How do you do this novel writing? Laurie Halse Anderson and Neil Gaiman

Now that I'm working on a novel, I'm racked with insecurities. Can I do it? How do you do it? How do other people do it?

I find other writers' blogs very comforting. Laurie Halse Anderson recently left a character writhing on the cutting room floor, and found her novel is better off for it.

Here's her answer to a query asking if it was hard:

"The different parts of the writing process feel like different countries to me. The etiquette and customs of one country is extremely different from the next. In the early drafts, I include everything that falls into my head and I love it all. I could never cut out a character at that stage. When I get to later drafts, that changes. The only thing that matters is what works best for the story. if I fall in love a character and she doesn't work in the story, she's gets cut. I can always send her flowers, take her to the movies, or go out for coffee with her. But if she isn't a vital thread in the fabric of the story, out she goes."

Neil Gaiman took a huge, anxious leap away from home to get a grip on his novel, then returned with something (pages? confidence?), to home and garden shed and family, and finished.

Here's a bit from a recent blog of his, answering the question of how he writes:

"The truth is, as the truth about so much is in writing, that there are no rules, and even a writer who normally does things one way doesn't have to be consistent. You do what produces pages. You keep moving forward. If I'm really stuck on a scene I'll sometimes skip to the next scene I DO know how to write, and often by the end, the solution to the one I was stuck on is obvious, or I can't even remember why it was a problem." Check out Neil Gaiman's blog for more.

Helpful. Comforting. How we all twitch around and get mental space for some parts of the writing and listen and imagine and then get ruthless and use a different part of our brain to rewrite and then send off what we've done to our trusty editors and sit on pins and needles till we hear what is good and what is rotten and we make the changes we can make and send it back again and try to forget all those wonderful characters we spent so much time with. We take to hanging out in cafes without a stricken look on our faces and go to yoga and see friends who probably though we'd died or been incarcerated and pay our ignored, overdue bills.

And then? Start the whole damn thing over again.

Curl up with The Gathering by Anne Enright and your heart will fly wide open

I just finished reading The Gathering after seeing a podcast of Anne Enright giving a talk at Barnes and Noble's New York store. She looked so.... normal, for lack of a better word. Kind. Thoughtful. Clearly smart. Poised.

Then I plunged into her book. It's the kind of book that lays you wide open. I spent the day yesterday reading in front of a hot fire while outside it stormed and rained and the wind blew in great, gasping, smoky breaths through the cracks around my windows and doors.

The Gathering is one of those books that ten people would have ten different takes on what it means, because it's so rich. For me, it was how to love and tolerate and truly see the family you're born into, as well as the one you make. It's about seeing them all clearly, and letting them be, and not flinching away from the truth of them all. And stepping truly and deeply into the life you've made for yourself.

Day before yesterday I went to the ophthalmologist. The woman who dilated my eyes was chatty. "Sure hope it doesn't rain this weekend!" she said. "My son's birthday. Everyone's coming over. We won't all fit in the house."

"Who's everyone?" I asked, trying not to squirm as the drops hit my eyes.

"My husband's one of twelve kids. The whole family's coming. 120 people."

I thought of her while I sat in front of my cozy fire and it stormed outside. I thought of her as I read about Veronica and Liam and their ten other brothers and sisters.

And I thought about my own life, and my ninety year old parents and my four brothers and sisters, and my husband and his five brothers and sisters. Once we all had open faces and ruddy cheeks and tangled hair and huge noisy birthday parties and unknown, promising futures. And how we've had some good luck and some bad luck and worked hard and had a few ruddy faced, tangled-hair kids ourselves. And I felt incredibly sad and grateful and joyful, all at the same time.

A good book will do that to you.

Sherman Alexie

Last summer and fall I had the privilege of heading the National Book Award for Young People. As I've posted before, we agonized once we got to about twenty titles: how to cut down further? We debated hard, cast secret ballots and eventually had our five finalists. I feel a special connection with those books, a kind of pride that we recognized how brilliant they all are.

We finally chose Sheman Alexie's book, The True Diary of a Part Time Indian as THE ONE. He's reaping the rewards of his deserved success with the book right now, on tour to high schools acorss the country. He's written a beautiful piece about his tour for Publisher's Weekly.

The guy can sure write.

Dorothea Lange at SF Library

Just back from doing the presentation at the SF library with my dad and sister. We had a blast. We had a great audience who turned out even in the cold drizzly weather. They were very enthusiastic. Meg showed her film on Dorothea, and then Meg, Ron and I did Q&A for about 30 minutes. Questions were pretty wide-ranging which was fun. Here's my dad and my sister Meg.


Before the presentation we went up to the 6th floor of the San Francisco Public Library to look at Dorothea's photos of Steep Ravine. They were presented beautifully -- in big cases at waist level. I really enjoyed looking at them like that. I had seen the show before at the Marin County Historical Society where it was up on the walls. For some reason, this gave me a different appreciation of them. They are beautiful portraits. If you go to the exhibit look for me -- I'm the skinny girl with long braids running around in a couple of the photos.

It reminded me how much I love that part of the world, poised between the cliffs and the sky and the vast ocean. The cabins are rentable for something like $30 night. Here's a recent article in Via Magazine about the area, and how to rent the cabins.

Just what do sales reps do, anyway?

I belong to a small on-line reading group. There are just four of us -- two authors and two illustrators. Our ostensible goal is to read books, mostly kids and YA with an occasional adult book, and figure out what makes them good or bad or popular or overlooked. We read. We pore over cool illustrations. We also talk about the publishing industry, juicy gossip (OK, there isn't THAT much in children's book publishing), and whine and laugh about tough work and family issues -- mostly raising kids and caring for elderly parents.

An agent suggested to one of the illustrators that she make something for the sales reps when her next book came out. It started us into a big discussion: what do sales reps do, anyway? What's a good sales rep? How do you know if they are saying lovely things about your book to the book store buyers?

I found lots of info on a recent Shelftalker post, Alison Morris' fantastic blog on Publisher's Weekly. It's a well-deserved love fest for reps, and if you scroll through the comments you'll see a couple from the reps, sharing the love back.

There are a bunch of really, really hardworking people out there, getting our books into the hands of readers. I join in the love fest: thank you reps and booksellers both!!

Dorothea Lange at the SF Library

There's a beautiful exhibition of Dorothea Lange's photographs at the San Francisco Public Library in the Skylight Gallery up on the sixth floor. It's photos of her cabin at Steep Ravine perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Terrific.

On Tuesday, Feb 19th, my sister Meg will be showing her film, Dorothea Lange: A Visual Life, at 6 pm in the Koret Auditorium. My dad and I will be there with her to take Q and A after the film. My dad, Rondal Partridge, was her assistant when he was young. We all were folded into the family and used to spend sunny days and windy nights out at the cabin with the Taylor-Lange-Dixons.

snow and ice and blooming plum trees

I know most of you are freezing cold. Really, really cold. Snow in New York City. Laurie Halse Anderson's sweat is frozen to her post-jogging face. Neil Gaiman's in diamond dust snow in Minnesota. My son Will, also in MN, would probably be in diamond dust snow as well except that he's a lab rat and never gets out.

So I'll share with you two wonderful pictures by the amazing illustrator Katherine Tillotson. These are from her neighborhood in San Francisco. She says: "The street is brick paved and lined with blossoming plum trees on both sides. If I time my walks just right I can walk through drifting pink petals and hear the wind chimes in back yard. It is very magical."

Enjoy. Lift your face up and feel the rays. Smell the delicious flowery dusty smell.