I'm Aware, I'm Aware

I’m sure you’ve seen that status before—it’s popped up on my newsfeed six or seven different times.  When I first saw it, it was humorous.  When it appeared the second time, I thought that my friends were just copying one another.  But around the fourth or fifth time, I started to smell a rat.  I commented on one of those statuses, partly because I wanted to know what was up, and partly because I wanted to be a bit snide about it.  Hey, I’m only human.  Well, I got my answer: no sooner had I posted my comment than I received a message in my inbox from the friend who’d posted the status.  

“So here’s the rules: For liking or commenting on my status, you must now post the same message as your status to continue the game for Breast Cancer Awareness (unless you’ve lost your sense of humor!).”

Awareness, huh?  Seems to me that just like the need to pretend to be a slug, that word is turning up everywhere.  People are all about raising awareness for one cause or another these days.  Video responses, hashtags, facebook posts sharing articles and photos—the social media world enjoys this game of “pass-it-on”.  Maybe a bit too much.

I know, call me a grouch, and maybe I am.  Raising awareness about bad things in the world is important, isn’t it?  Well, yes—people need to know about the problems that need solving, or they will never get solved.  But the fact is, after a certain point, raising awareness doesn’t help us very much.  Most of us don’t want to be reminded of bad things.  I never did pass on the slug status; I saw the “game” not as a necessary way of sharing information—which it didn’t, not really—but as a chain letter, daring others online to continue the trend or TERRIBLE THINGS WILL HAPPEN.  I deleted the message.

It’s easy to send out a chain letter, and easy to ignore one.  It takes a lot more than that to make a difference in the world.  The hard truth is, sharing information doesn’t really help, either.  You can spout information until you’re blue in the face, but most people use as little information as possible to make decisions (see note).  Even with the most compelling facts and figures, there are always other reasons for bad behavior or apathy.  Most people know they should eat well, but McDonalds’ is still in business, isn’t it?  Most people know that cancer is a terrible disease, so why doesn’t everyone contribute part of their monthly check to finding a cure?  People will do what they want.

That’s what it comes down to: wanting.  Brainy as we are, we humans as a whole are more reliant on intuition and emotion when it comes to making decisions.  I myself will usually make a decision based on whether or not it feels right, whatever the pros and cons add up to.  So raising awareness with a Facebook status or a tweet might make us feel better—and it does feel good, because it makes us feel self-righteous and accomplished.  But it usually doesn’t accomplish much, and sometimes it can even do the exact opposite of its intention, making someone like me roll her eyes in irritation.

To get a reaction, to make a change in people’s behavior or drive them to action, you have to make them want to change or to act.  Intrinsic motivations are the key here.  You need to get personal, to show rather than tell.  Instead of talking about the number of women trying to support their families abroad, offer the story of a woman named Noor Zia, who started a beauty salon in her home with the help of a small business loan.  Instead of listing facts and figures about why smoking is bad, use the voice of a young boy worried that his father’s smoking is going to kill him.  If you’re going to use a game, make it unique and fun, as demonstrated by the enormous success of the Ice Bucket Challenge.  All this takes a lot more effort than the moment it takes to post a silly status to “raise awareness”.

We all know the world has problems; we get it already.  There are so many problems that one person can’t possibly bear to know about all of them.  We can’t care about it all, so we try not to care at all, most of the time.  Raising awareness is important, but we have to do it the right way, and it will never be easy.  But you get out what you put in, right?  So let’s do a little bit more than make people aware—let’s make them care.

Note: This is an idea discussed in an excellent article by Jesse Singal, which takes a more in-depth look at the psychology behind raising awareness.  Find it here.

Interview: Johanna Lemon

As promised, ladies and gentlemen, here is my interview with my fellow writer Johanna Lemon.  Johanna went to Hollins University with me, and we shared several different creative writing workshops, didn't we, Johanna?  So the two of us are relatively familiar with each other's work.  She has just returned from two years with the Peace Corps in Morocco, which is totally cool, and now she is spending the summer before grad school trying to get four (count 'em--four) books published.  This is me doing my part to publicize the books and get them out to as many readers as possible.

The questions are from me, and I've added a few comments in italics and parentheses below.  Other than that, I've just let Johanna speak for herself.

How do you decide what to write?  What is the process behind it?

When I think of an idea for a story, I go about creating it one of two ways.  If the idea has to come out now and I mean right now then I go for it.  I get on my computer and type out a couple of chapters and see where my imagination takes me.  The problem with that method is that often the plots aren’t fully formed, so by the time I reach the center of the novel I’m stuck on a plot hole.

The second method is what I like to call the Balloon Popping Method.  When an idea strikes me, instead of going at it like a bull at a toreador, I sit on it.  I sit on and think about the plot while I listen to music and play out the scenes in my head.  I think and I wait for the pressure of the balloon (metaphor here for ‘idea’) to rise to a level that simply cannot be sustained.  Once the idea is fully formed enough to pop the balloon, I start writing.  By that time I usually have a functioning plot, though it’s not a completely detailed I-have-this-written-on-a-storyboard plot.  I like surprises, and I think it’s incredible when I’m writing away at a story only to stop and think, “But what if my character did this instead of that?”

Listening to music helps me think about my scenes and plan what I’m going to write.  I like to play my story out in my head like a movie, with action sequences and fights or really emotional moments occurring during songs.  Then, once I have the story playing in my head like a movie I’d actually watch (aka, the popped balloon), I begin putting it down.

As for where my ideas come from, they come from everywhere and nowhere.  I got the idea for Inked from a post on Pinterest that was taken from a post on Tumblr.  Godmother Girl was the result of a deep love and respect for fairy tales.  I always wanted to write a book where I turned a fairytale on its head or shine light on an unsuspecting character, kind of like what Gregory McGuire did for The Wizard of Oz, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.  I got the idea for Beatrice Betwixt… well, I can’t actually remember that one, but That Girl spawned from thinking about what one of my ultimate Peace Corps vacation fantasies would be.

Describe your writing schedule.

My writing schedule is cyclical—as in, I do it and then I don’t do it.  It’s like being obsessed with a Netflix series.  Like, when you have to watch ALL the episodes of a series and then you’re unable to move on afterwards because of you’re so emotionally exhausted.

When I’m not writing, I sometimes find it hard to begin—either with a new project or restarting an old one.  But, like the laws of movement, an object in motion will stay in motion and an object in rest will stay in rest.  It’s much easier to keep going once I’ve already gotten so far, but if I’m stuck or lagging behind, it’s too easy to remain stuck and blame it on writer’s block.  (I have exactly the same problem—getting started and getting unstuck are the two hardest things to do as a writer.)

So in order to avoid The Block, I’ll issue myself a challenge, even if I don’t have a story to work on.  NaNoWrimo (the national novel writing month challenge that normally happens in November) is a wonderful motivator, and I don’t simply relegate myself to participating in November.  I’ll say, “I’m going to do a NaNoWrimo in… July!  Or during Ramadan!”  (I’m not Muslim, but I lived in Morocco for two years, and Ramadan was the perfect time to go hard at writing because there was really nothing else to do until breakfast).

NaNoRamadan was the reason my third book, Godmother Girl, was written in a timely fashion.  For the whole holy month, I went to my favorite café, ordered a tea, set my cell phone timer to one hour, plugged in my headphones and uncapped my pen.

So yes, once I have a schedule, I stick to it, but I have to have a schedule first.

How do you write?

It depends on the story.  I’ve written about five books in paper notebooks—journals, diaries and spirals.  As a result, I collect interesting notebooks so I can use them later with the right story.  Two of my soon-to-be-published novels that began in notebooks include Inked and Godmother Girl.  For other stories, if I have this urgency to get them out as quickly as possible, I write them on the computer, like Beatrice Betwixt and That Girl.

Both have their advantages.  When I write longhand I go slower, so I have time to think of the words I want to use.  But if my brain is buzzing a million miles a minute about a story, I use the computer because it’s faster.  I can type out scene ideas and insert snappy dialogue that I think of and feel in the moment.  It’s easier to travel with notebooks though!  So whenever I wander, I always make sure to take one with me, whether I’m working on a story or not.

How do you edit?

I don’t.

Haha, just kidding.  I believe that editing is the most frustrating part of creating a novel.  I see it like this:  writing a novel is a little bit like being pregnant.  You watch your story grow and gestate in pieces and increments.  Yeah, you get morning sickness and backaches in the form of plot holes and frustrating characters.  And sometimes you can’t even see your feet (or the end).  But once you’re finished, once you give birth, you’re so proud!

You bask in the newness of parenthood for a few days, thinking about how amazing you are for producing and creating such a masterpiece, but then you get kicked out of the hospital and you realize, “Oh, so this is where all the real work begins.”  (This is the best metaphor ever and I am totally going to use it again.)

Raising your child into a functional, reasonable, responsible adult is basically the editing portion of creating a novel.  Sometimes it can even take longer than writing the novel!  I wrote Beatrice Betwixt in 2012 but had been editing it on and off until June 2015.

I edit by taking the first draft of my story (once I type it into the computer) and I read through it, editing as I go.  I correct it chapter by chapter and just keep swimming.  Again and again.  If I’m having difficulty with a revision, sometimes I feel like I’m rolling hamster wheel.  But that’s what I do, I keep proofreading it until I’m satisfied with the end result.

Inked was edited professionally, but Godmother Girl, Beatrice Betwixt and That Girl were all edited via a consortium of friends, family and my own blood, sweat and tears.

Do you write every day?

I do write consistently whenever I give myself a challenge or a schedule.  During my last NanoWrimo/NaNoRamadan, I tried to write each and every single day, and if I missed a day I made it up later.  Unlike NaNoWrimo, I do not give myself word limits.  I think word limits make people focus more on the quantity of words rather than the quality.  So I give myself time minimums instead because sitting down and actually doing the writing can be incredibly easy to put off.

When I started timing myself, I used smaller increments, like 30 minutes.  I would prepare a hot beverage, set my phone and begin.  I would not stop writing or even look up until my phone went off.  Once I became comfortable with 30 minutes I’d augment it to 45 minutes and then finally an hour.  I feel like an hour is about as much as I can do without losing focus or getting an intense hand cramp.  Of course, if I’m really on a roll then the time minimums don’t apply.

It doesn’t matter whether I’m writing longhand or on a computer, the time limit is the same.  Of the stories I’m about to publish, I wrote in the largest increments for Godmother Girl and Beatrice Betwixt.  For Godmother Girl, the longest I wrote at one time was two and a half hours longhand, and for Beatrice Betwixt, three hours on the computer.

Do you cross genres, or stick to one thing?

My main genres are young adult, new adult, and… adult.  Paranormal, urban fantasy and romance are my three mainstays.  I love to write and read all of those genres.  Basically I just like to write about people having awesome adventures in mystical settings.  I have written poetry and nonfiction, but I generally stick with fiction.  Inked, Beatrice Betwixt and Godmother Girl are all paranormal or urban fantasy Young Adult, whereas That Girl is one of my only New Adult romances.

How long have you been writing?

Oh man since I was really little.  Like, itty-bitty can’t-really-hold-a-pencil-well little.  Some of my fondest memories of writing include:

Writing a book about breaking my arm and going to the hospital at age 8 (pictures were included and no, they were not good).

Winning a poetry contest for writing about a mermaid when I was 10.  I even got a certificate!

Writing my first fully-fledged novel, The Mystery of the Blue Mark, age 11.  It featured a high school detective named Ashley Atkins on the hunt for the murderer of her English teacher.

After that, I wrote a story about a mermaid marriage contest.  Yeah, it sounds weird but I was happy with it.

Beyond that I turned to fanfiction.  You may laugh, but writing fanfiction really helped me hone my craft and sift through what worked and what didn’t in order to find my voice.  (It’s also where I found out I was creepily good at writing romance).  And hey, I gained a lot of followers through my stories on those sites.  (I agree about fanfiction.  It is writing on the “easy” levels with the characters and setting already established for you.  If you do it right, you can learn a lot about plot, character development, and keeping a writing schedule.)

Then throughout college and the Peace Corps I really began to blossom and develop my own stories and voice.  And now here I am, on the cusp of self-publishing.

Do you have a day job?

Writing?  (Haha, I wish).  At the moment, I’m on break.  I just finished serving two years in the Peace Corps and in the beginning of August, I’ll be heading to Illinois for graduate school.  I’ll be studying Recreation Parks and Tourism Administration at Western Illinois University, so I’m pretty excited about that.  Since I’ve been back I’ve spent the past months editing, re-editing and editing some more, in the hopes of getting my books out there for the world to see.  And now I soon will!

How do you work writing around your job?

Once graduate school starts, I have a feeling I’ll have to find a better way to manage my time.  I don’t have to at the moment, but I love schedules and To Do lists, so I have no fear that once I get settled in I’ll formulate a routine between writing, classes, homework and physical activity.  I mean, one can hope…

Do you listen to music when you write?

It depends on the day and the mood and the story, but in general yes.  Music is involved in all parts of my writing process.  In fact, I like to match the story I’m working on with the type of music I listen to.  If I’m writing a really energetic, fight-the-system scene, I’ll listen to Fall Out Boy or All Time Low.  If I’m writing a scene with a lot of attitude or a headstrong character, I’ll listen to pop and hip-hop.  If I’m writing a love scene I’ll listen to—go ahead and chuckle—Taylor Swift.  If I’m writing a sad or angry scene, I’ll vacillate between Secondhand Serenade or the Goo Goo Dolls.  Of course, I have much more music than that, and it’s all very subjective, but still, it helps to pump me up and puts me in the mood to write even if I don’t want to.

While writing Beatrice Betwixt, I listened constantly to hit radio stations like 93.7 KHF Lynchburg or K 92.3 on my parent’s CB radio.

While writing Godmother Girl, I had Australian singer Guy Sebastian crooning into my ear.  Remember that two and a half hour writing session?  Yeah, I listened to Guy Sebastian on repeat the entire time.  But Bastille and The American Authors also made appearances.

While writing Inked I listened to a lot of All Time Low, which is my all time favorite band (get it?  All time…?).  I also rocked out hard to Fall Out Boy because they’re always amazing.  It was the same with That Girl, which is a bit funny, because one of the main characters in That Girl is the lead singer of a punk band.

Oh!  And I almost forgot, if I’m in the mood for amazing, electrifying music that doesn’t have any words, I’ll put on the incredible Lindsay Stirling.  She composes and plays electric, rock-pop on her violin.  It definitely energizes me while writing and I would recommend her albums to anyone.

How much do you research for your work before writing?

When I write, I begin with an idea and a plot.  Once the overall plot is finalized, I then begin to work on the characters.  I am of the opinion that most readers fall in love with characters over setting, so I take particular care in developing characters who work with the plot and vice versa.  It’s a little like how you don’t need The Globe Theatre to perform a Shakespeare play.  It doesn’t hurt but you could take those characters and put them in a parking lot and they’d still be dynamic.

Anyway, once I finally know my characters—what they like to eat, their most embarrassing childhood memory, their secret hopes and dreams, their greatest fears—I then toss them into the plot, mix it up, hone in on the details and begin.

I’ll do research in order to further educate myself around a topic in my story, but I won’t build a story around research.  I feel like research should supplant the story you’re already well on your way to forming instead of the other way around.  One of the things I like about writing fantasy and paranormal stories is that you can make a lot of stuff up and no one can tell you, “That’s not right!” because who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong in fantasy and fiction?

My life experiences also heavily influence what I write.  For example, I have a love affair with the city of Paris, and in my latest book That Girl, Paris is a huge part of the first half.  I also share my experiences as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco in That Girl.  In fact, the main female character is an RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer)!  So yeah, a lot of my research comes from life experiences, and not the Internet.

Experience!  The research of life.

What is your ultimate goal in regards to writing?

I write because I love writing, not because it’s easy.  Trust me, if I wanted an easier hobby, I would take up something far less mentally taxing, like training cats to perform Hamlet.  (Ha.)  But in the end I write because I love it.  I love producing stories and watching them grow.  I love meeting my characters and watching them go from two dimensions to three.  There’s no greater feeling than reading over a scene you love and chuckling or crying or sighing because you feel what your character is feeling.

Now, obviously, I would love to make a bit of money with my books.  I am, after all, going to graduate school and resuming the life of the poor student is not going to be fun.  But making money is secondary to making an impact, and I especially want to make an impact with young girls.  We live in a world where gender equality exists on paper, but not in reality—not in politics, business, media or military defense (and that’s only in America).  What I want is for my books to get girls thinking about issues of gender equality.  I then want them to take those ideas from my pages and put them out into the real world.  That’s why I write about strong female heroines and male heroes who can not only handle an equal partner but revel in meeting someone of such fantastic caliber.

In conclusion?

Read my books!  Please!  You can find more information about them at my blog:  thewanderinglemon.wordpress.com.  I’m putting up pitches, excerpts, book covers, and more!  I plan on rolling out my books at the end of July and/or early August and if you’re kind enough to buy all four of them, I might even jump for joy.  I might even send you a post card!

BOOKS:

Beatrice Betwixt

Inked

Godmother Girl

That Girl

BLOG:

thewanderinglemon.wordpress.com

DATE:

            Flexible but definitely coming soon!

Ready, Set, Collaborate!

I’ve always considered writing to be a solo operation.  Frankly, it’s one of the things that drew me to it as a young, broody adolescent.  A job that wouldn’t require me to talk to anyone for days on end?  Sign me up!  Of course reality has a way of teaching you the error of your dreams.  Writing, at the beginning, is a solitary career, but once the book is written, there has to be more than one person on the boat.  There must be proofreaders, agents, editors, publishers, marketers—if you’re lucky.  If you’re not, you get to be all of those people yourself.  Writers these days have to reach out on their own, seeking out assistance to attain the goal of having many, many people read their work. 

This would be considerably daunting, but I have learned much about playing nicely with others since I was the aforementioned broody adolescent.  I have been educated on the joys of co-creation, writing with the assistance and inspiration of others, and now I am learning that even the less fun parts of writing that come after the inspiration can be shared.  We writers can be editors and marketers for one another, helping to polish the work and spread the word.

To that end, I will be linking arms with a pair of talented women, old classmates of mine from the mighty and wonderful Hollins University.  We three will be guesting on each other’s blogs, sharing information, stories, and publicity over the next few months and helping one another to get our work out to more people.  Allow me to introduce them.

Johanna Lemon is an adventurer just back from a two-year stint in Morocco with the Peace Corps.  She is a paranormal and fantasy writer in the young-adult genre, and she has amazed me by having recently completed four books, entitled Inked, Beatrice Betwixt (I do love that title), Godmother Girl, and That Girl.  They will soon be published, which is terrifically exciting, and we’ll be talking a lot more about that as time goes by.

Yafen Liang is living in New York, working full time and studying to get her MBA.  Somehow, she manages to find time to work on her YA dystopian, The Gods We Built, which looks at a controlling regime from both sides of history.  She is also a whiz who knows the mysterious ways of the publishing industry, and I can’t wait to pick her brain a bit about the nuts and bolts.

And for symmetry, as well as for those of you who may not know, I am a writer of science fiction and fantasy novels, working away at them on my days off and during my breaks from my job as a waitress.  My main project now is a four-part series on an artificial intelligence named Youngest, and I have also written the first of another four-parter, this one fantasy, entitled The Nine Lives of Snapdragon.  They are nearly ready to publish, but I’ve had no luck in that quarter as of yet.

I’m hoping that Johanna, Yafen, and I can take inspiration from one another, as well as advice and encouragement.  We will share interviews with one another, quizzing each other on our writing process, our current works, and the struggle to succeed in the writing market.  Expect to see an interview with Johanna in the next few days.  I’m looking forward to the exchange, and I hope you are, too.

If I had a doobly-do, I would post links there, but I am not so lucky.  You can find Johanna's blog, "The Wandering Lemon" here, (blurbs blurbs blurbs!) and Yafen's "Afterthoughts" are in this location (she also has a mini-TARDIS, which makes me incredibly happy).  Go check them out!