Posts Tagged ‘writing’

Runway Recovery

12
July
2010

I love/hate drafting. Mostly I love it when it’s going well, and hate it when it’s not. It’s unpredictable and uncontrollable and maddening, marvelous things pop out and then other times all the energy just vanishes and I don’t know why. But there’s always (so far) a point where the book picks up so much momentum I almost cannot physically stop myself from blasting it all out. That happened this weekend on CIRCUS2. The only reason I got up from the computer on Sunday was to walk the dog (my husband’s leg is injured – but he helped by making me a veggie burger to eat as I worked). But now the draft is DONE.

And so is my brain. I refer to this as the “Fire Bad, Tree Pretty” phase of writing. Like Buffy, I feel triumphant but also completely drained. So I spent the rest of the day eating nachos and ice cream and painting my nails sparkly blue and watching Project Runway. I took it as a good omen that the final pre-Bryant Park challenge involved designing an outfit inspired by… the CIRCUS! Hah!

I’ve been thinking how Project Runway (the reality show where a bunch of designers compete for a chance to show a collection at NY Fashion Week and to launch their own line) really has a lot of interesting and potentially useful lessons for any kind of creative work. And since my brain has nothing else to fixate on right now, here’s what it came up with:

FIVE THINGS PROJECT RUNWAY TAUGHT ME ABOUT WRITING:

1) Better to strive for greatness, even if you don’t pull it off completely.

There’s one word that is (almost always) the kiss of death during the judging on PR. That word is BORING. People want to see something new, something unexpected, something that dares to be great. And as long as it’s not a complete trainwreck, they generally are going to be forgiving of its faults. On the other hand, you can make the most exquisitely tailored dress in the world, but if it’s boring, no one will remember it. No one will care.

2) But don’t get so wrapped up in your concept that you can’t edit it.

Another thing I notice a lot on PR is designers who have a particular concept for their design, or some element that they LOVE. This is a variation on the “murder your darlings” advice. Maybe it’s a particular fabric, or a beloved technique. Whatever it is, if it is compromising the success of the final result, you have to let it go.

3) Pay attention to feedback.

I love Tim Gunn, the design guru who serves as mentor to the contestants. He’s dapper, he’s funny, and he uses all sorts of lovely words like “flabbergasted” and “Sturm und Drang”. In fact, here, see for yourself:

Anyways, when Tim comes around to give his critiques during each challenge, there are always some contestants who listen to him, and some who don’t. And fairly often, the comments Tim has that get ignored are the ones that come back to bite the contestants during the judging.

4) But don’t let critical comments make you doubt yourself.

On the other hand, there are times when a contestant flips out after Tim’s comments, and loses focus, and then spends hours doing catch up for lost time. Or they get scared and disheartened, and play it safe.

The thing about criticism is that you have to allow it to help you, but not let it break you. Feedback is important. But so is remaining true to your own vision and enthusiastic about your work.

5) Be professional.

Every season on PR there are challenges that require the contestants to work in teams. And it always makes them groan and grumble, because they know (as we the audience know) that it’s going to present a whole new challenge. Almost always, the teams that end up on the bottom are the ones that didn’t work well together, regardless of how talented the team members may be independently.

You can have all the talent in the world, but if you act like an jerk and people hate you, it is going to hurt you. If you are a creative genius you can get away with it for a while, maybe, but fashion and publishing are businesses that require you to work with other people. Which means treating your business partners respectfully and understanding your own responsibilities.

~

What about you guys? Any other Project Runway fans? And if so, what do you think? Have you gotten anything out of it that you can apply to writing?

Fear

21
May
2010

Here’s the thing. I’m always afraid that I’m getting it wrong. That there are things I am just not capable of. Even when I’m feeling good about my current project, there’s a voice in my head telling me maybe I’m just deluding myself. How can I trust my happy feelings?

A lot of my writing life is about killing those fears.

I just cut about 15K from a 40K WIP, because after 2 weeks of waffling around trying not to admit it, I realized there were a few things that had gone off-track. Ignoring my fear just prolonged the problem. And it was such a relief to cut those chapters! It was scary, but it opened up new possibilities. I found the story again, and now it’s zooming along and I feel much, much better.

Yesterday I asked a question on Verla Kay’s Message Board for Children’s Writers and Illustrators aka the Blueboards (which is a fantastic resource if you are interested in writing/illustrating for kids/tweens/teens) about how other people feel they grow as writers.

There were a bunch of good answers, but one that rang very true to me was “push yourself to write outside your comfort zone”. In other words: don’t let your fears hold you back from trying something new.

I can see this in my own writing. I had always been leery of first-person before I started FORTUNE’S FOLLY, but it was experimenting with first person that really (I think) broke me out of a rut I had been in. THE MAGICAL MISADVENTURES OF PRUNELLA BOGTHISTLE taught me that sometimes you need to be unafraid to throw out huge amounts of work (in this case, an entire draft) to find the real story. CIRCUS GALACTICUS is probably the most outside my comfort zone I’ve gone, with a scifi setting and a character whose voice is significantly different than my own, and a broader cast of characters to juggle. And not only was it the most fun to write, but I honestly think it’s the best thing I’ve written so far. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have flaws, but I am so glad that I didn’t let fear win, that I took the plunge and wrote it.

So now I’m thinking of the other things that scare me. The new projects that I think maybe I’m not good enough for, that I might fail at. It’ll be a while yet before I’m ready to start something new, but when I do, I hope it’s something scary.

What about you all? How do you push yourselves outside your comfort zone, in writing, or in life?

On a related note, I found a lot of inspiration recently in this post by author Sara Zarr. My favorite paragraph:

Let’s face it—fear is easier than courage. Fear offers no resistance. It’s a black hole, a bottomless well, it’s always right there and handily accessible in never-ending supplies. You don’t even have to look for it—it throws itself at you, a needy, uninvited interloper. It’s loud and rude, while courage sits quietly and politely, waiting for you to call it forth. I’ve noticed this seems to be the case with all positive character traits; they’re quiet, they whisper, they wait. The negative ones are ready to party 24/7. I don’t know why this is but it is. For me, the only way to hear the good things is intentionally turn the lesser things down or off, and that takes some discipline. Asking myself: “Is this a thing I can change, or not change?” is a helpful place to start. If it’s the latter, I try to let it go. Sometimes I think the whole work of living is figuring out the difference between those things, and then acting accordingly.

And then there are things that just completely blow my mind and make me forget about fear, and remind me that the universe is awesome and amazing. Like this picture from the Astronomy Picture of the Day feed (credit to Bret Webster):

Milky Way over Ancient Ghost Panel

That’s an 8000 year old painting in a cave in Utah, under the Milky Way. Happy Friday!

Pantsing/Plotting and astro-coolness

28
April
2010

If you read a lot of writing blogs, or articles about writing, or visit writing messageboards, you’re bound to see discussions about Plotting (ie creating an outline or list of plot points before you start writing) versus Pantsing (ie, writing by the seat of your pants, and seeing where it takes you).

I’ve always called myself a Plotter. All the books I’ve written (the trunked and the published alike) have started with a plot idea, which I’ve then expanded, found characters for, and outlined prior to actually writing. That may sound like I go into writing a book with everything figured out, but it’s not really that simple.

For example, just today I was writing a scene about midway through my current book (the sequel to CIRCUS GALACTICUS) and suddenly – like, as I was writing his dialogue the realization hit me– the Ringmaster revealed his secret plan. I didn’t know he had a secret plan up until that point. And actually, it was kind of bothering me because I couldn’t figure out how certain things that happen later in the outline were going to make sense. So maybe some part of my brain has been brewing this secret plan all along. But it definitely was not in the original outline, and it definitely took me by surprise. But I am also pretty definitely sure it’s the right thing to have happen.

Those surprises are one of the best parts of writing — when the story feels like it is alive and making decisions and moving, not just being prodded and shaped and directed. And they happen even when you are a mostly-Plotter.

So that’s today’s writing epiphany. Now here’s some cool space stuff I found while researching something for the WIP:

Check this out: four women astronauts! All in space at the same time! And a diverse group, too. How cool is that?

And this is the answer to the question I was actually trying to answer (for sekrit, book-related purposes).

Fairy Tale Retellings

28
March
2010

Author Sarah Prineas has an interesting discussion going on in her livejournal on fairy tale retellings. You can read it here.

I’m reposting my own comments here, for my reference and in case any of you want to join the conversation.

For me, I would divide fairy tale retellings that I enjoy into three categories:

1) The almost-literal retelling, which are really more a reinterpretation into more beautiful or poetic language. I used to subscribe to Parabola magazine and they would always have several retellings of this sort — more like short stories where the central events are unchanged, just recast in pretty language. These work, I think, because they are short. So pretty language can carry them.

2) The “bones given flesh” version as another commenter called it — where the central story is there, and the reason that it works as a novel is that the rest of the world has been filled in around it — we get reasons why Rumplestiltskin wants the baby, or why the princess is locked in the tower. The single motif is woven into a greater tapestry. I also did enjoy A Curse as Dark as Gold and McKinley’s Beauty, as examples of this. Or, explanding to myth and “mythic feel”, books like Elizabeth Wein’s The Winter Prince (Arthur) and the Attolia books (not based on actual myths, but I could totally imagine they could be. With these books it’s almost like you’re seeing the real original story, that was simplified and turned around over the years into something told over a campfire or to a child at night. So the appeal is in going deeper, in feeling the setting and the characters richly and truly.

3) The “cool idea” retelling: where the basis of the story is some fairy-tale element or archtype is reinterpreted in a particularly neat fashion. I suspect these are almost always humorous. Ella Enchanted the Enchanted Forest books by Patricia Wrede, for example. For me, these don’t need to be as deep or rich in character or setting, because that’s not why I’m reading them. I’m looking for cleverness and humor and something cool and unexpected. That’s not to say the examples I named are not deep or rich, of course, just that books in this category can get away with being more… over the top? caricatureish?… and I will still enjoy them.

I tend to think that probably a lot of the books that don’t work for me so well fall between these too — they aren’t rich and deep enough to satisfy my one need, nor are they clever or funny enough for the other. Having written this out now I think I was going for category 3 in my own Fortune’s Folly, so I know I did not build my world as richly as other things I’ve written. If I did it over again that’s something I’d probably focus on more, but all I can do now is apply these thoughts to the future.

And one other thought I had: while not a book I think the musical Into the Woods (one of my all-time favorites!) is another example of #3 done well. The setting is straight fairy-tale and some of the characters are very archetypal at times (although they do deepen quite a lot, especially as the story progresses) but it works marvelously. The plot does so many clever things and asks so many interesting questions (and it doesn’t hurt that the music is brilliant).

What about you guys (or, you guys who haven’t already commented on Sarah’s post)? What do you look for in a fairy tale retelling?

Skyping, Drafting, Dreaming

08
March
2010

Three good writing things:

First, I did a Skype visit! I had not done one before, but I certainly hope to do more because it was so fun, and so easy! Author and teacher and generally amazing person Kate Messner invited me to visit her Advanced Writing class to answer questions. And they were some GOOD questions! We talked about beginnings, since all of us were at the start of new projects. You can read Kate’s account here (she also talks about what sounds like a fantastic in-person visit by Newbery-award-wining author Rebecca Stead).

Things I learned about Skype visits:

  • Kate is an awesome host. Everything went smoothly, she had the setup ready to go, and she organized her class so that each student came up to introduce herself and ask her question in front of the camera.
  • It’s just so cool that I can be talking with students in another state, about books and writing! This kind of thing makes me grateful I live when I do.
  • I should try not to wave my hands around like a maniac (I talk with my hands a lot when I get excited, and writing excites me).
  • My dog is perplexed when strange voices start emanating from my laptop.

Thank you so much for inviting me, Kate! And thank you to the students as well!

Second good writing thing: After struggling to find my footing in the first draft of the sequel to CIRCUS GALACTICUS (working title: CIRCUS SPECTACULAR) I think I finally found it. Fortunately I have learned to recognize my own patterns, so I know it’s not unusual for me to flail around writing several different first chapters, throw them out, stick them back in, etc before finally finding the right one. It doesn’t make the flailing any more fun, but it makes me a little less prone to despair.

This weekend I had one of those moments I covet when I really fall into the story. I had written a good chunk in my morning session, but when I came home after running errands and walking the dog I didn’t want to just flump down and watch my new netflix video (She-Wolf of London — did anyone but me ever watch that?). No, I wanted to go back to the circus world. I even (shockingly!) ignored my vegetable sushi dinner in order to finish the scene I was on. It was the best feeling! I know there is slog to come, but moments like that are what give me the strength to get through the slog.

Third good writing thing: my new writing office furniture is on the way! Soon my new bookshelves will be in place, and I can put away the piles of books trying to take over the guest room. Even better, I will have a roll-top desk. With cubbyholes! I still don’t know what I will put in the cubbyholes, but I am excited to have them, because I’ve always dreamed of having a cool roll-top desk with cubbyholes, in a room with bright walls lined with books, and sunlight streaming through sheer-curtained windows.

I’m very grateful for all my dreams that have come true.

BFF

31
January
2010

I can be a wee bit obsessive sometimes. This can be a good thing, sometimes. It’s probably part of what kept me determined to publish, even after hundreds of rejection. But it can also be a bad thing, when I (for example) get obsessed with checking goodreads to see if anyone has marked my books “to-read”. Or when I start stressing out over whether people are blogging about my books. Or when I feel massive guilt for not updating Facebook and twitter often enough. Because while online stuff is useful and cool, I want to do it for FUN, not because of some obligation, or to shove my books in peoples faces saying “look at me!”. I’ve started to think I need a little break.

Then there’s the fact that I’m planning to start seriously working on the Circus Galacticus sequel tomorrow. It’s the first day of the month AND a Monday. It must have good project-starting mojo!

So I’m taking inspiration from author Laurie Halse Anderson and embracing Blog-Free February. No blogging, no twitter, no facebook, no goodreads (other than adding things I read), no google reader. Also, no self-googling and no worldcat stalking. And hey, I don’t have to worry about Amazon ranking anymore!

I haven’t quite worked up the guts to say no livejournal friendslist reading, but I will restrict it to a small subset of close friends so I don’t miss urgent life stuff.

Wish me luck! I’ll be back March 1 (or, um, sooner if I fail to control myself) to blog about how it went, and if I learned anything. And before I ride off into the blogless-sunset, here are some tidbits…

First, I have an essay up in the latest edition of Hunger Mountain (the journal of the Vermont College of Fine Arts) called “Proactive Princess: Re-imagining the Fairy Tale. Stop on over to read it and leave a comment if you like! Then go read Erin Dionne’s companion piece here. There’s a lot of other great stuff in this issue, which is dedicated to the memory of author Norma Fox Mazer. Check it out!

Second, I’ve been in a scifi state of mind lately, and thus was quite excited to see the trailer for this new short (20 min) scifi film by Kenyan director Wanuri Kahiu:

Third, here’s a poem that’s inspiring me at the moment:

An Adventure Begins

An adventure begins,
when the one who was grimacing
suddenly grins.

An adventure begins,
when the one who was losing
suddenly wins.

An adventure begins,
when the one who acts saintly
suddenly sins.

When the smooth surface pops up with circling fins,
when soft drums surrender to bold violins,
when the light of the moon starts to shine on our skins,

an adventure begins.

~by JonArno Lawson, from Black Stars in a White Night Sky

And now I’m going to take inspiration from my goofy dog and go sit in the sun and just enjoy being.

GoofyDog

2010 Writing Resolution #2: Have Fun

27
December
2009

I sat down to try to write about having fun while writing, but much of what I have to say on this topic has already been said quite well in these two posts that I will direct you to:

Author Stephanie Burgis talks about following the fun in writing in a guest post on the blog of Margie Gelbwasser.

Author Laini Taylor writes an inspiring post about the discipline of fun.

My own experience is very similar to Stephanie’s: of all that I had written, the book that finally got accepted for publication (Fortune’s Folly) was the one I wrote “for fun”. I had been struggling with this big epic serious dark fantasy for over a year. It was the kind of book I thought I should write. It was the kind of book I enjoyed reading. But I wasn’t enjoying writing it, most of the time. Then in November of 2003 one of my friends asked me to join a group doing NaNoWriMo. I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare, so I picked an idea I’d had on the back burner, something light and entertaining that I thought would be fun to work on. And it was! Sure, there were still days when the writing dragged and the motivation ebbed. But most days I sat down eager to see what would happen next. My main character came alive the way no other character had for me previously. I was working with fairy tales, one of my favorite things. I was entertaining myself. I was in the moment.

And that’s the book that finally sold. It wasn’t the book I thought I SHOULD write. It was the book I WANTED to write.

More recently, I had this idea that I kept coming back to, about an intergalactic circus. And honestly, I was a little uncertain about whether I should pursue it. Science fiction (especially non-dystopian sf) isn’t the hottest genre right now in YA/MG. But what I wanted to create was the kind of science fiction I love best: something that excites and inspires a dream of discovery, something that takes you to fantastic new worlds but remains grounded in honest emotion. So that’s what I set out to do. And I had so much fun doing it. I think it was the first time I can honestly say that when I finished the draft, my own enjoyment and love of the book outweighed my dreams of getting it published. I was just so happy to have had the chance to write the story, even if it didn’t sell.

But it did sell. Better yet, people I trust have read it and liked it.

So I’m going to try to keep paying attention to what’s fun, and write what I want to write, not what I think I ought to write.

Writing Update

08
November
2009

I have a strong suspicion that I will not actually have 50K written for NaNoWriMo at the end of the month. But that’s okay with me. NaNoWriMo is fabulous for some books (it really helped me get the first draft of Fortune’s Folly written) but sometimes pushing to writewritewrite for wordcount isn’t the best thing for a book. I am finding that for the current project, my pattern is to work on one particular scene for a day or two, then take a day to mull it over, revise, and dream about the next scene until I am excited to write it. I am having a lot of fun and feel good about the book. But my wordcount isn’t NaNoWriMo-level by any means. I will be lucky if I get 30K. So maybe I won’t “win” the marathon, but I will (hopefully) have the start of a novel I can keep working on and feel good about.

I fully admit that I am also feeling a tiny bit lazy — and also a tiny bit nervous about getting the house cleaned and prepped (I need to paint the living room trim, eek!) for my parents’ Thanksgiving visit. Not to mention a number of other mundane-life things that were stressing me out to be putting off. And the soulful, neglected looks the dog keeps giving me.

So I may not be going full-tilt for 50K, but I am still trying my best to write 1K per day. And I’m definitely cheering the rest of you on toward meeting whatever November goals you have set!

In other non-guilty-admission news, I wanted to spread the word to any librarians out there about a big contest we are holding over at the Debs of 2009 community. We’re giving away 46 (!) of our novels to one winning library (public OR school). Details on how to enter are in this entry. Please pass it on to any librarians you know who might be interested!

And a few miscellaneous fun links:

I am coveting these Star Wars Trash Compactor bookends! (Thanks to Pinot and Prose for the link)

Did you know a baby echidna is called a puggle?

On starting a new book

29
October
2009

I’ll admit it: sometimes writing isn’t entirely fun. Sometimes it is hard work. Sometimes it is painful, when the words I am wrestling with on the page are unmalleable, ugly, colorless clay compared to the perfect story in my mind. [Of course this isn't always the case. There is plenty of fun during the actual writing too, though I am always looking for ways to improve my level of fun. The brilliant Laini Taylor wrote an inspiring post about this recently in her blog. Her book Lips Touch: Three Times was also just nominated for the National Book Award! Congratulations, Laini!]

There is, however, one part of the process that is almost always composed of untarnished fun and excitement: the pre-writing, the brainstorming, when ideas and images are flickering around my brain and I am free to cast my net of dreams out into the sea of ideas and see what I catch. I haven’t committed to anything, so anything is possible.

That’s where I am right now. I had been waffling between two ideas for my next project, which I will be writing for NaNoWriMo. I very much want to do a sequel for my space circus, because that world and those characters are enormously fun to write about and I care about them quite a lot and want to find out the rest of their story. But there’s another idea that’s been drifting around the edges of my mind, looking all shiny and bewitching. It’s a very different sort of book: darker and more romantic. And I think it wants to be written in third person, with a somewhat more lush storytelling voice. My last three books have all been first-person, so the thought of third is a bit scary. I’ve written plenty of third-person novels, but they are all unpublished. I am not entirely sure I can pull off third-person successfully. But one of the things I want to do as a writer is to try new things, and to challenge myself. NaNoWriMo seems like a perfect time for that. I’ll be writing so fast hopefully I won’t have time to be scared!

So here’s what I’ve got:

  • A new inspirational desktop image (of the historical site of Bam, Iran).
  • A new inspirational playlist (lots of Dead Can Dance, and a bunch of new discoveries courtesy of Last.fm: Irfan, Azam Ali, Vas, L’Ham de Foc, Stellamara).
  • My two main characters and their emotional baggage.
  • A bunch of world-building/cosmology/secondary characters stolen from a trunked novel (Obsidian Shield, for those of you who have known me long enough).
  • The opening scene.
  • A very rough outline, and a couple of pivotal scenes from the rest of the story that I am really looking forward to writing — I am going to try to firm these up and identify a few more to serve as “carrots” to tempt me forward through the drafting process.
  • Lots of excitement (and a tiny bit of fear)!

What is your favorite part of starting a new project? Any other suggestions for keeping the fun alive during the drafting process?

Heaven to Betsy

05
September
2009

For my generalized gushing and introduction to the Betsy-Tacy series, go to this post.

Heaven to Betsy introduces us to Betsy just before she begins her freshman year of high school, and takes us through the ups and downs of that first year. This is one of my two favorites of the entire series (the other being Betsy and the Great World). If I start listing everything I love about this book you’re going to get something like “Miss Mix creates stylish new outfits and Mr Ray makes onion sandwiches and there are picnics and the Crowd and Halloween and Carney and Tony and JOE!” and then I will collapse in a pile of swoony fangirlishness. So instead I’m going to focus my discussion on two things that make this book stand out.

First is a general quality of the entire series, which I find particularly noticeable starting with the high school books. When I read these books, I feel a basic underlying optimism about life, that loved ones will support you, that there is always beauty and hope in the world. Some people might say that these are “nice” books. But I am not sure that word captures what I’m talking about. Perhaps this is because of early exposure to the musical Into the Woods, which leaves me silently singing the witch’s song anytime I hear the word “nice”: You’re not good, you’re not bad, you’re just nice.

The Betsy books are “nice”, but that doesn’t mean they don’t contain the good and the bad as well. Betsy has a loving family, but it’s all (to me, at least) entirely real and believable. These aren’t cardboard Mom and Dad cut-outs with smiles painted on. They are real people complete with faults and virtues. Betsy gets her heart broken, she makes mistakes, she hurts other people. And yet I never feel a lasting bitterness. Pain and regret, yes, but there’s a peace to it. A feeling that Betsy (or perhaps Maud, since these are semi-autobiographical) can look back and come to terms with her life. It’s a different feeling than what I get reading the Little House Books, where I do perceive a bitterness, a self-censoring by the author that makes the books more distant. It’s also a different feeling than what I get reading the Anne books, which have an almost fairy-tale like quality to me — they describe a golden-hued beautiful world I love visiting, but it’s not quite as down-to-earth as Betsy’s world. There’s a place for all these types of books, of course. But if you are looking for a book that is old-timey and sweet and nice, but also very grounded and real, you might find it here.

The second thing about Heaven to Betsy in particular that I think makes it worth reading, especially for anyone who is a writer or dreams of being one, is the depiction of Betsy as a budding writer. On the brink of high-school, and having just moved in to a new house, Betsy begins the book feeling that there isn’t a place for writing in her new life. In earlier books, Betsy uses a beloved old trunk as her desk to write poems, but it somehow doesn’t belong in the new room, and Betsy herself suggests it be moved to the attic. And yet:

Sometimes she climbed into the attic and stuffed smudged, scribbled papers furtively into the trunk, standing forlorn in a dark corner. On such occasions she often cried a little, never much, for it always occurred to her how romantic it was to be crying about her trunk, and then she stopped, and couldn’t start again.

Betsy quickly gets whisked away by all sorts of other diversions: meeting new high school chums, making fudge, picnics, singalongs, parties, and falling hard for the new boy Tony. It is exhilarating and breathless and FUN but yet there’s something more. By winter time we find:

The snow which all day long had sparkled in the sunshine looked pale. Walking homeward, looking up at the sky, and around her at the wan landscape, she felt an inexplicable yearning. It was mixed up with Tony, but it was more than Tony. It was growing up; it was leaving Hill Street and having someone else light a lamp in the beloved yellow cottage. She felt like crying, and yet there was nothing to cry about.

That passage in particular still really hits me — capturing a feeling I have experienced many times myself, especially as a teen. And like me, Betsy seeks refuge in her writing. Yet she still hides it away. The other girls don’t write, and the boys tease her about being a Little Poetess. She recognizes that she wants to be a writer some day, and even that her older sister Julia (who wants to be an opera singer and “never cared what people thought”) would never have put that trunk in the attic and “buried her poems in a handkerchief box”.

But while Betsy recognizes this, she doesn’t change her ways. When she’s chosen to participate in the annual school essay contest (competing against handsome but perplexing Joe Willard) she is thrilled, yet still doesn’t manage to handle it the way she might wish. But she does learn from the experience:

She looked back over the crowded winter. She did not regret it. But she should not have let its fun, its troubles, its excitements squeeze her writing out.

“If I treat my writing like that,” she told herself, “it may go away entirely.”

The thought appalled her. What would life be like without her writing? Writing filled her life with beauty and mystery, gave it purpose… and promise.

When Betsy finally acts on that realization I am cheering for her! And even now, it never fails to remind me, as a writer, that I have to make room for writing in my life.

There’s so much more I could talk about: the thoughtful portrayal of religion, the way Lovelace captures the exquisite ache of a first (unrequited) crush, all the wonderful period details, Betsy’s steadfast friendship with Tacy. But I’ll leave you all to find out about that if you read this book for yourself. I don’t expect everyone will love it as much as I, but if you do give it a try and do enjoy it, please let me know. And if you are already a fan, feel free to share your thoughts on the book! I’d love to hear them!