Now, the house is quiet.

In two hours, three children will traipse through the door with all of their demands. Laundry calls to me from upstairs. I have to figure out dinner. I have to call the piano tuner. I should get the mail. See what bills need to be paid.

The couch beckons with its cushiony surface. “Come nap on me,” it says. “Step away from the novel. Come, sit back, relax, stay awhile.”

I reach for a glass of water, push my sit bones deeper into the chair.

“I must write my two pages,” I tell myself. “I must right them now, quickly, before my entire afternoon devolves into chaos.”

My lids grow heavy. I want to lay my head down. But I won’t.

My writing partner, Soniah, linked to an inspiring post by writer Alexander Chee. The quote I leave you with from Chee’s blog post is not just for writers. It’s for everyone.

I recently had lunch with the AAWW interns, and one of them asked me, “What do you think, having taught writers for a while, is the thing that makes the big difference? What separates the students who go on to become writers from the students who don’t?”

“Stamina,” I said, very quickly. Persistence is the gift that brings all the others. I know many writers with a great deal of talent who do not write. Art is not fair, it is not democratic, it has no court of appeals. Talent is not equally apportioned, but luckily it also doesn’t matter as much as stamina. There is little science to it all that is reliable except that I have seen persistence carry the day over talent again and again. And it may be this that inspires me most of all.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend, filled with the best kind of stamina.

Part of the reason why I think I’ll be so sad if I never get a book published, is because I think publishing a novel would be a great way to thank all of these wonderful people who support me day after day. So many writers have to hide their writing from others, have to fight for every minute in front of the laptop. I’m so, so lucky I don’t have to do this. I’m so, so lucky, that when I have such terrible doubts about my ability as a writer, about my chance of getting a book published, that the only person working against me is me.

I just have to remind myself of this. Unlike working at a job away from home, I have to be the one to pat myself on my back. No one will be there to do it for me. I have to remind myself that writing IS work. Publication or not, it is work that counts.

page 45, novel #2

And so, I celebrate the work by taking photos of the page I’m on, to chart my own milestones, my own progress, since I don’t have a manager or a paycheck.

Serve with a dash of soy and a side of chopsticks!

I don’t know how it’s possible, but I’ve never cooked Chinese food before. (Unless you include instant Ramen noodles, which I don’t.) I absolutely love Chinese food. But when I’m in the mood for spring rolls, instead of cooking, I run off to one of my three favorite Chinese restaurants, all within a few miles of my house.

But yesterday, in honor of Chinese New Year, I decided to cook Chinese. Over the weekend, my husband  picked up whole wheat lo mein noodles and hoisin sauce. I sauteed the vegetables we happened to have in the house– green peas, grated carrots, diced green onions, and garlic. I cubed extra firm tofu, tossed in the already cooked noodles, and threw in a few tablespoons of hoisin sauce. Voila! Year of the Dragon Noodles. The kids loved it, and I’ve finally made my Chinese friends proud.

First, some background. I’ve never been much of an “outliner.” I know some writers of novels/screenplays/plays who complete all of their research and a 50-100 page outline before they write a single word. If I had to invest that much into a novel before doing any writing, I’d never have finished Secrets of the Sari Chest.

And yet, I wasn’t too keen on my writing process with Secrets. Though I had a pretty good idea of the story beforehand, my plot was all over the place. After several drafts, I changed the age of the protagonist, which threw off a good bit of the novel. I cut out an entire character. I brought in a character who previously only appeared in a flashback. Sure, every novel is revised a gazillion times before it’s ready. But I had 200+ extra pages that I didn’t even use in the novel because I wrote in such a disorganized fashion.

I didn’t want to repeat this incredibly inefficient method again with my second novel.

My character web

In December, the wonderful Terra Elan McVoy told the Club that she does a Character Web and a Timeline for her novels. The Character Web shows the relationships between all the characters. The timeline is just that– dates and times for all pertinent events in the plot. I rushed home from this meeting and immediately started creating them for Finding Om. Though Character Webs and Timelines requires a lot of forethought, I find them far easier to manage than doing a detailed, scene-to-scene, chapter-to-chapter outline.

Thanks to Terra, I now have a completed character web and a timeline for Finding Om.

Jeff Stepakoff was our wonderful speaker yesterday. He has written for Dawson’s Creek and other television shows, and is now out with his second novel, The Orchard. (I started The Orchard last night and so far I love it.) There is much to be learned from screenplay writers, that’s for sure. Jeff educated us on how one measures a television show or movie with Acts and Scenes and Beats– and how these measurements are imperative for good fiction writing.

But what I really took home from Jeff, was the importance of writing your book jacket before you write your novel. Book jackets have compelling “hooks” which try to get potential readers from the bookshelf in a bookstore to the cash register. I’ve spent most of this morning working on my book jacket for Finding Om. I’m hoping that the Book Jacket will keep me focused on the plot, keep me writing scenes that push the plot forward, and prevent me from writing gobs of back story (which I did i the first several drafts of Secrets.)

So, there you have it. Great tips from great author-speakers. Hope you writers out there find them helpful!

I’m a realist. It is what it is. C’est la vie. If something is kinda shitty, I’m not going to pretend that it’s not. If I’m stressed out, you’re going to hear about it– I’m not going to cheerily announce “oh, it could be worse.” If I’m frustrated about something, I’m not going to fake it.

Hence my blog post from two days ago. I needed to get it out.

Soon after I wrote the post, I got some lovely comments. Oh, they were beyond lovely. So incredibly encouraging.

And so, after reading them, I thought: If these amazing people can take the time out of their busy lives to write such thoughtful, encouraging words, the least I can do is write a few words on my next novel.

That night, I opened up my word document with twenty or so pages of my next novel, Finding Om. I hadn’t worked on that novel in over two months.

I took a deep breath.

I wrote two pages.

Yesterday, I wrote three more.

And so, after one incredibly negative post, came something positive. I’m working on my next novel again. I don’t know for how long, but at least I’m doing it. The act of telling the truth has liberated me from some of the anxiety. It’s just words on a page, but when you’re a writer, words on a page are everything.

So thank you.

And yet, except for a few of us, we can not get work.

We meet for lunch every couple of weeks, rarely talking about our children. Instead, we brainstorm about every possibility that could lead to employment. “Did you send your resume to Y?” “Are you going to sign up for X class?” “Would you be willing to work the 2nd shift?” “How far is too far a commute?”

We are thankful, grateful, appreciative of the fact that we were able to be stay at home parents for the early years of our kids’ lives. We are even more grateful that our spouses earn incomes which pay for our households. And yet, we are desperate to go back to work.

I include myself in this group, though I haven’t exactly been looking for a job. But for the past two months, I have been looking for an agent for my novel. It’s been a year since the agent for my anthology (which never sold) told me that an editor was interested at Z publishing house, after which that editor never responded. It’s been a year and a half since I wrote two picture books that went nowhere.

I’ve spent the past few weeks applying to three summer writers residencies. I’ve been reading and re-reading websites for low residency MFA programs. I’m having a really tough time writing my next novel, not because I don’t know what to write, but because I’m overcome with anxiety about finding an agent for my first novel. I’m terrified that this book will lead to another dead end.

For the first time in the past seven-and-a-half years, I’m regretting leaving law to pursue writing. I’m wishing I worked just a little longer, so I wouldn’t have such a huge gap on my resume. I’m wishing I didn’t decide to be a writer at the exact same time the entire industry collapsed.

I’m wondering how the hell to get back on track.

So I’m thankful, so very thankful, for this wonderful group of friends, all struggling with the same thing, all supporting each other.

Our latest purchases...

Whenever I go to Barnes & Noble, I walk back to their bargain section, and pick up an armful of journals and sketchpads. The good people at B & N have been selling high quality sketch pads (thick paper, tough as nails covers and backs, and sturdy wire bindings) and beautiful lined journals for $4.98 (small size) and $6.97 (large size)– for years. We have them all over our house. Each child has a small sketch pad, a large sketch pad, and a small journal at all times. They sit on our coffee table, in our craft cabinet, and on nightstands for writing or drawing before bed. The smaller sized journals/sketch pads travel with us on every road trip. (Though they’re a little on the heavy side, we even took them to India.) We even take them to art galleries where all three kids sketch out their favorite art work.

3 year-old sketches at the High Museum of Art

My 10 year-old is an avid short story writer, but also loves to draw animals.

10 year-old likes to write stories about older Harry Potter characters when they were kids. This one is about Lilly Potter as a child.

My 7 year-old writes short stories and comic strips, and also draws.

"Le Artist" by my 7 year-old. I didnt know she spoke French.

My 3 year-old can just now write some words, so she’s finally getting the chance to write in her journal. But she also sketches quite a lot, too.

I really loved this piece about long sentences. My sentences tend to be really long, and I’d love it if the long sentence came back into style. I hate breaking up the description of a single moment with a period for the sake of having a shorter sentence. When I edit, I read my writing aloud, and the long sentence helps me connect thoughts in a way that is fluid, gentle, and builds suspense.

I loved this line in the essay:

What we crave is something that will free us from the overcrowded moment and allow us to see it in a larger light. No writer can compete, for speed and urgency, with texts or CNN news flashes or RSS feeds, but any writer can try to give us the depth, the nuances — the “gaps,” as Annie Dillard calls them — that don’t show up on many screens. Not everyone wants to be reduced to a sound bite or a bumper sticker.

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Did you just love Downton Abbey last night? Oh, how I wish every episode were two hours! Next week is too far away…