The Divining Wand

[Although Canadian author Catherine McKenzie's debut novel was a national bestseller in Canada, SPIN is finally being launched here in the U.S. on Tuesday, February 7, 2012. That's great news for all readers since it was praised by Publishers Weekly as:

“[A] charming debut…With fresh, fast-paced storytelling and a personable, self-deprecating protagonist, McKenzie whirls a perfectly indulgent tale.”

Arranged, the author’s second novel, will also have a U.S. publication on May 15, 2012.

Catherine was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, where she now practices law. An avid runner and skier, she also sits on various boards and professional organizations, and has taught part-time at the McGill Faculty of Law. However, in today’s guest post, she explains and shares why she writes.]

A while ago, an author friend of mine, who was feeling a bit of writing ennui, expressed the possibility of giving it all up. He was tired of the late nights writing after his day job, and since his books, while critically acclaimed, weren’t selling as well as Dan Brown’s, he wondered why he was putting in all this effort. “I’m not doing this for my ego,” he said, and those words have stuck with me ever since.

They’ve stuck with me though I admit that my first reaction was skepticism. My first book had just come out, and if I’m being honest, the month of January, 2010 was pretty full of ego. (In fact, I dubbed it “the month of me” and was thoroughly sick of myself by February). But at that moment, I remember thinking that the whole act of publishing a book—from writing, to getting an agent, to getting a book deal—had to be at least partially about ego.

And of course it is. But the more I thought about it, and the further I got past my own publication date, I began to understand what he meant. You see, that first novel, that first real novel that you get the agent and the book deal with, that novel isn’t written because of ego. I suspect it might be a little different in every case, but in my own, that novel was written because I couldn’t help myself. It was (often) all I could think about. What was this character going to do? How was I going to get from this conflict to the resolution? How was I going to get the images in my mind, seemingly so clear, down on the page when the link between my brain and my fingers often felt ephemeral. I was, in my own way, like Dylan, trying to capture “that wild mercury sound” in my head with words. And the effort, while sometimes trying and frustrating, was in the main fun.

Now it might have been hubris to think, once all the writing, editing, and endless drafts were done, that someone might want to publish this book. And I might have been seeking to gratify my ego (and have had that ego gratified) when I got an agent and a book deal. But in between those events (two years from finished manuscript to book deal, another six months to publication), there was lots and lots of rejection; lots of blows to the ego. And this mix of gratification and blows continued once my book came out. Because even if you’re Jonathan Franzen—which I make no pretension to be—there are people who dislike your book, who might even hate it. Sometimes those people are book reviewers with access to a large audience of readers. And because we live in the age of social networks and email addresses on author websites, readers can reach right out and touch you with their thoughts, negative or positive, as soon as they put your book down.

This might sound like I’m complaining. I’m not. I am aware of, and grateful for, the amazing luck I’ve had in getting not one, but two books published. But the further I’ve gotten into this process—the revisions, the worry about how the book will sell, the constant feeling that you should be promoting your book(s) somehow, all the time—it’s become less and less about ego.

And I think this trip away from ego is even more true if you’re lucky enough to have the chance to publish a second book (or anything past that first one really). Because those books often feel like they are more about contractual deadlines, and advances paid out, and expectations (real or imagined) about it being as good, or better, than your first book. It feels like it’s about justifying all of these resources being marshaled for you—the editing and marketing and publicizing. I mean, why did you get this chance, when so many others have tried just as hard, or harder, or longer, and failed?

Thoughts like these don’t feed a writer’s ego, but they certainly can destroy it, along with the will, or sometimes the ability, to write. Because, if I’m being perfectly honest, when you’re in the middle of that vortex, you sometimes forget why you even started writing in the first place. Wasn’t this fun once? Didn’t the words fly off the page, the ideas tumbling out faster than my fingers could keep up with them?

So why? Why do I continue to write? I, among the happy few, published writers?

I don’t have all the answers, but I can say this: I write because I see and hear people that aren’t there unless I write them down. Because the fun is there, you just have to look for it sometimes.

Because I must.

SPIN is available for Pre-order in print and ebook edition.

[Have you ever wondered why authors write? It's not the easiest, stress-free, or stable and secure career choice yet it remains a dream/goal shared by so many. Throughout the next weeks, months, and onward, The Divining Wand will have authors explain their personal reasons.

Introducing this series is Kim Arbor, the pen name of an award winning, New York published novelist who has both an MFA in Creative Writing and a serious addiction to gummy bears. Kim is the author of the new women’s fiction novel, His Wife and Daughters, about a congressman’s political sex scandal of twenty years ago and the effect it still has on his wife and two daughters today. His Wife and Daughters is available as an e-book on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble.]

When I get asked the question, “Why do you write?” my first response is usually to say that I can’t not write. I’ve used the written word to express myself in some way or another since I learned to put pen to paper and fingers to keyboard. Letters, journals, songwriting, web content, tech writing, short fiction, novels, nonfiction—I’ve done it all and can’t get enough of it.

But although it’s some kind of addiction for sure and a never-ending drive to communicate (I am, after all, a Gemini—the great communicator of the Zodiac) if I continue to think about it, I suppose I write because I’m embarking on a constant journey to try to solve, understand and attempt to explain the puzzles and complexities of human behavior. Well, what else would you expect from a college psychology major?

Last fall a study conducted by psychological researchers at the University of Buffalo concluded that readers don’t read fiction for escape or fantasy, but to connect with others. The researchers asserted that reading novels provides “the opportunity for social connection and the blissful calm that comes from being a part of something larger than oneself for a precious, fleeting moment.”

The mention of social interaction brings us to the e-word: empathy. And why shouldn’t this fulfillment of a need for a social connection also be the impetus of the fiction writer? I know it is with me.

It can be said that empathy is one of the great powers of fiction. I find it fulfilling and challenging to try and identify with a character, enter her consciousness, and explore her motivations. That’s one of the things that turns me on about writing long fiction and having the time and space to build characters that live and breathe. In attempting to make sense out of the world and the people in it through my characters, I need to fall in love with them and understand them as deeply as I possibly can.

When I create a character like Trina Brath in my new novel, His Wife and Daughters, I’m not drawing from my own life. I’ve always been puzzled and, frankly baffled, by wives of politicians who stand by their men after being humiliated by their husbands’ sex scandals. But instead of taking an exterior view of these women, throwing my hands up and stating “they’re crazy,” and feeling how there’s now way I’d ever do that, I go deeper. I look into how I’ve perhaps misunderstood these women; I try to get into their skin. I find an empathy, even a love, for my characters, which I hope will make them complex and empathetic to my readers even if they’re not necessarily the type of person we’d want to emulate.

And being empathizers in the fictional world hopefully makes us better people in the real world. Understanding others is important to everyone—readers and writers alike. And that’s a big reason why I write.

[Welcome fall! With the arrival of the autumnal equinox at 9:05 a.m. GMT this morning, summer's gone as is my vacation. Yes it was lovely, thank you, and one of its highlights was reading Dawn Tripp's (The Season of Open Water, Moon Tide) latest novel, Game of Secrets. This extraordinarily haunting story -- written in poetic prose -- unfolds through a game of Scrabble and tells of the secret games all her characters play.

In today's guest post, Dawn describes her inspiration, writing process, and true meaning of what's in a game.]

Game of Secrets has been called a ‘literary thriller.’ It’s the story of a murder that divides two families, a deep-seated feud that is overturned when a young man and a young woman fall in love. It’s the story of secrets played out through a Scrabble game. But it didn’t start that way.

Like my other novels, Game of Secrets started in pieces—on the page for months—fragments of character, story, scene. I write longhand—often first on scraps of paper—the backs of receipts, the leftover white space of a grocery list. There is a certain artistic freedom that comes when I write on throw-away things and, in the first stages of a novel, I crave this freedom. I might have a vague sense of the overall narrative arc, but I try to resist the impulse to pin everything down into place. I try to let those early fragments have their room to shift and grow, to let the twists and turns of the plot deepen and evolve. In those early months, I turn my back completely on the old adage ‘write what you know.’ I write what moves me, what I am impelled by. I start where I feel led to start. It’s like wind-marked ocean, this early work. Everything is possible. That doesn’t mean a structure isn’t there. It doesn’t mean some dark side of my mind hasn’t already mapped that order out. I have faith that there is such an order. And I write to discover it.

Game of Secrets started with four primary fragments—the real-life story of a skull that surfaced out of gravel fill with a bullet hole in the temple, and three images: a fourteen year old boy driving fast down an unfinished highway, two lovers meeting in an old cranberry barn, and two women playing Scrabble. I did not know their names. I did not know the details specific to their lives, but I could feel the undercurrent of tension between them as their hands arranged those blonde Scrabble tiles into words and laid them on the board.

The image of the Scrabble game hit me especially hard. Not just because the unfolding of the mystery in the novel mirrors the playing of a Scrabble game: clue after clue is revealed, the story comes together piece by piece, like a puzzle, as in Scrabble, disparate letters are arranged into words, which in turn are arranged into a larger cogent grid.

It hit me because I have always loved Scrabble. I grew up playing with my grandmother. She taught me cards as well—pitch, gin, poker, bridge. But it was Scrabble that I loved. I remember the thrill I felt when I was old enough to keep my own letters, to have my own rack. We would play with my father after lunch and, after a game or two, my father would drift off to something else. “You want to play again, Nana?” I’d ask. And my grandmother would nod, light another cigarette, and start flipping over the tiles. We would play game after game. Until it was time for her to fix supper. Then we’d eat, clear the table, wash the dishes, I would dry them for her, then I’d ask to play again.

The idea for Game of Secrets came to me years after she was gone. The story has nothing to do with her life; the women in the story are not modeled after her, but the sense of my time with her—generational, intimate, lost—is strung all through it. As I wrote, I remembered those long childhood hours: the stillness of the house, the light tick-tack as she lay down her tiles, the smell of her cigarette balanced on the ashtray, just resting there untended, dwindling down.

And I remembered, too, things she had taught me over the years as we played. She played Scrabble for the words, as many women in her generation did. I always played for the numbers. How we play that game can reveal so much about how we tick, how we live, who we are. In Scrabble, some play to keep the board open, some play to shut it down. Some play with an eye to the sum of the total scores of all players; some play, simply, to maximize their own score. Most players will look at the board and see the words that fill it. But a really good player, a canny player—and she was one of those—will also see opportunity in the skinny spaces still left open in between.

As I wrote the scenes for Game of Secrets, the game for me became the perfect lens for a story about two women and their families bound together and divided by unspeakable secrets—a brutal past, a murder, a love story. Because what are words if not a bridge—in a game of Scrabble or in a novel? Between one person and another. Thought and reality. Past and present, present and future. Words bridge silence. Words, and the stories they comprise, bridge time

Note: This Fairy Godmother has her own secret. Please return next week to learn what it is!

[]In real life there are at least two sides to every story and nothing is either black or white. In today’s guest post, Kristina Riggle (Real Life & Liars, The Life You’ve Imagined, and Things We Didn’t Say coming June 28, 2011) explains how this same fact applies to people — whether real or fictional.]

Early in my career as a novelist, I sighed with relief that my writing no longer had to hurt anyone’s feelings.

In my newspaper days, I had to print nasty things that Politician A said about Politician B, because both were prominent and that made such mud-slinging “news.” I remember interviewing a trembling mother about her murdered daughter, and the poor choices the young woman made which the police thought contributed to her slaying. More than once I remember interviewing someone and the person would raise their eyes to meet mine and ask, “Do we have to put in the part about (embarrassing yet newsworthy background) ?” And I’d have to say yes, we do.

Oh sure, like all journalists I reminded myself that the truth hurts but is necessary. That I was just doing my job. And I still believe this to be true. Obviously, journalists can’t sanitize their stories for the sake of protecting feelings.

But when I quit that day job and began the transition to fiction writing, I thought with great relief that those days of hurting with my words were behind me.

Or, are they?

When people ask what I write, my glib answer is, “I write novels about screwed-up people.” My characters behave badly, early and often. They fumble their way toward something better by the end (most of them, usually) but to say they are “flawed” is the least of it.

I write about screwed-up people because they are interesting, even if they are not always endearing. Some of the interesting-not-always-endearing characters in THINGS WE DIDN’T SAY include a divorced father named Michael, so wrapped up in his fading career and his ex-wife’s drama he barely notices his fiancée struggling to stay above water in his stormy household.

The young fiancée, Casey, has kept huge chunks of her life hidden from the man she claims to love, not comprehending how damaging her secrets would be when spilled into the light of day.

The ex-wife, Mallory, manipulates the other characters and ratchets up the drama the minute she arrives on the scene.

To me these people are just made up and the story is made up. What could be the harm?

My mother, reading an advance copy, told me she assumed that my kid sister’s childhood tummy aches must have inspired the stomachaches suffered by the youngest child in the story, Jewel.

Oh. I hadn’t even realized I’d done that. (Sorry, Kim).

I’ve learned by now, on book three, that people will read themselves into fiction (even if they didn’t grow up in the same household as the author). And if they see themselves in my characters behaving badly, my words might sting.

The only remedy I can imagine is for me to treat all my characters with respect and sincerity, even the ones that will make readers want to throw the book across the room. Sure, my characters behave badly, but they are complex and real and rounded. In other words, even the worst ones aren’t completely bad.

Just like my journalism subjects. In newspapers and novels both, I work in shades of gray.

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away three copies of Making Waves by Tawna Fenske in a random drawing of comments left only on this specific post, Presenting Debutante Tawna Fenske and Making Waves. Comments left on other posts during the week will not be eligible. The deadline is Wednesday, June 22, 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.

[Good writing requires more than the ability to write a good story. In fact more often than not it's the author's voice and/or personal choice of genre that attracts and sustains a reader's attention. As a writer-by-trade, Tawna Fenske (Making Waves coming August 2011) knew this and -- in today's guest post -- she shares the journey of discovering her author's niche.]

I’ve been blogging at The Debutante Ball since last August, so I guess you could say I’ve become a familiar voice there.

Several weeks ago, I wrote about my early forays into fiction writing and how it took me awhile to figure out romantic comedy was where I fit best.

Based on commenters’ reactions, I might as well have confessed it took me 36 years to discover I had toes. How could I not know I should be writing humor?

Hey, I never claimed to be the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Yes, I’ve been the class clown since I was old enough to string sentences together. Sure, I’m always the one to break up boring meetings by making sex jokes. OK, I’ll admit I could probably find the humor in a funeral if I tried hard enough.

But it really didn’t dawn on me in the early days that I could use that to build a writing career.

I’ve always written for my supper, but in a much different capacity than what I’m doing now with novels. I caught the journalism bug in high school, and used my experience as editor of the school newspaper to land college scholarships, work my way up to editor of the college paper, and to eventually find post-college work as a newspaper reporter.

Once the appeal of long hours and lousy pay wore off, I moved on to tech writing before transitioning to a career in marketing and public relations.

All of those jobs involved writing. A lot of it, in fact. But none involved making stuff up.

That’s probably why it was such a funny feeling the first time I sat down to take a stab at fiction writing in 2002. I kept checking over my shoulder, certain the word police were going to come and arrest me for lying.

In a way, I was disappointed that never happened. I really looked forward to those handcuffs.

Though the first novel I wrote was a romance, it was barely recognizable as such. Because I’d grown so accustomed to doing vast amounts of research in the writing I did for my day job, that’s what I did for the novel, too. Looking back, that book probably could have had footnotes.

Nothing says “sexy romance” like a bibliography.

Fortunately, my first couple stabs at writing fiction weren’t read by many people who weren’t either family members or drinking buddies (or both – hi, Dad!)

But my third book did sell.

I know we’re classifying Making Waves is my debut novel, and it’s true it will be my first published book. However, it’s technically not the first book I ever sold for publication. That honor goes to a book called Avalanche. I wrote it for a line of women’s action/adventure/romance novels published by Harlequin/Silhouette several years ago under the Bombshell label.

I sold the book, spent the advance check, and had already written two follow-up novels that hadn’t yet made it to contract when my editor called on my 32nd birthday to tell me the line was being cancelled one month before my scheduled debut.

This was also the same day my cat died. Oh, and the same day my employer said they’d fire me within a week if I continued to disobey the company’s hosiery policy (I did. They didn’t).

At some point near the end of that day when I walked out onto my back deck with a glass of wine in my hand, I thought, “this is really pretty damn funny if you think about it. What are the odds of all of this happening on the same day?”

I won’t say that was an epiphany, per se, but I will tell you that within a few days I sat down and began writing something new. Something different. Something funny. Something that screamed, “if I can laugh on a day like that, I can find the humor in damn near anything!”

And though that book didn’t actually sell, it did land me an amazing agent, who eventually landed me a three-book deal for my romantic comedies.

So that’s the roundabout route I took to find my voice. Do I wish it had been quicker? Absolutely! Was it worth it for the experience I gained? I think so. Does the slowness of my journey to finding my voice indicate I need professional help and perhaps a tutor?

Don’t answer that.

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away two copies of Populazzi by Elise Allen in a random drawing of comments left only on this specific post, Presenting Debutante Elise Allen and Populazzi. Comments left on other posts during the week will not be eligible. The deadline is Wednesday, June 15, 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.

[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.