In honor of Follow Friday, I would like to suggest that you follow my wonderful agent Sarah Davies. She is not only talented and charming, but she is also English, which makes everything she says seem even smarter and more charming. And she really knows her stuff.

Follow her on Twitter
and on her blog
or just follow the latest Greenhouse news

Speaking of news, I had some big news of my own this week, as I sold my first, second and third books to two different publishers! The deals were announced on Publishers Marketplace today as follows:

Talia Vance's debut SPIES AND PREJUDICE, pitched as Veronica Mars meets PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, in which a teenage private investigator goes undercover to discover that the mother she thought was dead is actually in the witness protection program, and the guy she was determined to hate is the one person who can save her life, forcing her to re-evaluate everything she thought she knew about herself, her family, and love, to Elizabeth Law at Egmont, for publication in Spring 2012, by Sarah Davies at the Greenhouse Literary Agency (NA).

And:

Talia Vance's BANDIA, rooted in Celtic mythology, a story of forbidden love, as a girl discovers too late that she's descended from a deadly Irish goddess, having accidentally bound her soul to the hot guy whose tribe is sworn to destroy her; falling for the one boy it would kill her to love, and with her survival depending on his death, she must find a way to break the power of her dark inheritance, to Brian Farrey at Flux, in a two-book deal, for publication in Fall 2012 and Fall 2013, by Sarah Davies at the Greenhouse Literary Agency (NA).

And now back to bouncing off the walls with excitement!

I come to my writing table with two sharpened pencils, a black pen and a cup of tea.  My desk is clear of clutter.  My Internet is turned off.  My phone is on vibrate.  My dog is quiet.  I work for three hours straight and can often write 5,000 words that need little revision.  In one sitting.

Not.

Vomit.  By great good fortune I was able to hear the brilliant Lisa Yee speak about revision at a conference in 2008.  She said that the first draft is like throwing up.  You get it all out.  With revision, you clean it up. 

My problem?  I vomit copiously.  Spectacular page counts that make my other critique group gasp.   I love the history so much that I want to get in all these fascinating details that have little to do with the actual story.  Like the obscene little carvings on Anne of Cleves’ marriage bed.  Or how the Thames River froze completely during the single winter Jane Seymour was Queen.

Also, my characters drive my novel.  For some of them, their stories are already written.  I can’t change history.  But others make their own choices.  And they surprise me.  I can’t control that.  So I just let it go.  And go.  And go.

So my first revision includes judicious cutting.  And then I get organized.  Susan Hart Lindquist taught me a beautifully complex editing technique involving multi-colored post-it notes.  I use that.  For my current revision, I’ve drawn a lengthy (20 ft.) timeline-like map with a 3-5 word outline of every scene and written in changes for every character, for the setting, for intention in different colored pencils. 

So my process?  Is a little schizophrenic.  Part slob, part obsessive-compulsive.  I used to fear outlines like the plague, but can see the beauty in them now.  Maybe in the next book, my vomit will be organized.  Contained.  Less prolific and more specific.  Maybe it will happen.  Maybe it won’t.  Every book is different.  Every day is different.

Some days, like today, I wake up at 5 o’clock and start writing.  I’m interrupted by the dog barking at the neighbor’s Harley Davidson.  By the kids waking up and needing cereal.  By my husband reminding me to pay the bills.  Like Donna, I check Facebook, Twitter, e-mail.  I write some more.  I live my life.  But every day I write.  At least a little.  Even just a single sticky note, reminding me to add one more historical detail.

With my first novel I was a total pantser.

The result? An okay book with way to many subplots and characters and no clear character arc. What? It was a lot of fun to write. And rewrite. And rewrite again.

Enter the outline. It terrified me. I really had to figure out the whole book at once? Couldn't I just make another pass at the darn thing?

I could. But how many times would I have to write the book if I just kept writing and trashing, and writing again? I was in danger of turning into the computerized equivalent of the guy who types page after page only to rip them out of the typewriter with disgust; figurative balls of paper covering the floor around my trashcan.

I don't know why outlining was so scary to me. Once I had one, I rewrote the second half of a 90K word novel in four weeks. By the time I started revising, I was no longer throwing things away, I was adding layers to the scenes that were already there. Scenes that needed to be there. No wasted effort. Nada.

So sounds like I found a process, right?

Not exactly. I'm still terrified of outlines. I have one for my current WIP, but I find myself deviating from it often. My MC always seems to have a stronger reaction than I'm expecting, and scenes happen too soon. But I'm okay with that.

Like I said, I'm a total pantser.

You can't put more than three writers together for long without the question sprouting up: what's your process? The sister-questions often follow. When do you write? Where do you write? Do you write with music? Do you outline? So here goes, my answers on process:

Where? I have a dedicated space for my writing, but I don't always work there. I'll go through phases of "favorite spots" around the house, or even at a local coffee shop. The one constant? Leo, my laptop. Leo is my writing "place." Seriously. If I have my laptop, I'm good to go.

Music? Sometimes. The right song can move me to tears if I'm in the mood, and in the zone. I do put together playlists for each WIP, and several scenes in my manuscript have a dedicated theme song. But just as often as listening to music, I write with the background noise of half a dozen kids running through the house and my dog barking after them.

Outline or Seat of the Pants Writing? Now we're getting into the meaty subjects. I tend to lean towards the outlining end of the spectrum. Last Spring, I took a wonderful class with the brilliant Lynn Hightower through UCLA Extension. It was called, "Novel Planning: Bringing Order Out of Chaos." The course introduced me to a great process for blocking out essential pieces of information before the actual writing. Sort of like going on a cross-country road trip, Lynn's process showed me how to map out the places I wanted to hit along the way, without needing to commit to an exact route or timeframe. Because of that class, I was able to complete a full length YA manuscript in a year and a half, which is a pretty quick pace for me, halving the time I spent on my previous WIP.

When? Onto the biggie here. I think as writers we're always trying to gauge how long it takes us to get from HERE to THERE. But really, guys, we all know it takes a lot of time, right? The answer for me is I'm always writing. If I wake up in the morning and I can squeeze in an hour, I write. If my kids run over to the neighbors' house to play, I write. When school is in session and I'm not helping in the classroom, I write. Basically, if I'm not spending time with my family or doing essential task for our home or our school, I'm writing. I do try to find time for regular exercise, but really, part of me wonders if I run because it helps MY WRITING. And, of course, there are all those hours in the car or waiting in the carpool line or at a soccer practice that may not find me TYPING, but I'm still writing. Y'all know what I mean. When it gets in your mind, really crawls in there, then there's no getting away from your story or characters.

One thing I'd like to point out, and this echoes what Donna said in her post about process, is this: we all approach our writing in different ways and that's okay. Our methods are as diverse as our stories. I think the trick is to be flexible. Follow your inner compass on that road trip. Stop in Montana if you want to, or just point your car toward the horizon. However you do it, what's most important is enjoying the ride.

Road trip, anyone?

My horoscope today says, “Puttering around is part of your creative process. So don’t fret if it takes you a few hours of wandering from room to room to get comfortable. This is just what you do before you finally settle into work.”

I’m not a big follower of horoscopes, but I couldn’t have described my writing process any better. I putter around. I wander around from room to room-like the Facebook room and the Twitter room and the email room-before I finally settle in to actually write. The puttering around also involves cleaning the vents in the laundry room, taking bubble baths, drinking lattes, and staring at people in the coffee shop. Some days I avoid the blank page with almost any distraction. I also don’t write every day. There I said it. I write in chunks of time when I can squeeze it in between a full time job and everything else in life.

I've always thought a writer's life SHOULD be like this-wake up, do some Yoga, fix a cup of tea, settle in to my special writing place (check out amazing writer, Laurie Halse Anderson’s woodland writing cottage) with my cat curled quietly in my lap and my dog snuggled in at my feet. I type out pages and pages of new words onto the blank screen and then break for lunch.

Unfortunately, the TRUE story of my day is more like this-I wake up late for work, grab a Lean Cuisine on the way out the door, think about my story in the car, have a budget meeting at 9, a dissertation defense at 10, a disgruntled student at 11 and Lean Cuisine at 12. And so it goes until I get home around six and try to write something before bedtime while I dodge the cat on my desk (see picture) and pull the new lab puppy (goat) off the dining room table.

According to a lot of the advice out there, I just don't write right. Some people say write 10 minutes every day. Other people say take November and write a whole book. Still others said write three morning pages when you first get up. Keep a journal. Write note cards, etc. etc. But none of these suggestions seemed to fit with my writing life as it is right now. At the recent SCBWI conference, I was surprised to see how few people in the crowd wrote full time. Most had other jobs to support their writing habit, as has been my case ever since I began this writing journey.

So, for better or worse, I've come to accept it is my process. Maybe someone else has a similar process and needs to hear they aren't writing wrong? If so, I release you from the imagined perfection of someone else’s process and encourage you to write as much as you can, when you can. It isn’t perfect, but it does work.