Why do I write?

This post will be short and sweet as I'm leaving this morning for a writer's retreat in Taos, New Mexico (about a 3 hour drive north of me) with some of my best SCBWI buddies. I'm taking my brand new laptop with me and an editorial letter for my next Scholastic middle-grade manuscript due out in Summer of 2014. I've got 40 hours more of work ahead of me, I estimate, and little more than a week before the deadline.

I love these two quotes found recently . . . 

Question: Why do I read?

 Answer: 

Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.

–Vera Nazarian 

 

Question: Why do I write?

 

 Answer:

 

 “Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.”

― Eudora Welty, On Writing

See you next week!
xo,
Kimberley 

Getting back to the Land of the Bloggers . . .

I've been so AWOL the past several months - or is it year? Probably ever since my brother got so ill last summer and I spent the next 6 months traveling like crazy to San Diego to visit him and then for his funeral and internment, and then for research and presenting at several conferences . . . I counted up 14 trips in the past 12 months. From New Mexico/Texas/Utah to California to Niagara Falls to Jordan & Israel. Just, wow. I have never traveled that much in such a short space of time before, including international travel to three countries (with nerve-wracking border crossings and delays and questioning!)

Except for posting SPELLBINDERS blog posts every Monday, my personal blog has been exhausted. I mean, *me* - I've been exhausted. Throw in the trauma and emotion, not only of losing my brother, but 14 months of a hundred doctor appts for my oldest son who has been so ill and now has a severe heart murmur which will probably need open heart surgery, and you have an author who never was a great blogger, but who misses it, too.

I do still read many, many blogs on a daily basis and usually post several time a day on Facebook. (Twitter is getting better for me . . . .:-))

One of my favorite blogs is author Beth Kephart's site. Many times I just want to copy and paste her beautiful, heartrending, perfect words right here on my blog (giving her credit, of course!).

Here is Beth's post from Tuesday and it sums up a bit of the writing life . . .

"Here, on my desk, the notes I have made for the final seven scenes in the Florence, Italy, novel. 

"Seven scenes is a large number and I refuse to write fast; there's too much pleasure to be found in writing slow—in taking the time to look around, in stopping to live in the thick stew of it all, in feeling deeply, in walking to the end of that alley."

Go here to read the rest - only two paragraphs, but they are powerful paragraphs. http://beth-kephart.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-writers-life-is-all-here-in-making.html 

Then go read her gorgeous book, SMALL DAMAGES.

Maybe someday I can write just a little bit like that. Perfect word choices, perfect cadence, perfectly beautiful thoughts and wisdom.

xo,
~Kimberley

Deadlines? Did anyone say Deadline? Escaping into the Open . . .

I had a manuscript due yesterday. Well, not exactly. It's due to my publisher in October, but back in early August I had my schedule planned out to get the first draft completed sometime this week - and if all went well, maybe even by September 8th. Yeah, yesterday.

The reality? I only have one chapter finished. And I keep rewriting it over and over again, trying not to hate it. (Oy!)

Life happened. Life got in the way. Life--yeah. That.

It's a bit panicky-feeling to think I'm three weeks behind. With 2nd round of revisions looming for my Harpercollins YA and Book 2 of the trilogy to draft no later than October 25th, too.

Did I say I'm panicked? Naw. I meant, TERRIFIED!

I'm also adding something new to the schedule. A trip back to San Diego next week to see my baby brother who has been so ill with brain cancer. I was there over the summer, but I can't put off seeing him again. It's that serious. And that makes me crazy terrified and emotional every single day.

One moment I'm gushing tears and sobbing at my desk.

The next I'm trying to keep my mother's and sisters' spirits lifted.

Or I'm numb. In shock that this is actually happening to my family.

Every day I'm hugging my babies tight. Or escaping into a book because I have to stop weeping and if I keep thinking about this I'll truly go ballistic; throwing things and swearing.

And then guilt rushes over me for whining and complaining when my brother has lost all ability to do anything, even to speak, the cancer has taken over so badly. And yet, he's fully aware of everything that is happening to him, as his life and all the things he loves have been taken away the past year. His music, his guitar, his books, his gaming friends, his navy life he was so good at. He's spent most of the last 6 months in the hospital trying treatments that don't work--or give him terrible side-effects. Frustration, disappointment that no treatments have worked, depression, anger and fear are daily battles for him as well as his wife and three sons who are so young (the twins in Kindergarten). Ironically--unbelievably--my brother was only 5 years old, the baby of 6 siblings, when we lost our father to a tragic accident (plane crash). And yet, it struck me today as I worshiped during church services and heard some incredibly inspiring talks, that he will be the first of all of us to see our father again--a father he barely remembers--on the other side of heaven's veil. I wish I could see that reunion. Father and son embracing, weeping tears of joy, and talking, talking, talking, catching up on all that they both have missed these last 30+ years.

Writing has, many times in the past, given me an escape. A way to cope with life's trials and heartaches. I think I'm ready to go there this week. I hope so. My character, Larissa Renaud, of Bayou Bridge, Louisiana, is reaching out to me from her own heartaches and scars that have come from many sides. And she will be called to do something big and wonderful--and terrible, too. She will learn that her family is in danger. Terrible danger that could kill her mother, her baby sister, and herself, and she will be able to save them. And, as she becomes stronger, the heartache and scars and loneliness will diminish. They won't matter so much because of the person she discovers that she truly is deep inside.

Faith and sacrifice are always stronger than fear and doubt.

I leave you with a writing quote from the beautiful book, Escaping into the Open by Elizabeth Berg:

"All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation--it is the Self escaping into the open."
--E.B. White

I hope I can escape into my Open this week, and write true and write strong. 

Thank you, Dad, for giving me a love of literature, a love of words, a love of writing--your own dream of publishing a book never fulfilled.

xo,
~Kimberley

Must Read Blog Posts by Caroline Starr Rose!!! I'm serious.

I have very brilliant writing friends. They often put me to shame they're so good and wonderful and lovely and generous. I'm usually running around like a chicken with my head cut off - and getting nowhere.


Caroline Starr Rose (author of MAY B - one of the best middle-grade novels of 2012!) is running a series of incredible posts this week called:


NAVIGATING THE DEBUT YEAR: Public Life 


(Private Life post coming soon as well as a Writing Life post)


Wow.
Wow.
Wow.


It is a MUST read.


Go now: http://carolinebyline.blogspot.com/2012/06/navigating-debut-year-public-life.html


Post it to your Wall, virtual or real.


Read her book, MAY B.


Watch a rising star . . .

Three Rules? How about Three Steps!

Remember this amusing quote from Monday? 

"There are three rules to writing a novel and nobody knows what they are." William Somerset Maugham

Look no further! Harlan Coban has an article in the Wall Street Journal titled, "Want to be a Great Writer? Follow these Three Steps".


It begins like this:
'“I don’t like writing.  I like having written.” Ah, the paradox.' 

A great essay from a writer who's been in the trenches for a long time.

About 20 books worth. :-)

In Labor

Working on this holiday. I have a new book due by October 1 and I still have about 125 pages to write and then 250 to get feedback on and revise into something lucid and exciting and page-turning. Insane, eh? Much.

Book launch of CIRCLE OF SECRETS is October 1 and I'm only doing about a million various things for the launch . . . all of them are fun, but I think I bite off more than I can actually chew, swallow and digest!

Which reminds me . . . must make chocolate chip cookies to be able to coherently write . . .

I thought this quote was hilarious:

"There are three rules to writing a novel and nobody knows what they are."

William Somerset Maugham

Is This just Feeding all my Excuses *not* to Write?

"I have a basic indolence about me which is essential to writing . . . It's thinking time, it's hanging-out time, it's day-dreaming time. You know, it's lie-around-the-bed time, it's sitting-like-a-dope-in-your-chair-time. And that seems to me essential to any work."
Grace Paley

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time."
Sir John Lubbock

"It takes a heap of loafing to write a book."
Gertrude Stein

Enjoy your beautiful autumn! I still have some of my summer flowers . . . they'll soon be disappearing though.