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I “picked up” Jade Dragon Mountain on a browse through my libraries’ ebook sections. I thought the setting and premise sounded interesting. In the early 1700s, Li Du–an exiled imperial librarian–is traveling through the city of Dayan on the border of China and Tibet. He only wants to get past the city, but he is required to get permission from the magistrate–a cousin who he hasn’t seen in years, since he shamed the whole family with his exile. A body turns him into a detective, and he must solve the murder before the trouble can distrupt the Emperor’s imminent visit.

The mystery itself is good, with multiple viable suspects and a complex enough plot that is keeping me engaged but never confusing me.

It’s the writing, though, that is putting the author on my always-watch-for-another-of-their-books list. Don’t come to this story if you want fast-paced drama or high-stakes conflict. Come to it, instead, for the lovely prose, the methodical investigation, and the peaceful mood that still manages to support the quiet tension of the story.

As Li Du is leaving Dayan, determined to accept, without question, the death of a kind and curious elderly “foreigner,” he rests on the trail and watches the mist crawl up the mountainside and break apart into small windows for him to peek through. I haven’t seen enough Chinese art to be an expert, but the writing seemed to me to capture perfectly, through words, the feeling in the watercolors and jade sculptures of mountains with tiny trees and rivers and animals and people scattered along trails and beside rivers.

“The quiet deepened into silence. Li Du did not move but rested his eyes on the soft, white expanse. As he watched, the cloud shifted and broke. He saw, as if through a window, a tree on the opposite side of the gorge. It was a dead, hollowed oak, blackened by fire. Only one branch remained, reaching out perpendicular to the trunk. The vapor thickened, the window closed, and the tree was gone.

Another opening appeared. Through this new window Li Du saw movement, and thought he could make out the rounded back of a little bear trundling across a clearing into a copse of evergreens. Again the mist moved, erasing the scene.”

No gunshots, car chases, or explosions. Just beauty and intrigue and questions to be answered.

Depends who’s asking. On weekdays, at my day job, I work here. So if you bump into me somewhere in downtown San Jose, or we connect at an event where I’m not wearing my comfy clothes, I’d probably tell you that I’m in Development and I work with foundations to support our exhibits and educational programs. And I might hand the very cool, purple-orange-teal-and-yellow (hey, it works!) business card designed by our media & communications team.

If you catch me on the weekend, though, or at a comfy-clothes gathering some evening, I’ll probably tell you I’m a writer. And if you catch me in a few weeks at the SCBWI Spring Spirit conference, that’s definitely what I’ll say.

Seemed like a good time to order myself some new cards that say it, too.

Warning: navel-gazing ahead.

When I was younger, I made a few choices that got me into life places I didn’t want to be. In part, life just got me into those places. They weren’t horrible; I have no stories that you could build into any kind of salable young adult novel. But I would pick a path, usually because I didn’t see any other paths available, and I would go down it. I would find a destination, and I would build a piece of my world there, and at some point, I would look around at that world, and I would say…No. 

And I would chuck it all, shift gears, and pick a different path.

I was young, and part of what I was doing was what we all do when we’re young, or what we should do: try something on, test it, figure out whether it fits, and–if it doesn’t–put it back on the rack and try something else.

But, along with that rhythm, I added a layer of self-judgment (also something lots of us do when we’re young, but would be happier without). I had made a big mistake. I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t have a dream to follow (not one that would pay the bills, anyway). I couldn’t make myself happy. All the judgment added up, obviously, to a big feeling of defeat.

But somewhere in the defeat was also, thankfully, a thread of anger. Some of it, unfortunately, was directed at myself, but a chunk of it was also, always, directed at The World. The Universe that wasn’t giving me what I wanted (whatever that was). The anger also, on a smaller scale, pointed to specific pieces of that world–the job I had, the place I was living, the people I was surrounded by. No, the anger wasn’t fair, and it probably wasn’t healthy. But maybe it was what I needed to kick away at that much worse feeling of defeat.

And in those times, I would find myself listening to music that fed the anger. Music with a driving percussion beat, some hard guitar chords, and uncomplicated lyrics that spoke to me about not accepting defeat. About taking risks and breaking away. About Melissa Etheridge. Tracy Chapman. Pat Benatar.

And Tom Petty.

Like Free Fallin.

So yesterday, especially on top of the horrible news from Las Vegas, hearing about Tom Petty hit hard. I listened to him all the way home from work, and I listened to him on the way in this morning. And I felt his music stirring that feeling of anger again.
When I was young, there was nothing wrong with getting angry at my life and chucking things. I’m not a wild person; I always had a plan and a process and a safety net. And all the changes I made added up to where I am now, which is–in so many ways–the place I want to be.

But here’s the rub. There are a few things in my life that are not making me happy, that are part of a pathway I’d rather not be on. (I know, whose life doesn’t have these things in it, but, hey, I warned you about the navel close-up.) There are some things I would like to chuck away and leave behind. Some of these things are based in the current political climate. Some are closer to home and pretty much matter only to me. They are all things that have been making me feel defeated.

But chucking is not the same option it used to be. I am very lucky to have a husband and a son (and a cat!) who I love and want to be with. I have a home where I feel happy and where I can be true to myself.  I have friends who are very important to me. I’m not going to pack my bags, pay the last month’s rent, and move on. This is not that kind of midlife story.

My challenge, I think, is to figure out what kind of midlife story it is. And how I can use that music and the anger it stirs in a new way. How I can fight the feeling of defeat while I think about what changes I want to make, in the context of this world I actually want to hold on to.

I don’t know how to do that yet. But I think it will include listening to Melissa and Tracy and Pat. And Tom. 

Because he apparently still has some things to teach me.

RIP, Tom, and thank you. 

As the latest draft of my WIP sits with its editor, it’s also sitting in the back of my brain, sort of simmering. So I seem to be seeing different types of heroes everywhere I read, even when I’m not (consciously) looking for them. I’ve heard people talk about unsympathetic characters/narrators, but I don’t know that I’ve ever run across a hero I really didn’t like, certainly not one I kept reading about.

Until I started Marie Lu’s The Young Elites, the first book in the trilogy of the same name. (Books 2 and 3 are The Rose Society and The Midnight Star, respectively.) Adelina Amouteru is the main character of all three books. At first, because I am a worrier, I wondered if I was right that she was unsympathetic, or–as I was feeling–actually very unlikable. I wondered if that was Marie Lu’s intent. But the further I read, the more convinced I was that–yes–Lu did this on purpose. (Also, I googled around a bit and found interviews like this one, where it is clear that Lu saw herself as developing and writing a villain–a villain who, in my opinion, is also the hero.) Adelina is definitely the hero of the series. She is active, makes things happen, changes the world around her, and–ultimately–does go through a pretty huge learning arc.

As I realized what Lu was doing, I found myself asking one question over and over as I turned the pages: Why am I still reading? Not in a bad way–Adelina’s story is very well written. It’s action-packed, dramatic, and it does a pretty great job painting the wide range of dynamics between the various characters. But I asked, because–honestly–I really didn’t like Adelina. She is–for much of Book 1, all of Book 2, and a big part of Book 3–self-centered, paranoid, and cruel. But I didn’t want to put down her story and stop reading. I was rooting for her.

I think Lu did several things to get me (okay, us) there.

• She lets us see Adelina for a series of scenes before she discovers her abilities as a Young Elite. In those scenes, we see glimpses of Adelina’s focus on herself and her anger at those who neglect or abuse her. But we see her primarily as vulnerable and powerless, necessarily fearful and self-protective.
• Lu gives Adelina some very big, very real reasons for focusing so much on herself, for feeling angry and vengeful. Because Adelina has been “marked” by the blood fever and has no (apparent) useful powers, she is in turn ignored and abused by her father, harrassed and tormented by her society. Lu draws these scenes with strength, starting the first book by getting the reader on her hero’s side.
• Lu creates a downside for Adelina’s abilities. Adelina’s power is to create illusions, and the strength of that power is fed by anger, fear, and conflict. As she progresses through the story, these powers start to take a toll (trying to avoid spoilers here, bear with me!). Her illusions begin to spiral out of her control, showing her the image of her dead father following her around. They feed her paranoia–she is accompanied by increasingly frequent whispers in her mind, telling her that her friends want to abandon her, or to take her strength for themselves, or simply to kill her. By writing Adeline’s story in first person and giving us direct access to the whispers, we see the forces still acting against Adelina, even as her own actions get more violent, more abusive, and more unlikeable with every page.

As I got deeper into the story, toward the end of Book 2, I started–also–getting curious about whether and how Lu was going to bring Adelina out of her villain state. I kind of thought she had to, because, well, hero’s change. And I was pretty convinced, even in the midst of Adelina being really horrible, that she was the story’s hero. And Lu did it. Not too many spoilers here, but Lu takes Adelina deep into the isolation that cruelty and paranoia build around her, then creates a very strong reason for her to force herself out of that isolation and for the friends she has pushed away to invite her back into their company. And then Lu continues to place them all in situations where support, connection, and even some kind of renewed respect and caring start to be rebuilt, in all of the characters. (I did feel a few times that Adelina pushed away the whispering voices a bit too easily in this stage, considering how quickly she gave into them earlier in the story, but this was just a tiny question as I read, and it didn’t take me out of the story or out of accepting Adelina’s growth at the end.)

So back to that question of why I kept reading. I could say it was because I was being analytic and I wanted to figure out all the things I’ve just talked about. But that wasn’t it. I kept reading, because–while Adelina does get really unlikable, especially deep in the middle of the story–she never becomes unsympathetic. By giving us a believable foundation for all the nastiness Adelina commits, by showing that some of her fear and paranoia is based in reality and reason, by continuing the fine thread of her intentions along with her actions…Lu kept me sympathizing with Adelina from beginning to end.

And that is one way to build a hero.

I have a love/hate relationship with deadlines.

If you make me wait to finish something until just before a deadline, then I hate them. Sometimes this plays out at my day job, when I need some final information from someone else before I can submit a grant proposal. I accept that others are busy and that this is my reality, but it Drives. Me. Crazy. Me, a control freak? Whatever do you mean?

If you let me plan and organize and beat my deadline by a couple of days, or a week, then I am happy. And, in that case, I love deadlines. Because they make me get things done, let me check a task off a to-do list, give me a feeling of completion and satisfaction. While I was doing the at-home-mom, working-on-my-own-fiction thing, I essentially had no deadlines. Oh, sure, yes, you have 18 years to get your kid Ready to Move Out, but guess how quickly you realize that is very much out of your control? And you want to publish a book SOMEDAY, but someday is not a deadline.

August 31, 2017 is a deadline.

That’s the date when I find out if I get into the writing program I applied for. It’s a mentorship program, and they decide based on your first 20 pages and a couple of other items. If they reach out on August 31 and tell you that you’re accepted, then on September 1st, you send the whole manuscript.

I’d been working on this book for a while, had a couple of complete drafts, and was in the middle of another, and I pretty much knew the bare bones path to the end. But I had been waffling around that middle, spending way too much time on deciding whether my hero was going to do X or Y and whether I was going to bring in this side plot rf that one or neither, things like that.

With the deadline, I stopped waffling. I spent approximately two minutes thinking about any decision, then I made a choice. Doubts, fears, nasty little voices–I pushed them aside. Questions about what should happen in the next scene got answered by what taking one more look at what happened in the last one, and moving on. Sometimes that meant picking up the next scene five minutes after the last, sometimes it meant skipping forward some days. When the You-Call-that-Pacing? demon raised its head, and, oh, it did, I pushed it back down. I basically played Whack-a-Worry and kept writing.

And I met the deadline. I met it the way I like best, three weeks early.

Is the book good? Oh, h*ll, I have no idea. Is it better than the last versions? In terms of telling a story from beginning to end, coherently and in a comprehensible sequence? Yes. In terms of depth and writing and impact. Probably not. Are there holes and missing layers and characters who showed up too little or not at all? Definitely. Is my hero active enough and driving himself forward with a character-driven plot.  Not yet.

Did I get more work done and make more progress in the past few months than I had in the past two years?

I did.

And that’s the power of a deadline. That is the love part of my love/hate relationship. And the reminder is the first gift (hopefully not the last) that this writing program has given to me.

Okay, Nathan Bransford said this was hard, and I believe him. But it was also fun. It has made me very clear that there are some books I want to go back and reread and some books I should be putting on my never-read-and-whyever-not? list.

Nathan had his caveats, and I’m going to have mine. They are:

1. The books will be ones I’ve actually read, all the way through. There are probably many books out there that I have never picked up that would totally qualify.
2. Some of these books I literally haven’t read in decades and are on the list because of the impact they had on me when I did read them. If I reread them today, they might not make the list. Others are recent reads that are foremost in my memory–in 10 years, they might not be here. Some are books that I know I won’t choose to read again, because they were brilliantly written, but I don’t want to repeat the experience of being in the world they portray.
3. As I look at the list developing, I realize that it is a very white, heterosexual list. I am working on this, trying to read more widely and more diversely. But these are still books I fell in love with or was at least blown away by, so–for now–they make up my “best.”
4. They are in alphabetical order, obviously, not order of favoritude.
5. I’m not going to argue about this list. I welcome all comments and discussion, but I won’t be defending anything I’ve put here. That’s why it’s my list. You should definitely make your own and, if you want, leave a link in the comments!
6. Because some of my favorite books are memoirs, I’ve included some of those. And I cheated a couple of other times, to get in some other books that are short stories or, in one case, long essays. Because these books are The Best.

Here we go.

NOVELS

1. 84 Charing Cross Road
2. All Creatures Great and Small
3. Anne of Green Gables
4. The Ark
5. Artemis Fowl
6. The Beekeeper’s Apprentice
7. Between, Georgia
8. The BFG
9. Bitterblue
10. Ms. Bixby’s Last Day
11. Breakup
12. The Brothers Karamazov
13. Bluecrowne
14. The Bluest Eye
15. Busman’s Holiday
16. Caddie Woodlawn
17. Captains Courageous
18. Charlotte’s Web
19. Cheaper by the Dozen
20. Cloud and Wallfish
21. The Color of Water
22. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
23. The Flame Trees of Thika
24. Flygirl
25. Frindle
26. A Good Man is Hard to Find
27. Great Expectations
28. Half Magic
29. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
30. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
31. High Hearts
32. The Haunting of Hill House
33. The Hobbit
34. Holes
35. A House with Four Rooms
36. I’ll Give You the Sun
37. Inkheart
38. Island of the Aunts
39. Jo’s Boys *
40. The Jungle
41. The Left-Handed Fate
42. Life of Pi
43. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
44. Lionboy
45. Little Men *
46. Living with Jackie Chan
47. The Long Winter
48. The Magician’s Elephant
49. Matilda
50. The Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
51. The Metamorphosis **
52. The Mouse and the Motorcycle
53. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
54. My Antonia
55. My Father’s Dragon
56. My Most Excellent Year
57. Not a Genuine Black Man
58. Okay for Now
59. The Only Ones
60. The Boy Most Likely To
61. Persuasion
62. The Penderwicks
63. The Penderwicks in Spring
64. Perverse and Foolish
65. The Phantom Tollbooth
66. The Picture of Dorian Gray
67. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle
68. Pippi Longstocking
69. Pride and Prejudice
70. The Princess Bride
71. And Quiet Flows the Don
72. Reflecting the Sky
73. A Ring of Endless Light
74. A Room of One’s Own 
75. The Scarlet Pimpernel
76. The Secret Garden
77. The Shepherd’s Crown **
78. Speak
79. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing
80. Tea with the Black Dragon
81. The True Meaning of Smekday
82. The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode
83. The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax
84. Travels with Charley
85. Villette
86. War and Peace
87. The Water is Wide
88. The Watsons Go to Birmingham
89. We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea
90. The Wee Free Men **
91. When We Rise
92. Wintergirls
93. Winnie the Pooh
94. Travels with Charley
95. The Water is Wide
96. The Wolf Wilder
97. The World According to Garp
98. A Wrinkle in Time
99. Wuthering Heights
100. Zooman Sam

* Little Men and Jo’s Boys reach “best” status when you read them both, in order.
*** Make sure you read all the Tiffany Aching books after The Wee Free Men BEFORE you read The Shepherd’s Crown (the last in the series).

 

Yesterday, I finished reading Lisa Cron’s Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel. Somethings in the book worked better for me than others, but–overall–I am very impressed with Cron’s perspective and the exercises she uses to help us strengthen our stories.

For a while I was doing the exercises as I read through them, but this weekend turned out to be a good time to just curl up with a book, so I finished the last few chapters. And now I’m thinking about how I want to do the last exercises.

If you are just starting a novel or are even just thinking about it, I think I would recommend doing all the exercises, straight through, as Cron advises. She gives you a good base and then helps you build on that, and I find her logic and processes make sense. But that’s not where I’m at. I’m on the third draft of my WIP (although, honestly, it feels like a second draft), and I was struggling to get across the middle with anything that felt like effective scenes, when I heard people talking about the book. I started it, and then I was caught, but…honestly, I don’t want to back up and start this draft all over. And I don’t want to jump ahead and skip to the next draft, because I’m still going to have to deal with that middle that sent me looking for help. So, for Chapters 11 through 15, I’m going to pick and choose a bit.

1. I’m going to create an Idea List out of all my existing scenes, in the order they currently happen.
2. I may or may not do one of Cron’s scene cards for each of my existing scenes. On the one hand, I think it would be good to get something set up for each one, so I’m thinking about the her scene card questions–which I think are excellent. On the other hand, I already feel a bit as if I procrastinated myself away from my WIP to work through Cron’s book, and I don’t want to add too much more time onto that procrastination pile. So I may just do a quick card for each scene and give myself persmission to answer all the questions on it later, before the next revision.
3. I’ll start adding to the Idea List, as I take my first strong look back at that middle where I got lost–looking for new scenes to bridge that chasm.
4. I’ll test the new ideas against some of Cron’s questions: 1) Why does my plot need this to happen?, 2) Logistically, why can this happen (is it actually possible)?, 3) Why would this happen, given my protagonist’s inner struggle? and 4) Why would this matter to my protagonist’s inner struggle? I actually think 3 and 4 may be the same question, and Cron just phrased it differently in a couple of places, but it doesn’t hurt me to look at this all a little bit more closely?
5. I’ll do a scene card for each of the new scenes I want to work on to cross that middle. On these, I’ll push myself a little further than on the cards I may do for my existing scenes. I really like how Cron  uses these cards to connect what has happened before to what will happen later, and I think that making those connections will (hopefully) make the middle of the story less of a big, dark hole that I can fill in.
6. I’ll continue to do a scene card for the scenes past the middle, ones I already have some idea about and have, at some level, worked into my overall plot. I don’t want to back up and do any scenes over, but I want whatever I write new for this draft to be as strong as it can be. And I think Cron’s system can help me get there.

Obviously, I’m not positive this is going to work. There’s a little voice calling to me to back up and start all over, using Cron’s full system, but there’s a louder voice basically shouting at me to keep moving forward. So I’m going to give it a try–I’m going to flex and adapt Cron’s tools to my need, right now, and see what happens.

Fingers crossed!