Ok, I can't tell you guys anything, but SWW and I are happy humble creatures. That's all I'm saying. You'll hear more when I can. :D

Okay -- it's officially Friday and I'm going to bed .. . but I've now posted my fiction piece over at merry_fates so you guys should go look at it. :D

43,436 / 70,000 (62.0%)

I was a busy beaver on BALLAD this week. Finally I'm starting to like the look of that word count thingy. I'm like, yeah, July 1st, no problem baby. I'm suave. Me professional writer. I do polished drafts of novels in 90 days all the time.

And you know what, I'm actually sort of enjoying myself. It's mostly like any other time that I've written a novel, just with all the em, ah, and ers taken out. Oh, yeah, and very little evening TV. But other wise, I'm cool.

Oh right. And tomorrow (I'll remind you again) is my day for weekly fiction over at the new writing comm I'm a part of, Merry Sisters of Fate (merry_fates  ). Today there's a discussion of blood thirsty goblins over there and Tessa (everflame  ) did a piece of fiction on Wednesdays. And of course Brenna (brennayovanoff  ) on Monday.

So, just in case you're strapped for time and can't type up a proper comment for my fiction post tomorrow, I've done one that you can just copy and paste:

Oh Maggie. You are truly the Future Queen of America. If your prose were a sound, it would be the lead guitar from Audioslave. If your plotting were a girl, it would look like Salma Hayek. If your dialogue had wings, it would be one of those rare, endangered things like a condor that everyone wants but nobody has. I heart you. That's all.

Truly my benevolence stuns even me. I mean, seriously. I wrote you guys a great comment. Free. Gratis. Whoo.

I'm off to go vibrate with anticipation until tomorrow, when Big Novel Things are happening.

I just wanted to announce the launch of a new writing community that I'm a part of here on LJ -- it's called Merry Sisters of Fate and is going to have original short fiction by me, brennayovanoff, and everflame, two of my three amazing crit partners. Also author discussions, blabbering about craft, and other fun stuff -- we're hoping to make it a place where thinking writers of spec fiction of all sorts can come and talk in the comments.

Anyway, check it out (pretty please). Brenna's posted her short piece today, Tess has Wednesdays, and I have Friday's (Friday's Child has far to go you know). It's here. merry_fates.

And yes, I'm scared snotless at the idea of coming up with some cunning flash fiction piece every week.

But I've found out by now that scared snotless is when I do my best work.

The more I write and read, the more convinced I become that good writing is actually 80% good observation and 20% translation of what you observe. The books that I like the best are populated with characters that have a sort of uncanny resonance for me -- like no matter how crazy the crap is raining down upon the characters, they're real in a way that makes me care about them no matter how idiotic the plot may get.

I didn't used to think that way though. When I first started writing, I was all about the plot -- plot holes, plot twists, plot this and that -- and then I built the characters around that. I mean, the characters weren't totally tactless. They had pasts and motivations and favorite CDs. But I wouldn't say they were totally real. They were realistic, but you'd never mistake them for actual people.

And that's where the observation part comes in. The more people I meet, the better I think I write. I collect little goodies like gestures, and weird patterns of speech, and the things people actually  do when they're surprised or nervous or whatever. I haven't had a fictional character gasp in surprise in tens of thousands of words -- because you know what, when you become good at observing, you notice that a lot of people don't gasp when they're surprised. Or even swear or cry out or widen their eyes or any other literary device I'd picked up over the years. The weird, real things that people do is what makes my characters breathe now.

I'm amazed at what a difference it's made in my writing. It seems obvious to write people just as they are . . . but for so long, I didn't. Even the difference between my characters in LAMENT and BALLAD is stunning to me.

So how about you guys? Have you changed the way you write your characters over the years?

Okay, so a wrap up.

This week I:

1) flushed my husband's contact lens case down the toilet. Yes, it was an accident. No, I couldn't replicate it if I tried.

2) Visited the teens at Woodbridge High School and swore way more during the talk than you're probably supposed to in an authoritative position in a high school.

3) Got insane good news on SWW that I can't talk about yet and is not quite done unfolding.

4) Read HOW I LIVE NOW and have the intense feeling of having been Entertained.

5) Listened to Ashes Divide's album 8,034 times because it's all I seem to be able to listen to while writing BALLAD.

6) Wrote some more, though not as much as I should've. I was at 29,050 words on the 29th of April. I tried the wordcounter again, and it's still vaguely depressing.

37,129 / 75,000 (48.0%)

7) Bought my daughter a rubber snake that looks disturbingly real because she wanted it more than anything. Truly, she is my daughter. My mother is Not Amused.

I realized today as I was writing that as I get better at writing, everything I write takes longer. You know, I can't just write "she rolled her eyes" for disbelief anymore. Now it's got to be "One side of her mouth pulled out in a disbelieving sort of way."

One little Maggie angel on one shoulder whispers, "It's your style. You have a style!" and the other little Maggie angel on the other shoulder whispers "You're making every friggin novel longer."

Today I had a Q & A with the creative writing classes at Woodbridge High School. They were awesome -- they had really great questions and two of them in particular really surprised me with their depth of knowledge on the business. And one of them really reminded me of  . . . .well, me. Something about the line "I plan to become rich and famous." ;)

I read a bit of LAMENT to them and there was laughing and no heckling. All in all, a positive experience, even though the security guy mistook me for one of the students when I got lost.
 

Today was a very exciting day. For starters, I got to hold my first real live ARC of Lament. OMG it has interior design. Curly letters heading all the chapters. Interior art before every section inside. They printed my corny acknowledgments! Ohhhh . . . it looks awesome. I love my book designer. I would kiss them, but they weren't sent in the package, so I'll kiss what's handy instead.

It has been an awesome Monday -- I have super secret wicked exciting happenings going on that are causing me to slap and pinch myself like crazy . . . all I can say is that I am more in love with werewolves more than usual today.

Whee! No way can Tuesday live up to today!




























.

I am working on my copy-edits for LAMENT now. Each thing I need to address appears in a little bubble on the side of the page. And there is a bubble on every single page.

The message is clear: Maggie Cannot Type. Or Maintain Continuity.

ETA: To my eternal relief, the edit bubbles, like frog eggs, were mostly gathered at the top. I may live through this after all.

I realized that I haven't been talking very much about my other life -- my non-writing one -- on this blog, even though, until I got my first contract last September, it was how I made my living. I haven't been doing many finished pieces since then other than portrait commissions, but I have been doing a lot of sketching from life. So here are a couple of my five minute and under sketches from life (why do people have to MOVE so much).

I've got to say I'm kind of getting addicted to it now. There's something really satisfying about having enough practice at this sketching stuff that I can get someone's likeness down in under five minutes. What it could be good for other than, say, making a few bucks at the mall sketching people, I don't know, but I like it!

Feel free to boo me off the stage if the art side of Maggie is boring, or visit my art blog if it's interesting to you.

Also, I meant to ask this before, but those of you that aren't under contract yet, is there anything you'd be interested in hearing me wax poetic about?

1) Husband is reading PEEPS. He was not brought up to be a bookaholic like me, so seeing him all crouched over on the edge of the sofa reading makes me Happy Happy.

2) Brilliant Editor Andrew read what I have of BALLAD so far. Was happy happy himself. "Don't think I didn't miss that classical reference with the swan, Maggie. Ahem." And the subtitle "The Gathering of Faerie" is a go. BALLAD: THE GATHERING OF FAERIE has a certain ring, doesn't it? Happy Happy Editor makes me Happy Happy.

3) The first teens other than my sister read advanced copies of LAMENT and said things that made me very Happy Happy.

That's all.

I know I blabbed about this before, but it never ceases to be exciting once it's officially announced:

(from P.W. April deals)

April 28, 2008
Young Adult Maggie Steifvater's BALLAD, the sequel to Lament, in which a gifted teen at a music boarding school draws the attention of a dark faerie muse who strikes a Faustian bargain with her victims, and, when Halloween descends, he must choose between his long time friend/crush and the dark faerie herself, to Andrew Karre at Flux, by Laura Rennert at Andrea Brown Literary Agency (World).

I must confess that I'm in love with Scott Westerfield. Love is a very fickle and unpredictable thing, as you all know, and though I read UGLIES last year, I didn't fall for him then. But in response to my pacing stumping and general eye-glazing from writing yesterday, I hit the library and found LIFE AS WE KNEW IT, by Susan Beth Pfeffer and PEEPS by Scott Westerfield on the shelf. The librarian gushed over both and I randomly began to read PEEPS while my kids and my husband played on the playground.

(which goes like this:

3 y.o VICTORIA: Dada, let's do SWINGS now!
2 y.o. WILL: Yeah!
DADA: Yeah, great.
VICTORIA (five seconds later): Dada, let's do SLIDE now!
WILL (less enthusiastically): Yeah!
DADA: Yeah, great.
VICTORIA (five seconds later): Dada --
WILL: 'Toria, shut up!
DADA: Yeah!:)

Anyway, PEEPS was just what I needed. Fast-paced, efficiently drawn characters -- ending was a leeetle bit on the sketchily plotted side for me, but I'll let that slide, because love forgives all wrongs -- and a nice external structure (in this case, case studies of parasites, if you can believe it) imposed in a very mood-setting and plot-hinting fashion.

I'm psyched to write today.

29,050 / 75,000 (38.7%)

I had to try one of these word count meters, just once.

And good gawd, these things are depressing. Though I guess if I've written 38% of the novel in 1/3rd of the 90 day deadline I had, I'm still on track, right?

My pacing on my latest WIP is starting to feel distinctly lumpy, which is a surefire sign that I need to go stick my nose into a book. Whenever I start to feel like my story is getting uneven or like I'm losing perspective, I can usually cure it by immersing myself in one or two really good novels in the same genre or age range.

I wonder if that means that the IRS would let me write those novels off as business expenses?

Yesterday I had a great time hanging out with a friend from my college band (and felt guiltless about it because Sundays I don't write) and we went over her query letter and talked about her mss. And I thought that I might as well blab what I told her here because it's stuff that always seems obvious to me now but wasn't even a year or two ago. Ignore if you are already brainiac on writing business stuff.

1. Read what you're trying to sell/ write
When I first started writing, I didn't read many new books. I was a big library frequenter, which meant that the most popular books were usually checked out and on waiting lists so I didn't even know of their existence. I was passionate about young adult lit -- but it was young adult fiction from the 80s and 90s. Not exactly what editors were buying nowadays.

Plus, when editors and agents call, you want to be able to tell them what you've read in your genre and why your book fits into that or at least hint that you're conscious of a greater milieu that you belong to. Oh, yeah, and don't read crap. Read the bestsellers and the books that have made your genre what it is. Even if you don't like them, as writers, we need to try to understand what made them popular.

I just can't emphasize this enough. Read what you're trying to sell. Seriously. My writing improved so much when I did.

2. Query letters are easier than you think
You don't need to explain why your genre is appealing to readers. You don't need to talk endlessly about yourself. You don't even need to talk endlessly about your book. All you need to do is convince them that they want to read more, like any other reader. If you've targeted your submissions right, it should be as simple as one paragraph of text. The idea's what's going to make them say "yes, I want to see this" and anything else is just slight reinforcement.

This is how important a good query is: my current agent loves LAMENT. I was looking back through my old rejections the other day and found a form rejection from her from a year ago, before it had a contract. She didn't ask to see more back then. Why? Cause my query sucked. It was long and rambling and . . . yech.

My queries now are much more like what I tell you guys about my books in my LJ. I described BALLAD like . . . how did I say it? It was something like: homicidal faeries + faerie muses with psychic vampire tendencies + angtsy boys = win. Did it make you want to read more? Maybe just the first five pages? That's all you need to get the agent to read. Hook + voice. I didn't get that before.

3. 50-75K. Length of the average YA novel. It's not YA if your characters are older than teens or younger than 14. That's all.

Dear Cocky Male Protagonist of Ballad,

If you are so freakin' kick ass, then why don't you get over here and kill all these ants that are inexplicably swarming my computer desk? I'm tired of picking them off my fingers while I type and I think they're going to carry away the computer soon.

Also, don't think I don't know what you're trying to do with the plot. Very. Funny. Ha. Ha. It's not going to work.

One step out of line, and you'll be a soprano for any subsequent books involving you as a character.

Love,

Maggie

I have just discovered not one, not two, but fourteen e-mails from authors, art clients, and blog readers (of both my art and writing blog) in my spam filter from g-mail. Some of them are almost a month old and I'm feeling like a total heel!

ARRRRGGGH!!!

So if you've sent me an e-mail and I haven't replied in the next, say, hour or two, send it to me again and I'm agonizingly sorry!