Character Collage Class - Postponed!

Bad news.  Or great news, depending on your point of view.  My YA Character Collage class at the Writing Pad in Los Angeles scheduled for this Sunday, 1/20/13, has been postponed until May 4th.  That's bad if you were looking forward to this Sunday.  On the other hand, if you only just now heard about the class, there's still time to join in the fun!  My apologies for any inconvenience.  See you in a few months!

I Go Hobo

Did you know the word hobo is short for homeward bound?  Well, it's one of the possible origins of the word, at any rate.  Given the other options are "ho, boy!" and "ho, beau" I think I'll stick with my original statment.  Well, they say you can never go home again.  It's a wonderful cliché  I decided to defy it last week.  I went home to Washington, D.C., the scene of the crime from ages 3 to 11, and took a tour of the old neighborhood.

My family hasn't lived in this house in years.  The last time I saw it in person was probably 2004.   Recently, I took a fantastic Improv for Writing Workshop (if you live in the LA area and can swing it, take this class.  It's incredible), and one of the exercises we did was to imagine a walk we used to take when we were kids.  We drew maps of the walk, the things we saw at each step along the way, and then used the map as a jumping off point for writing scenes.  So, in my mind, I've been down this street and around the corner just recently.

Last week, however, when my husband drove the rental car around the corner and I screamed,"Wait!  This isn't right!"  My poor husband almost steered into the curb, thinking he'd made a wrong turn. 

"No, the street is right, but they houses…  They're all… weird." 

It was as if someone had, I don't know, squashed the street.  The street was foreshortened, as if someone had squeezed both ends of the block like an accordion bending inward.  There was my sweet little childhood home, the place I'd grown up in, smack dab in the middle, and I could hardly recognize it.

 We parked the car and I walked the block, pointing out all of the things that I had mapped so recently in that workshop.  But none of them were quite right.  A hedge was missing here, the door was the wrong color there, and that tree—the big one out front where my brother and I poured a mixture of honey and cooking sherry to watch drunken ants and bees fight—it was tiny.  It couldn't possibly be the same tree.  Someone must have changed it while I wasn't watching.  The surreal sense of omniscience Google maps had given me, allowing me to spy on my old neighborhoods from the heights of an invisible cloud had not prepared me for this.

Every stone was in its place.  But it had changed.  It was familiar, like the smell of chicken soup on the stove, but different.  I wanted chicken and noodles.  Somehow, this bowl had chicken and stars.

So maybe it's true.  You can return to a street address (unless a bulldozer and a city planner have something to say about it), but you just can't go home again.

It's Not Too Late! Sign up for my class!

Hey fellow writers!

It's not too late to sign up for my character collage class!  Just picture it:  a week from today you, me, and a few other like-minded individuals rattle the windows and shake the halls of our minds while characters spring, Athena-like, from our craniums!  So, bring a notebook.  It's gonna be a bit messy.

Fun times!

A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery

Mystery Meat

 
Have you ever written a mystery?  Do you like reading them?  I read mysteries voraciously as a kid—Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, etc.  I've also read more than my fair share as an adult.  (I love Sherlock Holmes!)  And then I decided to try to write one.

Boy, was that a taller order than I expected?  I had ideas, of course, but the more I wrote, they less sense they seemed to make.  I started reading books on writing mysteries.  I came away with some thought provoking statements on the need of society to hunt the bad guy, how the stakes must be archetypically life or death, and how to chart your clues.  I created spreadsheets of every character, charting where they were while the hero was doing X, Y, or Z.

In short, I got lost. 

So I asked some adult mystery writers, "How do you do it?"*  Laurie R. King, who writes the fabulously convincing Mary Russell series said, "It's just all up here," while tapping her temple with a zen-like calm.  Kate Carlisle of the charming Brooklyn Wainwright series (she's a bookbinder who solves murders!) said, "Oh, I just go back and fill in the clues later."  Playwright and journalist Kitty Felde said, "If you figure it out, let me know."

 

Finally, I decided to simply ask myself, "how would I solve this crime?"  I've decided the trick is to get to know your hero and ask them the same question.  After all, deductive reasoning is logical (if I know my Holmes, and I do!)  And logic varied from person to person, whether it should or not.  So, know your villain, know your crime, and know your hero.  The rest should fall into place. 

At least, that's the working theory.  When I figure it out, I'll let you all know. 

 

*Full disclosure: I do not know all of these fine women. Sadly, being a writer does not come with an all-access pass to a private club where we all talk shop. Sometimes the fan girl has got to step up and ask some questions! 

Teaching a Character Development Class! - 1/20/13

Hey, you budding writers!  I'm teaching a class on character development on Sunday, January 20, 2012 at the Writing Pad in Los Angeles.  Care to spend the day with me and your favorite protagonist?  You can find the details on YA Character Collage:  Crafting Your Story From the Inside Out.  Be sure to check out the other awesome offerings on finding an agent, screenwriting, YA, you name it. 

Hope to see you there!

New Year's Eve 2012

I am notorious for asking people to reflect on New Year's Eve.  I want to know what they thought about the old year, what they experienced.  I want to hear it all distilled into a simple conversation.  And then I want to know about their aspirations for the new year.  What will be remembering 365 days hence.

Everyone hates it. 

To a person, there is a shifting, leg-crossing and un-crossing discomfort, as if I'm about to give them a pop quiz on successes and failures in their life.  I've been told, "I don't like thinking about that."  Or "I dunno," or "Why do you do this!"

The reason is simple.  I'm a writer.  I tell stories.  I'm a reader. I like to hear stories, too.  What is a year but a clearly marked chapter in a life?  That doesn't mean that every chapter has to be scintillating.  We've all read books that pull you along and then, suddenly you can't wait to stick a bookmark in it  (I'm thinking Prince Caspian chapter 2 or so, From Hell chapter 4).    You are done.  You don't have the attention/patience/love to give it anymore.  Until an hour or so later, when you do.  And you keep on reading.

So, if you think your year has been dull, or miserable, or not worth mentioning, think again.  So much has happened in this last chapter that you might have forgotten.  Think about it.  And then, as with all good writing, every chapter ends with a little (or a big) cliffhanger.  What.  Happens.  Next? 

That's 2013 calling.  What will you do to answer it?

 

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Sandy Hook, A Plea

An unspeakable crime was committed today at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newton, CT resulting in the deaths of 20 innocent children and six of their teachers.  My deepest condolences go out to the families of the victims.

 Five years ago, another horrific act took the lives of 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech. 

I come from a family of teachers.  Three of my four bridesmaids teach.  Violence in the classroom strikes a particularly deep chord for me.  Today, a different chord was struck:  My husband is a graduate of Virginia Tech.  Once upon a time, he was also a student at Sandy Hook Elementary. 

In both Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech, the crimes were committed by young men.  In a September 2012 survey of mass shootings by Mother Jones, of the 61 incidents since 1982, 11 took place in schools and almost all of them were committed by men under the age of 30.  Time and again today I heard "experts" say that most of these killings are planned well in advance, that the killers often share their plans with others.  But no one listens.  No one takes them seriously until it is too late.

As a young adult writer I was struck by this fact.  It's the eternal condition of the kid to be ignored, sidelined, not listened to.  It's one of the reasons that I, as a kid, turned to books and storytelling.  It was a way to hear and be heard.   Now, I was lucky.  I had parents who cared, who taught me, who showed me right from wrong.  But they could not always take the time.  And when they couldn't, there was always a book.  Reading gave me a way to learn about the world without having to suffer every pain directly.  In that way, books taught me empathy.

Listening to the news today, I tried to think what I would say to the children who survived today's attack.  What books are out there to help them deal with grief, with loss, with the inexplicable.  And then I wondered, what I could do to help? 

As a writer, I ask you, what can we do to help.  How do we reach the child before he grows up to become a killer?  How do we reach the children who might end up beneath their desks or in a closet hoping they live to see Christmas? 

It is evident to me that, somehow, we are failing our young men.  Somewhere along the way, they are getting lost, angry, sick and they act out in horrific ways. 

I am not a doctor.  I am not a counselor.  I am not even a parent with children of my own.  But I am a writer.  I write for teens to show them a path out of darkness. 

It doesn’t get darker than this.

So, students, teachers, fellow authors let's put our heads together and come up with a new path.  How can we help stop this from ever happening again?