Writing Advice du jour: What To Do With The Novel Whose Genius Is Not Yet Recognized

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Jenna Blum

Dear Jenna,

I have a manuscript that is 4+ years in the making, which I absolutely love and believe is ready to be published. Problem is, agents aren’t interested (100 rejections and counting). I feel like I’m done. I can’t work on it anymore, but I don’t want to abandon it. Has this ever happened to you? Do you have any advice?

Dear Writer,

Oy.  Well, the “oy is because this is such a hard thing to go through, and I know this because yes, it has happened to me. Three times. Once with the original drafts of THOSE WHO SAVE US. Once with the novel between THOSE WHO SAVE US and THE STORMCHASERS. And once with the original drafts of THE STORMCHASERS. With each novel, I submitted to agents, and for each novel, I received a hearty round of nice, encouraging…rejections. I couldn’t get anywhere with any of them. Finally I put them away and turned to other things: life, new writing. What happened with THOSE WHO SAVE US and ‘CHASERS was, years later, I returned to both novels with new insights and more skill at creating structure for their stories.  Those times, they sold!

The novel in between–that one did not sell.  It is sitting in a file in my Boston apartment. I just visited it and said hello to it. Was there a mourning period for it? Absolutely. I didn’t write again for about a year after my agent couldn’t place it.  (I made sure of this by quitting smoking during that year.)  But you know, when I picked it up recently and riffled through the pages, the characters in the novel were quite happy being where they are. They’re having a fine time living out their story lives on the pages. Whether they’re being read by a bunch of people doesn’t matter to them. It matters to me.  So the novel is fine where it is, and I left it alone.

CHARACTER HEAVEN.

Some novels you return to because time and enhanced experience can make them better. Some are complete in themselves, they’re never going to be any different, and you can let them go to happy novel-land.  I hope this is helpful!

xo & write on!,

Jenna.

 

 

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How I Get My Ideas

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Jenna Blum

Howdy, everyone:

Oftentimes I receive from readers wonderful suggestions concerning what I might consider writing about next. I know many writers who do work this way: they hear of a topic, or spy one in a newspaper headline, and run with it. I have always envied those writers. It seems such an efficient way to get material.

The way my stories and books are born is: I take a subject of extreme emotional interest to ME and plug it into a different context, thereby changing it somewhat–yet hopefully projecting it onto the wall of readers’ imaginations so everyone can feel what I’m feeling, too. That prism–refracting emotional light from me to you through the lens of make-believe–is called fiction.

Photo courtesy of Jim Reed.

I’m deeply grateful to have a chance to do this for my living and with my life. It’s not always easy trying to find the right context for the emotional situation. But once I find it, and once readers write to me to tell me what I wrote moved them–well, that to me is more than worthwhile. That’s evidence of grace.

This is also why I feel writing to sell, to pander to popular taste, just to make money, is a sucker’s game.

I wrote more about why this is in my latest Friday Five-0 advice column for Grub Street Writers.  Here’s the column. Enjoy.

Happy reading–and writing!

xo,

Jenna.

 

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Writer on The Road: Wichita. Once Upon A Time, A Thanksgiving Far, Far Away.

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Jenna Blum

Hi, everyone:

Here’s my new blog post for Grub Street Writers, on a Thanksgiving far far away…and what I’m thankful for now.

Enjoy! Wishing you and yours the happiest Thanksgiving.

 

 

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The Tense Tense

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Jenna Blum

Howdy, all!
 
Another reader query this week about why, WHY IN THE NAME OF GOD, I wrote THE STORMCHASERS in the present tense.  I’m always bemused as to why people pick up on my use of present in ‘CHASERS when I also wrote THOSE WHO SAVE US in present tense–and nobody ever asks about that! Maybe it’s because I diabolically eschewed quotation marks in THOSE WHO SAVE US to distract everyone. (Actually I left out the quotes in THOSE WHO SAVE US for other reasons, but that’s a different story.) 
 
I wrote both THE STORMCHASERS and THOSE WHO SAVE US in present tense because, as one of my Grub Street novelists (I think it was you, Dr. Kathy Crowley!) once said, the present tense is “the tense tense.”  The reader doesn’t have the security of retrospect. When you use/ read the past tense, the implication is that the character is relating the story from some safe place or point, having survived all the travails. With the present tense, that doesn’t hold true; the reader is strapped into the immediate experience with the character.  

I wanted this to be true for both novels and especially for ‘CHASERS, so the reader would have the full experience of not knowing when the storms, both atmospheric and mental, would strike.

Sadistic, aren’t I. 
That’s what being a writer is all about.      
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11 Tips For How To Start Writing A Novel

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Jenna Blum

Hi, everyone! Today, my new Writer On The Road post up NOW for Grub Street Writers:

11 Tips For How To Start Writing A Novel

 

….which might explain a little bit why I’ve been uncharacteristically quiet for a while.

Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah, All The Way Home: How to Make Dialogue Sound Real

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Jenna Blum

Dear Readers,

Ever wonder how to write realistic-sounding dialogue? How to make your characters say interesting things? And how to keep your 19th-century characters from saying things like, “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?”

My new post for Grub Street Writers on writing dialogue, up now:

The Dialogue Post!

I hope this is 1. interesting and 2. helpful! Write on.

xo,

Jenna.

Blah blah blah blah blah, all the way home.

 

 

 

 

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A Creative Spark to Flame: How THOSE WHO SAVE US was born

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Jenna Blum

This morning I had the intensely gratifying experience of hearing from a former student of mine from Boston University, from the days when I was teaching Creative and Communications Writing and wearing little glasses I didn’t really need so nobody would know they were my first classes, and I was only a few years older than most of my students, and scared to death.

mean little glasses

I doubt this fooled anybody, but my students were too polite to mention it and played gamely along.  Now, many of them are working writers, which pleases me so greatly, I can’t begin to tell you.  And, like all good writers, they are full of questions.  The writer query du jour is from one of my B.U. survivors who is now in a creative writing master’s program, and she asked this:

I've been dividing my time between writing
short stories and working on my novel. But the last short story I
started has grown and taken over, and now I've decided to expand it
into a novel. That's really what I want to be working on right now,
not the first novel - does that happen often? I hate the idea of
giving up on my first project, or even putting it aside, but this new
one is really what's on my mind now.

My answer contains the explanation of how THOSE WHO SAVE US was born:

First, I have to say that I don’t believe there is any such thing as “normal” in the writing process–by which I mean there are no shoulds.  Writers write in such myriad ways that if a creative spark ignites in you, it doesn’t really matter how it got there or how you execute it, only that it did and you do.

That said, writers do have common experiences, and I’m happy to say that the way your short story is expanding on you is exactly what happened to me with THOSE WHO SAVE US.  I was working on finishing a short story collection–while I was teaching at B.U., in fact–and the last story in the collection was also entitled “Those Who Save Us.” It turned out that the story had a lot more juice to it than I thought; I just had a feeling that it would be a hit, the way you do when you hear a certain song on the radio, and when I sent it out to literary magazines, it got picked up by three in one week (which as we all know almost *never* happens!). Shortly after that, I awoke one morning with the whole novel mapped out in my head.  I staggered around my apartment feeling like Beethoven, at once immensely grateful for the flash of illumination–and piqued that instead of finishing a story collection and sending it out, I’d now have about three more years of work to do!  And indeed, that’s how long it took.  But it was, in addition to a lot of very intensive work, a magical process.

 




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Quote-i-quette

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Jenna Blum

Hi, all! Ever wonder how the quotes get on a book’s back jacket? If you’re a writer, do you ever wonder how to ask for quotes less painfully? (Because it can be excruciating!)

Please check out my new Writer On The Road Column for Grub Street, up NOW:

QUOTE-I-QUETTE

I hope it answers some questions!

xoxo

Jenna.

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Writer On the Road: Cape Cod, MA. The Calm After the Storm.

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Jenna Blum

Hi, all! As a sort of epilogue to my Hurricane Irene posts, here’s my Writer On the Road column for Grub Street Writers. Enjoy!

http://grubdaily.org/?p=2504

 

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Hurricane Blog, Day 8: August 28. No Way, Jose.

Posted on August 28, 2011 by Jenna Blum

So Hurricane Irene comes to New England and….the punchline is, she’s now a tropical storm.  When I woke this morning and looked out my 11th floor window, I saw wind and rain.

I.e. what looks like a typical Boston morning.

Further recon on the street proved that yes, as they say in Twister, it was windy.  According to the wind-measuring App on my iPhone, it was a 47-mph gust barreling down Arlington Street that made it hard for me to stand up.  And similar gusts are probably responsible for debris the likes of this:

Irene debris at Boston Common.

Also, Irene seems to be the solution for Boston’s eternal traffic snarls:

Irene improves Boston traffic

There are also numerous NWS reports of trees falling, torrential rain, and flooding all over New England.

In other words, something like your typical Nor’easter.

Not that I’m disappointed.  Not really.  I’m more dismayed by the “That’s IT?” comments on Facebook and Twitter that indicate other people are disappointed by Irene’s performance. Apparently, they want something bigger and badder to compensate for the inconvenience of relocating for the weekend.

Maybe I should be rolling my eyes and scoffing along with them.  After all, I’ve driven over 1600+ miles and probably spent almost as many dollars getting to this storm.  Shouldn’t I too be indignant about the media’s “sensationalism” and “overhype”?  Shouldn’t I be pointing fingers at forecasters for crying wolf?

No.  As anybody who’s serious about weather knows, its defining characteristic is:  it’s capricious. When I chase a storm, whether hurricane or tornado, I set forth with a 50% expectation I’m going to bust.  I’ve come away from this experience with renewed appreciation for the National Hurricane Center’s forecasting: they’ve been accurate up the line. It’s not their fault Irene’s course wobbled–that’s what hurricanes do. I’ve been very impressed with how quickly the Boston Parks Department has appeared to clear debris from the streets.  And do I think the media has overplayed its hand?

I do not.  Because we’re so plugged in these days, from Facebook and Twitter to TV and radio, our lives are more permeated by information than ever.  This can quickly lead to information saturation–but you know what, folks? If you don’t like it, turn it off.  Unplug.  It’s your choice, you know.  It’s the media’s job to keep you informed about what’s happening and what might potentially happen.

And to those folks kvetching because Irene didn’t take out downtown Manhattan, did you really want another Katrina? In New York City?  Any idea of what that would do to our economy, let alone the unfathomable human cost?  Personally, I was glad to see authorities pre-act as they did to get people out of harm’s way.  If anything, Irene was a good test run to see if our big Northeast cities are prepared.  Seems like they are.

Do I wish this scenario could have played out differently?  You bet. I wish Hurricane Irene had picked an easily predictable course, stayed with it, and made landfall on an unpopulated barrier island so I could take pretty pictures of big waves.

But that’s not the way it works.  Instead, we get the best case scenario: a couple of days off to drink wine, share weather photos and stories, and enjoy a lack of traffic.  Do I wish it had been worse?  No way, Jose.

Speaking of which, Irene’s successor, Jose, looks as though it might make a US landfall too.  Will you see me out chasing that?

No way, Jose again.  What I’m going to do now is order up some room service. Rendezvous with Mr. Reed once he’s wrapped up his assignment in NYC (and I can’t wait to see those images, which I’m sure will be iconic).  Enjoy some R&R.

Of course, that’s what I say now. Ask me again in a couple of weeks when there might be another storm to chase.

Please, stand by.

(And thanks for reading my Hurricane Irene blog!  For now:  The End.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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