The Muse Waits for No One

~ Laini Taylor

You know how you're in the middle of charging through a scene and you don't really want to stop for any interruption in case the Muse decides to go play with someone else?

^ Current situation as I make the leap from act 2 to act 3 of Before I Remember You.

So I'm just sharing this inspiring TED talk by Lisa Bu before I bounce back to the manuscript. Enjoy!

QOTD:

"I have come to believe that coming true is not the only purpose of a dream; its most important purpose is to get us in touch with where dreams come from, where passion comes from, where happiness comes from. Even a shattered dream can do that for you."

This is incredibly important. Don't give up on your dreams no matter how shattered or bruised they may be! They are what make you stronger and more resilient. Find a way to fix that dream, and protect it with all your heart.


Joyce ♥

Singapore Writers Festival - for the dreamers and the story-tellers

Singapore Writers Festival 2015 - Island of Dreams! It was a pleasant surprise to be invited to this year's SWF. I'd only ever published one book, so the honour is all mine.

But for an INFJ, the idea of public speaking was enough to send me spiralling into a neurotic worry-fest. What if the audience gets bored, or finds me obnoxious and self-indulgent? What if I fall over my foot (happens quite often) or trip over my words (ditto) or blush so hard I start sweating (you have no idea).

But then I wrote a script, and I rehearsed it in front of a mirror countless times, and I prepared answers to anticipated questions. And then I rehearsed again. I know, I know. A panel is supposed to be spontaneous and fun, and shouldn't involve scripts or rehearsed speeches. But consider it a crutch. It made me feel better, knowing that I had answers prepared so I wouldn't flounder for one when the time came.

And instead of obsessing over how I would be perceived, I focused on what I can bring to the panel and share with the audience. Really, if ever there was a tip that might help with giving a speech, this would be it. Focus on your audience and what you can give them. People may not necessarily remember everything you say, but they won't forget how you make them feel.

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

On the day of the panel itself, the two other panellists/writers, Joyce 2 (I'm Joyce 1) and Rachel Hartman, the panel moderator, Denise, and I arranged to have lunch together to get to know each other before the panel.

But since I got there way too early for our meeting (as usual), I got some pictures out of the way.

Programme booklet and my festival pass!

Because it's not a festival without some music, an outdoor stage was set up just outside The Arts House.

Plus, I bought postcards from the little booths around The Arts House, one of the venues of SWF!

Since, you know, the theme of this year's festival is "the island of dreams".

Anyway, Rachel got a little lost and went to the wrong Privé Café, and the three of us assumed she wasn't turning up because she once mentioned that too much social interaction gave her a sensory overload (introvert problems - we all completely understood).

But she found us in the end, and it was lovely to sit down for lunch with her (she was surprisingly good with curry chicken)! Rachel Hartman, if you're still unacquainted with her, is the author of the award-winning fantasy novel Seraphina. The book was ranked number 8 on the New York Times bestseller list in its first week of publication AND awarded the 2013 William C. Morris Award for the best young adult work by a debut author. HELLO. NYT bestseller upon debut? WOW. And what are the rest of us doing with our lives.

But she was so sweet and friendly and chatty, and so were Joyce Chng (who also writes about dragons and is a huge sci-fi fan) and Denise that I felt loads calmer.

As 4.30pm inched closer, however, my jitters came back.

The stage is set

Then people started filling in and getting comfortable. The mood was relaxed and the setting cosy

The audience got beanbags to laze in!

All in a day's work! Many thanks to the Singapore Writers Festival for inviting me. It was the loveliest experience ever with these two smart, funny, and distinguished ladies (fangirl moment when I spoke with Rachel Hartman btw). The audience raised intelligent and pertinent questions, and the mood was relaxed. I also learned of the existence of fanfic-writing fans of Lambs For Dinner (like whoa!). I'd love to be back! And hopefully, I'll have a new book out soon. Till next year!! :*

A photo posted by Joyce Chua (@jcxw2590) on Nov 8, 2015 at 2:47am PST

Ah yes, the fanfic. Joyce's 12-year-old daughter, Jaslyn, kind of freaked out when she realised I was the author of Lambs for Dinner. And she started gushing about how her friend loved the book so much she wrote "cringe-worthy fanfic" about it. SQUEEEEE! Cringe-worthy or not (I'm sure Jaslyn has high standards, seeing as her mom is an author - side note: I've always wanted to know what it feels like having an author for a parent), imagine having fanfic spawned from something you wrote! How cool is that!

And my primary school classmates and English teacher came! ♥

(Sorry I didn't manage to get a shot with everyone there! Still, HUUUGE thank you for attending! You don't know how comforting it was to see familiar faces in the crowd.)

Pre-panel jitters aside, it was a really good experience. Not just public speaking bit, but also meeting young aspiring writers and fans of the books. I met those wide-eyed with hope and passion, those who had scribbled down a list of questions they didn't get to ask during the panel, those who recounted their attempts at writing a novel before they realised how hard it was or decided they were terrible at it (to which Rachel, Joyce and I say, DO NOT give in to that notion. Everyone starts somewhere. Every writer goes through terrible first drafts before they get somewhere good, or at least somewhere they want to end up. That's what the rewriting and editing processes are for), and those who were too afraid to pursue their passion in writing and needed a nudge in the right direction.

I really, REALLY enjoyed talking to them. Partly because I see so much of myself in them - they remind me of myself back when I was a 16-year-old aspiring writer too - but also because their passion and enthusiasm are so genuine and yet unsullied by reality and conventional societal expectations.

I can't stress this enough:

The world needs more artists and dreamers and story-tellers, and it is all the richer with our voices in it. Don't give up because you think you're no good at it, or because someone told you it's a waste of time, or because it doesn't reap tangible rewards. Write because you love it. Write because there is a story - maybe more - living inside you. Write because you need to be heard. Write because you want to entertain. Write because you want to inspire. Whatever the reason, you write. And you keep writing. And keep reading. You will get better, and someday you will be heard.

Strangely, this whole experience just made me all the more determined to get my next book published.

See you at the next SWF! :0)

Murakami wisdom, Tinder shenanigans and book talk

1. How girls talk:

That conversation came about after my girlfriends and I piddled around the Tinder app and were trying to figure out what a guy might mean when he doesn't respond to an emoticon. And people say GIRLS are hard to figure out.

Our responses to the faces we see on Tinder range from this:

To this:

(All the dudes baring their pot bellies or flexing their gargantuan muscles in minimal clothing, you know who you are!)

Occasionally, we're like this:

(There ARE some cute, non-creepy ones on the app, after all! Faith in humanity restored.)

But more often it's this:

(Why would you put a shot of yourself sitting on the edge of your bed in your boxers eating half a watermelon as your profile picture???)

By the way, can I just say that Tinder still has a lot of room for improvement? Not only are we unable to scroll back to the person we might have accidentally rejected, we are unable to go back and view the profile of someone we have approved until he approves back. Apparently not a fan of hindsight, this Tinder.

For now, though, while my friends have run out of guys to pick from, I'm still highly entertained by the different types of profile pictures (supposedly) single guys choose of themselves.

And because I think I'm permanently scarred by the sight of this one guy in a pair of green floral shorts hugging a huge block of cheese (another head-scratcher), THIS is very much welcome:





Ah. Much better now.


2. Anyway, speaking of wisdom, here are some snippets of wisdom - so profound, but never self-righteous or self-important - from "the Yoda of Japanese literature", author Haruki Murakami:

"Life's no piece of cake, mind you, but the recipe's [your] own to fool with." ~ Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985) 

"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking." ~ Norwegian Wood (1987) 

"For 'a while' is a phrase whose length can't be measured. At least by the person who's waiting." ~ South of the Border, West of the Sun (1992) 

"Even castles in the sky can do with a fresh coat of paint." ~ South of the Border, West of the Sun (1992) 

"A person's destiny is something you look back at afterwards, not something to be known in advance." ~ The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997)  

"Understanding is but the sum of misunderstandings." ~ Sputnik Sweetheart (2001) 

"In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It's important to combine the two in just the right amount." ~ After Dark (2004)

I read After Dark a few years ago, in my freshman year at university, and I remember being taken by sparse, beautiful and heart-breaking prose.

Murakami's characters are always diverse and complex, even when the things they say and the conversations they have seem surface. Plus, there's something tragically lonely about the characters and their voices, and uplifting about the way they found each other - which, I realise, can be applied to Norwegian Wood too. But while Norwegian Wood got a little draggy for me, I didn't want After Dark to end.

Go read all 30 of them!


3. Romance writer Jennifer Crusie on how to create conflict in romance novels:

Conflict in general is pretty simple ... The pursuit of these goals brings your protagonist and antagonist into direct conflict because neither can achieve his or her goal without blocking and thus defeating the other. 

The romance plot has a protagonist and an antagonist (or vice versa) who are drawn together and who, during the course of their story, move through the physical and emotional stages of falling in love ... Over the course of the story, they change as people so they can connect, learning to compromise and forming a bond at the end that will keep them together forever. 

The hard part [is] taking the romance plot and giving it conflict. A good conflict has the protagonist destroying the antagonist completely (or vice versa). A good romance plot ends in compromise with both protagonist and antagonist safe, happy, and bonded. Trying to navigate the space in between causes most of the problems in romance writing. 

Romance novels aren't just the usual, fluffy boy-meets-girl, done-to-death stories that everyone thinks are so easy to churn out. (Well, there are some stories that go like that, but we try not to emulate them.)

Romance novels are, in essence, highly character-driven, and that's what makes them so tricky to write. What makes this character different from another? Why choose to write his or her story? How do they grow as a result of each other? What do I want them to become at the end of the story?

My characters usually end up sitting around talking, so I try to toss in some action that is totally lame and pointless, and it all ends up looking contrived and my characters get really confused and annoyed with me.

Still, it's just the first draft, Joyce. Just the first draft. You can rewrite and edit the shit out of it later.


4. And from a literary agent's perspective, Carly Watters believes writers should compete with themselves and not with other writers:

It doesn't make it easy when you know how many other writers there are out there trying to get published, too. But that information has to light a fire under you and make you want to revise and want to write the best book you can. Competition is about writing better than you did the day before, and the book before this. You are your own competition. Make that your mission.

Also, she offers candid insight on what publishing requires from a writer:

Publishing is where creative writing meets Hollywood: Does it have a hook? Can you sell it in a sentence? Are the characters memorable? Is their journey compelling? Does it start when we meet the characters at an interesting point in their lives? Getting published requires some stripping down of overwriting and self indulgence. Getting published is about making your writing accessible to mass readers.

For more advice, go here!


5. Due to the slew of less-than-glowing book reviews that have popped up, particularly on sites like Goodreads, some folks are starting to question: Do we really need negative book reviews?

Of course, the first reaction would be to say no, that it's unnecessary and let's just all talk about books we love and enjoy instead of directing attention to the "bad" ones.

But without criticism, how are we writers going to learn what works or what doesn't? I'd much rather be told candidly why my book is mediocre than be assured that it is deserving of critical acclaim if it isn't true, even if the criticism may be harder to stomach.

Of course, if the negative review is mean for the sake of being mean and getting some laughs at the expense of the author, then please fold some origami and shove it up your pie-hole because the world doesn't need more bullies.




6. I don't want this post to end on that note, so here's some happy:

The Infinite Gallery : Cornwall, England

Okay, okay. Off to do just that now! Happy mid-week, everyone! :0)

PRETTY is a lovely word (as is LOVELY)

Ex-literary agent and author Nathan Bransford dishes out some hard truths:

The thing people should really be worried about is whether they have the willpower to write a novel. That is the hard part. The setting aside of time, powering through when it stops being fun, and getting the whole thing written and edited.

I think I've said before that writing can be lonely at times. It's just you and your words. You slaving over your story. You and your own thoughts that can easily morph into doubts. You don't know if what you're writing is any good, if anyone will ever get to read it, much less love it. And because of that, you're hesitant about showing anyone your work. And then it becomes REALLY just you and your story. After a while (usually around the middle), your story starts to get tiresome, and you're not sure if you should just give up on the whole endeavour.

But then you remember how immensely gratifying it had been to complete your previous stories. And you decide to push through.

Aww thanks, Ryan!

So that's where I am now, trying to keep up my flagging enthusiasm for Neverland, keep my eye on the finishing line, so to speak.

Thank goodness for little reprieves such as these:

This has to be one of the most hilarious interviews of McFly I've seen. Alan Carr + the boys = a total riot!

This one NEVER gets old. Some people say this is a terribly display of how spoiled First World kids are, but I think they were crying about the injustice of losing what they'd earned (how much trick-or-treating do you have to do to get two bags of candy?) more than they were crying about the candy itself (though, of course, they were crying about the candy too).


And this! Another classic: Dominic Monaghan prank-interviews Elijah Wood.

I died laughing.


And to those who say Orlando Bloom is just a pretty face who can't take the piss out of himself, check out this video:

Still love him. Once my Legolas/Will Turner, always my Legolas/Will Turner!




Oops. Those eyes though!

.
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Sigh. Is it any wonder why the writing's going slowly?


Anyway, remember Graffiti Moon, that wildly beautiful contemporary YA book by Cath Crowley that I raved about a while back? I only just discovered her blog (how did I only find it now?!) and OMG it might be one of my favourite blogs now, along with Laini Taylor, Nathan Bransford and Maggie Stiefvater's. I mean, just look at these random gems Cath posts!


Some prose (click on the link for the full piece!):

Someone will offer you the last page of your life today. You won’t know it’s the last page. They won’t say and you won’t ask. 

They’ll be waiting for you on a corner that you walk past every day. You’ll think maybe you recognise them. It’s something about the way they’re clicking the thumb and index finger of their left hand together when they speak – you do that all the time, you’ll think. 

So you’ll take the page, they know you’ll take the page because you’re that kind of person. You say sorry when it’s not really a sorry kind of situation. You say sorry at least five hundred times a day. You counted once. It’s a habit. You don’t even know where you picked it up.  

You’ll get a strange kind of feeling when you walk down the street. The sky, an uncut blue overhead and the mist coming out of your mouth like a ghost. At one stage you might get the idea that you can suck the cold air right back inside. You can't, you’ll realise. Air that’s breathed is breathed for good. 

The paper will stay in your pocket all day – maybe along with a couple of chocolate wrappers and a piece of gum you didn't know what to do with because you couldn't find a bin.

You’ll probably touch it a couple of times during the day – feel the corner when you talk to the one you want but spend most of the time looking at the air just to the left of their ears. Maybe you’ll touch it when your boss says you messed up and you believe him.

In the end you’ll take it out and read it on the train. You’ll be coming home like everyone else, watching the blur of lights out the window, the glass between you and the night, between you and the breath of stars.

Some poetry:

You is my mad aching ship
My sad puzzled light
My honey ocean
My late night, impossible wish

I'm sure the grammatical choice ("is") is there for a reason, but I don't want to delve into literary criticism here.


And some more prose:

You’ll look up today. You’ll notice the sky. It might be streaky or blue or brushed with white buckled clouds but there will be a piece of it that seems exactly right. You might take a photograph so that you can remember.
You’ll think about the words that you love - maybe nova and opal and shadow and nest. Maybe flicker and frost, kismet or linger. Maybe bliss. Maybe kiss.

SO MUCH BEAUTY in her words. All that imagery! So tender and sweet it's almost heart-breaking. I just want to hug those words...

Like this!



MAD MAAAAAD LOVE! I wish I had her sensitivity for words. Graffiti Moon was gorrrrgeous. It's just the kind of intense, bittersweet, funny, poignant contemporary YA romance centred around two characters looking for themselves and each other that I wish I had written. Or will someday be able to write with much much aplomb.

Speaking of pretty words, there's something soothing about finding pretty art in the sinkhole that is Pinterest on a lovely blue-skied morning.

Wolf painting by chantelyoung on Etsy

a painting by Carson Ellis for Wildwood, a lovely MG book series by Colin Meloy

Obviously, Quentin Blake.

The Little Prince by Woo Hee Kwon

Okay okay okay. Enough procrastinating. I'm gone. Have a great week, everyone! :0)

Monday moodlifters!

(I've decided to name all my posts on Monday "Monday moodlifters" because I'm a lazy ass who doesn't want to come up with new post titles every week. So if you have issue with the cheesy name, suck it. Kidding!)

So I came across this article on weird things that affect our dreams today. I don't know if it's all just a load of horse shit, but they do sound plausible. At least, we all know the stuff we're exposed to during the day gets processed by our pre-conscious mind and they manifest in completely bizarre ways when we're asleep.

Speaking of dreams, I had the weirdest dream last Saturday (I'm starting to see a pattern here - is Saturday the day when my circadian rhythm jumps out of whack?), and the emotions I experienced in it were so intense I woke up crying. No shit.

(It's funny. You may be sobbing your heart out in your dream, so hard that you feel like your chest and face might explode from all that emotion, but you wake up and find that you're only just tearing up. Like how you're screaming and shrieking in your dream, and you're actually just whimpering in waking.)

My dream might have to do with the book I just finished reading:

Wonder Show by Hannah Barnaby

It's about a girl named Portia who was abandoned by her family at a home for girls during the Great Depression era. I generally avoid books set in depressing times because they're such downers (sorry!), but this one has a circus, a budding romance and is a coming-of-age story about a girl searching for her father.

Okay, that's a terrible summary. I think this blurb from Teen Librarian Toolbox does it more justice:

Portia has always grown up hearing the stories of her family, but when her family disappears there is no one left to care for her except for The Mister. The Mister runs the McGreavey Home for Wayward Girls and it is a place that you would do anything to escape if you could, perhaps even death.  When one of the girls in the home, her friend Caroline, does indeed take her life, the thought that she may be a murderer haunts her.  For a while Portia languishes at the home, biding her time and praying that her father will magically appear and rescue her, but when the circus caravan drives by and a card with all their routes on it falls out a window and glides slowly to the ground, she has a new plan. 

Portia jumps on a bright red bicycle and pedals to a new type of freedom, she hopes.  Her she stumbles upon The Wonder Show, a side show of circus freaks who caravan across the country and make a meager living based solely on their various oddities.  Tall men, short men, fat ladies and a woman with no arms who throws knives with deadly precision - they are now the only hope that Portia has of out running The Mister and trying to find the father she knows once loved the circus.  Portia knows it is only a matter of time before The Mister finds her, he is not the type of man to let someone get away. And Portia, more than anyone ever has, has upset The Mister.

Abandonment, optimism, flagging hope, It's right in line with the themes and emotions of Neverland. Plus, the pacing is tight and keeps you turning the pages, the characters are people you want to root for, there is an underlying sense of urgency and danger threaded throughout the story, and you find yourself hoping along with Portia for her father to find her.

Some beautiful quotes from the book:

Sometimes promises are even harder to keep than secrets. Promises are easily made - we toss them like coins bound for a fountain and leave them there, under the water, waiting to be retrieved.

And:

The ones who left (tapped at the edge of her memory), and the ones who were left behind, everyone in motion like startled birds, trying to find a place to land.

And:

There was always someone going and someone left behind. Portia had been both. She had enjoyed neither. But she knew that leaving a place was sometimes necessary, when you wouldn't breathe there anymore, when you weren't yourself because of it.

And finally:

Lives only begin once.  Stories are much more complicated.

I love it so much I NEED to own it.

Anyway, yes, the dream.

It involved a girl (let's call her Iris) being found by Mother, a no-nonsense but kind lady who founded the Academy for Wayward Teenage Girls. There, she got into trouble with the other girls, got framed, got kissed, got blamed for a murder, got expelled, and finally she realised that she had nowhere left to go. That the Academy, for all its failings and imperfections and hateful rules and hierarchy, was the only place she had come to count on. That part where Mother had to let her go was the part where Iris (or, okay, me, since I was Iris in the dream) struggled to hold in her tears and eventually broke down. I woke up to find my pillow soaked, although I wasn't choking on my tears the way Iris - or I - had been in the dream.





What, you don't get weird-ass dreams like that?

On the plus side, that dream made for some really good writing material. I might write something about it when I have the time, maybe a short story, if not a proper novel. I've been saving my dreams for ages, recording them in my notebook as detailed as I possibly can, hoping to one day discover them properly and fill up the missing pieces (you know how dreams can be a little hole-y).

Hmm. How shall I develop Iris's story? I already have a few ideas brewing, but am not sure how to work out the technicalities...

NO, JOYCE, NO. NOT NOW. NOW IS THE TIME FOR NEVERLAND!! DO NOT GET SIDETRACKED.

Okay, that's enough rambling for the day. Shall leave with a few lovely quotes and pictures, as usual.

John Green offers some very inspiring advice to aspiring writers:

Don’t make stuff because you want to make money — it will never make you enough money. And don’t make stuff because you want to get famous — because you will never feel famous enough. Make gifts for people — and work hard on making those gifts in the hope that those people will notice and like the gifts.Maybe they will notice how hard you worked, and maybe they won’t — and if they don’t notice, I know it’s frustrating. But, ultimately, that doesn't change anything — because your responsibility is not to the people you’re making the gift for, but to the gift itself.

It's easy to lose sight of the reason you write. We want to be published so badly, want everything that comes along with being published. Book tours, book signings, brushing shoulders with YA superstars - *ahem* Laini Taylor *ahem* Sarah Dessen... Writing is such a lonely journey we want to see results sooner, if not at least have people to share the process with. To find someone(s) who's as excited and invested in the story as we are.

Which is why writing a novel requires SO MUCH patience and perseverance. You need stamina to see this shit through. To put yourself through this mental agony day after day until you hit The End.

But I guess I will try to see this journey - or, in fact, every journey, assuming I still have stories I want to write - for what it is. If not a gift, then at least a much-needed lesson in perseverance.


Laini Taylor on writing meaningful dialogue:

I think the trick to enjoying dialogue (which I think is the lifeblood of a book) is: to have characters who want things and are doing things. Then there's plenty to talk about, and their unique identities emerge more (for me) in the writing of dialogue than anywhere else. 

 WANTING and DOING. What do my characters WANT and DO?




Rose garden love!

F.R.I.E.N.D.S. love!

Reading love!

And finally,

Pretty boy love! 

Have a great week, everyone! ❤