So What's It Like?

By Amy MacKinnon

My email inbox is more full than ever before. I've heard from long ago friends and complete strangers, all of whom have been supportive and kind. To know there are people out there actually reading Tethered is a little jarring though, like someone poking around the shadowlands within me.

Neighbors I've never met have stopped by to ask if I'm the one who wrote the book and then wished me well.

My father called the other day to say when he started his car, the radio came on, and my voice filled the space. "You're like a Hollywood celebrity, Amy," he said. There was a catch, but he swallowed it. "Your mother and I are real proud of you." I didn't tell him it was a very local show and the interview lasted only six minutes; we all want to believe our children are somehow special.

I've scrubbed the bathrooms and the windowsills, I've managed to vacuum every other day. The laundry still gets away from me.

I walked past my local Barnes & Noble the other day and was a bit wistful to see the display window filled with books that came out the same time as mine. This is my turf, I thought. In the next moment, I accepted that my book was one among many and as Lynne says, we each have our own journey. With my next step, I noticed another display window. In it was a poster-sized photo of me and copies of only my book. It reminded me to keep moving forward.

Most people don't know who I am, don't know that I've written a book, and don't care.

I've received my first 1-star review on Amazon. I expected it to hurt. Instead, it made me wonder about the laws of attraction.

I received my first newspaper review from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. This from a writing instructor.

My children and I finished their back-to-school shopping. They'll be leaving me in a week's time, gone for hours each day. I'll miss them terribly.

Yesterday at my local library, the place I learned to read, a librarian asked if I was the author of "that book." She said there was a wait-list and she looked forward to reading it. Another woman approached me with her two children in tow, "I saw you in the paper, you wrote that book. Congratulations." After I mumbled a thank you, she then turned to her kids and said, "This is a real live author, she wrote a book..." Something to that effect. I was too embarrassed, too shy to hear anymore much less do the proper thing and greet her children. I promise to do better next time.

Yesterday, I went to the doctor's, the pharmacy, supermarket, and corner store. No one knew or cared who I was.

Also yesterday, a package arrived from New York, something from my agent. I opened it and was stunned to discover a gorgeous fountain pen inscribed with the title of my book and its pub day. She believes in me and that is why you need an agent.

Tomorrow I'll be doing a reading in Cambridge, MA with Brunonia Barry, author of The Lace Reader. It's sponsored by two favorites: Grub Street and Porter Square Books. Those will be some coattails.

I received a charming note from Ann Patchett in response to one I wrote her. It's tucked away in the first copy of Tethered I received from my publisher. If my house were on fire and my children safely out, I would race back in to save both.

I sleep through the night now.

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Dreaming

Posted by Lisa Marnell

I was away last week - spending time in BEAUTIFUL! Santa Barbara and beyond, but I'd love to play catch-up with Friday's MLLF question: What's Cool About The Writing Life?

My answer is simple. It's cool to daydream.

Just yesterday, I was walking back from our neighborhood pool, I meandered along a series of walkways that are hidden away by stone fences and pine trees. I was so very alone. It was delightfully relaxing. And yes, of course, I was thinking about my WIP. How could I not be? That ten minute walk was time I gladly share with my characters.

What, I wondered, should be Ava's reaction when she finds out Rose is in danger again?

Just how friendly should I allow my two main characters become?

It's fun - to daydream. It's a lovely perk of being a writer. I get to be a child, to daydream, to fantasize.

Ah, did we choose writing or did writing choose us?

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Making a Literary Life: Cool

As the dog days of summer turn cool (at least in these parts), we'd like to reflect on what's cool about the writing life. We've kvetched about the heartache when the words won't come, the angst of getting an agent (or not), selling a manuscript (or not), but let's talk the good stuff. What's your favorite aspect of this journey?

Lisa Marnell
Lisa is a way, but will catch up next week.

Amy MacKinnon
Last night, I sat in my family room surrounded by boxes and boxes of Tethered. Why, you ask. Well, rock star Random House sales rep Sherry Vritz asked if I'd be willing to sign copies for bookstores that requested them. So they were shipped to me first, I spent several hours gratefully signing them all, and will then ship to them to fabulous IndieBound book shops. Many thanks to The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City, The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, AZ, and Murder By the Book in Houston, TX. Very cool.

Hannah Roveto
What's cool for me is that writing was a life I used to live completely in my head. Not only the writing part, but the life part. I'd doodle, I'd lurch, and I would always let "real" life push it aside. Writing is a life I live now, and yes, there are still the job and the kids and the house and... yet... every day, I write, and now there are goals, milestones, and accomplishments.

Lynne Griffin
Lynne is still away, but we'd like to hear her thoughts on this topic when she's back.

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A New House

Lynne is away on vacation, but here's one of our favorites of hers:

Posted by Lynne Griffin

I've never built a house, but I took a wonderful course on building a novel. When I was deep in to a revision of Life Without Summer, I took a course on story construction offered through Grub Street by the smart and talented Stace Budzko. It helped me then, but how was I to know that eight months later, as I delved into crafting my next novel, that things he taught me would flood into my mind with new relevancy.

The elements of our stories are not unlike those of a house. What we know about our characters -- how they behave and misbehave -- their desires, wants and needs are as important to the writer as the windows that allow light into the living room. Plot can be seen as the opening and closing of doors. Voice -- the house's architectural style.

Having built and sold one novel already, I know that building a good foundation is critical to the novel's ability to stand out in the marketplace. For me, settling on point of view is an important first step in creating the right structure, telling the right story. Whose story is it? Which character(s) have the most to gain and the most to lose given the situations and complications I've chosen to write about? When I find the heart of the story, I know it. I love writing in two voices, so for me there is often more than one heart to consider.

At every stage of novel building it's important to use quality goods. For a writer, the raw materials are words. This time I'm finding it even easier to lay down the structure with care, partly because the more I write the more I fall in love with words. Though in truth, I'm confident, because I trust that even when a house is done, there is nothing wrong with moving a little furniture or hanging new curtains. Even brothers and sisters have been known to change rooms, and parents know when it's time to add a room over the garage.

Perhaps the single most valuable lesson I learned from Stace during that weekend in April relates to setting. I will be forever grateful to him for opening my eyes to the idea that setting can be compelling, not merely a backdrop "where characters do their thing". Whether you imagine the places in your novel as pleasing, forbidding or somewhere in between, setting embodies all the places that influence the way your characters see the world and how they respond to it.

Andre Dubus once said, "We enter the fictional world through memory". During my weekend course, Stace urged me to take every opportunity to pry, eavesdrop, stare, and otherwise gather the material I'd need to build a story. Little did he know that the perspectives he offered, I would remember, serving me well in my building projects down the road.

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Math and the Artist's Career

by Hannah Roveto

I was reading Rolling Stone yesterday, not because I am cool but because I was waiting for back-to-school haircuts to be completed. The current issue has an interview with Robert Downey Junior, who is, as far as I'm concerned, an artistic genius.

He was talking about his career and what a single choice can mean. People used to say to him, "Hey, I remember you in Weird Science; loved Less than Zero." By that latter movie he'd been in a dozen films, plus a season on Saturday Night Live. His achievements, he said, were like an algorithm -- a moveable, complicated process. Now, he says, people point to him: "Iron Man!" With that choice, Downey said, he has a fixed point from which to build.

The last time I took a math class was in high school. Calculus, actually, and that was pretty much the point when I switched with a happy heart to the humanities. But algorithms and fixed points -- the process of a career and its successes -- got me thinking.

As writers, we hope -- try -- for fixed points, one after the other. In part for ourselves, but in part for business reasons, truth be told. We want our stories to resonate and stay with the audience, to create a deep connection. The annoying thing is that -- as with other kinds of artists -- we don't get those starry successes every single time. This career is two-faced, the art and the business, and we can never forget it. And we worry.

What I like about Downey's math analogy is that it provides a long-term rationale for pushing forward, for not letting one moment make or break your determination. Yes, you can have a career and go along for a bit without a fixed point. If you keep at it, if you are smart about it, you will create one. Why am I so certain? Because what must be done comes not from the outside world, but from inside of us. We keep going, we keep creating. It is in our souls. Not to say we shouldn't be strategic. Many writers take pseudonyms to restart careers, extend careers. Or consider John Irving. His first three books didn't get the reception he thought they should have (career as algorithm), so he took his fourth book to a new publisher. That book, of course, was The World According to Garp (seriously fixed point!).

I have had relatives, neighbors and friends in this business; I have been lucky enough to absorb their experiences in preparation for my own. I know there will be times when my career might be more of a process; I also believe that with hard work, belief and determination, there will be points of achievement to stand upon over time, as well.

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Lisa Marnell has completed and gained representation for her middle-grade novel. She's now at work on a second.

Amy MacKinnon's debut novel, Tethered, will be published by Shaye Areheart Books/Random House in August 2008.

Hannah Roveto is a public relations specialist at work on her first novel.

Lynne Reeves Griffin is a nationally renowned parenting expert and author of Negotiation Generation: Take Back Your Parental Authority Without Punishment! (Penguin, September 2007). Her debut novel, Life Without Summer, will be published by St. Martin's Press in winter 2009.