Why Delaware isn't New York

I think there's something about living in one place your whole life, where you start to feel a bit privileged; you start to think this is the way it should be. And then you go somewhere else, and you scoff. You think to yourself that it's not as warm, as rainy, as cold, as sunny, as it should be. Those aren't the right plants. It's not a beach without palms. Redwoods. Maples.

And what you do, see, is you miss things. If you drive through Colorado wishing it was greener, you miss the inherent beauty of such a stark landscape; you miss how vivid all the reds and golds and rich browns are.

I have always sort of felt this was the case with me personally, but I still can't seem to help it. My family went to Florida once for vacation. It was during the shift between spring and summer, and I was happy to get away from the muddy transition stages of New York. But to my surprise, I found Florida a little sad. There were so many empty stucco buildings painted in whites and pinks and tans. So much sand and scrabbly weeds. So many palm trees with yellow, peeling leaves. I got a little grumpy. I felt like something was missing, but I wasn't quite sure what, until we got back to New York.

I remember bolting out of the car and stumbling into our back lawn, our gorgeously emerald green lawn. All the maple trees had spread their leaves and the boughs swayed, heavy with the abundance of it. It was gorgeous. It was so green. It was lush.

I remember running down to bask in that lushness, sunlight turning the greens transparent or thick with shadow, everything rich and damp and spongy soft, and thinking to myself, I will always love New York. I could never live somewhere where it isn't green. Later vacations to California, the Carolinas, and even Virginia only strengthened my feelings.

Then last August I got accepted to a college in Delaware.

I thought to myself, It can't be too bad. It's not that far away. It will still be green. Right?

Turns out Delaware is green enough, just not snowy enough. Snow is also very important to me. But in Delaware, nobody gets snow until February. I was a bit shell-shocked. No snow meant no white Christmases. No fluffy hummocks of white. No crisp, painfully clear night skies to stand beneath with my chin tipped up, breath crystallizing into clouds.

None of that until February.

winter in NY

The other thing I learned about Delaware -- or at least the upper end of the state -- is that it's not terribly sunny. Even on bright days, there's still this smoky layer across the sky that makes it feel like the sun never actually comes out. I spoke to some residents about this, and they explained it has something to do with New Jersey, how the wind tends to channel down through the cities, spreading all that nasty smog across Delaware. Sigh. Thanks for that, Jersey.

So I basically spent the first few months here pretending I was being optimistic and silently judging how pathetic Delaware could be. It wasn't cold when it was supposed to be cold. And even when it was cold, it refused to snow. (What's the point of cold without snow?) It rained a lot, which was okay, but when it wasn't raining, it was still cloudy. Half the time those clouds turned into fog.

winter in DE

My discomfort went on for some time, until, I don't know when, it kind of stopped. I just got used to living here. And that's when I started noticing the lovely things about Delaware that I hadn't the eyes to see before. For example, that misty layer over the sky? Makes for beautiful sunsets. The fog or whatever disperses the light, both softening and enriching. So the sunsets are these huge, raw, throbbing things that make you want to get out of your car and just…stand there in awe.

And at night, the fog is insane. It's thick and huge and it doesn't rise up from the ground--it hangs overhead like this thick, bruise-colored blanket. There's so many cars and stores that everything lights up with this freakish pink and gold glow. And the roads go rising and falling, so that you feel like you're on this roller coaster, this dark serpent, and it's pressing you up against this terrible black cloud above you, like you might get crushed beneath it.

If that sounds terrifying, it is terrifying--but in a totally awesome, power of nature kind of way.

And there's more, little things: everyone grows the same kind of gorgeous pink roses that smell just delicious. There's a tree that drops these huge, neon-green, soft-ball sized nut things that look a bit like a brain. There's the quick and easy access to so many fascinating places like DC, Philadelphia, and NYC.

larger than life memorial in Princeton, NJ. It's gorgeous up close.

I'm sure as time continues, I'll discover more things--oddities about late Winter, and Spring, and early Summer, and so on, and so forth--that will be amazing and special. I'm sure no matter what state or country or country I go to, I will find this to always be true. While I can't help identifying deeply with New York, I really am trying to appreciate other areas for what makes them unique. I don't just want to see how they look on the surface. I don't want to limit my knowledge to a place's tourist facade. I want to know it as it really is, as it's meant to be known.

I'm certain this is a writer thing. What I'm realizing is, there's a story in every place I live--maybe this story has more green, or this one has more sun, but it's still there, if I look close enough. And the writer in me refuses to be satisfied with anything less than the whole story.

I know this is a silly question, but I'm honestly curious to know--is there somewhere special, perhaps where you grew up, that you judge all other places against? What do you think about snow/no snow/learning to appreciate a place for what makes it unique? Share. I love it when people share.

Truly and always,
-Creative A

Have a Little Music

Some of you very perceptive followers may have noticed I didn't post this past week, like I'm supposed to. Or maybe not. Maybe I just outed myself.

Well, either way, I'm sure you'll be delighted to know that I actually had a few posts planned, and I had a whole day cleared out for it, and everything. Then something wonderful and amazing happened. I had a Creative Explosion. I suddenly, abruptly, at 9:20 at night, had torrents of words spilling out of me, and, well...

I never did get around to writing your post.

But I made a ton of progress in Shutterbug Meets (Invisible) Girl. As in, record-making progress. And I'm happy, and I want you all to be happy, too.

So here are some songs that make me happy. (I know I totally just cheated there. Let's both pretend we didn't notice. Maybe I'll distract you by saying that these songs have been my soundtrack for Shutterbug Meets (Invisible) Girl.)



I feel like this song was made for coffeeshop writers. Who doesn't go to a coffeeshop, and dream, and think about about the people they see there?




Just heard this for the first time recently. Love the chorus!




This is my current anthem for Adelle, the heroine of Shutterbug Meets (Invisible) Girl, but also a completely cute song.




Absolutely love this one. The lyrics are gorgeous and stunning, and it's part of what inspired me to include a male POV in Shutterbug. The intensity is itself heartbreaking.



Truly and always,
-Creative A

If It Isn't Working, Try Playing

People start out writing for different reasons, but in my experience, many people are just experimenting at first. They want to see if they can do it; they've always liked books; they have an idea. So they write. They’re just playing.

But every writer starts to grow up at some point. This is a business. We’re professionals. We can't afford to play. Does it have a hook? Is it marketable? Is it mainstream? Will it sell? The professional writer needs to consider such things.

I wonder though, if in our effort to transform into professional, publishable authors, we get a few things backwards. If playing is perhaps just as essential as being marketable.

Let me back up for a moment, here, and try to define "playing." Because anyone can say, "Oh yes, I play. Look! I'll put an adverb in. I REALLY like to play. See? Gosh, that was fun. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go edit it out."

That's not what I mean by playing. I don't mean indulging oneself every so often. I'm talking that absolutely ridiculous plot you’ve had floating around in your head for ages—you know, the one with the octopus apocalypse? The one nobody but you would enjoy? Writing it would be a complete waste, and of course you’ll never bother. But it’s just fun to think about.

Have you ever had one of those ideas? I did. It surfaced about three years ago, when I revolutionized my writing process to reduce self-induced pressure. I decided to simplify. Take a break. In the past, I always pressured myself to start the next project, but this time, I vowed to wait and let things play out naturally.

A month passed.

A second month passed.

I got a little antsy. Still, no serious ideas came to me. I toyed but none stuck. True to my vow, I let them go and continued waiting.

A third month passed.

I couldn’t bear not writing anymore. I was bored, and I was hungry, and I wanted story. I opened a word doc. In sheer desperation I wrote the beginning to one of my favorite daydreams--a mysterious flying girl who falls to earth.

It wasn’t high premise. It wasn’t serious at all. But it was fun. I was happy as a kid mucking around in a mud puddle. Like the Dread Pirate Roberts to Westley in Princess Bride, I finished each writing session thinking, “Made good progress today. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Might kill it in the morning.”

I never did kill it, though. The more I wrote, the better it got, and I finally had to admit MIRRORPASS was a real novel. And now it turns out MIRRORPASS is one of the most serious novels I’ve ever written. Of course I managed to conveniently forget I could ever be that unprofessional. Until now.

With this new year, I find myself faced with the dilemma once again: choose a serious project, or a fun project?

Was MIRRORPASS a one-time fluke, I wonder, or did I stumble upon something crucial, something true?

Here’s how I see it.

Playing frees you from all expectations.

When you’re “just playing,” you don’t expect the idea to go anywhere. Nobody ever needs to see it but you. It sets you free to explore. And though we often forget this, exploring is the whole point of a first draft.

It’s just for fun—which is why it IS fun.

Be honest. Sometimes, writing a novel because you want to get published sucks the actual fun out of writing. Writing is fun again when you write with the purpose of enjoying yourself. This is the story you'd tell yourself late at night, the story you want to read curled up by a fireplace when it snows outside. It doesn't matter if it's a Harry Potter ripoff or not, as long as you enjoy it.

Playing is full of possibility.

Some things, like evil scientists, are so clichéd that you just don’t write about them. But I happen to love evil scientists. MIRROPASS was like my fantasy novel, and I could do whatever I wanted with it, so I included evil scientists. And government chases. And crazy escapes. And special abilities. I felt free to do that because I knew this was my novel to have fun with.

A powerful end result.

The combination of these elements--the privacy, the freedom, the indulgence in possibility, the purity of writing what you enjoy and enjoying what you write--combine to create something explosive. Suddenly, this idea is serious. It is high concept. It is marketable.

How did that happen? If you look closely, “playing” is recommended by more than one rule of writing.

• Write what you know
• Write what you’re passionate about
• Write crappy first drafts
• If you don’t enjoy the story, readers won’t, either
• Turn off the internal editor
• BIC. (Don’t over-think it.)

I hear these rules all the time, and I’m sure you do, too. But I think we lose sight of what’s really being said here; that we need to stop worrying about being serious writers, and we need to just play. Enjoy ourselves. Just play.

Because when you play, you don't care about crappy first drafts; you write what you think about most often, and what you enjoy, what you're passionate it about; you don't care about the internal editor, and you're not overthinking.

You're having fun.

Just playing.

Who's to say, where it will take you?


All right gang, pitch in. Do you ever write that unmarketable idea just for fun? WAS it fun? Did you end up trunking it, or taking it seriously by the end? And even if you did trunk it, do you think it was worth it?

What do you all think about playing?


Truly and always,
Creative A

Oh the Silly Fears We Have

Once upon a time, there was a little girl, and she was afraid.

Of movies. Of sleep. Of thunderstorms. Of the river in winter, swollen, waiting to suck little children beneath the ice.

She got older.

Her fears grew more complex. She began to doubt she would ever have friends; she realized people could change, and she couldn’t stop them; she feared depression, loneliness, inadequacy. She wondered if her writing would ever be Good Enough.

She got even a little older. She won contests. She got articles published. She wrote and read and learned about the publishing industry and wrote; she went to school, gained confidence, got some attention, discovered you could have more than one dream, discovered you could pursue them all. She kept writing.

She stopped being afraid publication would never happen and began to cherish those daily routines, the seasons and cycles that made up life, the romances and lessons learned afterward, the moving away, moving back. She learned to enjoy things as they were. She fine-tuned the dream. Despite all her fears, it seemed she was turning out mostly OK.

Also, she interviewed debut authors.

She watched (but did not participate in; smart girl) the rise and rise and fame and fallout of Twilight. She watched the rise of Alyson Noel. She watched The Hunger Games happen; she watched the end of the Harry Potter books, and saw J.K Rowling step down; she watched Chris Paolini's ascension. Maggie Stiefvater. Kristin Cashore. Lauren Oliver. Beth Revis. Laini Taylor. Veronica Roth…

Rising and falling, rising and falling, some making it. Some just barely treading water. Some of them were just beginning, and she crossed her fingers, and hoped.

They were living the dream, she thought. But if they were living the dream, why, for so many of them--particularly those biggest hitters Meyer and Rowling--did the dream seem to kill them?

The world of publishing is like a happy dog who, in midlife, gets stuck with the new puppy. It's grumpy. It has to share. It rolls over, loses a few bones, growls, goes back to sleep. It learns to adapt.

Writers adapt. They write trilogies whether or not the story deserves it. They write love-triangles that leave nobody happy. Writers get shuffled back to the midlist and off Barnes & Noble shelves. They are forgotten. They write some amazing breakouts; they struggle not to drown in the waves of ensuing fame. On their blogs they cry, "I'm so sorry, I've been so busy. I'm trying. I'll be better. Sorry. Thanks."

She looks at them. She looks at her little writing dream.

She wants, very simply, to write. To get published, stay published. To have the mild success that allows her to keep playing, keep exploring, to become a name, not an icon. Just write and sell books and be happy.

She never wants to write a cliffhanger ending just so people will buy the sequel. She never wants to become so famous in one trilogy that the fame of it crushes her. She never wants to get pinned into just the fantasy genre, just the paranormal romance genre. She wants...she wants...

She wants to write the books that she loves to read. Books like Graceling and The Hunger Games and first Twilight and the very first Harry Potter and If I Stay; Shiver and Lament, the first Artemis Fowl, Warped, Blackbringer, Brightly Woven.

Books that were good because they were good, not because the series was famous, or because someone played tricks.

But she’s not sure anymore. She doubts. She fears.

Maybe it’s not possible, this little writing dream of hers. She fears she'll have to change. That her beloved writing will get stuffed into a niche, or lost in the midlist; she's afraid of plummeting, afraid of fame, afraid of becoming someone who only publishes once every six years, afraid...

This goes on until she reads a book.

A new book. An unknown. A rising star.

It is brilliant, breathtaking; it shatters genres, it defies stereotypes. It uses funky paragraph breaks like Across the Universe, it’s a 400 page debut like Before I Fall, a crossover with descriptions like...

These are the books that make their own waves. They shouldn’t work. But they do. These are the books that stand up and say, "I am something special. I am not a gimmick. Read me, and I'll prove it."

So everyone reads them. And they are awesome. The writers are dedicated. The quality, stunning. They don't "get away with it", because there's nothing to get away with--it is something new, something invented. By them.

It can be done.

Slowly, she puts the book down. Raises her chin. Turns to her laptop.

It can be done.

Take heart, my writer friends! Don't be afraid :)

Truly and always,
-Creative A

Date a Girl Who Reads

"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes." -- Rosemarie Urquico (via Monica Bird)

I am sharing this because it's gorgeous, and it's true, and I love it. And that was one too many reasons not to share.

Truly and always,
-Creative A

My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece: Featured Book Trailer

Saw this trailer today, and loved it. I think it's a great example of how simple trailers can be--although it had film and actors, the sets were everyday, and there wasn't a single special effect. What really caught my attention was the twist at the end. Nobody points it out, but you can't miss it; the inherent conflict leaps out at you.






See what I mean? Gorgeous conflict. The book's Goodreads blurb never would have caught my interest, but this trailer did. And if you break down the elements, they are easily reproducible in cheap, simple terms--

1) Child actors could be a younger sibling, your own kids, children of your good friends or relatives.
2) The film could easily be replaced with still photos of a boy coloring, the mantelpiece, the swingset.
3) The setting--house, park, muddy road--are also found just about everywhere. Your house. A park or school playground near where you live. The muddy road is a bit more specific, but a stream, cornfield, etc would work as well.
4) Music -- this is the kind of generic song you could find online for free with little hassle. Not all music videos need dramatic soundtracks (or old fashioned songs.)

In other words? You could do this. I could do this.

Food for thought.

Truly and always,
-Creative A