Lilith Saintcrow

Today is the release date for my first young adult book, Strange Angels. This is the book I refer to as “Supernatural meets Buffy, with a dash of Appalachian folk magic and some Eastern European folklore thrown in. Oh, and Vampire Hunter D.” (You can find the blurb here.)

The initial image for this book was a teenage girl in her kitchen, staring at the back door. She was surrounded by boxes, and she was terrified. Then the angle moved around, and I got a glimpse of the back door, and I realized why she was scared–she was looking at a zombie. And that zombie used to be her father.

I worked on the story off and on, finding out about this girl. Then one opportune day my agent called and said, “Can you do young adult?”

I said, “I can, but it probably won’t get published. It’s got patricide in the first five chapters, and it’s not even finish–”

“Send it.”

So I did. Lo and behold, the book sold. I never thought I’d do YA, because of the darkness (and profanity) that shines through all my work. (Maybe “shines” isn’t the right word.) Besides, there’s my utter unwillingness to dial back on either (because the world is a dark place and hey, people say naughty words) to consider, too. And yet it happened, and I had a great time writing this book.

Now all the work and the waiting has come to an end. There’s a giveaway over at Darque Reviews, and you can find Strange Angels at Barnes & Noble, Borders, Powell’s, Indiebound, and Amazon.

And I hope you like it. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Dru Anderson and Strange Angels. I loved writing it, and I’ll close with the same offer I make every time: Come in. Sit down. Let me tell you a story…

It’s just one of those days where I am reduced to helpless laughter halfway through. It’s either that or cry out of sheer frustration and angst. You know, those days where you wake up, things are okay for a while, you’re on a roll…and then it all goes to hell and one thing follows another and then, you have to start laughing at the sheer absurdity of each situation because otherwise you’re going to have a complete sobbing breakdown?

Yeah, like that. *headdesk*

Anyway. I have not heard from one of our winners (Catie at comment 61, no not you, Ms. Murphy, a different Catie *grin*) so I might have that copy of Strange Angels to give away if I don’t hear from that winner before midnight tonight.

Okay. I’m going to have another cup of coffee and a biscotti, and settle down to work. Now that I’m home and not going anywhere else, I’m hoping the day will brighten. Man, I’m glad I hit the treadmill this morning. Some days that’s the only thing that can keep one going.

And a happy Monday to you, dear Readers. I’ve had one of the busiest weekends I can remember, up to and including a video shoot yesterday. (I can’t officially announce for what yet. Stay tuned.) So I am yawning and shambling this morning.

And we have two Contest Winners! I added the comments on the post here and at Deadline Dames together, because there was some initial confusion about where to comment to win and this seemed the fairest way of resolving it. With the help of Random.org, we have our winners! As luck would have it they are both commenters on the Dames post.

So, our first winner is comment #61, from Catie, who said:

Haha! Yeah Dame Lilith you’ve pretty much echoed what everyone who cares about me always says: “Stop worrying about whether or not your work has value and what it might be–JUST WRITE and make it the best work you’re capable of producing.” Dagnabbit if y’all aren’t on to something.

Good advice, Catie! And our second winner is comment #87, from Leslie, who said:

Thank you for your straight forward advice on writing. I’ve requested The Elements of Style from the library.

Ah, those words are sweet sweet music to my ears.

So, Catie and Leslie, send me your snail mail addresses. Remember, I can only ship to the US and Canada (things are getting better).

I am now going to bid you a civil adieu for the day, I have a lot of catching up to do since this weekend was too hectic for me to really work at home. See you ’round.

First, the giveaway! I have two–count ‘em, two–signed copies of my about-to-be-released YA novel Strange Angels to give away today. Comment on this Deadline Dames entry by midnight Saturday, April 25, and with the help of Random.org, your comment might be chosen! Disclaimer: I can only mail to US & Canada addresses. Sorry about that.

Let’s talk about truth in writing. A fellow writer asked me the other day:

Here’s the thing. I’m a good writer. I know the craft stuff, I have the structure, characterization, dialogue, plot. . . what I lack is that spark of truth, theme, life. I write as honestly as I can, but I don’t know how to break through to the next level. How do you connect to yourself? I feel it should be the most basic element of writing, that one must learn the Other stuff, whereas I know the Other stuff and lack being straightforward. Ironic. How do you do it? Where does the connection come from? I feel I am making headway with my latest work because I asked “what am I trying to say here?” . . . I always avoided it because I don’t want to be preachy or gimmicky or too glib, but perhaps I should. I spent my lunch hour in the bookstore looking over writing reference books and my frustration kept growing because it occurred to me that I do know the things they’re trying to teach. It’s the Bones you talked about that I haven’t grasped yet. Help?

First of all, throw the goddamn writing reference books away. We may get metaphysical here in a bit, and that ballast won’t help. We all know how I feel about books on writing–there are two, count them, TWO I recommend^[1] out of the vast number of how-tos. Hitting yourself on the head with those books is probably the best use for them, if only because it will feel so good when you stop. Quit trying to look for a magic key in there. If there was one, the entire self-help/writing book industry would tank overnight.

Next, the bad news.

* You ain’t never gonna be happy, honey, ’cause happy ain’t in the deal. No serious professional writer I know is ever completely happy with the work. Well, they are on one level–there’s a great deal of satisfaction in consistently turning out good craft. But writers are inveterate fiddlers. We go back and edit. Relentlessly and constantly. If we’re any good, we’re constantly refining. Even when your books are in print you are going to open them up and reach for your red pen. That’s just how it is–you are always going to see things you could have done better. It’s like life.

* Like ogres, this craft is all about…layers. There is always going to be another level to get to. No writer is so godlike-perfect that they can’t learn a thing or two, or want to get better. Your characters have layers–you can stay on the top and wonder about their motivations, you can sink inside their skins and look out through their eyes. Either will give you different things to write about. But there will always be another layer, another thing to consider, another goddamn thing to learn. Sorry about that.

But there’s good news, and it outweighs the bad.

* You’re probably ready to move forward. One of the “joys” of a writer’s life (like all true miracles, it has teeth) is that creative motion forward is indirect. I’ve often noticed I get itchy and dissatisfied for a while before the craft takes a serious step forward and I’m back to juggling chainsaws again. I call it “plateau-ing” and I’ve seen it in other writers. You might be ready to take that step into the layer of the “bones”. The process–inspiration, gestation, frustration, illumination–repeats itself over and over with the process of being a writer, both in terms of small individual works of art and artistic growth. Don’t rule out the idea that you might be getting ready to take a step forward.

* And you can’t see the forest for the trees. Get used to the idea that you might be too close to your own work to see the “spark” in it. That’s why we have beta readers and editors. If you’re very lucky you might glimpse it once or twice for yourself, but I have to tell you I haven’t seen it yet. My editor tells me it’s there. My beta assures me it’s there. Some readers tell me it’s there. Sometimes I’m pretty sure a work is technically sound, or I love it because it’s mine.

But here’s a secret: I still cannot see this “spark” you talk about. All I see are the mistakes.

Nobody said this was going to be easy. But if you know you’re too close to see it, you may find some comfort in the thought and quit beating yourself up about it. Beating yourself up is wasting time you could be using for writing. Just…consider the notion, okay?

* You’re obviously not going to quit. Believe it or not, this is very important. You know the answer is there and you’re not going to stop until you find it. That stubbornness will stand you in good stead, and I admire it.

So, what the hell should I tell you to do?

All applicable disclaimers here. But you asked my advice, so here it is.

* Get used to being scared. Like it or not, the bone is where the fear is, and the fear is where the power is. You even mention the lack of being straightforward. What are you scared of writing? Is it something your mother would disapprove of? Something you’d be embarrassed to show your friends? Do it anyway. That fear of being shamed if “someone” reads your stuff is an invaluable sign that you’re on the right track. Heart in your mouth and your palms wet? Don’t stop. Keep going, keep writing.

You care what “someone” thinks enough to stop writing? I didn’t think so. Here’s a little secret: most people could care less. You’re no more than a secondary character in the big drama of their life; it’s the curse of being human. If your mom cares that you write hot sex scenes, if Aunt Lucille would be scandalised because she thinks the dingbat old lady in the book is her, if your ex-boyfriend might recognize himself in the dime-store Lothario who gets nailed in the nuts…who cares? The fig leaf of “these events are fictional” in the front of the book is fair warning, so don’t worry about that. Writing someone into a book is a much healthier way to deal with any residual aggression than many others I could name. And your mom will probably be so proud you’re published she won’t even care about the spicy bits.

But it all comes down to this: who are you writing for? Yes, you have a commitment to your readers. But if you are not writing the things that thrill you all the way down to your knickers, you’re falling down both on that commitment to the readers and the commitment to yourself and your art.

* What is the risk here? You might be afraid of your character risking something. Without risk there is no reward. If your character isn’t really running a risk, of course it feels like you’re just phoning it in. Sit down and figure out what your characters are risking. Then, up the ante. Make them pay for it. Get your heart in your mouth. Be unsure whether or not they’re going to make it. Get them dirty and make them deal with consequences. I know you don’t want to–you really don’t want to hurt your characters. But you have to. Otherwise you have a story with no risk, and no reward.

* Whose story is it? As Laura Kalpakian once said, the story belongs to the character that changes the most. Who is changing in your story? If it’s not the hero/ine, you have some thinking to do.

* Why, yes. It IS like taking your clothes off in public. But nobody is going to look. Some people are going to think that everything you write is about You. A character with trauma must be YOUR trauma. They will judge you based on your characters, and how well your characters conform to THEIR expectations. Of course everything you write is personal–writing is a personal art. But you are going to have to learn that feeling of exposure is not necessarily yours. It’s another trick by the Internal Censor trying to get you to back away from Telling The Truth.

Nobody is going to “find you” in your writing, beyond certain values of lit-crit and biography that I wouldn’t worry about, because by the time they become relevant one will most likely be safely dead. Writing is personal, but it does not hold the key to your inner sanctum. Only you do. The fear of exposing oneself is a necessary social function, and it sometimes holds one back from getting the characters dirty or writing about a situation you have intimate knowledge or imagination of. Don’t worry about this while you’re writing. It can always be edited out, either by you or your beta or your editor. Get it all out first, no matter how heart-in-mouth you feel.

* Do not quit. If you have come this far, you are so very close. You have done what a high percentage of people who call themselves “writers” have never done–consistently finished work and taken a look at what it means and what it takes to get published. You are at one of the last hurdles before the world opens up. Don’t stop. Stamp the pedal to the metal and let the engine roar. Go for the horizon, race to beat the Devil, go until your heart burns. Do not stop.

I promise you, if you do not quit, that spark will be there. Whether you can see it or not.

Now go get ‘em.

^[1] Stephen King’s On Writing and Strunk & White’s Elements of Style. That’s it.

First of all, giveaways! To celebrate Dame Keri’s latest book debuting at #6 on the NYTB list, we’ll have three lucky winners chosen at random^[1]. We’re giving away this tote bag (so you can carry her book away from the store), this coffee mug (so you can sip coffee/tea/hot milk while reading her awesome book) and the grand prize, a $10 Amazon gift certificate…so you can buy her book, erm, ahem, anything you want. (There may be more Surprise Prizes too.)

To win, just congratulate Keri in the comments of this very post at Deadline Dames before midnight PST on Saturday, April 4. (She buried the news at the bottom of another DD post, and this, bwahahahaha! is my revenge. Mine is an evil laugh.)

And now, having Announced, comes my regular Friday thoughts on writing.

Laura Anne Gilman said something thought-provoking this morning.

You-the-writer must have empathy for your characters. You have to like them — or hate them. I’m not saying believe they’re real — that road leads to the Palace of Psychosis, and nobody will visit you there except to mock — but you have to let them into your heart as well as your head. It’s that emotional connection that allows you to care about them, not as the means to deliver a message, or to flip a twist, but as actual individuals going through hell. Once you care about them, you can make other people care about them, too.

If you don’t? if you’re emotionally removed from your characters, or see them merely as markers to be moved along the story, in order to achieve a final goal? The most brilliant prose in the world won’t do you for damn. (Laura Anne Gilman)

I hadn’t thought about this before. But it’s true. I cry every time I reread the hospital scene in Dead Man Rising. And the end of Redemption Alley makes me cry every time I read the last four words. When I finish a book I’m more often than not a mess, because I am emotionally invested in these people. They are pretty damn real to me.

No, I’m not a candidate for the Palace of Psychosis just yet. I know they’re imaginary. But I make myself forget they’re imaginary for long enough to finish the book, and I feel for them. Not so much for the books I write to spec–they’re a different kind of Imaginary Real People. But the organic books, yeah. I feel it when they’re hurt. I know what makes them tick. I understand the fault lines in their heads, the damage done to them, the abandonment or betrayal complexes.

A fellow writer (oh, hell, I might as well say it, hello Jeff) asked me about getting into your character’s head, and I’ve been thinking about how to explain how that process works for me. It was particularly agonizing because I had no words for it. I just did it. (Having no words for something is a special kind of hell for a writer.)

Gilman has hit the nail right on the head. It is empathy–imagining yourself in someone else’s shoes. When you build a person from the inside out to write them, or when they show up in your head with this story they need you to tell, feeling for them, understanding what they feel, is very little different than listening to a friend tell a story and not just saying “That must have felt terrible” but feeling it sincerely.

Sometimes, when a character shuts down and refuses to talk, I get out pen and paper and “interview” them. I put together song lists for them (all my organic characters have soundtracks). When I go for walks, or during workouts, I talk to them in my head–a kind of imaginative sympathy, almost like method acting. This is why I love having a fellow writer as a best friend; she understands when I talk about my characters as if they’re real people. (”But I wouldn’t want to speak for him,” she said once about a character, and after a long moment of ironic silence we both burst out laughing.)

It is like magic. I know “magic” doesn’t objectively “work”. But the techniques make a psychological and emotional change in me in order to get the results I want, in order to maximize my chances of the seed of luck hitting prepared ground instead of stone. Your characters and mine aren’t real, but if we feel as if they are we can feel with them, live with them, and transform with them. Which is the whole point.

When I was young I got into the habit of telling myself “stories” before I went to sleep every night. I had a very rich inner life to compensate for the barrenness of the outer; I would literally imagine myself inside the skin of characters and create whole worlds up from nothing. I think that practice of the imaginative muscles stood me in good stead when I began writing stories–for me the only way to do it was to think about how and why the characters were feeling the way they were, how they would react, why they would choose one path over another.

This strikes on something else I believe very strongly: the key to this skill lies in observation. Are you curious about why people do the things they do? Do you watch them? We spend our lives around human beings, predicting their behavior while they drive, shop, interact with us in the office and in social situations. We know much more than we think we do about why people do what they do.

At bottom, most people are just like you. They are afraid of rejection and are the stars in the ongoing stories of their life. People love to talk about themselves, a principle I’ve used several times while interviewing experts for books. Listen when people tell you about themselves. Observe them going about their daily lives.

I warn you though, sometimes it becomes impossible to stop the “observation”. Everything becomes grist for the mill, food for the work. It will become a deep mental habit. Just one of the hazards of the writing life.

So, feel for your characters. Yes, yes, recognize that they are just characters. But they are yours, and feeling for them will create the “spark” Gilman talks about–the opening in the armor for the reader to peek inside and see the vulnerability. That gap is like the vulnerability between lovers. It creates intimacy and opens up the possibility of being hurt, but human beings don’t stop loving. That’s what makes us human.

And that is what will make your characters human. At the end of the day, all fiction is human stories. We are telling each other over and over again what things mean to us. That vulnerability is the chance we have of helping someone else understand. It is a small seed, and from that seed…

…miracles.

Keep writing.

^[1] Winners will be chosen with the help of Random.org. So what are you waiting for? Congratulate Keri over at Deadline Dames and win!