the next big thing

My wonderful friend Chioma Okereke tagged me for “The Next Big Thing,” a blog tour of upcoming projects by writers.

 • What is the working title of your next book?

The Dream-Singers

 • Where did the idea come from for the book?

I have been working on this book so long that it is difficult to say. I’m a bit obsessed by twins (my zodiac sign is Gemini), and at the center of the story is a pair of magical twins. I was staring at a painting (that I now own) by my friend frank d. robinson, jr. In the painting a mother is morning the death of one of her twins. I wanted to explore what an absence like that would mean to the left behind sibling. What would it feel like to have a loss that no one believes that you should even register? 

 • What genre does your book fall under?

Literary fiction. 

 • What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I think I’ll leave the casting for the movie people. 

 • What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Who has to bear the weight of dreams realized and denied?

 • Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I will seek agency representation shortly. 

 • How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

A year for the first draft. A decade of revision. 

 • What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I love novels that show a community or family over time and trauma. 

 • Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I am still obsessed by the shadow that the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. cast on the city of Memphis, TN. The twins of my novel are born as Dr. King is dying. 

 • What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

There is magic and mystery with a soul music backdrop. 

 

Here are the other stops on the tour:

Chika Unigwe, author of On Black Sisters Street and 2012 winner of Nigeria’s biggest prize for literature, the NLNG Prize. http://www.chikaunigwe.com
Rosa Rankin-Gee, Paris Literary Prize 2011 Winner and author of The Last Kings of Sark, forthcoming by Virago. en-gb.facebook.com/rosarankingee
Bassey Ikpi, a featured cast member of the National Touring Company of the Tony Award winning Broadway show, Russell Simmon’s Def Poetry Jam, poet, writer and founder of the Siwe Project – a global non-profit dedicated to promoting mental health awareness throughout the global black community. http://www.basseyworld.live

an invocation for beginnings

{literary blog relay} transformation

i’m running again as a part of christine zilka’s literary blog relay. my last entry is here. christine seems to magically time her relays right when i need a little encouragement with my own writing. super short stories have captured my attention lately. super short is particularly tantalizing since my primary project has proven to be a very, very long journey. the theme for this relay is transformation. we get 250 words and take our first line from the previous chapter. my first line comes from the wonderful stephanie brown. read her chapter 5 here.

Chapter 6: Transformation

And I wanted to cry. But I couldn’t. I feel sorry for her. I do. Not that anyone would believe me. The things the people in this town ask of me in the dark: Keep my wife home. Get the judge on my side. Stop him from beating me. Tell me the right number to play. Set a light for me since I can’t do it at home. I watch their spines straighten and hips loosen as they venture unburdened back into the night.  They don’t look back. I carry what they leave behind in my spine, my breasts, my hair.

I’ll do anything. They say this but don’t mean it. They pay me for my work, sure. A little piece of money. A bolt of fabric. An I-pod. A mess of beans. A few dozen eggs. An emerald ring. A meager price for all that weight. Just this once, I took full price for my work. She calls to scream at me on the phone, confusion and terror pulsing red through the line. I feel a wave of compassion cut with a sharp frisson of pleasure when I see her features settling on my face in the mirror. I wonder what she sees in her own mirror now. Is her reflection covered in a rheumy fog? Or is her countenance sliding from translucent towards transparent?

I’ll do anything. It was a fair price. A bargain, even. I lean in closer to admire my new face. Was it worth it?

Next up for chapter 7 is matthew salesses. his novella the last repatriate is currently being launched (in a very innovative, smart way). i can’t wait to read it!

THE FULL LINE UP, IN ORDER (completed posts in bold)

1. Christine Lee Zilka czilka.wordpress.com
2. Nova Ren Suma novaren.wordpress.com
3. Wah-Ming Chang wmcisnowhere.wordpress.com
4. Nina LaCour ninalacour.com/blog
5. Stephanie Brown scififanatic.livejournal.com
6. Jamey Hatley jameyhatley.wordpress.com
7. Matthew Salesses matthewsalesses.com
8. Krystn Lee blog.kryslee.com
9. Bryan Bliss bryanbliss.blogspot.com

---

THE RULES:

• Start with the last line of the previous entry.
• Poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction all up for grabs.
• 250 words (you can fudge if artistic license requires)
• Thematically linked
• Link to the next person on the list, as well as those who posted before you.
• Post something within 4 or 5 days of the most recent piece.
• Posts should start with an explanation, with links to the previous posts as well as the next.

welty on books

“It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they came from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them—with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.”

~Eudora Welty, One Writer’s Beginnings

tools of the trade

there is something about a fresh notebook that makes me feel like anything is possible. inspired by my new favorite notebook (seen above), here are a few of my favorite writing tools of the moment.

1. rhodia notebook: i am kind of a stationery, office supply freak. i need my tools to be functional and beautiful. i found the perfect system. it had notepads, filing, project management tools, templates, everything. and of course, as soon as i invested in this system, it was promptly discontinued. i was down to my last notepad and really, really tried to convince myself to just get the 3 pack at office depot. i couldn’t do it. a sad notepad just makes a things-to-do list even more depressing. luckily, my favorite local stationer scriptura hipped me to the rhodia. now, i owned a tiny one in the past, but didn’t know that the rhodia was made in the same factory as the fancy french clairefontaine notebooks. that’s why i love to shop with people who love what they do. i like the construction orange of the cover. it makes what i do feel more solid, somehow. i also like that it has a cover. i write in mechanical pencil, so i hate the uncovered notebooks because the front page gets all grimy and smudged. and the paper is as smooth as silk and designed not to smudge.
2. outlines. yes, outlines plural. that is one of many. i make maps, spreadsheets, keep character dossiers. it is kinda crazy. you can see a bit of another one here. although my outlines are crazy detailed, i always go off course. this is fine, but there is something about being able to hold these pieces of paper in my hand that calms me. my security blanket, i guess.
3. scrivener. i used to make index cards for all my plot points and spread them out on the floor. i would then clip the associated manuscript pages to the index cards. this quickly became unruly. i discovered a computer program a few years ago that is great for organizing creative projects. it even has a virtual corkboard, so it feels like what i used before. this week i have put several years worth of drafts into scrivener. it is a wonderful, wonderful tool.
4. freedom. this is a little program that disables your wi-fi connection for up to 8 hours. at first i thought it was silly. i should just have willpower! i don’t use the internet that much! i only use it for research when i’m writing! i started using macfreedom last year and it only took one session for me to see how unfocused i was with the internet on. definitely the best $10 spent.

i could go on and on, but what are your favorite tools?

fess up friday

the calenture edition

i’ve been down with a vicious flu that morphed into an allergy attack for well over a week. i’m not entirely recovered, but on the mend. lauren cerand, publicist extraordinaire used that word in a tweet, sending me directly to the dictionary. calenture is a kind of fever that sailors experience when they’ve been out at sea for long periods of time. they imagine that the sea is a green field and have an intense desire to jump in. later meanings include any kind of feverish delirium or all consuming romantic passion.

when my fever finally broke from the flu, i was beset by a new one. noveling can be such a long process that you forget the different stages. i work in big sections that i call “chunks”, groups of sections that eventually shape themselves into chapters. although i have been writing for a very long time, i feel like i’m fairly new to revision. i’ve finally done enough of it to figure out what my process feels like at this stage. i imagine my revision fever is something of a calenture. i am so deep at sea with the work that a kind of delirium sets in.  my habits change–i go from never writing at night to staying up past midnight. i don’t want anything but the work. i want to drown in it, disappear into the sea of red ink.

“I never want to see anyone, and I never want to go anywhere or do anything. I just want to write.” – P.G. Wodehouse

my friends threaten interventions and ask if i’m becoming a hermit. seasons change and i barely notice. the only cure for my calenture is to finish the chunk. to get it as done as i can in the moment. after 6 hours at the writing table, today i emerged with a cure. what kept me from going overboard was knowing what the fever was when it arrived and remembering that i’ve been here before.

*p.s. i love the fat quotation mark, but it bothers me that the style doesn’t close the quote. get on that wordpress!!

zadie smith & nathan englander

i’ve had this video bookmarked for a bit. i’m just getting around to watching the video, and it was just what i needed today. i was also excited to find out that zadie smith also uses freedom to shut off her internet when she writes!

welcome, earthlings. uh NaNoWriMolings

my friend Emilie has pointed you here to my blog (and totally exposing that i have not been fessing up on fridays at all!) and i figured that some of you might be expecting a fellow citizen of your NaNoWriMo world. perhaps you are looking for nano tips and inspiration, but i must confess–although i am a writer, i am NOT a nanoer. i am, however, nano-friendly. i’ve been writing for some time and remember stumbling across the nano website. i know that at some point i signed up for nano, but was never a “winner”. but each year in november i cheer on my friends who participate. i harass, i ask about their wordcounts, i call them out when i think they are stalling. i’m a nanowrimo cheerleader.

but not a nano writer.

every november at nano time i begin to feel a bit like old marvin the martian, observing the noveling earth from above. the coffee shops where i toil almost every day of the year are suddenly filled with people writing novels and speaking in the language of word counts and word wars. the party looks fun and lively, but in the end just makes me nervous. so i just keep to my regularly scheduled program. i am always a bit jealous when november 30th rolls around and everybody has a fresh novel draft.

everyone except for me.

if i’m lucky i’ll be finished with a section i’ve been working on for months. but for these days it will be nice to have the company, even if i’m observing it from my faraway planet of everyday plodding. i think one of the hardest parts of writing is figuring out what works for you. only you can figure that out. what i figured out is nano just does not agree with my constitution. and that is okay. don’t cry for me. you don’t have time! get your wordcounts up. i’ll be cheering for you at the finishline.

fess up friday

my process, my life. captured by Matt Landers

the brief edition

i started a fess up friday last night that was really two posts. one, a musing on writing and ambition and  the other about who owns a story. i couldn’t finish them. the novel has me in its clutches.  right now the novelwords are shaking me to get up! get out! they don’t care that it is raining. or it is a saturday, the weekend. everything in my head has the background chant of write, write, write. and i know that it won’t be quiet until i am at the writing table writing. so those other posts will have to wait until i have energy. when the novelwords are not so jealous.

until then.

fess up friday

staff meeting of one

wherein i give myself a talking to edition

boss: hey, i really want to commend you on the way you’ve been showing up at the writing table.

me: thanks! (contemplates what to do with bonus)

boss: yeah, you’re showing up, but mostly late. i noticed you’re playing on the internet. and this stack of research books. *points to books*

me: yeah, well i HAVE to research. i HAVE to get these details right. it’s important.

boss: of course it is, but i think you’re hiding out there.

me: hiding? i write in coffee shops! ask the barristas! i’m here almost every day!

boss: yes, but how productive are you? i think you might be hiding out in research instead of writing. what are you afraid of?

me: nothing! this is a big book and it just takes time.

boss: *silent*

me: and i need to carry all of these books around at all times because i never know what i might NEED. i NEED them!

boss: *silence*

me: *fidgets*

boss: mmm. i want you to think about this. do you really want to finish this book? if so, come up with a plan. you’re a talented lady. there are plenty of other things you can do if you don’t want to do this. you really have everything you need. sleep on it. if you do, then come up with a plan.a plan that balances out the research so you can move forward.

me: okay?

boss: good. close my door, will you?

so, i’m writing. but pretty quiet about it. i’m glad the “boss” in me stepped up to pull my collar.

onward!