I'm spending a great deal of time this semester at VCFA pondering the beginnings of stories. So many story elements to include: characters, desire lines, settings, inciting incidents... And deep within that, why am I as an author writing this story?

For my semester project, I've decided to take on Kurt, an antagonist from The Boy Next Door. I won't give spoilers for TBND, I promise, but those who've read the early drafts know that Kurt has done some not-so-easily-forgiven things. Why write about him, then?

Two reasons. First, I love this character. He's a bad guy in TBND, but Robert McKee, author of Story, says writers should love all their characters and I believe this is good advice. When you care about a character, you add depth and interest that you might not otherwise do. Second, who among us has really NEVER done something we later wish we hadn't?

Randy Ingermanson's popular Snowflake Method for novel writing has a lot of suggestions that I find useful, including the idea of starting your work with a single sentence of what your novel is going to be about. I also find it helpful to consider a question that I'll be exploring. I think that for this novel, my question is this: Can you ever put back the pieces if you shatter somebody else's life?

The answer? It'll take a whole novel. :-)

Comparisons are a writing staple; they're a great way to get across a lot of information in a single sentence. Here's a example from a craft book that's a fave of my fellow Swoon author Jenny Elliott, Noah Lukeman's The First Five Pages. You could write: "The man had a long, drawn-out face. He was very pale. His forehead ran straight across. He had large dark circles below his eyes..." Lukeman carries the example much farther, but the basic point? This man "looks like Frankenstein." (Lukeman 61). This comparison gives a strong mental picture and saves a lot of the reader's time.

Now there are some cautions to this technique. You must be sure your audience understands the comparison. If your reader doesn't know who Frankenstein is, now he or she is only confused. A good comparison will be original without needing explaining. That being said, I'm about to break all the rules.

If I say VCFA (Vermont College of Fine Arts) is like Hogwarts, I hope you get the picture that VCFA is an intriguing and beautiful place where magical things happen. In the interest of fun, though, photos and explanations below.

Move over sci-fi and fantasy, the highlight from today was a great lecture by author Coe Booth on world building in contemporary novels - six pages of notes! As a teen, I embraced my inner geek in many ways, one of which was in mapping out imaginary towns and imagining the lives of the people who lived there. I had no idea that what I was doing was an integral part of creating story, but think about how many ways your life has been shaped by the neighborhoods you grew up in.

Coe created an imaginary New York neighborhood called Bronxwood for her Tyrell novels and she provided us with various levels and questions to help us go about the process ourselves. I'm excited that I gleaned a couple character memories from the exercises that will improve my draft of Kiss and Cry.

If you're in the mood for your own writing challenge, I've posted a slide show of pictures below that you might use to imagine character memories as connected to a place. The pictures are from downtown Montpelier, but don't limit yourself to that. What kind of characters do you think live in a place like this? How do they feel about living here? How do they interact with each other? You can also take a walk through your own neighborhood and think of some of your own connections to place as well.

 P.S. I love almost everything about Vermont but the internet connection in the dorms leaves a lot to be desired. As a result, these posts are drafts and I apologize in advance for typos or the occasional nonsense post gone live...

Specifically, Vermont College of Fine Arts. It's time for summer residency in the Writing for Children and Young Adults program and residency kicked off today with a great lecture on public readings by faculty member Alan Cumyn. Alan is the author of many books including Tilt, which is on my TBR list after this afternoon's lecture. Other highlights from today included listening to (and seeing Alan's advice in action at) faculty readings by Kathi Appelt, Tom Birdseye, Susan Fletcher, A.M. Jenkins, and Rita Williams-Garcia.

What happens in Vermont stays in Vermont (the professors' lectures aren't mine to share), so I won't be going into details but I will be checking in to share some of the craft topics we're delving into during residency. If you have little experience in doing public readings, here's some links to check out to get yourself started thinking about this useful author skill:

10 Tips for Successful Public Readings (basic information)
How to Read in Public (important considerations)
10 Tips for Writers Reading in Public (a humorous and real essay)

I also recommend reading your current works in progress aloud to yourself. It's a great way to hone your public reading skills while also helping you revise, as there's nothing like reading aloud to help you see words and phrases you are overusing or areas where your work might need tightening.

I remember being told in school that if I couldn't think of anything to write, to just go ahead and write exactly that. As in: "I can't think of anything to write. I can't think of anything to write. I can't think of anything to write. I can't think of anything to write. I can't think of anything to write..." (Okay, you got it, I know.) Eventually, I was told, this would help me spark an idea. Or...not. I've been on the teacher side of that fence a time or two. Or four. Or, well, way more. I sympathize as well, then, with the teacher's frustration. It's hard to build from nothing.

Blank pages, though, have this way of mimicking brand new books. (Yes, I smell books. They're like calorie free chocolate!) Just like the tantalizing aroma of a new book, the blank page has the fresh, pristine possibility of being the greatest next thing EVER. There is then, in that potential, all the stress of making it perfect. Oh, bring on the stress balls, the worry stones, and (of course) the chocolate!

I confess to watching a little too much Frozen lately, but it is time to let it go. In fact, when I begin a new writing notebook, I purposefully record something messily right away. It gives me mental permission to let go of that need for perfectionism. Fellow author Sandy Hall (A Little Something Different) posted "tips for writing scenes" on her Tumblr recently and the last tip said to rewrite about 200 times. Exaggeration, yes, but not in principle. You will need to rewrite and rewrite. You won't need to write, "I can't think of what to rewrite, I can't think of what to rewrite..."

Just get something down. The names of characters in a scene. A description of how someone looks. A sensory image from the place where you're writing, even if it's an annoying hum of fluorescent lights. Repeat and repeat again. Think of the blank page not as needing to be filled with perfect but with possibility, lots of possibilities.

Of course, just like athletes, those who practice daily find the words begin to come more easily. For me, nothing kicks me into writing gear better than a daily word count goal. Want some online accountability? Camp NaNoWriMo (the summer version of National Novel Writing Month) kicks off its July session today and you can get some virtual cabin mates to hold you to your word count goals as well as lots of tips for making word count. Visit https://campnanowrimo.org/sign_in to sign up!

I belong to several writing groups. There's my online writing friends, a fantastic and brilliant mix of people from SCBWI, RWA, and Swoon Reads, who also all write YA. There's my SCBWI critique group, where we write everything from picture books to YA. I've also found a group of writers at my local library who write everything, from sonnets to graphic novels and memoir to editorials.

I find all these groups helpful and inspiring for different reasons. The benefits of critique partners who write for the genre are probably obvious. These people are well-read and experienced in my favorite field. My SCBWI group, with its talents at all levels of kid lit, help me make sure my work is appropriate for my target age group in addition to their other feedback. But sometimes I want or need to expand my writing beyond writing for children or young adults. Enter a drop-in visit to the library group.

Tonight, I owe this post to a fellow library writer. I was looking for suggestions as to where I could cut parts of a magazine article I'm working on. (800 words over count in a novel? No biggie. In a magazine article? Wince. Grimace. Moan.) Deborah pushed me to think about it in a different way. "Get a highlighter," she suggested, "and highlight all the parts you really want to keep."

Advice I'd heard before? For sure. Advice I needed to hear again, right then? Yes. And behind those words of advice, much needed subtext. The answer is there when you're willing to look at things a different way. Thank you, Deborah!

The world today lost not only a wonderful writer but a wonderful woman with the death of Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Ann Johnson, who passed away in her North Carolina home this Wednesday, May 28, at age 86.

 Angelou once said that it was her goal in writing to "write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine...before she realizes she's reading." As a reader, I say she met this goal. Her best known book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is her autobiography from age 7 to 16 and depicts life in the Jim Crow South as well as the personal horrors she endured. I first read it in middle school and it remains today one of the books that has influenced me the most. The author of staggering beautiful poetry as well as a dancer and singer, Angelou was also an advocate of justice, education, and equality who worked alongside Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today, Angelou flies away from us but leaves her work as guidance for our own flight. I rejoice for the blessings the world received from her life and take comfort in the words she leaves us. Maya Angelou, you opened so many cages - may you now sing to us all from the skies. And may we all remember her by continuing to pay it forward to others with our words, actions, and time.

Angelou in a 2009 interview with CNN: "Our country needs us all right now to stand up and be counted. We need to try to be great citizens. We are necessary in this country, and we need to give something -- that is to say, go to a local hospital, go to the children's ward and offer to the nurse in charge an hour twice a month that you can give them reading children's stories or poetry," she said. "And go to an old folks' home and read the newspaper to somebody. Go to your church or your synagogue or your mosque, and say, 'I'd like to be of service. I have one hour twice a month.You'll be surprised at how much better you will feel. And good done anywhere is good done everywhere."

CNN posted a beautiful obituary of Maya Angelou. Read it here.

Since revisions for The Boy Next Door are keeping me insanely busy, for the next couple of weeks I'll only be posting once a week on Wednesdays about what I'm reading for VCFA homework. This week I'm swooning over David Levithan's Boy Meets Boy. This novel is a sweet romance between two high school boys, Paul and Noah, and I loved the phrasings used in their early relationship scenes. Especially favorite was this passage:

    "The first bell rings and I'm not sure what we'll do - is there a way to acknowledge our newfound closeness without being one of those couples who can't get through the day without a loud hallway snog?
    It's Noah who finds the answer, without me having to ask the question. "I'll see you later," he says, and as he does, he runs his finger briefly over my wrist. It passes me over like air, and makes me shiver like a kiss." (Levithan 79).

     The cast of characters was laugh out loud funny, especially Infinite Darlene, the high school's star quarterback and homecoming queen. The setting was definitely utopian but fitting for the story, since it allowed the focus to stay mostly on Paul and Noah's relationship and not on their sexual orientation.

    Boy Meets Boy was the April selection for the Swoon Reads book club, feel free to join the discussion here.

Extra teaching duties this week kept me from posting a Technique Tuesday reflection, so today is a change-up from the usual: a "Way with Words" Wednesday. The past couple of days, I've been devouring Jennifer Donnelly's A Northern Light. Here's just a few of the reasons why:

Romance, history, and a murder mystery could produce a page turning book enough on their own, but Donnelly is brilliant at setting up page turns such as this one, which ends a first page description of a perfect summer day in the North Woods and the belief that all days will go on like this: "I believe these things. With all my heart. For I am good at telling myself lies" (Donnelly 1).

Donnelly doesn't shy away from the harshness of life and I loved the raw emotion in the scene where narrator Mattie goes to visit her childhood friend, Minnie, after the birth of Minnie's twins. Minnie's cabin is a mess and she's trying to breastfeed both babies at once. She hands the babies to Mattie to get tea for her visitor. Mattie has trouble hiding her reaction to the babies:
"I was trying to settle them, so they'd stop screaming, so the wet from the diapers wouldn't soak into my skirt, when the next thing I knew, Minnie was standing over me, her arms at her side, her hands clenched.
    "Give them to me! Give them back! Don't look at them like that! Don't look at me! Just get out! Go! Get out of here!" she shouted.
    "Min...I...I'm sorry! I wasn't...I didn't mean..."
    But it was too late. Miinie was hysterical. She crushed the babies to here and started to cry. "You hate them, don't you, Mattie? Don't you?"
    "Minnie! What are you saying?"
    "I know you do. I hate them, too. Sometimes. I do." Her voice had dropped to a whisper. Her eyes were tormented" (Donnelly 271).

And the descriptions, oh the character descriptions! "Once I saw Beth lift her head at the sound of a coyote's cry at twilight. Her eyes widened - half in wonder, half in fear - and I saw that she would be beautiful someday. Not just pretty, truly beautiful. I saw the restlessness in Lawton long before he left. I saw it when he was only a boy and would toss sticks and leaves into the rushing waters of the Moose River and watch them go where he could not" (Donnelly 280).

My copy is filled with sticky notes marking even more favorite passages, but for now I have to get back to my own writing.

They say a picture's worth a thousand words, so about 65 pictures makes a great YA novel, right? Maybe not, but I find a little visual inspiration never hurts when I'm writing, just so long as I don't spend so long on Pinterest that my husband asks if I've fallen in...

At the Swoon Reads twitter chat last night, one of the questions that we first list panel members were asked was if our ideas came from real life or our imaginations. My answer? Imagination inspired by real life. This is true for not only plot events and dialogue but also for descriptions of characters and settings. I find pictures especially useful for helping me show character's emotions, what that emotion looks like on their faces and in their body language.

Google Maps is a great resource for setting as well, since you can use street view to get snapshots of places where your characters live or visit. A scene I'm working on for Kiss and Cry involves a drive through the Rocky Mountains and into Utah and Google Maps meant I could "drive" their route through snapshots. And if a picture's worth a thousand words, how much more for a movie? I also love YouTube videos for research. Since I personally don't enjoy seafood, I've never eaten a lobster. But I could learn exactly how to do it on YouTube.

Do you have a favorite source for visual inspiration? Please share by leaving a comment. Thanks!

P.S. For those who missed the twitter chat, I leaked that there's a new Halloween scene coming to The Boy Next Door. If you want spoilers, check out my The Boy Next Door board on Pinterest.