Teaching a 5-week creative writing class.  Starting June 22nd, I’ll be teaching a 5-week class in NYC called “Writing Sense.”  This class uses the five senses to engage students’ creativity and jump-start creative projects.  As for teaching long-term, I already have one freelance gig set up for fall and am working out the logistics of a couple more.

Starting a literary magazine.  As July fast approaches, we are nearing the kick-off for Verbal Pyrotechnics, the first literary magazine dedicated exclusively to teen literature.  For more information and submissions guidelines, visit our blog.  We open for submissions in July.

Finishing my novel.  I’ve been stalling and floundering around on this one for a few weeks.  Now, though, I have a goal and an incentive to get my act together and finish.  The first draft has to be complete by fall.

Summer reading.  At BEA I got my hands on a ton of galleys and now the summer reading frenzy begins.  Here’s a sampling of the books on my list:

Looks like it’s going to be a good summer!

For the month of May, I replaced the writing challenge with Story-A-Day.  Now May is behind us and the writing challenge resumes.  Sort of.

I’ve come to realize that if I want to finish my novel between now and August 1, then I need to write three pages or 750 words every day.  This sounds like no big deal–I mean, it’s just three pages–but I’m terrified.  The very thought of writing a certain number of pages every day fills my head with a million “what ifs.”  What if I can’t do it?  What if I have a bad writing day and I can’t finish my three pages?  What if I hit the wall?

It sounds like I’m hyperventilating over nothing, but the truth is, I’m playing with the big kids now and it’s sort of freaking me out.  See, while I’ve been able to fudge my way around most of my previous self-imposed deadline, this one is more serious.  No, the world won’t end if I can’t finish by August 1st, but there’s more at stake now than there has been with previous projects.  I’ve finished school; now I have to produce something.

So in light of this new goal: my new writing challenge will be 3 pages or 750 words per day.

What’s that saying again?  You know, the one about paving roads with good intentions…  Well the intentions are here, now I just hope I get where I want to go.

Last week Lady Glamis at The Literary Lab raised an interesting question about critique and how many times we writers are conditioned to look only for the negative.

In response to this thread, I started pondering how we critique not just other writers’ work but our own.  Just as I am a believer in focusing first on big picture issues when I read pieces from other writers, I find that approach also works best when revising my own work.

As a former student of psychology, I’m reminded of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, where humans will fill their most basic needs first (food, water, shelter) before trying to fill needs that fall higher in the pyramid (love, companionship, success).  My own revision system falls into a similar pyramid shape:

Character: Whose story is it?  This is the most basic part of the book.  If you don’t have a compelling character, then the rest of the pyramid will fall apart.  (Notice I say “compelling” character and not “sympathetic” or “likable,” but that is a topic for another post.)

Plot/Story: What story are you going to tell?  Now that you have a character in place, the character needs to want something and that want will drive the story.  Things need to happen to get in the way of that want.  There needs to be conflict.

Structure, POV and Voice: How are you going to tell this story?  These are the main choices you make when you decide how to tell the story.  The voice of the narrator ties in directly with point of view and the structure you choose for the story.

Description and Dialogue: Decisions made at this level are less about “big picture” and are smaller in scale.  At the same time, though, they are not as nitty-gritty as the revisions at the top of the pyramid.  Description and dialogue also tie in closely with character development and elements of story so this is why they are in the middle of the pyramid, serving as a bridge between the macro decisions at the bottom and micro decisions at the top.  Description and dialogue also clue in the reader to Where and When the story is taking place.

Theme: This is all about the Why.  Why are you telling this story?  Why do we want to read it?  Usually these answers only come together once you’ve written a draft, maybe two, which is why theme falls at the top of the pyramid.  Very rarely do stories start with a theme and grow from there.

Language:  At the very top we have the micro decisions.  Word choice.  Grammar.  Spelling.  Small stuff.  Just because the writing might not be super-smooth on the language level doesn’t mean it can’t shine at the character or plot levels.  What I try to stress to writers is that the bottom of the pyramid is the hard part.  If you nail that, you’ll have done the hard work.  Language is just a matter of using spell check and keeping a copy of Strunk & White’s Elements of Style on your desk.  And getting a trusted friend to proofread when you’re through.

Basically, revision all comes down to this:

Don’t sweat the small stuff until you’ve dealt with the big stuff.

The third book in Rachel Vail’s Avery series was released last Tuesday.  I got my hands on a copy, started reading and all I can say is that Brilliant is… well.. rather brilliant.

Although I have not read the first two books in the series (Lucky and Gorgeous) I’m completely sucked in.  While this is the third book in the series, Brilliant stands quite well on its own and a reader who has not read the previous books will have no problem getting into the story.  In fact, I like the protagonist Quinn so much, it’s hard for me to imagine reading the other two books in the points of view of her younger sisters.  I’ll be curious to read them and see how they compare and how they handle Quinn’s character when she’s not the central focus.

I think the thing that allowed this book to make such an impression on me is how similar I find Quinn is to myself.  Sure, I’ve read plenty of books where I identified with the protagonist.  In fact, one could argue that a strong protagonist has some quality, some essence, that the reader sees reflected in themselves and that is what allows us to sympathize with the character.  But this is different.  Quinn is so similar to how I was in high school, down to the way she gets along with her sisters and her propensity for academic achievement.  It’s like if someone asked me “if you were a character from a novel, who would you be?” I’d want to answer “Elizabeth Bennet” but really, the truth is it’s more like Quinn Avery.

What about you?  Do you have a fictional-character twin?