Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
> I've been blocked for so long that I wonder if I'm still a writer?
Looking back at my written works, I wonder who wrote those lucid
bits of prose, it couldn't have been me? 

Both of these things are eminently relatable. It would surprise me
if any writer or other artist here hadn’t been in these positions
more than one time. 

> "I was simmering, simmering, simmering . . . Emerson brought me to
a boil." is a stunner of a quote. 

Nancy, thank you for that ramble. Your work ethic and self-awareness
are impressive. 

As Erin has just crossed a continent, following a series of inner
and outer journeys, and is doubtless facing more of the inner, if
not the imminent outer, I shall share some of the WELLish
Kate-in-auction moments. 

Give me a moment, please, to gather moments. I shall return with a
younger Erin and a first book, both in pixel form. 
  

    
We are in October 2008, and Erin is an unpublished novelist. The
posts will leapfrog. We aren’t going to follow every breathless
breath of the journey.

>First response to PLAIN KATE ....
.... which is from an editor who says she can't read it until the
week
after next.  

Still exciting, though. 

#

Agent called -- big nibbles from big fish.  Nothing firm.  Terribly
exciting!!!!

#

We have now heard from seven of eight editors, and have extended the
auction until Thursday morning (eight days from now) because one of
the
editors wanting to participate is in Frankfurt. Agent Emily reminds
me
gently that not everyone who is invited to the tea party will
necessarily show up with crumpets. I know this. But -- GUYS!!!

#

I'm a little worried about how excited I am.  If we don't get an
offer I may need to go into supportive care.)

#

One publisher sent their offer in a treasure chest w/ a scroll. 
Another had an objarka (the things Kate carves) made for me.  It
will
be very hard to choose.   

##

Seanan again. I’m stopping here because a treasure chest, scroll,
and objarka make a fabulous place to pause. 

The request, Erin, is of course for reflection around this
revisitation and how it is for now-you, reading/re-meeting then-you
in this day. 

Trusting you to ward your boundaries and reveal and open no more
than feels safe and comfortable. 


 
  

    
Loved reading this!
  

    
An auction !   That takes ball/////   gonads!
  

    
Hello I have crossed the contient.  

My goodness the story of selling my first novel seems like a long
time ago.  My favorite part of that story -- the auction closed the
first week of November of 2008, at the same time when Obama was
first elected.  In my family we were over the moon about both those
things.  I remember my hubby and I going out to lunch with our kids;
the oldest had just turned three.  They (the kids) didn't understand
why we were so excited, and we tried to explain how exactly our
lives might get a bit better.  Their little eyes got big and quite
solemnly they asked:  "Can all my jellybeans be red?"  

Red jellybeans are still the congratulatory gift in my family, and
in my writers' group -- which is still together all these years
later.  Said kid is about to turn 19, the legal drinking age, but I
think would still prefer red jellybeans to champagne.  

 
  

    <scribbled by seanan Sat 31 Aug 24 04:45>
  

    
Thank you. 

It was, in many many ways, a long time ago. 

Red jelly beans neatly bring us back to “What are some things that
lift you out of the glums?”

The lift needn’t be complete. The things needn’t be things. The
glums needn’t be glums. There are variations aplenty on all themes.
Pluck your nourishing/healing string(s), as and when (and, indeed,
if) you will. 
  

    
What a wonderful pseud.
  

    <scribbled by aslan Sat 31 Aug 24 08:22>
  

    
I think many of us who read _Simon_ would love to know if you have
more upper-elementary-school books in the pipeline.

In the meantime I should read some of your Young Adult fiction. Is
there one in particular you would recommend I start with?
  

    
If I may, I’d recommend asking for a reading list, rather than the
single next book. It’s a rare gift to be able ask an author to
arrange their books on your shelf. 

It’s possible that Erin will have some questions for you first.
That, I cannot know.  
  

    
yes please
  

    
Yes -- besides SIMON, there are five other novels, and three books
of poetry.  Confining myself to the novels for a moment ... they are
quite different, one from the other, and different folks might like
different ones for different reasons.  

To think simply about reading level: if you want another
upper-elementary-school book, I'd try STAND ON THE SKY, my only
other solidly middle-grade novel. (PLAIN KATE straddles the line
between MG and YA.) STAND ON TEH SKY is the book that saw Seanan and
I trooping about Mongolia in the research stages.  

The hero is a Kazakh nomad girl named Aisulu.  She and her brother
Serik are out having an adventure one day, and try to capture a
golden eagle.  In the process Serik breaks his leg -- revealing a
hidden medical weakness -- and they kill the eagle.  Aisulu's
parents take Serik away for treatment, and Aisulu is left with her
rather strange and difficult aunt and uncle, and trying to save the
eaglet that she accidentally orphaned.  

It's a book about being the "glass child," the sibling of the child
in crisis, the one folks look right through.  It's a book about
finding one's place in a shifting family.  It's about culture and
heritage as a source of both strength and restriction, about how
amazing and hard it is to break ground.  

It is, despite its setting, my most autobiographical book.  

It's got both a prize sticker and an animal on the cover, and as a
person who grew up reading SOUNDER and THE YEARLING and WHERE THE
RED FERN F*CKING GROWS it's important to me to note *the eagle does
not die*.  And in SIMON SORT OF SAYS, nothing bad happens to the
dog.    

Anyway.  You may well want to sort books in some way other than
recommended age of the reader, and if so I am happy to help.  
  

    
>I think many of us who read _Simon_ would love to know if you have

more upper-elementary-school books in the pipeline.

I mentioned somewhere that I would like to talk more broadly about
slates and pipelines ... but am not quite sure how to frame the
conversation.  

What's on my slate?  I have recently sold a three-book series of
lower-elementary-school books that hit the slightly younger
CHARLOTTE'S WEB / TALE OF DESPEREAUX / WILD ROBOT demographic.  I'm
working on an all-ages non-fiction book that be labelled MG, I
think.  I have one adult novel -- a big sprawly historical SF that
is finished but needs to be revised before I sell it.  I have two
more adult novels on back burners.  And, indeed, I have just started
another book with protagonists about the same age as SIMON and
company.  Also, I am writing a "bible" to guide the transformation
of an existing pair of books -- THE SCORPION RULES and THE SWAN
RIDERS -- into television.  

Does that sound like a lot?  Just now it feels like a lot.  But of
course it's not as if all of them are due next month, or indeed at
all.  Only the talking animal books and the non-fiction are under
contract.    

I believe it's fairly normal for working writers to have multiple
projects at various stages of completion, all at once.  Having this
many is new to me, and results from a) getting backlogged do to a
long struggle with long-COVID, and b) publishers getting excited
about me after the Newbery and willing to commit to series stuff,
and c) me getting more ambitious and excited too, and also feeling
my mortality in the wake of the death of my mother two years ago,
and wanting to put more books into the world in the time given to
me.  Also, I very recently quit my day job.  

I'm curious to hear other writers talk about switching between
projects -- or not.  On balance I like it.  But sometimes it feels
like juggling marbles.  Or cats.  
  

    <scribbled by seanan Sat 31 Aug 24 17:19>
  

    
There’s a lot in there. 

Is there anything you feel like expanding on, exploring, or poking
around in? 

If the emotional parts are too much to handle (which anyone would
understand and respect), then perhaps there’s something
enjoyable/worthwhile for you in the “What’s on the slate?”
paragraph. 
  

    
I'm a very minor ... "emergent" songwriter with a bit of poetry.

Songs are mostly unrequited love (requited is boring), or long
historical ballads, eg "Anita and Clarence".

The start and middle are easy ... but I run into trouble at the end 
-- I sometimes have TWO endings, and sing one, the other or both.

I heard some advice on Jane Austin and Movies:

Skip the last chapter (books) , and walk out 5 minutes early
(movies)! Skip the staged "happy ending".

Erin, anyone else ... do you have a last-chapter problem?
  

    
I’ll have a probably unsatisfactory go at offering one response to
this. It depends. 

Farewells and endings in fictional and what-we-call-real life can be
problematical and troubling, as can the illusion of closure, which
is surely part of writing an ending… or purposefully not. 

I’ve struggled with the perfect death of a not-so-imaginary dragon.
I struggled with it after writing, rewriting, and revising it. It
was only when one of the most trusted readers in my eraser-sized
circles said she’d cried at the dragon’s end that the finish stopped
niggling in my mind. It wanted that litmus test. 

In a story about a strong-willed teen who tossed her culture’s rules
over a waterfall, the protagonist knew exactly where she wanted to
end up, what she wanted to do in her after-novel life, and with whom
she wanted to have an ever-after (herself, on her terms). That book
— all fifty thousand words of it — wrote itself in ten days. There
was no time for problems. 

With the current work in never-ending progress, there has never been
a choice about the ending. That was penned in the ink of a
centuries-dead hand. The beginning, the middle, and the way the
ending’s formed… those shades and shapes are mine, and each decision
seasons the scents and flavors of the end. 

In editorial, book doula, and story-judging (with feedback on what
works and what needs work), I encounter enough too-tidy endings,
fade-to-flaccid-grey endings, denouements that are out of true with
the rest of the work, and other variations on not-quite to know that
you are anything but alone. 

People talk more about struggles with beginning work, but ending a
story is just as hard — and that’s without factoring in leaving a
world and saying goodbye to your people; those things are _hard_. 
  

    
Hey all ... So if I were writing about right now it would be "how i
write when depression sledgehammers me," which is "I mostly don't." 
Landing at home after being away through August has certainly let my
father's death, on August 19, catch up with me.  



But also, let's talk about how and where writing bogs.  

For me, it's not generally either the ending or the beginning, it's
the middle.  I start a book with something I call "the original
equipment" -- a handful of characters and something a bit more than
a premise and less than a plot.  For Plain Kate, I had Plain Kate
herself, and the notion that she was an orphaned woodcarver's
daughter, who sells her shadow and gets in return (unexpectedly) a
talking cat.  The girl, the cat, and the bad-guy witch who deals in
shadows and wishes were all gifts from the universe -- I didn't
invent them so much as discover them.  

Generally, the original equipment provides a pretty solid framework
for the first third or so of a book.  Establish the girl, the witch,
the cat, the world and the girl's place in it, and the way magic
works.  Back her into a corner so that selling her shadow seems like
a good idea.  Do that.  Uh oh, a talking cat isn't exactly what we
need to escape the witch-burning mobs. Now what?  

I generally get stuck in the "now what?" How do I take the set-up
and spin it into a story?  I generally don't have an ending in mind,
or a way to write toward it.  So that's where things bog down.  

Sometimes I have a few set-pieces I can jump to, and I do -- I often
write books out of order.  Usually I follow characters around until
they do something interesting.  Sometimes they don't, or I head down
a dead-end path.  I just kind of keep noodling at it, adding words
without making much progress, sometimes for quite some time.  And
then one day I'll see the ending, and I'll suddenly know what the
story is about, and I'll stay up all night and write a treatment of
the rest of the book, which tells me what I can use from the boggy
bits and what I can't and what the road through looks like and how
the book ends, and that gets me rolling again.  

Granted, I am often wrong about the ending.  But it feels good at
the time.  
  

    

Parenthetically, I like the "skip the last chapter" advice so much
that I have a reputation in my writing group as "revising with a
cleaver."  I often recommend people cut off the first chapter or the
last chapter -- or even more often, the first stanza and the last
stanza.  I think in general it's good advice to start as late as you
can, and end as soon as you can.  

But that might be a technique for revising, not writing.  Revising
is your chance to make it look like you did everything on purpose.  
  

    
I carry a hatchet and a hacksaw into revisions, but only with my
work. With other people, I am more kind. 

(Please, please tell me to cut my first chapter. Or three. [Hatchet.
Ready.])

May the processing be thorough, the healing full, and the ramp out
of the bog closer than you think. 


As you’ve brought up the topic of cats, Erin, you have animals of
non-human varieties in your life. How do they inspire you and your
work? 
  

    
Animals!  I grew up with animals – pets, livestock, wildlife. Right
now, my family has two cats, a big dog, a water garden full of
goldfish and frogs, and a yard full of bird feeders and bat houses
and toad hides. 


In the summer of 2022 I got a cat named Cygnus – I’m the kind of
person who names their cat after the first discovered black hole.
He’s a big bruiser of a snuggle cat, an ex-feral with a clipped ear
and a broken nose who wheezes when he purrs and snores when he
sleeps.  He came into my life at just the right time, because 2023
was a tough year.  Long Covid left me literally unable to get out of
bed, for months.  I am blessed with family and friends who helped
get me through this, but not one of them was willing to spend all
day every day tucked up under my arm purring.  It sounds dramatic,
but I genuinely don’t know how I would have gotten through that year
without Cyg.  

So ... Animals are so much a part of my life that, to me, a setting
without animals doesn’t feel like the real world.  If I ever set a
book on a spaceship, I will include the ship’s cat.  It’s just how I
think about the world.  
  

    
I posted too soon, but it was getting long anyway.  I'll just leave
it and add.  The actual question was about how animals inspire .... 


Most of my books have important animal-human relationships.  Two of
them -- PLAIN KATE and STAND ON THE SKY -- have animal-human
relationships which are so central that the story would not even
exist if the animal were removed.  

I'm drawn to including animals in my books.  The relationships we
have with animals are so rich, and so different than the ones we
have with other humans.  We connect to our animals with our emotions
and our physical selves.  We connect to our human friends that way,
too, but the raw honesty our pets see can get buried under words and
ideas, under roles that they want us to play but that might not suit
us, under stories we tell about ourselves that might not be true.  

In SIMON SORT OF SAYS, Simon tells stories to hide his past, and
struggles with the stories other people tell about him.  But then he
gets Hercules the puppy.  Herc isn’t interested in those stories –
of course he’s not.  Simon and his dog can only be honest with each
other – they can only be afraid together, or happy together, or
tender with each other.  Simon’s relationship with Hercules helps
him get out from under the weight of the stories of his past. 
  

    
And Herc never says “We need to talk” or drowns his sorrows in a can
of beer. 

Cygnus is a joy that can be felt across borders. I still question
who got whom. Either way, it is beyond good that you found each
other.

It’s true about relationships with animals. In the past month, one
dog, one nineteen-year-old indoor/outdoor cat (We recently passed
our tenth anniversary. I bought him a tin of posh cat food with a
quail egg in it.), and a pigeon. In one sprawl of a Victorian house,
I used to wake between a pit bull (who liked to lie “in” my lap when
I was meditating) and the aforementioned cat. Even in the heat of
summer, their bracketing snuggle was comforting. 

This switching of animals calls to mind other changes. PLAIN KATE,
SIMON SORT OF SAYS, STAND ON THE SKY, SCORPION RULES… Would you like
to talk about hopping around genres? 
  

    
When you think about potential for triggering strong emotions
(traumatic, or otherwise) when reading a book, it is all so
personal.  

My own “edge of the seat this isn’t going to end well” feeling while
reading the book was all about “Simon is going to have to give up
Hercules.”