7 Ways to Make the Most of a Writing Retreat by Caroline Starr Rose

Adorable Boo, my writing companion.

Last year my husband took our boys to the Mountain West Basketball Tournament, giving me four days with the house to myself. I planned to use the time as a stay-at-home writing retreat, just Boo and me and fiendish typing. 

It was spectacular. 

I decided I needed to be prepared but open when it came to this writing time. While I hoped Jasper and the Riddle of Riley's Mine would be back in my possession, I couldn’t plan on that happening (It wasn’t. I worked on it anyway and was thrilled with what I accomplished). My goal was to have a sense of how I wanted to use the four days, but not be so rigid that I missed a creative opportunity. I ended up splitting the time between two projects, one in its very beginnings and the other nearing its end. 

I planned ahead about regular commitments and how I’d handle them. For example, I got up at roughly the same time I would have had my family been home. I kept my Thursday running date and attended church on Sunday. But I made room for flexibility, skipping the gym on Friday and going to a book signing Saturday afternoon. As for meals, I pulled a few things out of the freezer, cooked twice (with leftovers for when my family returned), and even ordered pizza one night. 

Most importantly, I knew I needed to have realistic, relaxed expectations while still committing to hard work. I am not a fast writer and never will be. With four days stretching before me, it would have been very easy to convince myself I’d do super-fantastic, out-of-character things, like write 10,000 words a day. Not happening, ever. Instead I focused on these things:

•  I decided not to serve my ego (those 10,000 words) or my anxiety (worry I wouldn’t accomplish anything), but simply show up and enjoy the work.
•  I told myself it was more important to be productive instead of producing. (In other words, I didn’t have to have loads to show for all the time I put in. Creativity isn’t always something that can be measured. I’m learning to be okay with this.)
• I strongly believe that every writing moment teaches me. That makes it worth it, whether it’s eventually cut or kept, whether it sells or doesn’t.

The view from our retreat house balcony. Isn't it gorgeous?

Every September my critique group meets for a writing retreat. We rent a house in town, plan out who will make dinner what night, do a bit of critiquing in the evenings, watch a movie together, and spend the rest of our time in creative work. 

The years I've been on deadline, I've made quantifiable! Great! Leaps and bounds! with my writing. During the other years, not so much. But here's the thing: those slower retreats were still creatively important, whether I produced much or not. Have I believed that during the retreat itself? Nope. I haven't. I'm still learning to trust in the moment that every writing experience teaches me something.

I have no deadline this time around, but I do have a project underway -- the one mentioned above, in its early beginnings (and honestly not much further along than it was a year and a half ago, during my stay-at-home retreat). It would be easy to head into the week with my ego and anxiety kicked up in high gear. Instead, I hope to apply what I learned while I worked alone: to stay prepared but open, relaxed and willing to work, ready to learn from each moment as it comes.

What words of wisdom can you share about writing retreats?

Villains: Rivals, Agents, and Enemies by Joanna Roddy

Antagonists come in many forms: natural disasters, well-meaning friends, or even unwitting coincidence. But I think the most fun to write are villains. 

Project Mayhem has posted some great material about villainy in the past, but I thought I'd revisit the subject with some ideas that have been helpful to me lately.

Many many types of villains have been identified before. But I've noticed lately that there are often three levels of villains that come up within the same novel, especially those with young protagonists. So let's break them down and look at their roles, functions, and pitfalls.

RIVALS:
What they are: Rivals are someone on the same level, or close to it, with the protagonist. They may only serve to drive the protagonist forward as a competitor who poses a true challenge, or they may become a bully who actively causes harm. Rivals are not typically the main threat. They are usually unrelated to the true villain of the story; however, they may be conscripted to become an agent of the greater enemy, or used as a pawn. They may also be somehow redeemed before the end, often as a result of their encounters with the protagonist. 

Examples: Draco Malfoy (Harry Potter), Josie Pie (Anne of Green Gables), Boromir (Fellowship of the Ring), Edmund (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe), Marion Hawthorne (Harriet the Spy)

Function: The Rival creates situations that test the protagonist, calling out and revealing their strengths, weaknesses, and true character. They also serve as a foil to the protagonist, so that readers become more invested in the main character through seeing their virtues in contrast to the Rival's character flaws. They are a training ground for the climactic confrontation with the greater enemy and create try/fail cycles to track the protagonist's progress. In reality-based fiction, the Rival may be the only intentional human antagonist. 

Pitfalls: Like all villains, Rivals need to have a good reason in their own minds for treating our protagonist the way they do. Just being a spoiled brat or the next best competition isn't enough for them to single out the protagonist. Get inside their head and figure out what pressures, insecurities, and prejudices make them the way that they are. Frenemies, former friends, or family members can make for a much more complex kind of Rival who has both love and hatred at play in how they relate to the protagonist.

AGENTS:
What they are: Agents are tools used by the true enemy to do their evil work. Often they are secret Agents, posing as allies but actually working against the protagonist. Sometimes they are overtly acting as a representative of a greater evil but are clearly motivated by lesser impulses and desires, which can allow for crueler and pettier torments for the protagonist. Sometimes they are corrupted or possessed by evil, or they may be a henchman. Often Agents are in positions of power or inherent trust, which lends to more surprising revelations and to abuses of that power, amplifying the largeness of the overall threat.

Examples: Wormtail/ Peter Pettigrew (Harry Potter), Barty Crouch Jr./ Mad-Eye Moody (Harry Potter), Professor Quirrel (Harry Potter), Luke (Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief), Saruman (Lord of the Rings), Darth Vader (Star Wars)

Function: Agent villains allow for layers of complexity to the greatest source of antagonism in a novel. They create good plot twists when their motives and loyalties are revealed. They give the reader a sense of the pervasiveness of the evil and the immensity of what the protagonist has to overcome. Agents are often the more interesting villains because their ability to deceive about their true motives gives the reader both good and bad interpretations of their character, heightening the horror of what seemingly good people are capable of. 

Pitfalls: Again, this type of villain needs a strong personal reason for doing what they do. They may believe in the cause of the true enemy, or they may be acting under duress, but their willingness to be used as an Agent has to have that additional personal motivation based on past experiences, beliefs, and circumstances. It can be tricky to keep a secret Agent disguised from your reader while finding that balance of giving them believable flaws, a compelling motivation for what they're doing, and some well-hidden hints before the reveal. Likewise, a too-perfect Agent will automatically be suspect. 

THE ENEMY:
What it is: This is the mastermind, entity, Dark Lord, or true source of evil who will pose the greatest threat to the protagonist, which they must overcome. These are the more traditional villains. 

Examples: Sauron (Lord of the Rings), Voldy (Harry Potter), The White Witch (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe), The Emperor (Star Wars), Lex Luther (Superman), Kronos (Percy Jackson)

Function: The Enemy's main function is to pose the greatest threat and bring the protagonist to their ultimate limits as they try to overcome that threat. They personify everything the protagonist must reject, and good Enemies actually do make clear the allure of their perspective, or offer such horrific consequences that the reader would understand why the protagonist would capitulate.

Pitfalls: One pitfall here is having only the central Enemy. As you can see from the above, layers of challenges with lesser villains better prepares the protagonist, and in turn the reader, for the final confrontation with the true Enemy. If you do layer in this way, though, you shouldn't just plunk in the Enemy at the end. Threads of the Enemy should be woven throughout the story, and the challenges the protagonist faces should relate in some manner to the ultimate challenge in the climax. Another major pitfall is to make the Enemy one-dimensional. Remember that every villain is a hero in their own eyes--they are a distortion of what goodness and heroism should be, not necessarily the total opposite of it. Understand why they do what they do.

I hope you find this as helpful as I have! Please let us know in the comments if you've noticed this hierarchy before, or if you think there might be other things to add to the levels of villainy. Now go practice your evil laugh. 

5 Lessons I Learned from NaNoWriMo by Caroline Starr Rose

It was with a bit of reluctance I decided to join National Novel Writing Month in 2013. For those of you unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, it's a month-long challenge to produce 50,000 words on a new piece of writing. (Chris Eboch ran an excellent post on NaNo earlier this week.) I'd tried NaNo in 2009 and failed miserably. I never, ever was going to do it again. But that fall things came together in such a way that joining in made sense:

• My verse novel, Blue Birds, was off with my editor
• I was at the point with my research for a new novel that I was itching to get started
• I read this blog post by Darcy Pattison
• My critique partner, Valerie Geary, promised me peanut butter cookies if I made it through

I didn't sign up officially. Instead I created a contest of one I called Fake-o NaNo*, where I aimed to write 1500 words a day six days a week. I missed one day, had a good number of sessions I didn't hit 1500 (and a couple I wrote more), and felt finished with the draft a few days before Thanksgiving -- the exact day Blue Birds "flew" back to me in a big padded envelope.

Here are five things I learned from the experience:

1. Slow and steady is my typical writing mantra. But sometimes fast and furious is just as important. Typically, I write verse novels and picture books. It's a sloooow process, especially when I'm initially drafting. But this novel was in prose, something I hadn't tried for seven or eight years. Throwing words on a page was a very liberating, non-committal way to reintroduce myself to this form. With my first NaNo attempt, I got stuck during the first week and decided to stop. This time around was no different. I faced the same impossible rut one week in. But I kept moving, mainly by sticking to the next lesson I learned.
2. Sometimes you just have to write about the writing. While I'd kept a journal for this book since the previous spring, I still had a lot of exploring to do. Many days I found myself writing about what was working in the story and what wasn't. Things I'd have to look further into, characters I needed to add, relationships I needed to develop. Really, the draft became a running commentary, an in-the-moment chance to reflect on my ideas (or lack of them).
3. Practice holds the fear at bay. The creative process is a scary thing for me, and beginning (and finishing) a first draft is my biggest challenge. By holding myself to a daily goal, I was able to break through some of that fear by simply showing up and doing the work.
4. Embrace the mess. The "draft" I finished with was most definitely the messiest, worst thing I've ever written. But it was such a great experiment in getting words down, feeling out characters, and sometimes learning exactly what I didn't want to write about (by first doing just that). Knowing I could toss it all took me in some directions I might never have discovered if my approach had been more careful.
5. Did I mention the cookies? Committing out loud to a friend kept me honest. And the cookies were a great pay off!

In February this NaNo novel hits the shelves as Jasper and the Riddle of Riley's Mine. As I think back to that draft I created three Novembers ago, the finished book holds little in common with it. But it was the starting place my story -- and my character -- desperately needed. Without that month of steady work, Jasper wouldn't be the boy he's become. I'm sure of that.

What are your plans for National Novel Writing month?

* I hadn't heard of the so much fancier "Faux NaNo" at the time, which I don't think is an official thing, just another name for a make-your-own version of NaNoWriMo.

4 ways to handle seasons when you can't write by Joanna Roddy

I'm going back to teaching full-time in about three weeks. Much of what I'll be teaching is entirely new to me and I have all the flurry of curriculum planning, new job orientations, in-service programs, and moving into my new digs. Oh, and I have two young kids at home. Oh, and I'm a writer and my agent is expecting a revision from me soon.

I think we've all experienced this. We reach a season that is not forever, but we know that the writing has to go on the back burner. For me, it's this first semester back to teaching. I'd like to think there are some ways to navigate these seasons with as much grace as possible, so I thought I would share my current strategy with you.

1. Finish up your commitments. Reasonably.
Before the madness sets in, if you have some foreknowledge of it coming, do what you can to tie up what you're in the middle of. For me, that means setting aside the two WIPs I have going and just focusing on my monthly article commitments and my manuscript revision. There are still a few weeks before things blow up, so this feels manageable.

2. Keep writing, but lower your expectations.
I know I just said that there are seasons when we can't write, but the truth is, we always can. At least a little. It might be 10 minutes a day, or one evening a week, or one retreat weekend this quarter, or one hour each weekend, but take something for yourself. We need balance to keep our sanity and even if it's a tiny amount, it's still keeping you in touch with that vital creative part of yourself. For me, I'm going to write on Monday nights with my writing group during our regular meeting time. We're shifting into a new season of actually writing together, which seems heaven-sent. That's all I've got to give to my writing, but I'm going to give it fully.

3. Accept this season for what it is.
It isn't forever. Next semester my class-load will be half and I won't be creating curriculum from scratch. You don't have to kill yourself trying to do everything. Let your writing mind rest and remember that fields that lie fallow are primed for flourishing the next year. 

4. Keep a notebook with you for ideas.
It seems ideas always come when you just don't have the time for them. Don't reject them! Just tell each idea patiently that you will pay attention to it when you can give it the respect it deserves. Then quickly take a note so you don't forget it. When your crazy season is over, set aside some time to just sit with those notes and really think them over. See what still resonates.

Being a writer is not contingent on your output. Ebb and flow is part of the creative life, and sometimes a forced reality of circumstances. Don't let it discourage you. 

While I live out the frenzy of my coming semester, there's a secret, quiet place inside me that is beaming about having my own office to write in where I won't have to buy coffees endlessly or leave at closing time. I won't be using my new office that way yet. But it's there waiting for me on the other side of this semester. And this image of abundance sustains me in the season of scarcity: me at my office desk, a mug of tea steaming beside me, three walls of windows around me in the romantic old Tudor building where I teach, and my manuscript open in front of me with quiet hours ahead in which to do my work. 

On timed writes, word counts, and NaNoWriMo by Joanna Roddy

Image Courtesy: National Novel Writing Month

You will never see me running a marathon. Because, twenty-six miles. I mean, really? How about three? That’s extreme enough for me and I know I’ll be able to do it again two days later. For that matter, I'd be happier to do a yoga class or go on a jolly good walk. I may have a bum hip, but marathoning doesn’t appeal to my personality either. I like to savor things. I like to enjoy the task at hand and be ready for the next round. I like a challenge, but not killing myself in the process. In other words, I'll push myself, but my end-game is sustainability.

So National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is just around the corner and it's always struck me as a marathon-like task--an extreme feat of authorial athletics. I have utilized many strategies to get my bum in the chair to write over the years, but having a 50,000 word novel drafted in thirty days as my carrot incentive just seems a little over-the-top to me.

But this year I have to admit, I’m intrigued. All the women in my critique group have decided to do it. I'm sitting at the beginning of two big ideas. And I'm craving more self-discipline and the sacred space of those early mornings at the page.

Ok, but word counts? I discovered earlier this year that they just don't work for me at the drafting stage. I need to respect the work I'm doing in terms of quality in order to trust it to lead me forward and that just takes longer for me. It's a first draft, so I'm not going to nit-pick, but I need to feel I'm doing my best given what I know. I find my daily word count interesting, but it can't be my target because I need to find the path, and sometimes it's really hard to see. I could just take off through the underbrush in what I think is the right direction, but I don't want to find myself at the bottom of a ravine with no way out. No. There's a road under the ivy and I need to find my way along it, step by step.

So I want to do NaNoWriMo, but the word count thing is a hang-up for me. The rules might be too rigid, as Chuck Wendig suggests in his frank and hilarious post 25 Things You Should Know About NaNoWriMo, (warning: coarse language and vulgarity, if that's not your thing). Wendig argues that you are the only one this really matters to, so make it your own. Hang the rules.

I was chatting about it with a writer friend for whom word count goals also don't work. Except for him they don't work at all, ever, where for me, I thrive (and I mean THRIVE) on them in the re-write stage. And together we came to this conclusion: time goals. A general benchmark seems to be two-three hours for the requisite 1666 words per day in the NaNoWriMo model. And I decided that's going to be MY version of NaNoWriMo. Time with the work. At least two hours a day.

Image courtesy: The Pomodoro Technique by Francesco Cirillo

One of my favorite timed writing approaches is the Pomodoro Technique. It's deucedly simple: set a timer, work for twenty-five minutes, take a five minute break, repeat. Often the first set is painful to get through, but by the second or third, I want to skip my breaks because I'm on a roll. It works!

So I guess I'm doing my own version of NaNoWriMo. JoNoWriMo, I'll call it. I hope my liberality with the rules doesn't offend the hardcore Wrimoes, but we all have to find our own stride in this writing life and it should be celebrated in whatever form it takes, right? If I end up in December with 50K+ words, great. If not (and I suspect I won't), I think I'll still have won, virtual trophy or no. 

Question for you: Is anyone else planning to do NaNoWriMo this year? Any advice from former Wrimoes? 

And I’d also love to hear more from you about the word count/ timed writing debate. What works best for you and why? 

Whatever your November brings, may we all work well and grow in our craft. Cheers to that!

Chris Eboch on Writing Great Endings

[This post is adapted from a chapter in You Can Write for Children: How to Write Great Stories, Articles, and Books for Kids and Teenagers]

If you’re a writer or a reader (or both), you probably know about story climaxes. The climax is the most intense point of the story. It’s an exciting, dramatic challenge, where the main character must finally succeed in her goal, or fail with terrible results. You want the climax to be the most dramatic part of the story, so the reader walks away satisfied.

But first let’s look at the moment right before the climax. My brother, script writer Doug Eboch, points out that movie plots have a moment of apparent failure (or success). However the movie ends, “There needs to be a moment where the opposite appears to be inevitable. So if your character succeeds at the end, you need a moment where it appears the character will fail. And if your character fails at the end, you need a moment where they appear to succeed.” (Doug’s full essay is in my writing craft book, Advanced Plotting.)

Setting up Failure

I wondered whether Doug’s point held equally true for novels. Looking through a few of the books on my shelf, certainly the climax includes a crisis point where the reader may believe that everything is going wrong and the main character could fail.

In my paranormal adventure The Ghost on the Stairs, Tania is possessed by a ghost and her brother Jon isn’t sure if he’ll be able to save her.

In my historical drama The Well of Sacrifice, Eveningstar is thrown into the sacrificial well, a watery pit surrounded by high cliffs, and realizes no one will rescue her.

In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis, the lion Aslan is killed and the good army is losing their battle.

In Eden Unger Bowditch’s first Young Inventors Guild book, The Atomic Weight of Secrets or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black, Faye tries to escape the clutches of the mysterious men in black when her parents seem to have completely abandoned her. She jumps from the car and runs but is quickly grabbed and brought back to be taken and deposited bodily, on the ground, outside the farmhouse. How can she possibly escape now, when the men are watching her closely?

In mystery or suspense novels, this may be the point where the bad guy has captured the hero or is threatening to kill him. In a romance, this is the point where the couple is farthest apart and we wonder how they’ll ever resolve their differences to live happily ever after.

Does your story or novel have a crisis point, a moment at the climax where readers truly believe the main character could fail? If not, you may want to rethink your plot or rewrite the action to make the climax more intense and challenging. The happy ending is only satisfying if it is won at great expense through hard work. In literature as in real life, people don’t always value what comes easily. Success feels that much sweeter when it can be contrasted to the suffering we’ve had to endure.

The Climax

Finally, at the climax, the main character must succeed or fail. You’ve built to this point with your complications. Now time is running out. The race is near the end. The girl is about to date another guy. The villain is starting the battle. It’s now or never.

However you get there, the climax will be strongest if it is truly the last chance. You lose tension if the reader believes the main character could fail this time, and simply try again tomorrow.

In The Well of Sacrifice, the high priest throws Eveningstar off a cliff into a sacrificial pool. If she can survive and get back to the main temple in secret, she can confront the high priest with new status as a messenger from the gods. But the penalty for failure is death, the highest stake of all.

In Dianne K. Salerni’s middle grade fantasy adventure, The Eighth Day, Jax has failed to protect his liege lady from being used in an evil ritual to destroy seven days of the week. The person he hoped would save them both, his guardian, has just been delivered bound and gagged for use as a human sacrifice by somebody Jax thought was on their side. Jax has one last, desperate idea, but his hands are tied behind his back and he can’t implement it.

Movies are well-known for this “down to the wire” suspense, regardless of genre. In Star Wars, Luke blows up the Death Star during the final countdown as the Death Star prepares to destroy a planet. In Back to the Future, Marty must get his parents together before the future changes irretrievably and he disappears. He’s actually fading when his parents finally kiss. In the romantic comedy Sweet Home Alabama, Melanie decides whom she really loves as she’s walking down the aisle to marry the wrong man. The technique works just as well for books and stories, and you’ll get the most suspense if the stakes are high.

Tips:

Don’t rush the climax. Take the time to write the scene out in vivid detail, even if the action is happening fast. Think of how movies switch to slow motion or use multiple shots of the same explosion, in order to give maximum impact to the climax.

To make the climax feel fast-paced, use mainly short sentences and short paragraphs. The reader’s eyes move more quickly down the page, giving a sense of breathless speed.

Exercises:

Study some of your favorite books. Is there a “ticking clock,” where the characters have one last chance to succeed before time runs out? If not, how would it change the book to add one?

Now look at your work in progress, or a completed manuscript draft or outline. Do your characters have a time deadline? Do you wait until the last possible moment to allow them to succeed? If not, can you add tension to the story by finding a way to have time running out?

You Can Write for Children: How to Write Great Stories, Articles, and Books for Kids and Teenagers is available for the Kindle, in paperback, or in Large Print paperback.

Hot Tip: When you buy a paperback (or if you purchased one in the past), the Kindle eBook should automatically be set to $0.00. Even if you do not have a Kindle, you can get a free Kindle app for your computer. You Can Write for Children lists many websites and blogs among the resources; with the e-book version, you can click to go directly to the sites. So pick up your paperback copy for easy reading and markup, and get a free Kindle copy for quick clicking!

New children's classics by Joanna Roddy

I don't know about you, but I'm a little obsessed with children's classics. When I go into a used bookstore they're the first thing I look for. I'm ever hunting for hardback, illustrated copies, ostensibly for my kids' libraries, but let's be honest: I'm keeping the books when they move out. I even named my son Corin after a character from the Chronicles of Narnia and my daughter Avonlea after L.M. Montgomery's Anne series (resulting in us now owning an inordinate number of copies of Anne of Green Gables). So maybe I'm a lot obsessed with children's classics. 

My little classics library

I'm always hunting for newer books with a classic feel, especially fantasies. This quest has led me to discover Susan Cooper's excellent The Dark is Rising sequence, Diana Wynne Jones's Howl's Moving Castle series and Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, all of which have been around long enough and been praised loudly enough to merit the distinction of new classics.

The last few weeks I've been reading John Stephens's Books of Beginning trilogy, which I stumbled upon when I saw a blurb calling it "A new Narnia for the tween set." I've been really impressed with the series so far (I'm about to begin the third and final book, which released earlier this year). Stephens straddles the line between classic and contemporary very successfully and it's got me thinking about what makes for a new children's classic while still satisfying the tastes of a contemporary audience.

You and I both know that if we were to sit down and pound out a story using C.S. Lewis's voice, it would smack of insincerity, being that we're neither living in the 50's, nor British, nor an Oxford don. New classics need to feel timeless, but they also need to relate fully to today's reader and feel authentic to the writer's persona. Here are some ways I'm noticing Stephens and others accomplishing this feat:

Classic elements: This can mean revisiting well-known fantasy, myth, or fairy tale themes, but doing so in a fresh way so that the reader reimagines familiar elements. In Stephens's trilogy, for example, there are dragons, dwarfs and elves, which borrow heavily on established fantasy parameters, but are simultaneously Stephens's unique take on them, making the reader think, "Oh, so that's what a dwarf is really like." Stephens also creates new fantasy creatures, like the undead soldiers known as the morum cadi or the nameless monster fought at the end of the novel, which fit seamlessly into an existing fantasy landscape.

Voice: Another way to evoke the classics is through using a classic narrative style, often third-person omniscient, or at least a timeless quality of narrative voice. There's great range of possibility for this, especially considering the quirky voices of writers like J.M. Barrie or Roald Dahl, or the third person limited voices of more recent classics like Harry Potter or The Golden Compass. Regardless, there's a kind of high-minded authority to the classic narrative style that allows a work of fiction to transcend its own era.

Plot: Classic children's literature also tends to be plot-forward, even neglecting character development. That won't fly with today's reader (more on that in a moment), but a character novel without a driving plot probably won't produce a classic either.

Meaning: Classics tend to have an enduring, undergirding meaning that gives the stories depth. They explore some vital aspect of living, of growing up, of redemption, or love, or good versus evil.  It seems that without this element, attempts at mastering the previous three will never attain the enduring quality that all classics share.

Character: While the narrative voice might be ageless, the character voices can and should be fully realized, even with slang and modern attitudes. More than this, though, today's reader is looking to undergo an internal journey with the main characters. The character arc, then, becomes the structural heart of the novel, while the narrative arc is built around it. The contemporary classic writer has to do both plot and character development well.

Action: Today's reader just doesn't have the patience of yesteryear. I don't think that's a bad thing, or even a lazy thing. I think writing has evolved. Television, film, and books inundate us with stories in a way previous generations couldn't imagine, and we as constant consumers of stories need greater stimulation to capture our attention. The contemporary classic is accomplished successfully through a quickly changing narrative, be it through action, cliff-hangers, shifting power differentials, or changing relational dynamics between characters.

It's no easy task to attempt new classics without being derivative and only time reveals which stories will endure for future generations. Yet these are the books for which I seem to have an insatiable appetite, so I continue to search them out.

Have you read any books recently you'd consider a new classic? Are there any other techniques you see writers using to create new classics? Please comment and join the conversation!

Your own unprovable truth, by Joanna Roddy

Is it any good?

A few years ago I went to a writing conference and the most memorable breakout session was taught by Bill Kenower from Author Magazine, who interviews tons of authors about their writing process. He chose a clip from an interview with Louis Sachar to share with us. (It begins at minute 3:50 in the video below.)



Sachar describes dining with Judy Bloom after finishing his most recent book and asking her "Do you wonder after you finish a book if it's just any good at all?" And she said to him,

"Every single book."

Judy Blume and Louis Sachar?! These icons of children's literature who win award after award for their books? They don't know if what they've written is any good--every time!

Sachar goes on to say, "You forget--once everyone starts reading the book and liking it and you get the affirmation--you forget that, Oh yeah, I worried about that book too. And with every single book I've written, without exception, there's always a point in the middle where Oh, this book's totally wrong. I've gone this far, I might as well finish it, but..." (shakes his head).

...said the winner of the National Book Award and the Newbery Medal.

So what's up with that?

In Kenower's lecture, he offered a reason for this. He said it's the same reason his math whiz sister took one try at writing fiction and came back and told him she hated it and would never try writing again. Why?

THERE IS NO RIGHT ANSWER.

Kenower said, "There is no formula and there is no right answer. That is the difficulty and the beauty of being a writer. We write to share our own version of the right answer. Our own unprovable truth. In writing (as author) you discover your authority."

I love this. You write to find out your truth, to say what only you can say in this world. And that has no foolproof template to follow. Only you can find the way through. Much like the young heroes of our stories.

A related thought that Sachar shares earlier in the interview is that he doesn't talk about what he's writing with anyone: "The story was just inside me and nowhere else, and day after day after day living with this story--it's like it's exploding inside me, but I wouldn't let it out except by writing. I think if I talked about it, it would take away that energy."

I've been thinking about this idea a lot this past year in my own writing life. I used to be a planner and I thought I couldn't write without a perfect outline, without perfect vision for what lay ahead. But I've learned that my best writing is fueled by my own curiosity and a deeper trust in the work itself, which means not necessarily knowing what's going to happen when I sit down to write. I recently heard a writer say that talking about or planning out your story too much gives you the same psychological satisfaction as if you had already completed it, lessening your drive to write the story itself.

I think this approach to writing is very related to the idea of writing to discover your truth without knowing whether your right answer will resonate with anyone else. When you write without a detailed outline, it's like setting out on the road without your handkerchief ala Bilbo Baggins. You don't know where the road will lead, and in many ways you're ill-prepared. But as the adventure sweeps you up into it--something greater than you, something wild and unsubmissive to civilized strictures--you discover who you really are, and what you're really made of. Turns out Bilbo's less of Baggins and more of a Took. Turns out mild-mannered Bilbo's actually a burglar, a riddler, and a trickster. Like Bilbo, we are changed by the stories we write, revealed by them, and that's a very vulnerable place to be.

But it's your truth. Only yours. You can't be wrong. And that sets you free from the fear of being wrong. I've heard it said that all bad writing is rooted in fear. And while there is much to learn of craft, and little to gain from didacticism, I think that if we write our own unprovable truth, never knowing if the work is good or not, maybe that's what frees it to become great.