By Yvonne Ventresca

This is my first month participating in the IWSG blog hop! The question is: 

I often find myself analyzing for craft as I read. For example, if the story contains a satisfying twist, I go back to figure out how it was executed. If a scene is particularly suspenseful, what makes it so? What makes a character unique or compelling? 

This can work for negatives, too. If I'm losing interest in a story, why is that? What diminishes the tension?

A few years ago, I took a "Reading as a Writer" workshop given by Ann de Forest at an SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) Conference.  “Books that we read can be our teachers,” Ann explained then, and I still find that to be true. (I wrote a summary of the workshop if you're interested.)

In other news, the brand new website for the IWSG Anthology, Heroes Lost: Mysteries of Death and Life is now live! You can check it out here. Thanks to my fellow anthologists for being such an organized, motivated group of writers, and a special shout-out to Renee Cheung for creating the website. I'm looking forward to reading everyone else's stories, and I hope you'll follow the group blog to learn more.

If you are reading this on February 1st and live in the NYC area, consider coming to the Jefferson Market Branch of the NYPL for a Teen Author Reading Night! I'll be reading, along with the an amazing lineup of young adult authors, from 6 PM to 7:30 PM:
Crissa-Jean Chappell (Snowbirds), Tiffany D. Jackson (Allegedly), Pam Laskin (Ronit and Jamil), Shani Petroff (Romeo & What’s His Name), Matthue Roth (Rules of My Best Friend’s Body), Mary Thompson (Flicker and Mist), and me (Black Flowers, White Lies)

What's the last book you read that you learned something from?
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If you're interested in reading other answers to the IWSG monthly question, follow the blog hop links below.  (If they don't show up due to tech issues, please visit the IWSG website to access the links.)

Pandemic links: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N | Books A Million | Book Depository | AmazonUK | Goodreads

For this week's Friday Five, I'm happy to share the cover for Sign of the Green Dragon, a new middle grade novel written by one of my critique partners, C. Lee McKenzie. Read on for Lee's guest post about the cover and the story.
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​When I started working with the cover designer, I gave him my short synopsis and a quick description of the characters. The only thing we had to go back and forth on was the chest. It wasn’t right, but I finally sent him a picture of a chest that I own that was close. He extrapolated from that image and we had the right look.
 
Working with a talented cover designer is always exciting because you finally “see” what you’ve only pictured in your mind. 

Best of luck with the new release, Lee!

After blogging on a specific theme for all of April, I always have a bit of a blog identity crisis in May and feel like I need to reintroduce my regular blog features. 

In case you are new to my blog from the challenge, on "Teen Tuesdays" I often post something for teen writers -- a market, a conference, a contest. I also have a Resources for Teen Writers page on my website.

My Fridays usually have a "five" theme. For example, last Friday author Beth Fehlbaum guest blogged five things she learned about writing and publishing.

Today's Friday Five are five random things I wanted to share this week, as I recover from April's A to Z Challenge. ​

1. If you'd like to read my productivity themed posts from April, I've grouped them together on Pinterest.

2. One of my April posts was about Ivy Lee's "Six Things." For an easy way to track your six main goals for the day, consider making your own reusable to do list. I'm not that crafty, but basically you put pretty paper inside a glass frame, and get yourself a dry erase pen. Simple! If you need more info, there are detailed instructions and photos in this blog post.

3. I enjoy researching productivity, organization, and goal-setting. But I'm also a fiction writer with a love of books and a desire to help other writers, so warning: weekly blog contents may vary. I tend to share more of my personal book news through my newsletter, which comes out every month or so. I also do occasional giveaways there (in March it was a coloring book) as well as share some fun memes. If you already subscribe, thank you! If you'd like to give it a try, subscribe here. I'm working on my May newsletter this week with some news about my upcoming psychological thriller, Black Flowers, White Lies.

4. Everyone experiences rejection, especially writers. This article offers an interesting perspective on why rejection hurts and what we can do about it.

5. I recently came across this quote from Einstein, and it has me wondering... 

April was a whirlwind of A to Z posting about productivity for creative people. (Monday will feature a "reflection" post on the month.)
Today, I'm back to the Friday Five. Thank you to Beth Fehlbaum, author of The Patience Trilogy and Big Fat Disaster, for today's guest post about the writing process and the publishing business.

 

1. After completing a first draft, leave it alone for several days--or longer--before looking at it again. Seeing the manuscript with fresh eyes makes a huge difference in terms of noticing needed edits and revisions.
2. Be willing to listen to suggestions from trusted colleagues. Note that I said, “trusted colleagues.” Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet about hard and fast writing rules. For example, early on, I read advice: “Never use the word ‘that.’” Okay, I figured since this was on a writing site, it must be a widely held belief, so I immediately removed every occurrence of the word “that” from my manuscript. Consequently, I had a mess on my hands that took a LOT of work to repair. It was truly a foolish mistake.
3. Finding an agent is only the beginning, not the end. I think so many times writers become fixated on finding an agent that they think once an agent takes them on, their book will be published in short order. It’s not that simple, and it’s only the start of what will at times feel like a slog through the stickiest mud in the world to (what you think is) the finish line: selling the manuscript to a publisher.
4. Publishing moves glacially. Once you accept that your version of “reasonable wait time” is vastly different than people who work in publishing, your life will consist of more than checking your email 47,356,921 times per day to see if there’s news.
5. The publication of the book is not the finish line, either. After the initial support your publisher gives the launch of your book, i.e. submitting the book to trade journals or perhaps providing you with “swag” such as postcards or bookmarks, your publisher is going to move on to the newer (shiny) project, and you are an island unto yourself in terms of promoting your work. Simply put, NO ONE cares about your book as much as you do. NO ONE. It’s like expecting someone to love your child the way you do: there’s nothing like the love a parent feels for her child, and there’s nothing like the love an author has for her book. You have to be your book’s loudest advocate, because regardless of the size of your publisher’s marketing department, no one will cheerlead for your work like you will. That’s not to say that you should be obnoxious on social media about promoting your work 24/7. However, if you expect the marketing department to hold your hand every step of the way and invest the amount of time, energy, and money into your book that you believe your book deserves, you will be disappointed. Educate yourself on how to build an Internet presence, study what your successful writing colleagues do that seems to work for them, and ask for advice. Finally, accept that you will necessarily be spending money and time to promote your work.  

Thank you, Beth, for the guest post! 
For my fellow A to Zers, will you be posting a reflection on Monday?

Who better to offer advice on being a productive creative person than some productive creative young adult authors? Thanks to Gretchen McNeil, Katie Kennedy, Isabel Sterling, and Charlotte Bennardo for sharing their tips.

Gretchen McNeil: “I came up with this method in order to trick my brain into chipping away at my deadlines. I set an online timer for between 12 and 15 minutes, then I just dive into the writing. I don't think, I don't check email or Facebook or my phone. I just type until the alarm goes off. Then I rest. And check email and Facebook and my phone. And think a little about what comes next in the story. I'm not super strict on my down period - 20 minutes or so? Then I take a breath, set the timer, and dive back in. Rinse, repeat. I can knock out 300-400 words per sprint and suddenly, my goals seem manageable.”

Katie Kennedy: "I write on a computer with no internet. So no checking email, FB while I'm writing."

Isabel Sterling: "On weekends, I drop my girlfriend off at work and then write in the local Barnes and Noble for her 4-6 hour shift. While I definitely take breaks, I get way more done this way compared to when I'm home alone with Netflix staring at me from the living room."

Charlotte Bennardo: "Always be doing something every day--if not writing, then editing, outlining, researching, developing the next idea, booking signings, paying it forward, blogging, reviewing, reading... Not only will doing something almost every day help you get things done, it helps you set up a solid routine and puts you in the mindset of working on something even when a novel is finished, or when writer's block hits, or when you're waiting for edits or a response to your submission. Finally, it helps you think in multiple directions."

What tricks do you use if you *have* to get something creative done? Offer your own productivity advice in the comments. ​I provided mine last year for Y:
 Y is for Yours Truly: Productivity Advice from Yvonne.

Author Jack Gantos has an impressive writing routine. He writes about 200 days a year in the library. Each day, he spends two hours drafting, two hours revising, two hours reading, and about two more hours working before he heads home. (He spoke about this during his SCBWI Winter Conference speech a few years ago.) I was able to ask Gantos about it recently, and he said, “I try my best to keep to a rigid schedule which still allows for me to be creative within the boundaries.”

The concept of having a routine (or set schedule) means that you don’t need to decide what to work on next, or how long you will work, or whether or not you are feeling inspired. It just means the creative stuff gets done.

James Clear compiled the daily routines of twelve other authors. Two excerpts: 

E.B. White: “A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”

Barbara Kingsolver (about writing while raising kids): "I used to say that the school bus is my muse. When it pulled out of the driveway and left me without anyone to take care of, that was the moment my writing day began, and it ended when the school bus came back."

Do you have a set creative schedule? Do you use environmental cues (like working in a library or waiting for the kids to leave for school) to trigger your creativity?

November is National Novel Writing Month, and whether or not you’ve tried to accomplish writing a novel in four weeks, I think there are some useful principles that can be applied throughout the year. (April is Camp NaNoWriMo if you are interested.)

_Why do so many of us start our day with email instead of a creative project? Daniel Ariely says, “For many things, it’s hard to figure out how much progress you’re making. When you answer a thousand e-mails, you see every e-mail you answer” (“Understanding Our Compulsions,” Managing Your Day-To-Day).
 
So there isn’t necessarily that sense of progress for a bigger project. While it’s satisfying to see your inbox hit zero emails, it’s harder to measure a novel revision. One solution is to brainstorm ways to track progress. For first drafts, writers can do words written, and seeing the wordcount grow satisfies. But what about revisions? What about an artistic project? 

One idea is to count the hours spent, if that makes you feel accomplished. Another method is break a larger project into pieces. Novels can be divided into chapters. Break an art project into distinct phases. Or track the number of days you’ve worked on something in a row, creating a chain of success, an idea Jerry Seinfeld implemented to write jokes on a regular basis. The visual chain of Xs serves as a source of encouragement, so you don't break the chain. 

I used to keep an ongoing journal, and I recently started journaling again by writing “morning pages” as described by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. Basically, she recommends that you write three pages by hand first thing each morning. 
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In the beginning, I pretty much hated this. It felt like one more thing I had to do each day. But after about two months, it became a useful part of my routine. Sometimes I vent. Sometimes I daydream on the page about my work-in-progress until I can barely wait to work on it. Sometimes I think of ideas that get transcribed onto my to do list. It’s like a mini-brain-dump on the page. I like using a cheap spiral-bound notebook (rather than a nice journal) so I don’t feel pressure to record anything "important."
 
(As an aside, some people use Bullet Journals which is more of a way to track tasks and goals than it is a free-form writing journal. I have yet to experiment with this, but you can learn more about it at Bullet Journal--Getting Started. )
 
These two articles link journaling to productivity: The #1 Productivity Tool You Aren't Using and Start this Simple Habit to Rocket Your Productivity: Journaling.) I do think it helps me have a certain positive mindset to start the day and increases my focus for the creative work ahead.

Have you ever kept a journal? Do you keep one now? If so, how do you find it helpful?