My new online home

Finally I have achieved the task that eluded me for a year: I have settled down and set up shop at dayanastockdale.com

There I lay me down to rest, no need for the wanderlust that plagues and enriches my not-so-cyber life. For now it is a simple micro-blog, a quaint and unassuming little hobbit hole that my new mommy self can handle. I hope you'll stop by, whenever you are able. I hope you'll check in for news about my book(s). I hope you'll watch it grow, post by post, until one day it is a classy fantasy mansion, my very own waterfall-laden StockenDale. You know?

Little Old Mermaid

At a writing conference, after a writing playshop...

Little Old Lady: What is your book about?

Me: It’s about a 17-year-old girl who goes on a cruise with her family and mysteriously falls into the water and mysteriously transforms into a mermaid and has to figure out what happened and how to get home. It’s about searching for home and longing for what you once had.

Little Old Lady: Oh, I grew up as a mermaid!

Me: I grew up as a fairy so mermaid was a stretch for me.

Little Old Lady: Oh, so I have a fan. See, my father built pools in Southern California, where we lived. So my sisters and I got to go swimming in all these different pools every day. Celebrity pools. Decadent pools.

Me: The most extravagant pools.

Little Old Lady: Elizabeth Taylor’s pool. Cary Grant’s pool. 

The decadent pool of Doris Duke (on O'ahu).

Also friends, I'll soon be moving this blog to WordPress. Once the process is complete, I'll let you know and I hope that you will come check out my new digs. 

Happy Saturday!

Continually surprised

I've been thinking a lot lately about how stories can really just come from INSIDE. I got a beautiful comment about my current WIP. A new beta reader said, "Don't get too many opinions on this. You have a true story here, and you have to tell it."

That pretty much made my day. Well, that was last week, so I guess it made my week. Anyways, I avoided a lot of mistakes with this book, and I don't understand how or why. This character was going to be an only child with no friends. I just came across this post by Justine Larbalestier about why that would have been a bad idea (boring, unrealistic, etc.)

Lucky me: when I wrote the first draft, this character ended up having a sister who blames her for a lot of things and a crew of "friends." Not great people to be around sure, but they exist, and it is...complicated.

Also, this book was going to sci-fi and it ended up being an alternate contemporary. Not that sci-fi is a problem, but it just didn't fit.

This book was going to be in third-person. It wouldn't come out that way and it had to be in first. I'm so glad that it is.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, no matter how much we plan, we always surprise ourselves. I love not knowing what will happen, even if I think I've got it all figured out. I think writing is magic. I think it's a lovely mix of slow dedication and some serious impulse.

So, enjoy what you're working on and let your heart override any bad decisions your mind might try to impose on your characters.

I love that sister, BTW.

Releasing literary pet peeves

I came across this article today at HuffPost. Greg Zimmerman writes:

My literary pet peeve is readers who have pet peeves.

 And...

...a literary pet peeve becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, severely limiting your exposure to great books. That shouldn't be: There are exceptions to every rule, and every rule is made to be broken.

I've read posts lamenting all books told in first person when the main character wakes up at the very beginning of the book and has no idea where he or she is. Some people hate all first person stories in general. Some people don't like YA because they are convinced it is all full of colloquialisms and one-word sentences.

I've had my own pet peeves. Pretty much about covers. Like paperback fiction that looks like it was purchased at the grocery store. Blech, I thought. Never would I ever. But then my sister talked me into trying Twenty Wishes, by Debbie Macomber. I decided the cover was cutesy, but not embarrassing. I loved that book. I devoured it. It was my first time reading anything like it, and it opened me up to a world of chick lit that isn't necessarily romance--which I still struggle with.

Critique partners past have had such obvious pet peeves that I knew what they would comment on in my manuscript before they even spoke. This is not good. Predictability in criticism is not good, I think.

So, do you have any literary pet peeves? Are they keeping you from reading a specific genre or book? What pet peeves of yours have been broken?

The joys of summer

The last summer I experienced was in 2009. No, really. 2010 and 2011 were spent in Hawaii. I know what you are thinking...poor thing no summer because of Hawaii no summer in Hawaii...wait there's no summer in Hawaii?

Some would argue that there is, but it's different. Oh, it's gorgeous (soft sand, warm turquoise water, deep blue sky with big white puffy clouds, palm trees blowing in the breeze, the scent of plumeria in the air, and my personal favorite = the gecko's mating calls). Yes, it's gorgeous, but it isn't summer. Not really. I'm a mainlander at heart.

This summer involved a very large pot of sangria...

And a family trip to Yosemite...

And darn good strawberry cupcakes...

 I finally got to see Ani DiFranco live. (I only cried through three songs!)

 We did a little boating, crawdad-catching and paddle-boarding.

We got scolded by a topless hippie for swimming at our favorite hole.

 The little cuts from picking five pounds of blackberries healed quickly.

The resulting tart was very exciting.

This water was really freaking cold.

And this water was a little creepy.

Classic NorCal summer. Exactly what I needed! Thanks to the family and friends that took me and hubby on such fun adventures. The whole unemployment thing is tough stuff, and job-searching kind of sucks, but evenings and weekends have been really superb. Whilst lamenting the state of our finances, we've had a really good time. So thanks.


All that said, I'm not gonna pretend that I don't miss the geckos.

p.s. I do not think the images appear in the email version, so click through to the link. love!

Are self-doubt and great artistry directly correlated?

"The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize."
--Robert Hughes

I'm currently revising, and I keep saying to myself, I don't know what I'm doing with this. Am I making a mistake? Am I screwing this up?

Doubt. Doubt. Doubt.

So, I'm not sure if I agree with the above quote, but given the doubt I've been feeling, it is at least encouraging. Actually, no I don't agree with it. I can't. There are moments of both reflections. This quote is talking about visual arts I do believe, as Robert Hughes is an art historian. But I assume that just like writing, there are moments.

Self doubt in the rough draft process can be frightening, but helpful. Self doubt when revising can get you to really step back and figure your ish out (thanks Alpha Reader #1 for getting me to take out all mention of trolls in a contemporary novel --duh!). But self doubt while copy editing just down right sucks.

At those end stages, when you're ready to put the work out there into the world, you need some confidence, perhaps even perfect confidence. Or else that manuscript might go back on the shelf. (Nope, not happening.)

You know you're a writer when...

You flip to the back of the book to see if there is an acknowledgements page...

...and if there is one, you recognize some names.

You find stuff on Pinterest that your characters would like.

Your birth date is an illiteration.

Writing from afar

Just finished The Help by Kathryn Stockett and absolutely loved it. At the end, she includes a personal story and says, "I wrote The Help while living in New York, which I think was easier than writing it in Mississippi, staring in the face of it all. The distance added perspective. In the middle of a whirring, fast city, it was a relief to let my thoughts turn slow and remember for a while."

I have written a short story set in Santa Cruz while I lived there. I am now writing a novel set in Nevada City while I am in Honolulu. For me, I like both ways. Writing from up close can feel pleasantly like an exercise. You can go to the location and describe what you see. Inspiration can flow a little easier.

Being farther away, I set the scene using what stands out the most to me and what seems most important, through the lens of memory. I'm nomadic, so I'm sure in my life, I'll write about where I am and sometimes about where I've been.

Where it's all going down!

So this is (me and) the journal I found to write my research notes and actual scenes in (yes, I'm working on paper again, I just can't help myself!)....

The pink camouflage is actually perfect for the subject of my book, which I will share at some point in the future....

So that's all! Just a pointless post to show you my pink journal. How obsessed am I? Well, now I'm off to the library downtown to work on a scene with 8 new characters! Eek! Major challenge!

Happy Hump Day and Pi Day!

Losing frenzy, gaining trust

I have completed the research for my 2nd book (subject to be announced at a later date) and am 42 pages into my rough draft. As I work, I am struck by the gifts my journey of the last year has given me.

The franticness and frenzy is gone. I don't feverishly write down ideas at 2 a.m. Instead I ponder them for a moment, and let them go, knowing that if they are good ideas they will come back to me in the morning, probably with a new spin or quality enhanced by the nature of my dreams.

I trust myself a lot more. Knowing what I do now about the editing process (how anything can be rewritten, overhauled, moved or re-imagined), I have taken a lot of pressure off the rough draft stage. Instead of worrying about how I will perform in a certain scene, I trust that good dialogue or descriptions will come to me, or I trust in my ability to get down a rough sketch of the scene and then to fill it in when I edit.

Overall, the effect is that I am still excited, still passionate, but just a little more experienced, calmer, and less nervous. My personal growth has enhanced my writing process--just one of the ways that I celebrate the interconnectedness of life.

One year since the loony bin

My husband turned into Santa Claus. My sister turned into an angel. I thought Oprah was building an underwater city and that my landlord was one of the engineers. It was 2012 and the world was ending and Mayans were talking to me. I had an idea for a non profit website called literaryresolution.org. I thought I would be a paid idea editor with my own company, Day By Day Productions. I told one of my best friends to quit her job because I would employ her.

Now, I also told her Mayans were talking to me, so of course she did not fulfill my demands.

We were flying from Honolulu to Nevada City to visit family, and I had already gone four nights without sleep. My husband managed to control me enough so that I did not get arrested. It truly is a miracle I am safe (my psychiatrist later told me about a man with bipolar who said he had a bomb in an airport and was gunned down). I ran screaming through the airport because I thought I was on a TV show, I thought every camera was watching me. On the flight, a flight attendant asked me if I needed anything and I replied "Your babies."

I thought the cookies they gave us on the flight were my idea. I thought I was on a mission to sell these cookies and that if I could sell enough they would let me live in the underwater world that would protect humankind from destruction.

My brother-in-law picked us up from the airport and I told him all about those cookies that would change the world. And something about reading out loud to children. My husband and I drove up to Nevada City. We made it.

My in laws tried to give me sleeping pills. I thought they were trying to kill me. I thought my husband and I were soul mates that would meet again in the afterworld.

36 hours later (I thought Michael Jackson was going to invite me to his house, I thought my friend was turning into Beyonce, I thought I was part jaguar) they took me to the hospital.

I thought I was at a Disney hospital and that they were going to turn my eyes blue and turn me into a Dalmatian and that I would have to search for the blue eyes of my husband because I would be a dog and wouldn't remember anything but his eyes. I thought my aunt was Mother Mary. I thought that I was being punished for the actual experiments that my great grandfather did on salamanders.

I was experiencing stigmata.

The only person I trusted in the hospital was a gay guy in purple scrubs. He looked like a fish to me. He calmed me down.

In the hour long ambulance ride down to the loony bin I thought I was going to Hogwarts. The EMT asked me who wrote the lime in the coconut song and I replied "Harry Nilson." I was smiling and laughing the whole ride. The frowny faces on the laminated paper that have a rank of frowns from 1-10 (levels of pain) kept smiling at me and turning into cyclopses.

Then things got scary. People turned into spiders. I thought I was in a church that was judging people and I thought I was going to hell.

I stayed in the loony bin for five days. I made enemies. I made friends. I refused to eat certain things and had the rest of the people in there offering me the things I liked as if I were their queen.

That was almost a year ago. I'm about a week away from the anniversary. And I feel really effing good. I'm grateful for the people who have kept me safe, who have helped me pay attention to the cracked eggshell pieces as much as the beautiful baby bird.

I know how to deal. Before the big breakthrough, I spent months having minor episodes: not being able to sleep, being out of touch with reality, being super inspired and talking to my muses. I don't have inspiration like that anymore. I am like a mule now: slow and steady. But I have something so much more important:

My health.

What do I do now?

So I finished my book a few weeks ago. YAY!!!!

But now I'm wondering, what the heck do I do now? Do I try to go the traditional route and send queries and synopses and first chapters to agents who get thousands of submissions a year, or do I go the new techy way and try to self promote and self publish and sell it for 99 cents a digital copy on amazon? Or do I say screw it and leave it on the shelf and move on to the next project and not even worry about publishing?

What do I want? Sometimes I say I want to be the Ani DiFranco of writing and start my own publishing house. Sometimes I want all the support that an agent provides. Sometimes I just want to share my work with family and wait til the right books comes out to try and publish.

Is this the right book to push? Should I wait to push the next one?

I have written a query letter that I like, but I really don't want to have to write a synopsis. Is it necessary? I don't know.

What do I want to do now?

I don't know.

Status update: Getting so close!

I am on my last run through my book, doing line edits and little tweaks here and there and also hacking away at it to make it shorter. I only have 22 pages left. I've been doing this round of edits on paper, so when I'm done I have to enter the changes into the computer, and then OMG and then........I'll be done. It's already been two and a half years since I started this project, and soon I will be ready to close the book forever (unless of course an editor suggests some changes, but that would be assuming that I find an agent, and that my agent finds a publisher, and that I'm the luckiest girl in the world).

I honestly don't entertain any hope that this book will be published. I mean, hello its only my first. I know I have so much more to learn and improve on. Which is why....

I've started researching for my next book! It is a stand alone book about a character that I made up five years ago. I'm so excited to get started on it. And the best part is that the research is absolutely fascinating because I am enthralled with the subject (which I cannot state at this time. This is my big secret project).

Anyways, just wanted to let you all know that I'm still fighting/still pushing/still moving forward with my goals and dreams.

I'm not saying I'm back, just wanting to say hello

Hello, Blogging world.

What the heck is going on? It would seem that my second to last post was a year ago, but that is not true. In my manic state, I deleted three months of blog posts. Oh well.

Starting clean.

I have not been writing very much. My wrorgan has not been very hungry. I have been developing a new side of myself, one that is not so obsessed with the dream of getting published. A side of me that cares more about grounding from my heart, being supportive and responsible, and most of all....SLEEPING!

Maybe I'll post now and then to get my brain flowing and satiate the small appetite that my wrorgan now has.

Love love love you guys, because love is a state of consciousness.

Goodbye Blogger For Now

Oh my.  I realize I need a psychological and spiritual retreat.  So I'm closing my blog and doing my inner work.  Wish you all the best on your own journeys. 

And the dedication goes to...

Growing up, only one person encouraged me to be a writer and that's my tenth and twelfth grade English teacher, Mrs. Markovich, who was Japanese and born in the internment camp in Fresno, CA. She would work creative writing into our essays in any way she could. One red ink comment on an essay said, "Either quit talking to Erin or loose the nose ring. You're pushing it." The comment on the next essay said, "You should pursue a career in creative writing." I was 15, so at the time I paid more attention to the bossy comments. For the record, I neither took out the nose ring nor stopped talking to Erin. Not then. Not now.

It amazes me that someone told me what I should do at such a young age. I tried to fit myself into other boxes and didn't really internalize my "destiny" until I was 20, but those words are part of what got me to accepting my novel-writing fate. I can still picture her loopy handwriting in the margin of my essay about the difference between my mom's antique porcelain cows and the new funky clay ones, about the story each cow in the collection had to tell.

The next person to heavily influence my decision to be a novelist, and not just a journaler (because I've always Always kept journals on my own), is my husband. He takes the starving out of artist. He oversees all of my plot decisions. Sometimes he overrides me and sometimes I override him. Together, we keep my books from falling to their death off of cloud 9.

In Mrs. Markovich's class during senior year, I wrote an essay about my (at the time) fatherless state of being. I worked at Macy's and helped a man pick out clothes for his fifteen year old daughter. I watched on with something like envy, bittersweet and wistful. I wasn't the only one. All the worker girls were looking on in awe. It wasn't the shopping that got us. It was the sweetness. How comfortable they were together. I wrote about that moment and how boys didn't like me as much as other girls because my father wasn't around. I was a seed that got stepped on and I needed a man to water me, to make me grow into a beautiful flower that others would notice. I was a very odd sixteen year old, I know.

From all this, stems what I once thought would be the dedication in my first book:

To Mrs. Markovich, for planting the seed
and to Gabriel, the one who watered me.

As you can see, it means a lot and it makes perfect sense. But now I'm not so sure. Shouldn't the first dedication go to your mom? Shouldn't everything go to your mom? She has encouraged me to be whatever I wanted to be, but always jokingly pushed me to be a journalist and be on TV.

Now I have a slew of people who encourage me.

All this is to say is that I'm not sure what my first dedication would be. It is obviously not something to dwell on. Don't worry folks, I actually do write. But its the little things that make up a big dream, and I know I'm not the only unpubbed writer to wonder what that mostly blank page will say.

Have you given thought to your first dedication? If you're already pubbed, was the dedication important to you or something to make light of? Who did you dedicate to and how did you choose that person?

P.S. No matter who I dedicate my books to, rest assured that I will track down Mrs. Markovich and send her a signed copy of each one.

P.P.S. I blogged about a teacher on Monday. Maybe its Teacher Appreciation Week in some other universe and this is the first sign in what will be the sci fi novel of my life that I am actually an alien.

Animal Writes Blogfest

I'm organizing a blogfest! Yay! It goes a little something like this...

Pick any animal.
Write a scene from the viewpoint of that animal. (First person, I should think. Green light on fantastical creatures, so long as they're not usually sentient. So boo hoo hoo for me--no mermaids)
Less than 1000 words.
To be posted on or before Wednesday October 13th.

In my first creative writing class, the teacher (a native American man who went by the name Brightrope and had many names, the rest of which he would not tells us because when someone calls him a certain name then he knows how that person knows him and if he were to go around telling everyone all of his names then the system would be broken) shared a scene he wrote through the viewpoint of a horse. I remember the sweat, the muscles, the flies, the obscured vision. It was a beautiful descriptive scene, and reading I felt like...a horse.

So have fun with this! How does your animal see and hear and feel? It would be cool to get a variety of animals, so I suggest commenting here on what animal you intend to do. But by all means, feel free to duplicate!

I haven't decided my animal yet, but when I do, I'll comment it. I'm thinking maybe a gecko since I have about fifty in my backyard, but I kind of want to try a lion. Cats are always tempting. Decisions. Decisions.

Sign up bellow and leave a comment :)

Also, use the blogfest badge to let your readers know you'll be participating, and hopefully to get a few more writers playing along. The more animals the better!

My least favorite words

Everyone has their least favorite words. My sister's least fave is "delicious," which is so effing funny because people say it ALL THE TIME and every single time, she cringes. Its awesome. Best sister revenge ever. All I have to do is say, "This is delicious" and its pay back for whatever youngest-one-injustice I was suffering.

As a side, my mom's barfs when anyone else does. Actually, she barfs when anyone pretends to be barfing. I only used that twice. I distinctly recall some carrot coming up in a planter box. Sorry Mom.

What makes me gag? Two words that I really don't want to type. I don't want to think them. I don't want to write them. OH NO!! OMG OH NO!! I DON'T WANNA....ohhh here they are..."for me" and "personally."

Achk! aheuyck blfoopflpfl ghg ghgh uhhhh OMG I did it. Now you know. Sure its not as bad as barfing on cue, but it sucks cause people say them ALL THE TIME.

That phrase and that word are totally unnecessary. I remember when I was thirteen in line at a sandwich shop and the girl in front of me said "personally" at the beginning of every other sentence. I almost died.

And "for me" is just as bad. I don't care who you were talking about before, but if you say the word "I" you don't need to put "Me" in front of it!!! Oh and I am talking about the phrase coming at the beginning of a sentence. If you say "none for me" I won't slap you.

What's your least favorite word?

I promise not to use it as revenge. *crosses fingers under desk*

I was watching a TV show and the mom character's least favorite word was "moist." The daughter said it whenever she could, of course. Can you choose the least favorite words of your characters?

Umm...I sorta...can't.

I sympathize with you, Justine. Owwy.

Hiya!! I finished reading Liar by Justine Larbalastier last night. It was a fantastic read. YA. Unique. Hilarious. Witty. Shocking. Just darn good. I've never read anything like it. It was one of those books that makes you smile every other page and has you thinking how clever! how fun! A dynamic family history. An intriguing mix of country and city settings. Plus, where you end up is nowhere near where you think you might at the start...So you know, I recommend it. Just don't let anyone ruin the "truth" behind the lies for you before you read it.

Like a good fangirl, I went on over to Justine Larbalastier's blog. Her newest post says this:

The RSI in my hands and forearms got worse.
I took four weeks off from the computer entirely. I have reorganised my computer setup. I’ve been doing a vast amount of physical therapy. I’m improving. Slowly and frustratingly but surely.

Dang girl. Four weeks! That kind of freaks me out...a lot. As you know, I rewrote my book on paper. Now I'm typing it in. (I'm at 82 computer doc pages btw). Lemme tell ya that it hurts. Typing this much sucks. Writing hurts no matter what I do though. Type. Write on paper. Its just straight up painful. And I haven't been doing this all that long. So I wonder, will I have to take four weeks off someday? Go to physical therapy?

It wouldn't surprise me, but its not something to worry about, since its probably inevitable. In an effort to slow down the process, I always:

1) Put pot butter on my wrists before and after writing (before you get all offended, its pot cocoa butter, like a massage oil and does not have any...mental side effects). It calms my wrists down quite nicely.
2) Wear supportive wrist bands/guards. I wear both when I'm typing. Just the right one when I'm working by hand.
3) Use an ergonomic keyboard.
4) Keep my chair at the right height so that my arms are mostly bent at a ninety degree angle.

It just doesn't seem to be enough though. I'm on the computer probably...eight hours a day, and that is being pretty conservative. At night, I'm still in pain.

Are you plagued by wrist pain? What do you do to prevent it and heal it?

And, don't you just love Liar? I totally can't wait to read the anthology of YA short stories that she and Holly Black (author of Spiderwick) edited called Zombies v Unicorns. Plus, did you know that Justine is married to Scott Westerfield, author of the Uglies trilogy? Oh yes, what a good fangirl I am. Indeed.

The journey to an opening

Hello there!! So...I was reading my book out loud to hubby for the first time. It was rather exhiliarting and kind of scary too. (As a side note...while I read I found myself projecting the voices I imagined my narrators to have, but it didn't feel quite right. When I let myself naturally come up with a voice from the words present as I would with any other book I was reading aloud, the voices that did come out of me were totally shocking. Sort of like, did I do that? The narrators' personalities came off stronger than I'd hoped. Yay!)

At one point Gabriel said, "underline that whole part that you just read." He said that he really really liked that part and we agreed that it was where Joaviz's (one of my narrators) voice comes off the strongest.

The next day, I read posts about openings, and I wondered how much work I would put in to perfect the first five pages. My guess is that it'll be...a lot.

Today I was wondering about what snags me with an opening. (I never read jacket covers and do not pick books for subject matter or plot, so usually its the opening that gets me to read a book). I decided that its voice. Of course. I talk about voice a lot, don't I? Well, yeah. All writers do. Without a strong voice, you got shit. That's just the way it goes.


So, I'm thinking that I will take the section that gave us the strongest sense of Joaviz's voice and have it be my opening. Even though it comes from a few scenes later, I've found a way to work it into the very first scene.

This could change, of course, but I'm definitely on the path to the right opening. (Its already changed three times.) Here's the part I'm referring to:

Lily says I’m a scene girl, but I say I’m Old Hollywood plus punk.

Lately though, its just been black black black. Its not that I’m turning goth or black-cat-camera-eye (that’s what me and Lil call those slam poetry types). I’m not trying to mourn too soon. I’m not trying to do anything.

When I wake up and get dressed, I might wear a bright green t-shirt around the house, but I can’t get myself to go outside in anything but black, and maybe a little olive green. 

--
I tend to not like openers that feel gimmicky, like "I was about to learn that life wasn't fair" or "That was the summer that changed everything." If there's an audible voice and an interesting character, then I'm usually sold.

What are your favorite types of openers? How did you choose your own opening?