The Numbers Post

Okay, so since I'm using up all my letters on NaNo, I'm going to do a numbers post before I head off to AASL in Charlotte, NC, today. (Kindly pray that my head doesn't explode while on the plane since my sinuses are all clogged). So here are the rundowns on some numbers currently influencing my life:

Age I'll be on my next birthday, Nov 18: 28

Number of e-mails I received and replied to in October: 4,165
number of e-mails from Scholastic in Oct: 47
number of e-mails from my agent in Oct: 24

Word count for my NaNo novel so far: 6,673

Number of LiveJournal comments replied to in Oct: 389

Number of my husband's tropical fish I killed in October: 11*

Number of friends added on Facebook in October: 306

Number of harp strings I strung by hand last week: 32

Number of messages received on Facebook in October: 105

Number of wall posts received on Facebook in October: 646

Number of nostrils a human breathes through at any given time: 1**

Number of weeks SHIVER has been on the NYT Bestseller List: 14

Number of people living on the smallest of the Scilly Isles: 90

Days on the road for SHIVER in October: 12

Hours of driving logged in Loki: 11

Number of giant snails featured on my blog: 2

*I did not mean to kill his fish. I merely added some water at a perfect 72 degrees to the tank. And they came over all dead-like the next day. And the day after. And the day after that. And the day after that.
**I discovered this while looking up remedies for stuffed up nose (saltwater rinse works awesome, by the way). A person only breathes through one nostril at a time (put your finger 1/2 inch under your nose to see which nostril you're using), and which side is dominated by the hemisphere of the brain that is currently active. Left brain: right nostril. Right brain: left nostril. Unless you're stimulating your brain to use one side of the other, each hemisphere dominates in cycles that last from two to four hours. You can also clarify your thinking and balance your brain by using the yoga technique of pinching one nostril shut and breathing out of one side and then the other a few times. Cool, yes? Okay, so it's not. but now you've learned something against your will.

And now, number of bags I'm off to pack for my flight? 1

TEASER TUESDAY: LINGER!!!

As promised, I'm revealing the cover and first paragraph of LINGER today. A little bit about LINGER, for starters -- it's the sequel to SHIVER, it's coming out July 20th, and it is about after. What happens after you discover there are werewolves in the wood, after you've fallen in love for the first time, after you've lost what you think you can't live without, after you've become someone you can't live with (and no, not all of these are talking about the characters you think they're talking about.)

It was also the easiest and hardest book I've ever written, coming off the heels of SHIVER's immediate and crazy success. I can only imagine that Chris, the cover designer, felt the same way I did writing LINGER when he was trying to design the cover for it, because the SHIVER cover was such a smashing success, how would he follow it?

Well, I think he did. Behold, ze official cover of LINGER!

And now, the first paragraph(s). I've been asked a couple of times if folks can repost either of these things on their blogs and the answer is an absolute YES I'D BE FLATTERED PLEASE DO!!! Okay . . . the first bit of LINGER:

• grace •

This is the story of a boy who used to be a wolf and a girl who was becoming one.

Just a few months ago, it was Sam who was the mythical creature. His was the disease we couldn’t cure. His was the good-bye that meant the most. He had the body that was a mystery, too strange and wonderful and terrifying to comprehend.

But now it is spring. With the heat, the remaining wolves will soon be falling out of their wolf pelts and back into their human bodies. Sam stays Sam, and Cole stays Cole, and it’s only me who’s not firmly in my own skin.

Is it what you expected?!

'Mazing Things on a Monday

Okay, so the title's a stretch. Mostly it's because I have the flu and I need to do a bullet post and I am too lazy to think of a better name for the post.

1. NaNo. I have 1,408 words at the moment and I'm thinking I'll double this this evening after the kids go to bed. Cold medication + drafting = not great idea. I keep feeling really productive and then realizing that I've been staring at the wall for an unknown amount of time. I also have spent too much time reading about the Scilly Isles today, because I like saying "I'm reading about the Scilly People" to my husband.

2. Interested in LINGER? Tomorrow at noon EST, Scholastic has given me clearance to post the official cover for LINGER and the first paragraph. That should have little fireworks-y things around it. First paragraph! Whooo!

3. Somehow, SHIVER ended up as one of the Publisher's Weekly Best Children's Books for 2009, in exceedingly good company. It breaks my brain, just a little, to think of all the books published this year and to think that SHIVER, out of all of them, is one of fifteen children's novels picked.

4. While I was trying to understand this concept, Amazon posted their Top Ten Books for Teens in '09 list and SHIVER was on it.

5. It is only the cold medication that is making me sane right now. Otherwise I'd be floating.

NaNoWriMo: Day One: What Am I Doing?

Those of you also doing NaNoWriMo are infinitely aware that it is now November, and thus that writing can begin on NaNo novels.

So what am I doing today?

I am reading.

Why, you ask, in a race to 50K words, am I spending the first day of NaNo reading? Well, first of all, because I get terrible writer's block if I don't read several books a month. writers = readers. And second, because it's Sunday, and Sunday is a day that I don't write, no matter what my evil deadline is, because it is a day to recharge batteries. For me, it's a good rule, and NaNo's not going to change that.

Here's the thing about NaNo, or any other deadline. It is not a helter skelter race to the end, an every second writing sort of affair. Think of it this way: an average scene in a novel is 2-3K words long. That means that what you're really looking at with a 50K NaNo novel is not 1,666 words written every single day, you're looking at writing 16-25 scenes that lead toward an end. Which means, some days, if you are calculated and thoughtful and in the mood, you can power out two or three great scenes -- 4,000-10,000 words. Writing words just to write words will get you more words, but no closer to the end. Writing scenes and worrying about wordcount secondarily? That'll get you somewhere.

So yeah. Day one, NaNo. Word count: 0. Perturbed? Not yet.

The Great Ballad Contest Results

Okay, it's finally time to tally the results of the big Ballad contest! I have to say that this contest goes down as the only one that I have asked my readers to do something (apparently) illegal: take photos in bookstores. For all of you who were run out of stores by feral employees or couldn't find the book in time, I'm profoundly sorry.

For the rest of you who performed illegal acts in the name of sportsmanship and prizes, booyah!! We had over 250 entries, which is a lot of people photographed with Ballad. And we had two (I believe two, let me know if I counted wrong) entries that had over twenty people in a photo, which I said would get a special prize. And then I did a drawing amongst the folks who did entered by the first deadline, and there's a prize for that winner too (they were also all entered in the overall drawing). I numbered every entry and did a random number generator for the top prize first and then down for them.

So. Without further ado, here are the winners:

Winner of the signed audiobook of shiver is arieleishen.

Winner of the stack of books and signed copy of Ballad is tracy-d74

Winner of the swank messenger bag with the signed Maggie books in it is jb n becca.

And finally, winner of the first-chapter critique from all three of the Merry Sisters of Fate is melenka!


Now I can hear the groans already, so remember there are three more prizes. First of all, I drew from the folks who made it by the original deadline and got a_hoffman79, who will get a signed copy of either Ballad or the Shiver audiobook (you pick).

And then there were two folks, lovethebooknook and Amanda Jirka, who got more than twenty people in a single photo, and I said that would be a special prize . . . so I'll do a 5-page critique for each of you guys. Not quite as good as the first chapter critique by all the Merry Sisters, but a little somethin'!

So congrats to everyone who won and thanks to everyone who entered! Winners, e-mail me your info! (Also, folks who are waiting on CDs from the last contest, they're going out this week).

The Giant NaNo Prepping Post: Or, How Maggie Writes a Novel

All right, I’ve already said that I’m doing NaNoWriMo -- attempting to write a 50,000 word novel entirely during the month of November, along with a few other thousand people (note: we are all writing different novels. It might be awkward otherwise). I mentioned in my last post that I would talk about my prepwork for said Secret Novel (which is already sold and has a release date) if goaded. And I’ve been goaded.

So here goes, the birth of a novel.

IDEA! BRING OUT THE LIGHTBULBS!

For me, ideas come from everywhere. There is no such thing as a good or bad idea, by the way. They’re like atoms. They just exist. It’s what you do with them that’s good or bad. For me, an idea becomes a novel when I can’t put it down. When it gets bigger instead of smaller in my head. So for this one, I got it while on a boat in the middle of a river, and then I came home and wrote a short story. Normally the short story puts most ideas to rest, but this one was still running around like a hyperactive toddler. I knew it was going to require a novel to shut it up.


SO YOU WANT TO SEE THIS SHORT STORY, HUH?

Well, you can’t. Because it’s still secret. But I based SHIVER on one of my short stories, and it’s here. (warning, tis not beautiful).


ENDINGS FIRST, DARLINGS

Once upon a time, Maggie was an author who didn’t finish novels. It was a long time ago, and the novels were bad anyway*, but the point remains that none of them had endings, unless you consider scenes where the aliens come down and kill everyone to be excellent denouements (Only works if it’s War of the Worlds. Otherwise, not so hot).

*One novel, rewritten eleven times, was entitled THE WINDING RIVER and was about all of the unicorns in the world being hunted down so that their horns could be melted into things to make enchanters sexy. I’m paraphrasing, but that’s basically the gist.

Until Maggie realized that these terrible things didn’t happen if she actually had, you know, an ending. Once she didn’t allow herself to chase the fuzzy but dangerous plot bunnies until after she had an ending, the aliens went away.

So, for my NaNo novel, this is the most important thing. I needed to know the ending first. I do this with all my novels, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that I know how the conflict will be solved (though sometimes it does) -- it means I know what the ending looks like. I know where the final scene will be, though I don’t always know why. For instance, at the end of Ballad, I knew I wanted James to be making a terribly hard choice and I really, really wanted to burn someone alive.


SUM UP, PLEASE

Usually, the summary happens at the very beginning, when I first get the idea. The summary is a paragraph long and looks like the blurb on the back of the book. It’s what I use to convince my editors to buy the book, and also helps me clarify theme and plot. It also gets me excited. For my NaNo book, since I had the short story first, the summary came after the short story and the ending. And I’d share it, but it’s Top Secret until everything is announced. Sorry. More on this later.


WHO THE HECK ARE YOU, AGAIN?

This is where characters start coming in. Generally they get names first; in fact, sometimes they arrive with them. To me, the name is the first part of their personality, because I believe you either become your name or run as far away from it a you can. Anyway, once I have these characters named, I start to brainstorm on who they are, where they came from, and most importantly, what sort of people they were to get themselves into the problem that I’m writing about.

So this involves me thinking of their family background, what their hopes and fears are, what motivates them. How will they interact with the other main characters? I don’t want two characters who are very similar. I also don’t want characters that are too stable -- I can’t have lots of lovely angst if my characters aren’t changing in some way. Usually that means something just happened to them that’s forcing a change or something in their life is becoming untenable and they need to change, or the mere introduction of the other character is making them change. Characters that stay the same throughout the book? Boring.

Also, here’s the thing about characters: they drive the plot, not the other way around. There’s no point in me brainstorming on the plot anymore without knowing the characters first, because it’s plot without context. One way expressway to writer’s block.


SCENES, YOUR NAME IS BRICKS.


Scenes are my building blocks. For every book, I have a core of ten or twelve scenes that make the book what it is, and a lot of these scenes appear during the initial brainstorming/ prep work. Remember that noodling over characters I’ve been doing before now? Well, a lot of times it will make one of these core scenes appear. For those of you that have read SHIVER, some of the core scenes are the bathtub scene, the candy shop scene, and the Bronco scene near the end. If you’ve read BALLAD, core scenes were the Dee/ James scene in D.C., the final bonfire scene, and the beer scene.

Basically, when I get the idea for a core scene, my brain explodes and I get very happy: I know ‘em when I see ‘em. And they always grow out of character rather than by plot. The goal when I’m doing early brainstorming/ pre-drafting is to tease out as many of these as I possibly can. Right now, for Secret Novel, I have four of them. And then I have four other scenes that need to happen to get to The End, but I’m not sure how they’ll go down. They’re negotiable, so I don’t think of them as core scenes.

The scenes that don’t appear during my character musing occur during my final planning stage, when I am assembling my playlist and determining my themes I want to explore. Once upon a time, I’d use the core scenes to write a two page synopsis, full of lies and damn lies between the core scenes, but for this book, I’m going to see if I’ve outgrown my synopsis stage and just do a very ugly document with the scenes listed and the ending, all topped off by my two main characters’ descriptions and backgrounds listed very briefly, as I would’ve for a synopsis. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that I get more self-aware and efficient with my writing process as I move along this writerly life and learn my process better.

Ooh, ooh, I should mention that characters definitely dictate the scene building process. At one point, I was stuck in the brainstorming phase and I realized it was because my characters didn’t have motivation for moving further -- they only had the plot summary telling them to go places. I had to go back and figure out what would move them in that direction in their life and add it into their backstory. Then, bingo! Onward.

Basically, I think of the whole process like a road trip. I need to know the ending, because that’s my destination. If I don’t know where I’m going, how do I know when I get in the car if I’m going to end up someplace I actually want to be? And then the scenes are like little milestones that mean I’m going in the right direction; places I definitely want to visit. The rest? Is all up to wandering from milestone to milestone, taking the scenic route. I might go a wrong way, but I can always double back to the last milestone and strike out a different way until I find the right one.*

*this is actually the way I drive. It’s maybe a little terrifying for those who like more structure.


SO, WHAT AGAIN?

So to prep for my NaNo novel I have:

-had idea

-written short story based on idea

-come up with an ending for the novel

-written a summary

-found my main characters

-brainstormed some core scenes that I’m excited to write

-set up a musical playlist that conforms to the theme and mood I’m looking for

-brainstormed more core scenes

-gotten stuck and realized I needed SiblingProblems to make my plot work
written a document that has my scenes in sort of order, along with my ending. henceforth known as FAKE SYNOPSIS

And now I’m ready to go! Any questions? Comments? Derisive laughter?

Three Things on a Thursday

1. If you have been hoping and praying and begging for a live chat with Maggie Stiefvater, your hopes/ prayers/ beggings have been answered by Wild Things Book Club on Goodreads -- I'm doing a chat with them tomorrow at noon, EST. That's here.

2. I know you always wanted to see footage of giant snails. So I'm hooking you up with that here. Don't say I never gave you anything.

3. I think I'm all ready for NaNo. I'm just finishing up my synopsis -- do you guys want me to talk in more detail about how I'm prepping?