It's All About Stupid, Stupid

I'm enjoying my first critique session (is it a session if it's virtual?) with a fellow middle-grade writer I met at SCBWI, and I want to take this opportunity to wax poetic about the value of critique. I've had lots of people read my book--some friends and family and some English-professor colleagues--and all have been helpful, but now what I can benefit from the most is someone who is as embroiled in the genre as I am. And someone who is able and willing to read at a level of detail that I simply can't see anymore.

For instance, it turns out that about the only adjective one of my characters uses is "stupid." I knew I was overusing the word, but it took my critique partner highlighting again and again for me to realize that I need to vary my word choice. In my latest revision, I think I actually got better at describing this particular character's attitude in select moments, but I need to sustain that in all moments and take my red pen (or my delete key) like a weapon into the land of all those stupids.

Perhaps more important than overuse of a pretty lame adjective, my reader is also showing me places where she is confused. Of course, I am never confused because I always understand what's going on in the narrative, so I can be pretty blind to places that create confusion for my reader. Realizing I need to explain or clarify in certain scenes is invaluable.

And finally, as I always tell my students, I am also getting a lot out of the experience of reading my partner's chapters. She does some things a lot better than I do, and I might learn a thing or two from her about voice and pace. And when I find myself occasionally confused by her text, it helps me to think more clearly about the challenges all writers (including myself) face in balancing mystery against confusion.

So, in sum, all readers are good readers in one way or another, but an extra big, enthusiastic yay for critique partners!

Meter Tag

On Friday, I visited my son's 4th grade class to teach the kids about poetic meter. I used an activity that I actually use at Bucknell where the students invent movements to go along with each metric foot (like a skip for an iamb -- an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one) and then have relay races to see which metric form is fastest. On Friday, dactyls won the race. It was highly entertaining, and showing kids that poetry can be fun is pretty awesome.

Today, I got a packet of thank-you notes, many with pictures of the kids leaping around and some with poems they wrote. They thanked me for teaching them about meter, and many of them wrote about meter in ways they showed they really understood it. One kid wrote, "Thanks for showing us how to dance to poetry," and another wrote, "I learned more about meter and poetry than I will ever learn." Reading their notes has completely filled me with joy!

In my novel, the main characters attend a poetry camp, and I feel a renewed sense of commitment to that part of the novel. Poetry is accessible and interesting and entertaining to children! Maybe I can find a way to get some of the joy from meter tag and from the thank you notes into my book.

Why Homework is a Good Thing

This post is not about the homework I ask my students to do, though obviously that is also a good thing. Rather, this is about the homework I was asked to do for a workshop on writing historical fiction that I will attend next week at the Eastern PA SCBWI conference. We were asked to write the first paragraphs of three different novels set in three different times and places. I suppose if I'd ever taken a creative writing class, I might be jaded about this sort of exercise, but I am hungry for prompts, and I really enjoyed writing my paragraphs.

Not only did I have fun, I also tumbled into my next book. I've had an idea for awhile, bumping around in the back of my brain. It was the opening of a novel, a fabulous, surprising series of events, but it ended with a dramatically unfinished "and then..." My homework helped me to finish the sentence: the paragraph met up with the story fragment in my imagination, and now I have a whole plot. Actually, I also had an important conversation in the middle of all of this with my nine year old who has turned into an outstanding sounding board. So the process was (1) idea, (2) homework and epiphany, and (3) conversation to talk through kinks. Of course, the process isn't over either.

I'm pasting in the paragraph. I don't think it will actually be part of the book, but it led me to the story, so it deserves to be "published" here:

Xavi leaned against the gas stove, holding his book away from the heat of the flame and absently stirring custard in the pot, his eyes fixed on the page. He didn’t know how long he had been stirring, but during that time the hero Ramon had fled the marauding bandits and was about to tell his great love Christina where he’d hidden the jewels. Xavi dropped the spoon to turn the page, but before he read a word, the book was knocked out of his hand. “Que faix?” the housekeeper screamed at him in Catalan. Xavi knew she was angry because they weren’t supposed to speak in Catalan anymore. He looked at the pot and realized he’d scalded the custard. It would have been their first desert in nearly six months.

Since this was homework (and since I wax poetic in my classes about peer review), I do welcome any feedback. Thus the process goes on.

Gregor the Overlander

I finished the first book in the Suzanne Collins Underland Chronicles (I think that's what the series is called...) I was leary at first because the talking bats and cockroaches were offputting, but I got used to them pretty quickly, and I found myself deeply engrossed in the Underland world. I'm eager to move on to the next book in the series! So many books in this genre ask us to believe in children as authority figures, and Collins really gets it right. When Gregor assumes authority at a couple of key junctures in the book, I was right there with him, ready to follow.

The book, as Collins says in the Acknowledgements, is about family, so it seems appropriate to have read most of it while with my family and my extended family in Tennessee. It is also about families that are separated, so as we leave tomorrow to go back home, saying our goodbyes, I feel strengthened by Gregor's heroism. And I am reminded of the original sentiment that inspired this blog: C.S. Lewis's claim that we learn from the fantasy worlds of books lessons of heroism that help us in our real lives.

Feedback from the Other Side

Yesterday I wrote about having gotten feedback from an agent. Today I finished grading a set of papers for a 200-level class, so now I am the feedback giver. Because I have been feeling reflective about how it feels to get feedback, it seems appropriate for me to ponder what it's like on the other side. I should acknowledge that I'm pretty sure I care a lot more about my book than any of my students care about their 4-5 page analysis of a Victorian text, so the stakes are really, really different. Still, I am aware that it is sometimes hard to remember that the comments are about the writing and not the writer. When I tell a student she is too wordy, she may feel that I challenge her identity. The student who didn't really have much focus to his argument may wonder if I am questioning his focus in life. In short, even with lower stakes, nerves can be raw and feedback can hurt.

The trick as a teacher, in my opinion, is to treat the writer like she is always revising. Even when one assignment is wrapped up, there will be another assignment. Even when the semester ends and the class is over, there will be other classes. Even when they graduate and go out into the world, they will still write. So every comment is a suggestion for next time, and thus is rooted in a fundamental sense that there is potential everywhere. And because every comment implies a belief in the writer's potential, I hope that the writers will not be hurt by criticism but will learn from it and move forward. Onward and upward with the arts, as they always say at Carleton.

Feedback, Thank You

I got feedback from an agent today. Those of you who are in the business of querying agents know that there is an art to rejection letters--some are total form letters (Dear Author) with no attempt at soul, others are kindly meant (I choose to believe) form letters that at least express some respect and understanding, others seem to be personal rejections, at least they mention the title of the manuscript or even reference some other specific that allows one to assume the rejection was carefully, lovingly crafted for you and only you. None of these rejections contain any feedback.

However, today I got a short e-mail from an agent who was specific about why my manuscript doesn't work for her, and while that makes the rejection harder to take in some ways, it is the most respectful and certainly the most helpful rejection I've received. Of course, one should be cautious about assuming that one agent's concerns are all agents' concerns, but it is in any case useful to have some concrete criticism to move forward with.

And I've just been revising my first chapter, which I knew wasn't completely perfect a la George Eliot but which I had felt was pretty dang good. Now, I am able to see some places I can improve. It probably took that agent less than five minutes to write up her response to my book, and now I am able to make the book better. Aside from this (I hope) increasing my chances of finding an agent who wants to represent me, this simply helps me be a better writer, and isn't that really the idea?

Riordan, Haddix, and Barrett Browning

Those of you regularly check out The Wardrobe Door might have noticed that the "What I am Reading" sidebar has gone unchanged for sometime. Last night, I finally finished Rick Riordan's The Battle of the Labyrinth, and I enjoyed it a lot. Riordan balances well the epic and the mundane, exemplified in the scene near the very end of the novel when Poseidon shows up at Percy's birthday party. The awesome presence of the sea god along with the awkwardness of Percy's mom's ex meeting her new boyfriend illustrates the apples and oranges tone of the whole series. This mostly works for me, though there are times when I find it jarring. All in all, I find the basic premise of the books fabulous and inventive. I think Riordan crafts one of his most complex and interesting characters in Nico, and I am eager to see how he develops in the final book of the series.

I should say that I also read Margaret Peterson Haddix's Found recently, but I read it too quickly to post it here as in process. It's a compelling story which presents some classic issues (adolescent identity, adoption, and time travel) in a new way. I couldn't put it down and am eager to move on to the next in the series. I recommended it to my 9-year-old who also really enjoyed it.

Finally, I get to the meat of this post. The reason it takes me so long to read whatever I am reading is that I also read for a living. I tend to divide my reading into professional reading and reading-for-pleasure. While I do teach a course in YA fiction, I still consider Riordan and Haddix pleasure reading, whereas Elizabeth Barrett Browning's verse novel Aurora Leigh, which I've just finished reading with my seminar, is professional reading. However, I do take great pleasure from most of the professional reading I do. Aurora Leigh, for instance, tells a fabulous story in a lush and impressively crafted form. I think I've read it 4-5 times now, and each time it is a different text to me. This time, I was less interested in Aurora's personal story and more interested in her professional story. Of course, those of you who know the poem know that those stories ultimately come together, and that's my message here.

All the reading I do pleases me, and much of the reading that I think has nothing to do with my job ends up finding its way into my writing or into my classroom. When Aurora Leigh comes to discover that her engagement with the world around her and her attempts to put her soul into words on the page are fundamentally the same project, she reminds me that my students, my profession, my family, myself and even the texts themselves are better served if I do not separate the professional from the personal.