First thing’s first.

Administrative Whatnot: I have successfully moved servers and upgraded hosting plans. There was only one casualty [snickers at Alex] but some collateral damage was expected and is acceptable. The transition was more or less seamless, thanks to the great support team at Dayana, but please let me know if you encounter any problems or something still looks wonky. Appreciate it!

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Now. I’ve had a bunch of writing quotes in my drafts area forever. Because Andy got home from his business at 1:30 am last night (thanks to weather delays and a driver that almost killed him on the highway!) and then Riley had, erm, bowel issues at 5 am, I’m just going to leave these nice quotes here for your enjoyment while I go pass out try to make the most of my day despite my zombie-like diminished mental capacity.

(Please, no Geico-like retribution from zombies, okay?)

Therese Walsh has a fun analogy for the writing process:

Maybe writing is like crayon rubbings. Do you remember those? Stick something textured beneath a piece of paper, then use the flat side of a crayon to reveal its many intricacies. Rub hard enough and long enough and over the entire paper, and you’ll see a very clear likeness of whatever lies beneath.

Diana Gabaldon talks about learning your own best work methods, and inspiration vs. perspiration:

Writing successfully is a matter of figuring out how your own brain works, and doing that—not trying to adopt someone else’s methods. And in all honesty, I think an observant person would learn much more from extensive reading of novels, than reading how-to-write books. Remember though, that the only thing that counts is getting words on the page. Anything that allows you to do that is the right thing to do.

Mind, writing depends on hard work and having a routine of some sort. It should go without saying that one doesn’t just sit around waiting for inspiration (I mean, really—do ballet dancers wait for inspiration? Cello players? Athletes? CPA’s? Why in God’s name do people think artists do that? First, you work; then the magic happens.).

At at the same time, there really is a mysterious element to what we do. We aren’t spinning straw into gold; we’re making something out of nothing at all.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what I needed to hear right now:

Do not spend a single second making your prose readable until you’re absolutely, positively sure that you have your story locked down. This is the single most important bit of advice I have, and I ignore it all the time and have wasted years of my revising life because of it. The impulse to snappy-up dialogue and make sentences eloquent is almost irresistible at every point in the revision process. It makes sense: We’re surrounded by so many big, messy plot and character problems that it’s nice to seek solace in tidying up sentences. It’s a finite task, it’s instantly gratifying, and it makes us feel like we’re making progress on our books. The sadness comes when we spend six months transforming our first three chapters into Pulitzer-worthy gems, only to realize that none of those chapters will actually end up in our novels because they don’t work with the ending. This happens over and over and over, and it will kind of make you want to die. My advice: Think of your second draft as a house that you’re building. You need to pour the foundation, frame the walls, and get a reasonably waterproof roof over your head before you start to think about putting art up on the walls and installing the basement bowling alley and aviary. Let the art-hanging and bird-bringing be the treat you give yourself for all your manual labors with the cement mixer and nail gun.

Siiiiigh. Excuse me while I go knock down this beautiful front hallway I’ve been working on and pour some damn foundation instead…

Last night I was talking with Marci about Sex and the City and Grey’s Anatomy, and how Carrie & Big are essentially Meredith & Derek, or vice versa really since SATC came first. Marci is not a big fan (to put it mildly) of how fuc– erm, complicated, these relationships are, yet how they are protrayed as true love. I told her that as someone who has had 2-3 breakups or breaks or whatever you want to call them with my current boyfriend, I was hardly in a position to judge. However, in my relationship, no cheating was involved. Mostly it was miscommunication, and/or being 20 years old.

Anyway, what I realized today is that my relationship with Andy is by no means the most fuc– ahem, complicated, relationship I’m in. May I present to you…

Writing a Novel: A Love Story

It’s not The Notebook, but it’s pretty darn accurate. It’s also not written by me, but read it anyway.

Yesterday I had a brief conversation with the master himself, Kurt Vonnegut.

… i.e., I read “How to Write with Style” by Kurt Vonnegut and thought about what he had to say. The highlights of our “discussion” are as follows:

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don’t you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.

Hmm, no. Good point.

I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way — although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.

Hehe. You’re so cute and funny, Kurt! But there’s only a boy next door, and he’s sixteen, so that gets into some sketchy territory. Also, I have a boyfriend.

But I bet a petition or a love letter would be a lot easier than banging my head against my keyboard every day…

Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

I haven’t read that much of the Bible myself, but I see your point.

Thank you, Kurt, this has been very enlightening. No wonder you were such an awesome writer! I will try to keep your sage widsom in mind as I proceed, ever so slowly, on my own path as an author. Hopefully this will speed things up a bit, i.e., help me get published, because if that doesn’t happen soon, I may throw my keyboard away and go join the circus. Specifically, Cirque du Soleil. Because they have like a bajillion shows, all of which are popular. And I’m part Chinese, so I could probably twist myself into little pretzel-y shapes like those ten year old girls, right?

From a (looong) interview with Algonquin editor Chuck Adams, who was with Simon & Schuster before that, and who selected and edited Sara Gruen’s hit Water for Elephants:

What are you looking for in a piece of writing?
The first thing is the voice. If it’s got a strong voice, I’m going to keep reading. And if a story sneaks in there, I’m going to keep reading. To me, those are the two most important things. I want a voice and I want to be hooked into a story. I believe very strongly that books are not about writers, and they’re definitely not about editors—they’re about readers. You’ve got to grab the reader right away with your voice and with the story you’re telling. You can’t just write down words that sound pretty. It’s all about the reader. You’ve got to bring the reader into it right away. If the writing is poetic and so forth, that’s nice. I’m reading something right now that has an amazing voice, and I’m only fifty-six pages into it, but I’m already getting a little tired because it’s so nice, if you know what I mean. It’s so pretty. It’s like every page is a bon bon, and I want a little break somewhere.

Dangit. I think I tend to write bon bons. No, seriously! I am a writer, and I laugh at my reputation for telling awful stories — you know, ones that I think are hysterical but no one laughs at and then I try to explain the punchline and kill it even more — but Andy, and this Chuck guy, are right: I need to tell a good story.

That’s something Nora Roberts (see yesterday’s post) does really well, and exactly why I always reread her books before going to bed at night whenever I come back to visit my parents in Houston.

More from the interview:

Look at Michael Chabon. He’s had success from the beginning, but it wasn’t until he wrote The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, where he took his formula of two guys and a girl and put it against this big panorama—the Holocaust, the Depression, World War II—that he turned the intimate little stories he’d been writing into a big story. It’s not that difficult to do. It’s not easy to do, either. But when you really look at what he did, you just have to come up with the right backdrop and put the story in front of it and make the story one that people really relate to and care about.

…

I keep saying, “Look, write Romeo and Juliet or write Jane Eyre or whatever. But put it against a big backdrop. Steal somebody’s else idea, but just make it your own.”

Last but not least, something I know I will have to overcome when my time (finally) arrives:

That is the one thing I don’t understand about writers sometimes. It takes so much work to write a book. It takes a lot of ego to write a book. And then they finish it and find a publisher and go, “Oh, I’d feel cheap trying to sell it.” Bullshit. That’s part of the process. You wrote the book for a reason: You want people to read it. Help us. Help us get it out there.

I dunno if it’s the Asian in me, or just a natural shyness, or what, but the idea of actively promoting my own work makes me cringe. I’ve never enjoyed being a salesperson. I always think, Shouldn’t the work/product/service speak for itself? But I guess I have to remember that work/products/services don’t have voices, so I have to lend them my own if I want them to be heard.

That said… PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF BABY PANDAS, IF YOU EVER SEE A BOOK WITH THE NAME KRISTAN HOFFMAN ON IT, BUY IT!

500 words

Dear Angie,

As usual, I’m having trouble focusing. It’s the last day of the week that I can devote completely to my writing, and yet the gravity of that does little to motivate me. I should be taking full advantage of this day to myself, but instead I am resisting the temptations of the internet, television, and a nap. This is no easy feat — all are well within my reach. But I figure that writing to you, while not technically something that will advance my career as an author, is more productive than any of the alternatives. At least it’s writing, right?

Do you ever have trouble getting yourself to sit down and concentrate on a single task? Continue reading →

I had planned to write this really exultant post about how literary agent Nathan Bransford helped me to realize what kind of books I’m writing, via his post “Book Club Fiction”:

Around the publishing industry there has long been a hankering for a certain type of book that is both literary and yet commercial, familiar and yet exotic, well-written but not too dense, accessible but with some depth. They are books that are kind of tough to categorize, because they don’t exactly fit into any one genre. I’d often hear people calling them either literary commercial fiction or commercial literary fiction.

But during my last trip to New York I heard an apt label for this category: book club fiction*. And lots of editors want it.

My first reaction: AWESOME! That’s exactly what I want to achieve with both my writing and my blogging. And I’m not just saying that because Nathan Bransford says that’s what editors are looking for!

But then EVERYONE AND THEIR MOMS said “Thanks, Nathan, you’ve just described my genre!” And suddenly I didn’t feel so original anymore…

Pardon me if I’m a little less than coherent today. It’s the first day this week that I haven’t needed allowed myself to nap. Don’t get me wrong, naps are great, but should a twenty-two year old really need to nap at 9:30 am, just two hours after she’s woken up? I think not.

In fact, I’m a little worried about how tired Andy and I have been, particularly in the mornings. I was never this way before, except for a few nights in college when I’d procrastinated studying for a big exam or writing a paper until the night before. But now we’re like zombies in the morning, hitting snooze at least twice before we finally get up to stumble around our bedroom. It’s gotten worse in the past couple weeks, but if I’m being honest, it’s been a problem for the past few months. We tried opening our blinds to let in more natural light, and that helped a bit during summer, but with fall here and winter fast approaching, it’s no longer enough. Mostly because light doesn’t come until well after we’ve woken up and I’m taking Riley out on his morning walk.

We get seven to eight hours on a regular basis, both take vitamins — Andy’s better about it than I am, but he’s usually the tireder one — and eat decently well. So what’s the problem?! I honestly don’t know, but it is starting to worry me. We’re going to look at new mattresses this weekend, since we’re currently sleeping on an innerspring mattress that he’s had for over ten years, but there’s no guarantee it’ll help…

Cross your fingers for me?

What really brought me here was not to beg for your good vibes. (But please, please send them.) What brought me here was the realization that I don’t write happy things.

Okay okay, here on the blog, sure, stuff is mostly happy. Because I’m a generally happy person. I think I got most of my angst — and thus most of my angsty blogging — out during my teenage years, and I have since obliterated/privatized/forgotten about those blogs. Of course, I do have most of them backed up on my computer, because hey, sometimes it’s fun to go back and see how BOO HOO EMO you used to be.

But in terms of my fiction writing — you know, the stuff I want to make a living off of? — I rarely ever write happy things. My main characters are usually angry, sad, or both. Someone important to them has died. And no one really laughs, because snorts and sarcastic chuckles don’t count.

WHAT’S UP WITH THAT, YO?

I don’t go into any of my stories thinking, Hmm, how can I make this really, REALLY emo? They just kind of come out that way! I never thought it was a problem — frankly I thought it was because sad things are easier to write than happy ones — but the more I think about it, the more I realize the signs have been there all along.

Sign #1: my mom sitting me down one day during my junior year of high school and asking if I needed to see a psychologist, because my two award-winning stories were about (a) a woman in an abusive relationship who wants to commit suicide, and (b) a girl who makes a pot of coffee for her brother every morning, despite the fact that he’s been dead for years.

HMMMMM…

There’s no real resolution to this issue, other than my looking a little harder, digging a little deeper, and finding that happy place within me that can produce less depressing fiction that still rings true to my voice.

But you tell me: Isn’t it really weird?! Or am I overreacting?

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On a completely unrelated note, OMG CHECK OUT THE SEKSY. Since I can’t afford one right now, I’m making small tweaks to Winnie so that she and I are both happier. Most recently I lowered the Hardware Acceleration in her Display Settings (say what?? I know) because ever since I upgraded to iTunes 8.0 and Firefox 3.0, they mess each other up and I end up with half of Demi Lovato’s album cover in my Gmail window.

Dear Universe,

Please publish me soon so that I can reward myself with a new Macbook laptop. Also so I can stop feeling like a huge failure and waste of life.

THXBYE,
Kristan

The book had been more difficult to write than she expected. The swirl of important ideas and powerful epiphanies seemed diminished on the page. They became fixed words and were no longer fresh internal debate. Still, she finished, and was excited and nervous to see what people would think, how her work might change their lives. It could have a ripple effect. She did not want to get her expectations up too high, yet writing about personal discovery could prove to be her calling.

And then she could not find a publisher. She kept sending out the manuscript and received only rejections or never heard back. It had been a waste of time to write the damn thing. She was going to throw it in the trash–it pained her to see it, this big lump of wasted time. But then she reconsidered. She was stronger than that. It wasn’t a failure. She simply had not come out of the jungle yet. She needed perspective. She needed to revise her life before she could revise her book.

No more excuses about obligations. No more thinking she was indispensable. She bought a ticket for Paris. On the plane, she conjugated verbs that would soon have real meaning: Je crie au monde. J’ai crié au monde. Je crierai pour que le monde m’entende. I will shout to the world to hear me.

- Amy Tan, Saving Fish from Drowning, p 459

I have this bad habit. It’s an urge to find something — anything — “productive” that I can do instead of what I should be doing. Usually I try to resist this urge, but that’s when things start popping out at me. Things that need doing. Things that can be done quickly — so quickly! — that it’s silly to put them off for even another second, despite the fact that I have that other thing (WRITING) that I should be doing.

So I do the quick thing. And the other quick thing. And the third quick thing that, I know I know, is the third, but really, it’s quicker than the other two!

Suddenly my whole day has flown by, lost to quick things.

Today was just such a day. I started off well, putting in several hours of writing-related work this morning. Then I got the munchies. Then I needed to do dishes. Then I had to make lunch. Then I had to take out the trash. Then I had to go to the bank. And then… I had to redesign my blog!

So there you have it. I’m a compulsive cleaner, room-rearranger, and blog-redesigner. It’s sad — oh so sad — but true. And as the Borg say, “resistance is futile.”

But I did accomplish a few things I’ve been hankering to do:

• SIMPLIFY. I want the pictures and the words to stand out. I think they do now. Also, there are less crazy colors, so Albert will stop telling me something is pink, or yellow, when it is clearly orange, or tan. White looks white on every screen.

• Strong “branding.” This is probably because I’ve now been brainwashed by worked at a design firm for over a year. PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW MY NAME, gosh darn it.

• LINKS! Thanks to the Better Blogroll plugin for WordPress, I can now feature five random links in my sidebar. Meaning I’m not responsible for the order in which they appear, nor who’s on or off the list at any given time — i.e., I CAN’T HURT ANYONE’S FEELINGS. God forbid.

Since I wasted much of my afternoon but can now cross all those things off my to-do list, I’m going to call today a wash. Maybe tonight will be more productive. Or maybe I’ll just watch TV until our flag football game…