Blog & Podcast

If you’ve always known you’ve wanted to be a writer, went to school for it and have several books published and no other source of income – this post is not for you.  But many of us have had other careers and lives before finally “coming out” and becoming writers, and I for one am very excited to hear about people’s journeys! 

“Actually, I’m writing a book, too,” the person I’ve just met whispers to me at a party.

“Really?” I say loudly. “I’d love to hear more about it!”

“Well,” this person says, darting their eyes around the room to see who’s listening, “I haven’t really been telling people, I don’t know where I’m going with it.”

If this scenario sounds familiar to you, my advice to them is always the same.   You have to tell your friends and family and start talking about it, or you’ll never get it finished!  The best thing I ever did when I started writing my first full novel was to tell people I was doing it.   

Now, writers have a reputation out there as a group for being a bit reserved, and granted, I don’t exactly fit into that category.  But still, tell people.  For one thing, talking about my writing is usually a great conversation starter, but for another, I found the pressure very motivating!  Stating my goals out loud made them real to myself, my friends and my family.  I no longer had to write in secret.  I could stick my laptop under my arm and walk out the door, waving to my family. 

“Bye!  I’m going to work on my book..”

What a great feeling. 

You might have friends and family ask to read what you’ve written.  I always let them.  They’ll undoubtedly tell you that it’s GREAT!  It’s wonderful.  (Take the praise with a grain of salt.  They are proud of you and don’t want to hurt your feelings).  If you let them review a Work in Progress, you’ll hear:

“Here are some typos I’ve found, but great job!”

 Is this helpful?  Well, yes – because you are creating champions and supporters along your way.  They still have to buy your book when it comes out to see if you took any of their suggestions, or mentioned their helpful feedback in the credits.  If that’s something that motivates you, as it does me, then having friends and family read your work can be really helpful, though unless they have experience writing and editing, it won’t move your manuscript forward in the direction that you need it to go in to get published.  For that, you need to talk to those who have done it. 

GET INVOLVED!  The biggest surprise to me throughout this journey was just how welcoming the writing community is.  At first I was shy.  After all, I didn’t have a completed work to share, I didn’t know what a query was or how to find a writing group.   Take a writing course, attend a writing conference, look for online groups, join Twitter (I can’t believe how many writers are active and helpful on Twitter!)… find somewhere that works for you to meet writers. 

I was astounded at the number of writers I spoke with who invited me for coffee to share their experiences and point me in the right direction.  As it turns out, they love talking about writing as much as I do.  Taking the time to learn from their experiences has opened many doors for me and gotten me on my way.    

So, shout it from the rooftops if you want to take your writing career somewhere.  “I’M A WRITER!”   Then sit down and start writing. 

What are Your Kids reading? 

Or are you just happy that they are reading at all?

When I was 12, my dad “caught” me reading Flowers in the Attic (VC Andrews).  I still remember how angry he was, flipping through the pages and realizing that it was about incest and murderous plots.  He threw that book in the garbage and suggested I get some better reading material.  (Throwing a book out?  The thought still makes me cringe). 

The next book I checked out of the library was Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s auto biography.  I picked it out trying to impress my dad, thinking – how could he possibly object to such a clearly historical gem?  How educational!  I left that one on the coffee table in plain view.  Looking back, it probably wasn’t a more appropriate choice.   The thoughts of a madman that led him to execute millions of innocent people simply for their heritage or their beliefs, was that any better reading for my young mind?  By the way, I borrowed Flowers in the Attic from a friend and continued to read the whole series anyway.  Except the second time, I knew to hide the books.  Thanks anyway, dad, for trying to keep me sheltered just a little bit longer!

Bright kids will always look for answers that they can’t ask their parents in the books that they read.  I don’t think that reading things deemed beyond my years hurt me in the long run, though I certainly didn’t think they were beyond my years at the time. 

Even books targeted at younger ages have historically had mature themes.  I was appalled when I recently brought out some of the books I’d loved as a kid, to share with my own children.  Madeleine (Ludwig Bemelmans) talks about guillotines and animal cruelty, I had to answer lots of questions about smoking, shockingly, while reading Ramona and Her Father (Beverly Cleary) and Curious George (H.A. and Margaret Rey).  Curious George smokes a pipe in one of his earliest appearances. 

“Mom, doesn’t Curious George know that will make him DIE??” 

The wolf eats the pigs, the Farmer’s wife cut off their tails with a carving knife (Three Blind Mice), the old lady in the shoe whips her children soundly… the list goes on. 

The trend in recent years seems to be to take these mature themes out of picture books, thank goodness, though the trend is for Young Adult books to contain more violence.  This certainly seems true when we look at the break out successes in the past few years.  To name a few, the Divergent Series (Veronica Roth), The Book Thief (Markus Zusak), Paper Towns (John Green), all feature teenage characters who deal with very grown up danger and potential violence.

But should young adults and teens really be reading these?  Would you let your own kids?

Let’s look at an example you may have read.  Yes, the Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins) includes violence, but the reader feels the characters’ disgust and helplessness at the world they find themselves in, and I think that’s a great thing for kids to experience through reading.  It sends the message that just because everyone around you thinks that everything is okay the way it is, if you know in your heart that it’s wrong, you can find the courage to make the change.  What a lesson, hidden in a terrible world.   There are many great examples like this.  These are the books that stand head and shoulders above the rest, and their weeks on the bestseller lists speak for themselves. 

I for one think that reading some of the material out there, violence and all, can still be an amazing learning and growth experience for youth.    

So, will I let my kids read Flowers in the Attic when they are twelve?  To be honest, I don’t know.  I guess I’ll just have to see what happens when we get there. 

Do You Write About the People in Your Life, and do They Mind?

The key to a great novel is character development, right? Absolutely. You can start by knowing your character’s backstory, giving them mannerisms, writing out what their thoughts might look like if they kept a diary… the list goes on. Some of what you create during this process you’ll use in your manuscript, some you won’t.

But have you ever wondered where the inspiration for these multi-layered characters comes from in each writer? I’m sure for each writer it’s different. Friends and family who’ve read something I’ve written sometimes tell me they recognize a character, with a knowing cluck of the tongue. I just scratch my head and say, “really?”.

When I write, I think of my characters as new, unique beings. The suggestion otherwise made me think. Do I really write about the people in my life, subconsciously? YIKES! If so, should I be embarrassed? Should I apologise? The thought intrigued me.

So, the next time I sat down to create a new character for my new project, I tried to keep a critical eye as I went through what is now a routine process for me. My answer as to whether or not I write about the people in my life? A resounding…

Sort of!

Of course, like most writers, I do go through the lists of things about my character that help me to get to know them. For a small character I might write a single page of notes that only I will ever read. For a main character, the notes might almost fill a book themselves as I nail down just what I want them to think or feel.

So, do my characters look and act like the people I know? Surprisingly, no. I’m more likely to choose a celebrity at first, rather than someone I know to define my character’s looks, accent and mannerisms, just for ease of recall. For example, if my character is supposed to be middle aged, ghostly pale and from Australia, I might write Nicole Kidman at the top of my first character page, just so I don’t have to create each and every physical trait for her from scratch. That character may end up nothing like Nicole Kidman when I’m done exploring her, but it’s a starting point.

In fact, when I think about my latest completed project, young adult (YA) novel THE FOUNTAIN, I know exactly what each character would look like if I met them on the street. Strangely, they are like nobody I can remember meeting before, though their appearances are very clear in my mind. Actually, if I actually ran into someone on the street that matched the image of one of my beloved characters in my mind, I think I would go into shock.

So, if it’s not their looks or their actions, what is it that I draw from people I know?

I copy the feelings they evoke. I want the reader to feel the main character’s disgust when her unfair teacher enters the room. The protagonist’s longing for the new girl in class must be palpable when he talks to her. I think of it as their “theme”, almost like a theme song that follows my characters around my novel, though with less fanfare. If I don’t feel their theme arrive when they do when I’m reviewing a scene, I do it again until I get it right.

The mood I want the reader to feel when they experience a scene is something that I draw from things I’ve experienced. What it’s like to lose first love. How it feels to have your innermost thoughts exposed. These are things that must feel real to the reader. And they are.

My intense memory of feelings is what compels me to be a writer. I write YA because I think that the discovery of who you are and who you want to become is such an exciting and individual journey. I let my characters borrow my feelings about certain people because I want the reader to experience this bitter sweet journey in a convincing way.

So go ahead, comb my manuscript for a glimpse of yourself. But know that it might be in how I felt when we said goodbye that time, and nothing else.

Memoirs of a Book Club

So, what have you read lately?

My answer is always the same, “anything and everything!” My philosophy for the last few years has been to read anything that people are talking about, regardless of genre. I must say that this philosophy is serving me well – a huge improvement over choosing books at random off the bookshelf at the airport bookstore. Most importantly, this method has given me lots of inspiration for my own writing.

At the end of the day, I love to write – but I’m a business woman at heart and I can’t shake that off. I read popular books not to be cool (because I know that only my husband is ever going to think I’m cool!) I read them to figure out the “Why?”, so that I can try to learn. Why do certain books become a breakout success? Do they have a great hook, like 50 Shades of Grey (E. L. James)?

My aspirational reading list should include absolutely everything that is currently making a splash. Sometimes, my list gets pretty long, though the books that make my “Must Read” short list are the ones that my mom, the guy who works at the bookstore, and a neighbor have all recommended, like Cutting for Stone (Abraham Verghese). Books being invited into so many different lives are the ones I want to get my hands on.

I also read two books a month for book clubs. One of my book clubs meets over breakfast with the kids and one meets in the evening with wine and cheese. Occasionally, these both happen on the same day during the month. Those days rock. I get to sit around with smart friends, talking about what they like and don’t like about reading. Who could ask for better market research than that?

My morning book club has shared with me stories by some of their favorite authors, like Love Anthony (Lisa Genova). I’ve been able to share with them some of the coolest voices I’ve ever had the privilege to read, like the voice in Room (Emma Donoghue). This week, I requested Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn) for next month’s meeting from my Overdrive App, which lets me borrow eBooks from the Calgary Public Library for free. To my dismay, I’m number 81 on the waiting list, but that’s the kind of successful book I can learn from.

The ladies in my evening book club push the boundaries of what I’d normally pick up and for that I’m grateful. This year, our reading has taken us from Montreal, with The Imposter Bride (Nancy Richler) to the South Pacific of WWII in Unbroken (Laura Hillenbrand), and even thrown in a little Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy), in anticipation of its film coming out. I definitely wouldn’t have chosen this list on my own, but I learned a little something from each.

Then, if I have any time left at the end of the month, after having read everything I’ve put on my list, I come back to MY classics. These books are the Young Adult novels that inspired me to finally become a writer. They are the books that have opened young minds to the sport of reading. You know the ones. Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling), Twilight (Stephenie Meyer), The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins). These books get to stay on my nightstand while other books come and go. Odd choices for my repeat reads, perhaps, though the lesson of having written the right book in the right place at the right time is the one that I hope to get right.