writerversaries. Can't wait to tear up at all your sweet stories.