Author of award-winning, adventurous realistic and historical fiction

Where we buy our books

Dec 6, 2011 | , , , , , ,

I don’t care where people buy their books–indies or B&N or Half Price or online or Urban Outfitters or Target or the airport or your neighbor’s stoop–I just like it when people buy books. Yay, books!
With one exception: buy it where you found it.

If you discover a book in a bookstore, buy it there.

There have been a lot of trend pieces lately (and this article) about people using bookshops as showrooms–browsing the display tables and staff picks, then jotting down or taking pics of the titles to remember to buy them from an online retailer. I say: that sucks! Somebody working at that bookstore decided to stock the book, and liked it enough to put it out for you to find it. If you wouldn’t have known or thought to order it online without seeing it in the brick & mortar store, that store (and its helpful curators, the employees) deserves for you to buy the book there. Even if it costs a dollar or several more than online.
By the same measure: if you discover a title from an online giant’s email or newsletter or algorithm, great! Go ahead and buy it from them.

But a store is a store, not a showroom. It’s there to sell things and if it doesn’t, it will go away. Now that we have online retailers with no physical presence and mobile shopping apps up the wazoo, we have to protect the brick & mortar stores that help make our towns and neighborhoods vibrant places. Unless, of course, you want all the businesses around you to be banks and cell-phone stores. Nothing against them, but personally, I’d prefer a few bookshops in the mix.

Revision Trick: Synopsize Me

Nov 8, 2011 | , , , , ,

I know, I know. Synopses are devilish. But hear me out on this one.
I always start revisions by reading through my WIP, fighting the urge to make line edits the whole time. (If I let myself start making edits, I would never get through the read. So if something is really important, I jot it down on my ongoing revisions list, which is usually the length of Ulysses by the time I start revising.) But this time, to help keep my hands busy while I read, I synopsized my WIP. The urge to line-edit disappeared.

I didn’t mind writing the synopsis while doing my first read-through, mainly because I (apparently) forgot what happened in roughly 40% of my WIP. So I wasn’t slogging through dialogue I had memorized and scenes seared into my brain–the story was fresh, and I found it interesting to summarize each chapter after I read it. There’s a reason why teachers make kids summarize/retell as techniques for monitoring comprehension. It works. I remember all of my WIP after synopsizing it.

Summarizing/synopsizing helped me see the places in the WIP where eighty billion things happen at once (I’m looking at you, Chapter 14) and those where nothing happens for a really, really long time and it’s boring. I can clearly see where the pacing needs work. My synopsis is also helping me figure out where I might place the scenes I want to add and where certain subplots disappear/appear. I’m the type of person who needs to be able to see the big picture a lot while revising. My synopsis will now be my map.

For each round of revision I start on this WIP, I’m going to start by updating my synopsis with a read-through. It’ll both refresh my memory and show me which parts saw the most/least work. The best part? By the time I’m done with revisions once and for all*, I’ll have a synopsis ready should I ever need it.

*”once and for all” = for now, because I am a compulsive reviser

Have you ever used a synopsis to help with the early rounds of revision, writer friends? What are your revision tricks? Spill!

I love this poem.

Oct 4, 2011 | , ,

A Poet’s Poem
Brenda Shaughnessy

If it takes me all day,
I will get the word freshened out of this poem.

I put it in the first line, then moved it to the second,
and now it won’t come out.

It’s stuck. I’m so frustrated,
so I went out to my little porch all covered in snow

and watched the icicles drip, as I smoked
a cigarette.

Finally I reached up and broke a big, clear spike
off the roof with my bare hand.

And used it to write a word in the snow.
I wrote the word snow.

I can’t stand myself.

I think it applies to novelists, too.
Thanks to Megan for a) knowing I would love it b) emailing it to me.

Miss Teen Dream Fun Facts Page!

Sep 12, 2011 | , , , ,

I had so much fun reading Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens. So much fun that I didn’t want to write a review or even sum up my thoughts on the madcap, hilarious satire. Instead, here’s my homage to that perfect end-of-summer read: my own contestant fun facts page, if as a Wisconsin teen I hadn’t been more Daria-like than a Teen Dreamer.

Name: Rebecca Behrens
State: Miss Wisconsin
Age: 16
Height: almost 5′ 3”
Weight: Depends on how many dairy products I have sampled
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Green
Best feature: Arm muscles from frozen-custard scooping

Fun Facts About Me:
I secretly love to sing along to my Boyz Will B Boyz CD while dancing around my room. But in public, I tell everyone I only listen to alternative and folk rock.*
My favorite show is NOVA Captains Bodacious.
The thing that scares me most is Ladybird Hope the swimsuit competition running out of the Corporation’s 100 Lashes mascara.
I love watching old movies, and I like to make Hitchcock blonde Halloween costumes.
My dream is to run the Corporation’s doughnut production business unit. Or to be an investigative journalist who exposes crooks with hidden cameras. I love me some hidden cameras.

*The Corporation suggested that I do not mention Ani DiFranco by name.

For those of you who’ve read Beauty Queens: what would your fun facts be?

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