The Divining Wand

[Blank pages. At one point or another, most writers fear them. However, in today's guest post, Katie Alender (Bad Girls Don't Die YA, and Bad Girls Don’t Die: From Bad to Cursed YA coming June 14, 2011) describes two different blank pages and how one applies to us all.]

A lot has been said about blank pages. As a writer, you can’t escape them. They’re in your job description. A first draft is nothing but blank pages. And even when you’re revising and feeling good—coasting along with the confidence of a puppy—BOOM! One pops up, right in your face: a blank page.

The farther I get on a project and the harder I work, the more I notice a distressing trend: blank pages start following me around. They find me at Twitter, where 140 characters suddenly seem insurmountable. They find me at Facebook, where no phrase on earth seems sufficiently pithy/hilarious/relevant. And they lurk at my blog, where the “New Post” screen stares me down like the eye of a giant killer whale.

In these helpless moments, it inevitably hits me: “I can’t do it. I’m out. I literally can’t think of a single thing to say.”

And then I think, “Aaaaaaargh, I suck!”

But then, a few seconds later, something odd happens: I start to feel okay about it. In fact, I start to feel good.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: there are actually two kinds of blank pages. There’s the kind everybody thinks of: the kind that means you haven’t started yet. But there’s another kind, too: the kind that you earn.

And as a writer, I’m always in pursuit of the second kind.

Over the holidays, I went skiing in Colorado. To say I’ve never been much of a skier is an insult to actual skiers everywhere. (I’m better described as a “faller/cryer.”) But this time, I really wanted to learn. So I spent five hours a day, for all four days, in ski school. I suited up and headed out while the rest of the family was still drinking their coffee. I missed the ball dropping, went to bed at nine, and skied on New Year’s Day. I skied when it was minus twenty degrees and our hair froze into icy webs around our faces. I skied when my instincts told me to toss myself into the snow and cry.

At the end of every day, I felt like I’d earned something. By the end of the week… well, you couldn’t say I was a good skier. But I’d made a lot of progress. More importantly, I knew I’d given it every ounce of energy I had. And that felt amazing.

When I’m neck-deep in a draft or a revision, feeling utterly flummoxed, my five-day-old status update or my empty “New Post” screen is actually a tiny signal that I might be doing something right. Yeah, there are little boats waiting in the harbor, but that’s because the tugboats are out there in the open water, bringing in the tanker.

It’s terrifically bracing to work to your limit. Suddenly, the mythical blank page isn’t terrifying; it’s simply impossible. It’s not scary; it’s just a mountain to be climbed another day. And because you’ve conquered so many before, you stop associating them with terror and start thinking of them as a canvas for fresh starts and new possibilities.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whatever it is you love, whatever you’re committed to, do it until you’ve used yourself up. Then take a break, recharge, come back with a full tank…

And say good morning to the next blank page.

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away one copy of The Art of Forgetting by Camille Noe Pagán in a random drawing of comments left only on this specific post, Camille Noe Pagán and The Art of Forgetting. Comments left on other posts during the week will not be eligible. The deadline is Wednesday, June 1, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. EDT with the winners to be announced here in Thursday’s post. If you enter, please return Thursday to see if you’re a winner.

[Reading educates, enlightens, entertains and even allows us to escape from or clarify personal problems. In today's guest post, Camille Noe Pagán (The Art of Forgetting coming June 9, 2011) chronicles how reading also can be the ultimate lifesaver.

And, on that related note, please remember that from May 16th to June 1st, the author is donating $1 per pre-order of The Art of Forgetting to the Bob Woodruff Foundation, which provides resources and support to service members, including those who've suffered brain injuries.]

After I emailed Caroline Leavitt to tell her I loved her recent novel, Pictures of You, she mailed me a handmade bookplate. It was a photo of wings on the sidewalk in front of a brownstone. Beneath it, Caroline wrote:

“Camille, reading saves our life.”

Cute, I thought at the time.

But that saying burrowed under my skin like a tick; try as I might, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. While I was out jogging one day, I suddenly realized that Caroline was right. Reading had saved my life–more than a few times.

During my childhood, I followed in the footsteps of millions before me and escaped the misery and sadness of youth by losing myself in books. I became an Egyptologist while reading The Egypt Game; took on the White Witch alongside Lucy in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; and let the green world bring me alive like Mary and Colin in The Secret Garden.

In my twenties, after despairing of my instinct to flee a relationship that was so good for me I didn’t know how to handle it, I read Charles Baxter’s The Feast of Love twice in a row, then went around recommending it like a door-to-door evangelist offering free copies of the Bible. (Spoiler alert: I married the good-for-me guy. Thank you, Mr. Baxter, for that nudge.)

While a friend of mine was dying from terminal cancer, I dove back into my favorite novel, Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer, a story that illustrates, among other things, the way humans are interconnected with nature and every living thing. It was a sustaining thought in a time of internal chaos.

As a journalist (my other hat, when I’m not writing fiction), I cover health and wellness. I’ve written about depression and crisis more times than I can count, and the thing I hear from physicians and therapists time and time again is this: getting out of your own head can stop your negative, depressive thoughts and help you feel better. Our self-focus can drown us if we swim in it too long. But when we participate in activities that make us look outward–whether it’s exercising, volunteering, or being with friends–it breaks through those thoughts and offers perspective. Reading does this in the most primal way: it takes you out of your head and puts you in someone else’s.

The ability to leave my life and enter a fictional one—even for a few minutes—has kept me from sinking so many times (no surprise, writing fiction has a very similar effect). To me, at its core every novel is about redemption. When the characters we are reading about triumph, or even just survive, we cheer along side them because it reinforces the idea that we, too, can survive and triumph.

A month or so ago, a woman emailed me. It turns out that she helped copyedit my novel, The Art of Forgetting, which is about how two friends’ relationship is forever changed after one of them suffers a brain injury. She told me that while she was working on Forgetting, someone close to her had suffered a serious head injury. Your novel was a great source of comfort to me during that time, she wrote. Thank you.

It was then I knew that writing the novel had been a worthwhile endeavor; I had finally paid forward what Barbara Kingsolver, Charles Baxter and countless other authors have done for me. I may not have literally saved that woman, but my book had been a lifeboat during her flood. I’ve had some lovely early reviews–and, of course, some less-than-lovely, too. None of those words, good or bad, have meant nearly as much to me as the email that said, Your book helped me.

Reading saves lives. If you don’t believe me, crack open a book the next time you feel yourself starting to sink.

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away one copy of The Arrivals by Meg Mitchell Moore in a random drawing of comments left only on this specific post, Meg Mitchell Moore and The Arrivals. Comments left on other posts during the week will not be eligible. The deadline is Wednesday, May 25, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. EDT with the winners to be announced here in Thursday’s post. If you enter, please return Thursday to see if you’re a winner.

[For many authors running and writing not only complement each other, they also share numerous similarities. In today's guest post, journalist/debut author Meg Mitchell Moore (The Arrivals coming May 25, 2011) describes what it really takes to cross a finish line and/or type "The End."]

I am certainly not the first writer to address the parallels between running and writing, and undoubtedly I won’t be the last. (Debut author Rebecca Rasmussen wrote a fabulous post on the topic recently for this very site: Semper Fi.)

The reason running and writing inspire so many comparisons are because, well, they have a lot of similarities. I have been doing both for a long time. Both writing and running require enormous amounts of discipline. Both are solitary pursuits—you may run with a partner or show your writing to a critique group or a trusted agent or editor, but when you’re in the middle of a long, hard slog at the desk or on the road there’s nobody else who can do the work for you. Both often feel better when complete than during the act itself. Both are painful when done to the best of one’s abilities! (I’m not selling either pursuit very well, am I?) Both produce a sort of “high” on a good day. (Better?)

One additional reason I want to write about running in this post is to tell you about an event I witnessed earlier this year at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix meet at Boston’s Reggie Lewis track. The competitors in the men’s 3,000-meter race gathered at the starting line. In the controlled chaos that marks the beginning of many elite distance races, Ethiopian runner Dejen Gebremeskel lost a shoe, probably when another runner inadvertently stepped on his heel. This was an indoor track meet, which means competitors in the 3,000-meter race run 15 laps around the track. Nobody would have faulted Gebremeskel if he had stepped off the track after losing a shoe in the very first lap. (The sock, for the curious among you, remained on.) Gebremeskel’s gait was compromised, and he risked injury that could have put the rest of his indoor season in jeopardy. Not to mention that the unshod foot was particularly vulnerable to the spikes of the other runners’ shoes. Because of the rubber track, he said later, his foot was burning. He got blisters. (Ever try running with blisters? It hurts! A lot.) But. Gebremeskel didn’t step off the track. He ran the entire 15 laps with one shoe, then, with the crowd cheering him on, he won the race, overtaking Mo Farah, the anointed favorite, in the last few steps.

Let me say it one more time. The guy with only one shoe won the race!

I thought Gebremeskel’s race was an act of extreme courage, and I find myself thinking about it every so often with a mixture of awe and envy. I also find a lot of inspiration in the memory. And here we go again with the parallels between writing and running, with a different twist. The acts of courage writing requires rarely (okay, never) happen in front of hordes of foot-stomping fans in a televised event; they are, more often than not, as solitary as the pursuit of writing itself. They look something like this. Maybe you go back into a book and revise again, again, again to make it as close to the vision you began with as you can. Maybe you abandon a book you’ve spent months or years on when you know it’s not working. Maybe you query one more agent even though you think another rejection might put you over the edge or send you running for the scotch bottle. Maybe you swallow your pride and accept a painful critique that, deep down, you know is correct. Maybe you ignore the people who wonder why you’re spending so much time and energy on something that may never see the light of day.

I know not every reader of this site is a writer, but to those of you who are, these are all acts of courage, every single one of them. One foot in front of the other, one word after another (or, as Anne Lamott tells us, bird by bird), one day after the next after the next. Maybe nobody sees it, maybe nobody notices, but you writers know what you’re doing: you’re finishing the race with one shoe missing.

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away two copies of The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted by Bridget Asher (aka Julianna Baggott) in a random drawing of comments left only on this specific post, Julianna Baggott (aka Bridget Asher) and The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted. Comments left on other posts during the week will not be eligible. The deadline is Wednesday, May 18, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. EDT with the winners to be announced here in Thursday’s post. If you enter, please return Thursday to see if you’re a winner.

[There are authors who describe writing as an art while still others define it as a skill, but could writing also be considered a science? In today's guest post, essayist/poet and novelist of her seventeenth book -- The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted -- Julianna Baggott makes a case for scientific application to writing.]

Scientists get all of the best laws and theories – motion, gravity, thermodynamics, evolution, relativity. What about writers, huh? How about a few unbreakable Laws of Creative Musing? How about a little Theory of Novelization? ‘Bout time, if you ask me.

The fictional apple has dropped on my fictional head and here you go:

Baggott, Asher & Bode’s Laws and Theories of Creative Forces and Narrative Brain Matter

LAW # 1. Fiction punishes you for your absence. This law states that if you stop writing for a week or a month or more, you might think that your writing will be so happy to see you again (oh where have you been! I’ve missed you so!) that everything will come flowing forth. Wrong. You’re out of shape. You’re a body not in motion that’s got to shove itself into motion.

Suggestion: Keep writing because it’s easier to keep a body in motion that’s already in motion. (Also, for novels, once you come up for air and then reattack, you have to find your way back into that world, those characters’ heads. It’s not easy. The more times you break from the dream, the more time wasted reestablishing that dream.)

LAW #2. Writing rewards you early with great leaps in craft – but the better you get, the more diminished the returns. I explained this theory of mine to the world’s leading expert in expertise – Anders Ericsson – who explained, patiently, that this theory wasn’t mine. He could show me a graph that proved it. But this is how writing draws you in. At first, if you put in a little effort, you get great rewards. The better you get, the more effort required for infinitesimal steps forward. Like learning a foreign language – in a few weeks, you can speak well enough to get food, find toilets, tell people off. In a few months, you’re fluent. But it takes years to go from fluent to bilingual and sometimes it never truly happens. (Don’t make me show you a graph.) But by the time the rewards for your labor are tiny, you might already be in so deep – years of hours upon hours – that there’s no turning back. Sorry.

LAW #3 Time plus talent equals stronger craft. Talent without time equals – well, not much of anything. It takes hours – according to Ericsson 3-4 hours per day for 10 years. (When people tell me at cocktail parties that they want to be a writer, I tell them that’s great – and hit ‘em with the data.)

In other words: Talented writers who don’t write are doomed. I know a lot of talented young writers who don’t write. It’s over. Done. Wasted potential. From the start, in fact, they’ve got a strike against them. Writers who are excellent in a first draft are very hard to talk into the enormous effort it takes to get you from damn-that’s-good to actually brilliant and polished. Writers who are really just creating a lump of clay in the first draft – to then have something to sculpt with – have an easier time putting in hours and seeing results. It’s easier for an orthodontist to fix buck teeth than a tiny overlap. It’s the final 1/100th of the centimeter that’s the hardest.

LAW #4 For all I’ve said about putting in the hours, writers can improve solely as a function of the passage of time. A talented young writer of 23 – if he/she keeps writing – is going to be a much stronger writer at 35, simply because they’ll have more life experience to write about. It’s one of those few professions that writers simply get better at as they age. I truly believe this.

LAW #5 If you want to take a leap as a writer, dismantle the books you love. Reading for pleasure? Stop it. Read like a young engineer taking apart a clock. Mark up the margins. Break it down. Read and reread. Read aloud. Memorize lines. Figure out the structure. Reconfigure it. Once all of it exists in parts, try to put it back together again.

There you have it 5 Laws (and Theories) which, unlike the sciences, have all been broken before and will all be broken again. Feel free to add on as the fictional apples fall on your own fictional heads.

[A published author is of often defined as a writer who never gave up. In today's guest post, Laura Dave (The Divorce Party, London Is the Best City in America, and The First Husband coming May 12, 2011) shares an experience that tested and challenged her "author dream."]

Right before my twenty-sixth birthday, I moved to New York City. I’d been living in small towns, for the last several years, working tirelessly on my first novel. I was living on fellowship funds, getting up at 4:30 AM to write, and working a variety of odd jobs. They were challenging years. But I was hopeful that they’d paid off: I was heading to New York with two hundred pages of a book.

But, less than a week after I arrived in Manhattan, I spilled water on my computer and lost the entire thing. All two hundred pages.

Gone.

I spilled one glass of ice water, and the entirety of my work—all of those years worth of struggle and hope—seemed to disappear. I was devastated. I remember lying on the floor of my childhood bedroom, my father standing in the doorway, asking me what I was planning to do next. And I remember my answer.

“Well, I am going to start again,” I said.

The words were out of my mouth before I even thought about them. Much to my surprise, I knew, immediately, that they were the truth. There would be no taking this accident as a sign I was meant to do something else. (Except perhaps learn how to utilize a back-up system.) I would lie on the floor for a few more hours, feeling sorry for myself. Then I would pick myself up and get back to work.

As crazy as it may sound, I often look back at that moment with gratitude. Because it was in that moment that I became a writer. Whatever pitfalls I experience along the way now—whatever bad days make me want to put the pen down—I have lost fear that I will give up on my work. If I didn’t quit then, in the face of such loss, I figure I have no excuse to give up in the future.

But just in case: in my new home in Los Angeles, I have two back-up systems saving every word.

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away one copy of Exposure by Therese Fowler in a random drawing of comments left only on this specific post, Therese Fowler and Exposure. Comments left on other posts during the week will not be eligible. The deadline is Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. EDT with the winners to be announced here in Thursday’s post. If you enter, please return Thursday to see if you’re a winner.

[In life -- and including the sometimes difficult to understand word of publishing -- there are those events/experiences that make one believe. In today's guest post, Therese Fowler (Souvenir, Reunion) shares the unexpected, favorable events surrounding her latest novel, Exposure, in bookstores next Tuesday, May 3, 2011.]

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Exposure, my third novel, is a book that seems to have been meant to be. My cynical side (yes, I have one) says that’s a dopey thing to claim. My spiritual side (yes, I have one of those, too) says otherwise. So I’ll let you be the judge. Here’s the evidence:

• Due to scheduling matters, in early 2009 my publisher pushed the publication date of my next book from 2010 to 2011, which stretched my deadline as well. That summer (‘09), I was hard at work on the book I’d thought would be my third when my son was arrested for what’s come to be called a “sexting” crime—in his case a misdemeanor charge, but one that had potentially very serious consequences. The issues surrounding his arrest troubled me so much that they inspired a new story idea, a kind of modern Romeo and Juliet tale. Because of that extended deadline, I was able to set aside the book I’d been writing and write the story that became Exposure instead.

• A year later, when Exposure was done and being sent out for author endorsements (aka “blurbs”), I had some time on my hands, so I succumbed to peer pressure and joined Twitter. I was just getting familiar with the site when I saw a friend’s re-tweet of Jennifer Weiner’s tweet about the New York Times reviewing a debut novel Jen said she “might actually want to read.” (This was a slam against the Times, not debuts.) I read the review, thought the book sounded fabulous, and re-tweeted. That tweet included the book’s author, Eleanor Brown, who then sent me a message to thank me and say she was a fan of mine! A day or two later, I realized that her novel and mine had a connection: Shakespeare. On a whim, knowing she was on book tour and probably way too busy to read and possibly endorse Exposure, I asked anyway. She said she’d try—and she did, and her fabulous quote now graces the back cover!

• Around that time, a bound manuscript of Exposure that included the cover art was sitting on my literary agent’s kitchen counter when her twenty-one-year-old daughter came home during holiday break from college. The cover caught her daughter’s eye—especially the image of the girl. She said, “Hey, that’s Emily!” Emily: a good friend who is a model and actress and whose image just happened to be the exact right one chosen by the Ballantine Books publishing team for a novel soon to be published by Emily’s friend’s mother’s client (me).

• On March 26th, about a week before finished copies of Exposure would be sent out for media review and feature coverage, the Times ran this front-page article about teens and sexting. My first job as an author is to simply tell a compelling story the best way I can so that readers feel they’ve gotten their time and/or money’s worth. But I’d hoped that Exposure, which is a cautionary tale, might also help prevent future crises for other families. I never imagined it would land at the very moment the issue got “hot.”

What happens now? Now the book goes out into the world to be whatever it will be. Que sera, sera. Will there be other happy or interesting coincidences? I’ll be waiting to see.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this last interesting connection: four years ago, a generous blogger who loves books and was interested in emerging authors began visiting the blog I used to write. I was about to see my first novel, Souvenir, released in the UK, seven months ahead of its North American release. That blogger bought UK copies of my book for herself and a few other eager readers, then blogged about and reviewed the book, an act that led me to dub her “an author’s fairy godmother.” Today I come to you via her remarkable website, The Divining Wand.

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away two copies of The Violets of March by Sarah Jio in a random drawing of comments left only on this specific post, Presenting Debutante Sarah Jio and The Violets of March. Comments left on other posts during the week will not be eligible. The deadline is Wednesday, April 27, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. EDT with the winners to be announced here in Thursday’s post. If you enter, please return Thursday to see if you’re a winner.

[Although there are some born storytellers who become novelists, most novelists come from varied backgrounds that have inspired their storytelling. In today's guest post, debut author Sarah Jio shares how being a journalist has fueled her creativity with enough ideas to write one novel, The Violets of March (coming April 26, 2011), and more.]

As my first book, The Violets of March, makes its way into the world, I’ll tell you, honestly, that I’m a ball of nerves: excited, happy, elated, nervous, anxious, hopeful, and the like. (And if you came over to my house right now, you’d see me pacing the floors (with a newborn baby in my arms!) and checking Amazon sales rankings and my Blackberry for email updates a little too frequently.) But I think the biggest emotion I feel today is a sense of joy. Not every person can say they love what they do for a living, and although the writing life isn’t a perfect career, it’s perfect for me, and I’m so grateful to be able to do what I love.

I’ve been writing for magazines for the majority of my career, and while I’ll probably continue forever (I’m a huge magazine junkie, and I love reporting on fun new topics for all the big newsstand glossies—Glamour, Real Simple, Redbook, Health, etc.), I’ve found a new home in fiction, and I plan (and hope) to stay a while. Fiction fulfills me in a way that no other writing work has. I have never felt more passionate, engaged, and challenged in my work as I have been when I sit down to write a story. I also love the freeing feeling of being able to make things up (believe me, after 12 years wearing a journalist hat, this is pretty cool!).

And, just like with magazines, the thing I also love most about fiction is the idea-development process. Nowadays, editors assign me the majority of my articles, but when I was just starting out, I was always coming up with new story ideas and pitching them constantly. And now, I find that all that work sharpening my brain to think creatively about story ideas has parlayed into successful book ideas. Consequently, I think of book ideas all the time, and I find it so much fun. (Just today, I got a great idea for a new book—in the shower!). While a lot of these ideas go nowhere, many have stuck. I’ve already written, and sold, my second book, THE BUNGLAOW, which will be published by Penguin (Plume) in April of 2012. And, I’m a quarter of the way through my third book, which I’m so ridiculously excited about, I can’t wait to tell you about it—and everyone else. As soon as I can, believe me, I’ll be shouting it out from the rooftops. This story has really grabbed onto my heart, and my hope is that it will have the same effect on readers.

But, today, I’m thinking about Violets. I’m sending it out into the world, and hopeful that it resonates with readers in the way it resonated with me as I wrote it. No matter what the future holds, I’m just so happy to be here at this place.

Announcements: For those who have been wanting and waiting to read Holly LeCraw’s stunning debut novel, The Swimming Pool, it’s being released today in Trade Paperback. And for those who may have missed reading about this debut last year, here’s the presentation/review.

Also today Eileen Cook (The Education of Hailey Kendrick YA, Unpredictable, What Would Emma Do? YA, Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood YA) debuts with Fourth Grade Fairy for ages 9 – 11.

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away a copy of The Four Ms. Bradwells by Meg Waite Clayton in a random drawing of comments left only on this specific post, Meg Waite Clayton and The Four Ms. Bradwells. Comments left on other posts during the week will not be eligible. The deadline is Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. EDT with the winners to be announced here in Thursday’s post. If you enter, please return Thursday to see if you’re a winner.

[Although quick to note that her novels are not autobiographical, Meg Waite Clayton
(The Wednesday Sisters) admits that she falls back on her own emotions and experiences while writing. And, in today's guest post, the author offers how her past shine through in The Four Ms. Bradwells.]

Lovely neck on that The Four Ms. Bradwells book jacket, isn’t it? Pretty much the perfect neck. The perfect young neck in perfect white pearls on the cover of a book about four perfect…

Well, not exactly perfect.

O.K., not even close to exactly perfect.

Like all of us, Mia, Laney, Betts, and Ginger – a.k.a. the four Ms. Bradwells – are flawed. They are grown-up women who have been friends since the days when they may or may not have had gorgeous necks like the one on the cover of The Four Ms. Bradwells. The novel cuts back and forth between the present starting-to-feel-bad-about-my neck phase of their lives – when Betts is in confirmation hearings to become a Supreme Court justice – and their good-neck years. That’s when things began to go bad for them, in their good-neck years. The skeleton they buried together back then – one with a considerably more masculine neck – has surfaced. Untimely questions are being asked.

Mia’s neck would have been a bit chubbier than “the neck” even back then, when they were burying that skeleton, on an island in the Chesapeake Bay where Ginger’s family had a summer house, and still does. Laney has the best neck now, but even she would tell you her neck was scrawny back in the day. Betts … Well, Betts would joke that they should have wrung that neck when they had a chance to, but she would never lay claim to it. Ginger might or might not; one never knows with Ginger. She’s the Ms. Bradwell most likely to have had “the neck.”

Ginger’s mom, Faith, almost certainly had the neck. She had pearls, too, although they were gray pearls rather than white. Sadly, when we tried gray pearls on the cover, they didn’t “pop.”

Women of any age can relate to “the neck,” my publisher assured me, and I went off happily repeating that phrase: we can all relate to that neck, as if I might once have had “the neck” myself.

“Admire the neck on the cover,” I emailed my friend Sheryl, whom I’ve known since the sixth grade. “Surely we had necks like this, didn’t we?”

Her response: I NEVER HAD A NECK LIKE THIS. THIS IS A FICTIONAL NECK.

Her caps.

It made me laugh, the way dear friends do leave you laughing at the less important things in life. Like the Ms. Bradwells laugh together, even when things look grim.

Like them, Sheryl and I have both been through enough of life’s challenges to place much importance on the state of our necks.

O.K., not too much importance on the state of our necks.

But for the record, if Sheryl didn’t have the neck, then nobody did. More importantly, she was smart and thoughtful, and a wonderful friend.

The Four Ms. Bradwells is in some small way a tribute to friends like Sheryl, and like my own law school roommates who lived together on Division Street, in a house with a ratty old couch on the front port, like the Ms. Bradwells’ house. Jenn and Darby and Sheri. You can see their young necks here. Look at Jenn, on the far left of the top photo. Pretty nice neck, isn’t it?

It was a pleasure to sit down to write each morning, to wrap myself up in those friendships, and write from that wonderful, warm place.

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away a copy of Jael McHenry’s The Kitchen Daughter in a random drawing of comments left only on this specific post, Jael McHenry and The Kitchen Daughter. Comments left on other posts during the week will not be eligible. The deadline is Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. EDT with the winners to be announced here in Thursday’s post. If you enter, please return Thursday to see if you’re a winner.

[How many successful authors have THAT drawer and/or corner in their closet where their first "Great Novel(s)" hide? Probably ninety-nine percent do and, in today's guest post, Jael McHenry (The Kitchen Daughter coming April 12, 2011) admits to being one of them. However she also shares why -- although these works will never see the light of day -- this early writing has made her a debut novelist.]

Positive reviews are always welcome and wonderful things, but every once in a while, they make me feel guilty. This particularly happens whenever a reviewer mentions that The Kitchen Daughter is well-written “for a first novel.” Because, friends and readers, I am here to tell you that the only reason my first novel is even remotely well-written is the truly stunning quantity of unreadable stuff I wrote before.

I was especially pleased, then, when I spotted a New York Times essay last month asking Why Do Writers Abandon Novels? Because I’m in good company. Great company. Apparently even the finest novelists among us, boldface names like Michael Chabon and Jennifer Egan, started writing certain novels, but later these manuscripts turned so awful/difficult/wretched that they were forced to abandon them. They started over, and wrote something better instead.

The stuff of mine you will never read would make you say, “How interesting, yet sad, that this ‘writer’ can’t actually write.” It would make you say, “This person may or may not understand the English language.” You’d say “This book goes nowhere” or “Isn’t this entire thing an exact ripoff of the Audrey Hepburn movie Wait Until Dark?” or “Is this writer making a bet with herself that she can go for pages without punctuation?” or “Am I supposed to believe that a powerful demon would take human form as a lounge singer in a basement bar for farmers? Am I SERIOUSLY?”

Some of the stuff I wrote before my debut is fine. Some of it is even lovely. Some of it is great raw material I may return to in the future.

Some of it is so appalling I couldn’t even begin to tell you about it without bursting into laughter. Or tears. Or both.

(My personal favorite is the short story set at a senior prom held in a high school gym, where the pure-of-heart, innocent narrator [in a white dress] is threatened by a wild-eyed druggie with a gun, but saved from certain death by the druggie’s girlfriend [in a black dress of course] who throws herself into the path of the moving bullet at the last moment and DIES in the narrator’s arms ON THE FREE THROW LINE. In my defense, I was 16.)

And so, if you’re a writer whose writing sometimes disappoints you, take heart. Writing one or two or three awful things doesn’t make you an awful writer. And over time, even the awful things make you better. As Dan Kois puts it in the NYT essay I mentioned earlier, “Unsuccessful novels happen to everybody.” And the good news is, when your debut is published, it’s the only thing your readers see. It may not be your first writing, but it’s their first reading. How you got there is all a big dark mystery. And thank goodness for that.

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away a copy of Darien Gee’s Friendship Bread in a random drawing of comments left only on this specific post, Darien Gee and Friendship Bread. Comments left on other posts during the week will not be eligible. The deadline is Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. EDT with the winners to be announced here in Thursday’s post. If you enter, please return Thursday to see if you’re a winner.

[One of the most frequently asked questions of an author is: "Where did the idea for your novel come from?" In today's guest post, Darien Gee aka Mia King (Good Things, Sweet Life, Table Manners) explains how her novel Friendship Bread "started."]

If you’re never heard of Amish Friendship Bread, your life is about to change forever. Mine certainly was.

Amish Friendship Bread is similar to a quick bread except it’s made with a sourdough starter. If you’ve ever seen (or smelled) a bag of fermenting batter, I’m sure you’ll agree with me that it’s something you won’t likely forget.

Amish Friendship Bread is similar to a chain letter in that after ten days you’re asked to divide the starter into four portions, keep one for yourself and give the other three portions away to lucky (and unsuspecting) friends or neighbors so that they can do the same. After five rounds, there will be 1,024 bags of starter floating out there. After ten rounds: 1,048,576.

That’s a lot of starter to emerge from one bag of the stuff.

I’m often asked if Amish Friendship Bread is really Amish. I don’t know, and I’m not sure anyone else does, either. There’s no documented evidence of its origins, and I know some people’s suspicions are raised when they see instant pudding listed among the ingredients. But what I do believe is that the inspiration behind the bread is undoubtedly Amish in nature. It’s about friendship and community, about sharing what you have with others and expressing gratitude for the good things in your life.

Friendship Bread was inspired by my own experience with the bread, when my daughter brought it home along with a bag of starter she’d received from a friend. I was eating the last few crumbs when I started to think about a woman who receives the starter and just doesn’t want to do it. I saw a sadness hanging over this character and I knew I wanted to find out more. I started writing and the story quickly took shape—more importantly, it soon became clear that the book wasn’t about any one person, but an entire community ready for change and connection.

Friendship Bread is about what can happen when one person is willing to reach out and help another. It may seem like an overly simple solution, but maybe it’s not as insignificant as we think. Maybe there’s more power in it than we realize, and all it takes is one person who’s willing to give it a try.

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away one copy of Rebecca Rasmussen’s The Bird Sisters in a random drawing of comments left only on this specific post, Rebecca Rasmussen and The Bird Sisters. Comments left on other posts during the week will not be eligible. The deadline is Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. EDT with the winners to be announced here in Thursday’s post. If you enter, please return Thursday to see if you’re a winner.