This week has been a delightful one. First of all, my new Metloef bodhran (Irish drum) arrived in the mail on Monday, and I'm so looking forward to recording with it.





Secondly, the Old House of Stiefvater is getting pretty empty, and the New House of Stiefvater, two hours away is getting pretty empty (as is evidenced by the above video). Our move in date of the 31st, right before I head off to BEA, is looking actually plausible.



Thirdly, I have those two Virginia events (Fredericksburg and Alexandria) with John Corey Whaley tomorrow and the next day, and I adore Corey, and not just because I love his book and he looks like Samwise.



Fourthly, I am working on the sequel to THE RAVEN BOYS and it is going well, so everything in the world is rosy that can possibly be better by being rosy, and all things that are bad when rosy are not rosy at all. 



Anyway, all this delightfulness and rosiness reminded me that I haven't addressed reader questions in awhile, and there was one question that multiple readers asked in multiple ways, both in my blog and at last night's chat. Here it is:



Is your office in your home? If you are alone in a very quiet house all day with no children or husband underfoot, how do you get yourself going each day and stay motivated to write without dropping everything and putting in a load of wash? These are the kinds of things I wonder about my favorite authors... 




I have a question! Though I don't want to infringe on your privacy, so if you'd rather ignore it I totally understand. I'm just wondering how you balance young kiddos and writing - do they get to go on tour with you? :)




I do indeed have children, Thing 1 and Thing 2. They predate my writing career by a very little bit, but not my art career, which had a lot of the same demands. Namely, that my office was in the house, there was a lot of travel, my hours were theoretically amorphous and flexible. I had the Stiefvater Things pretty early in life, so I basically have always had both children and a career.



Here's something that I should put right out front: both of those things are very important to me. I'm not going to do percentages or a pie chart, but I should tell you that I always knew I wanted a creative career and that having children was going to complement that dream, not crash it. I firmly believe that if you don't believe the same thing — that you are entitled to a career same as any other human of any other gender — you will not accidentally fall into an agreeable parent-career balance. 



 Now that that's out of the way, the practical nitty-gritties. Part of this question is really about time-management. I've blogged about this before. In some respects, kids, laundry, day jobs, cat litter boxes, lawn mowing, college courses, and freelance fighter pilot lessons are all the same: they are all demands on your time. And so it just comes down to prioritizing and being clever and honest about the time you really do have.



Next, the womb warts themselves: Things 1 and 2 have known for a very long time that my writing and art are important career things for me, and so they respect quiet time when I'm on deadline and they're home from school. And before they knew about careers and paying the rent, they had an established "quiet time" — at first they had a nap from 12-2 every day, and then, when they no longer napped, they knew they had to watch a movie in their room with the door closed or play quietly with the door closed or devise evil plans that will eventually come back to bite me with the door closed.



Next, next, Lover: My husband has always been supportive of my career, because he knew I took it seriously. If your Lover doesn't feel the same way, I highly suggest you get an upgrade.



Next, next, next: Last year, I was away from home more than I was home and I wrote two novels. Lover quit his job to help with the kids, and I brought all of them or some of them along when I could. But it's important to point out that before that, I was writing and touring and Lover was working full time himself, and we still pulled it off. We have a good parental network within an hour's drive, so that definitely helped, and we also were equally committed to each person getting down what they needed to get done. We wanted it to work. So we made it work. There is a way, I promise. I wrote Lament on Wednesdays only, from 4-6 p.m., because I was working such long hours with my art show stuff. It took me four months. It can be done, I PROMISE.



Next, next, next, last: Women. There is a lot of guilt associated with taking time for your career versus spending time nurturing children. Every time you leave the house and the kids have a babysitter or a substandard dinner or no bedtime story, our culture screams at us for being bad mothers. But guess what. Working mothers are not bad mothers. Women who have a sense of self-identity, either through a career or through a home-based activity, are women that kids respect. My father was on an air craft carrier for six months out of the year when I was a kid. I adored him and still do, and what's more — I'm pretty much just like him. So it's not the amount of time you spend sitting in the presence of your kids. It's how you use that time.



So: Prioritize. Educate those close to you. Surround yourself with like-minded people. And kick some ass.

Recall, gentle reader, that I promised you the tale of the Trampoline of Doom. Here is that tale. It's a short one. More like a encyclopedic entry in the Great Big Book of Items of Doom than anything else.



I came across it while I was in California for a wedding*. My entire extended family and I had rented a Very Spiffy House in Santa Barbara for the occasion. If you have not been to California or to Santa Barbara or met my family, I highly recommend it. All of these things offer a wide variety of activities. Below is a photo journal of such things.



Well, mostly I just played a lot of pool. I considered a photo montage of all of the days and times my sister took photos of my playing pool, but it wasn't really interesting to anyone but the pool table's mother. So you get just one.








I also shopped for dresses for the ALA Printz event in June. Like an adult. Like a normal adult woman. I was shopping like a pro.












Uh, no, I didn't buy anything.



I also did some research for the sequel to THE RAVEN BOYS. This is the Chumash Painted Cave, which dates from the 1600s "or something." I'm paraphrasing from the historic marker.









Then I did more research by going to see one of the country's largest fig trees.










No. I don't think you get it. I said one of the country's Largest. Capital L.










I also enjoyed senselessly unending sunshine and aggressively beautiful landscapes from the front yard of our rental.








Which is where I found the Trampoline of Doom.










Let me break this down for you, what you're seeing.










That's right, it's an in-ground trampoline, designed for safety. You can't jump off and tangle your limbs in anything except grass. Pretty brilliant. Also, you could hide bodies in the pit underneath it. That's a free bonus suggestion right there. Anyway, it's the paragon of safety. Until you zoom out.










Let me break down THIS scene for you.










That's right. This trampoline, far from being a paragon of safety, is actually a way to get rid of unwanted children. Tired of bad grades? Disappointing skin tone? Substandard room cleaning action? Simply tell them to go out to play on the trampoline and your problem is solved!

Needless to say,



Thing 1 and Thing 2 mostly swam in the pool.

I am finally, finally, finally back home. I was sort of back home last week, after being out on tour for two weeks, but then I had to fly back out to California for five days of sort-of wedding (don't ask.) and I had no brain for blogging. But today I am home. Finally, finally, finally. I need to do a blog post on both the Trampoline of Insanity and on handling critique as a writer and artist, but because I am behind on posting about bits and pieces, I'm going to first do a post about them.

Piece #1: On May 15th, I am doing a live chat with Lucy Christopher, hosted by Figment and This is Teen. We'll be talking about how we build character and anything else you can think to ask us. Details here. Oh, in fact, here is my face inviting you to come:





Bit #2: I will briefly be in the UK in the middle of June. I'll be doing things like the Hay Festival. I don't know how many other public events I'll be scheduled for (it's largely a research trip and - gasp - vacation! what are these things!?), but I'll post them on Facebook and here when I get them.



Stuff #3: Domestically (that makes me think of vacuuming), I will be at BEA in New York City in June, too. Also ALA, in Anaheim. I don't have the final details on either of those things either, but I figured I should put that out there. Also, as I mentioned in a previous post, I'll be doing two events in my home stomping grounds in Virginia in just a little over a week. All of my events are always here.



Thing #4: Will Patton is narrating the audiobook of The Raven Boys, which comes out on September 18th, same as the hardcover. I really wanted him to do it, and I'm really glad he agreed to. His version of it is so compelling, and just today they've released the sample (including some Maggie-composed-music): http://soundcloud.com/scholasticaudio/the-raven-boys



 





Piece #5: I have a new app on Facebook that lets you read the first two chapters of all of my books for free (including The Raven Boys). Oh, technology. What a mench.



Stuff #6: I didn't have a chance to talk about how much I adored touring with Siobhan Vivian, Elizabeth Eulberg, John Corey Whaley, and Daniel Handler (also known as Lemony Snicket), but I did. They're all lovely, weird people and I'd share a cookie with any of them. I think this photo of Corey, Daniel, and I is my favorite of the bunch.



 



Next up, later in the week: the Trampoline of Doom. (I first typed that as the Trampolice of Doom, which sounds like an important sci-fi short story that your dad read in the 70s.)

I'm aware that many exciting things have happened in my life in the last week, but for me, the most immediately exciting is the fact that I managed to pull off making avocado sushi rolls.



I am very motivated by food.

LOVER: There is some sort of flavor to these things that I'm not sure about, but it doesn't seem to stop me from eating them.
ME: How many have you eaten?
LOVER: 11.

It is a sort of food that requires a preparation very similar to that of making Play-Doh snakes, and I like that.

I am easily pleased.

I apologize for my blog radio silence. You don't have to tell me that I've been bad. The weight of my shame dogs my footsteps. That said, it's not entirely without reason. I've been on the road since the 13th (I'm now in that stage of touring where time feels imaginary, which is why I'm posting on my blog at 3 a.m. in the morning), and in lieu of any actual words left in my brain, I'll show some pictures.

My first step on the tour was Houston Teen Book Con, which I attended with my fellow Scholastic authors Siobhan Vivian (The List) and Elizabeth Eulberg (Take a Bow). After an action packed day of panels back-to-back, we were supposed to rent a car and drive to Austin to meet our editor, David Levithan, and have an event there.

I figured that when Scholastic meant "rent a car," they meant, rent this:

So I did. Siobhan, Elizabeth, and I blasted up the highway from Houston to Austin at nearly the speed limit sometimes and then we arrived in Austin in time for an event at Book People. You see us here with David moderating.

Then David tried to drive the Camaro back (I fought him for the keys and lost). But you can see that the Camaro took its own revenge. It's not designed for Davids. Camaros are designed for Maggies. (As you can see from this photo which is NOT from this week but rather three weeks ago when I took my real-life, non-rented, much-older Camaro to the track):



This is what happens with Davids behind the wheel:



Then it was time to drive back to Houston for TLA. I think my favorite event there was the Scholastic Breakfast. I remember when a crowd this size would've made me hide under a table.



The reason I loved this event, aside from the fantastically passionate Texas librarians, is the format. It was a Reader's Theater, which meant that the authors were assigned a role from a scene in each book, and together, we acted them out with fairly hilarious results. Some of us were thespians. Others of us were just hams. (This is Elizabeth Eulberg, me, Michael Northrop, and Augusta Scattergood).



And it was also the first event ever where I talked about The Raven Boys in public. We acted out a scene that nobody else has heard, which was fairly awesome and terrifying.



The day was closed out with the YART dinner, where all of the authors got together and milled with librarians. I don't drink, but I'm aware these photos of Siobhan, Elizabeth, and I, will not convince you of this.





Then it was on a plane to California! Siobhan and I met up with Libba Bray and Pete Hautman (winner of the LA Times Book Award!! whoo, Pete!) Our first event was at Mrs. Nelson's, a delightful indie. We did blog interviews first.



We'd admired our wall of books second.



Then we had another panel, moderated/ barely controlled by David again.



Then it was time for the LA Festival of Books. Two action-packed days of signing and panels. And lots of sunshine, which is nice. Why aren't more book things outdoors? Oh, right, because they aren't all in California. Alas. Alack.



Anyway, that brings me to today. To 3 a.m. California time. Now I'm meeting up with fellow Printz honoree Daniel Handler and Printz winner John Corey Whaley for another three days of events in LA and San Francisco. Okay, that's a lie. David & I actually already met with Corey, and I have photos on my phone of him not enjoying sushi. But they're the sort of bad photos of contorted faces that you save for blackmail later. Or at least I do.

Just a tiny bit over a year ago, my author hero Diana Wynne Jones died. I wrote a letter to her on my blog that she would never see and mourned that there would be no more Diana Wynne Jones books. Now, the blogosphere is alight with a celebration of her life, and her editor asked if I would be a part of it. I struggled to think of what I could say in addition to the letter I already wrote her, and I think the best thing is to just repost the letter and then add what I missed at the end. And please, any of you guys who also loved her — please post your experiences with her books on your blogs and twitter and Facebook so that this whole week can be one big love-fest of DWJ fans.

Dear Diana,

I found out yesterday that you'll be discontinuing the chemotherapy you'd been undergoing for your lung cancer and I realized it was time to write a letter. Past due time.

Again and again in interviews, I've listed your books and career as one of my main influences, but I never actually told you directly. So here goes. When I was a young, evil child, I read your books again and again. I'm pretty sure I stumbled on Charmed Life and The Lives of Christopher Chant first, during my years living in between the shelves of my public library. Then Archer's Goon and The Ogre Downstairs, checked out again and again. Then I hit on Fire and Hemlock, which I didn't like the first time, partially because I was too young and partially because my sister loved it, and there was no way I was going to be caught dead loving something that she loved. She must feel so vindicated now that I've finally agreed to love it.

All the while I was writing horrible books with overwrought characters and dreaming of being an author.

Then some summer I hit upon Dogsbody and I know I did other things that summer, but I don't remember any of them. Because I read Dogsbody back to back six times. I still remember laying on my bed -- on a hot, muggy, thunderstorming Virginia afternoon -- closing the last page of the book, sighing, and then flipping it back over to the front to read it again, not even getting up to stretch my legs.

And somewhere along the way, I decided, that was why I wanted to be an author. I wanted to be that author who changed someone's life. Not through deep and weight philosophical tomes, but merely by the sheer physical weight of the days spent lost in the pages and mood of the book. So much of my childhood was reading and so many of those books were yours. So even after hitting the bestseller list and getting lovely emails from around the globe, my favorite ones are still the ones that say: "I have reread Shiver or Ballad or Lament 14 times."

Thank you so much for being part of my childhood and adulthood and everything in between. I owe a debt more than any letter sent via e-mail or post could say, and I'm sorry that it took bad news for me to send it.

The other day, I pulled out Fire and Hemlock and reread it for the first time in years. And you know what I did when I got to the end? I flipped it back around and started reading it again.

Yours,

Maggie

I'm reading it again and thinking, what can I add to that? I don't know if I can. Maybe just additional gratitude for how her body of work and her career continues to support me as an adult. Every time I wonder what my goal is with each book that I'm writing, I think about opening a Diana Wynne Jones novel and seeing that page "also by Diana Wynne Jones" — with her list of other books. And I'd run my eyes down the list to see if I'd missed any, and I'd remember the ones that I loved particularly, and I'd feel that warm glow of knowing I had so many options of Diana-books to dive into when I was done with this one. I would like to do that, Diana. I don't know if I can pull if off like you did . . . that's a bit of a lofty goal. But if I can come close, that would be a pretty amazing life.

Man, I'm revoltingly excited to let you guys know that Entertainment Weekly is giving an exclusive peek at The Raven Boys -- they have the first two chapters up for you to read here.

I hope you like them. *ulcer*

I always think this moment will be less ulcertastic with each novel, but, no. No, that first moment of the book getting out there is always like that moment when the roller coaster first starts to plunge . . .

I'd be able to pack faster if I didn't want people to think I was a magician.

Tomorrow morning first thing I'm headed off to the airport to begin two weeks of touring to fun places (Texas! California! Texas! California!), which means today I have to pack for two weeks of touring to fun places. There are a few difficulties associated with long term packing:

A) One never knows what the weather will be, and in 2012, one knows even less. One could pack for all possibilities, but that would not be space efficient. Tis better to gamble, gentle reader. Better to gamble.

B) One has to pack for multiple dress codes. I have simplified this process considerably by refusing to wear anything but jeans since 2008, but occasionally there are extenuating circumstances. For instance, I have to attend the LA Times Book Award reception where THE SCORPIO RACES is a finalist, knowing that if I win, I will have to stand in front of everyone. I will break my jeans-rule for that. I have a dress I can crush into the size of my eyeball that I can wear, but the shoes will be annoying. Maybe I can wear my combat boots.

C) One has to abide by TSA standards. So that means no more than 3, 3 ounce bottles of fluid in carry on, and nothing that you could poke someone's eye out before gaining control of the plane and using it to fly to Tahiti. Also one has to be able to whip their lap top out in security.

D) One has to hoard food whenever possible. Maggies are allergic to some preservatives and intolerant of others (which you might be too, to some degree)(although hopefully it doesn't make all your hair fall out and your skin slough like it does to me). So one must find room to stuff bags of cookies and possibly loaves of bread, like a hobbit or Peeta would do.

E) One must bring the office. One is always on a deadline, so the lap top and the charger and the iPod and the headphones must come along. Otherwise one's editor begins to make squinty eyes.

F) One probably has to look cool in public while carrying the stuff. It had to be said. I think it's important to counteract all the cranky, tired, deflated people I see in airports whenever possible. Which is why I usually pack in this for trips a week or less:



Every little bit helps.

And then, of course, if you are me, there is also:

G) One must convince others that one is a magician.

Basically, what I'm trying to tell you is this: every time someone says "I can't believe you got ___ weeks of travel into ___ bags," or some variant, I get an additional 10 minutes added to my life. 10 minutes might not seem like very much to you, but go eat a cookie and time yourself. Do you see how many cookies you can consume in 10 minutes? A lot. It adds up.

So it has become not only a matter of convenience but a matter of pride that nothing short of a month-long-book-tour can break me and send me packing a bag I have to check in at baggage. Everything else I will make fit into carry-on bags. Through sheer force of will.

Which means that today, packing day, becomes all about me trying to get as much of A-F into my luggage while still accomplishing G. And I use all my old techniques: packing jeans that will stand me wearing them two or three times. Packing layers instead of sweaters. Packing only what I need and not what I think I might possibly need. Rolling everything instead of folding it. Eventually, after working away at it for an hour, I end up with one or two or three weeks of outfits and my duffel spread out on the floor. And things of course don't fit, because you can't fit two weeks of touring into a duffel bag, no matter how good you are at packing.

Which is when I use magic.

Because I'm a magician. No, really.

In my continued attempt to answer reader questions, I decided to pull another one out of the stack today. Some of the questions I got were quite specific (like “what font did you use for the chapter headings in Lament?), so I’m trying to hit the ones that have the most universal relevance first. Here’s one I though might interest multiple people.

What's considered too much? My book is hovering at a precarious 156,000 words, and I'm not even halfway through the plot. I've run it by some people and so far they don't think I can cut any of what I have already. Of course that will change later, but how do I where the line between a long book and rambling is?

There are a few things you should know about me.

1. One of my eternal fears is being boring. It means when you ask me a question out in public, I will always try to answer in as few words as possible, and then I will pause to analyze your facial expression. If your eyebrows are still saying that you are interested, I’ll shoot more at you. If I’m at all not certain about the status of your eyebrows, I will fall silent and give you a chance to escape to powder your nose.



2. I write young adult novels. I like bucking the system and setting fire to expectations and other amusing pastimes, but I don’t do those things without good reason. That means that I am aware that most young adult novels are between 50,000 and 90,000 words long, and I will do my level best to put my story into that many words unless badly pressed.

3. I believe you can always cut. When I wrote the first draft of THE RAVEN BOYS, it was a monster — 40,000 words too long, in my opinion. I went through the draft and cut out a word here and there, a redundant sentence here and there, and lo and behold, I lost 40,000 words without removing a single scene. That means I kept all of the action in a book 2/3rds shorter. There is always more you can cut out of a manuscript. There’s always a shorter way to say something. A chapter is like an equation: solve for x. You can start out with a huge long equation and get it down to x = 32 x 11, and that might accomplish what you want. But never forget that you could always strip it all the way down to just this, if you had to: x.

4. I think nearly any writing question can be answered by looking at it from the perspective of a reader. So when the question is: “is eight narrators too many?” imagine books you read with loads of narrators. When the question is: “can I tell this story entirely through flashbacks?” remember how you react to it as a reader. When the question is “is length a problem?” try your level best to recall everything you feel about long books. How they affect your purchase decision, how they affect your decision to pick them up out of your TBR pile, how they make you feel when you’re halfway through. The answer will be different for every reader, but the best thing you can manage is to write honestly for the reader you are.*

*not the reader you wish you were, either, by the way. no cheatsies.

How does all this boil down in regards to our question above? Well, like this. At some point in the world of word count, a manuscript ceases to be a story and begins to be an assault.

You don’t want to be that person who gets asked a question and goes on and on without checking the eyebrows for permission. It is better to leave them wanting. You don’t have to solve entirely for x, but if you leave your book in epic form, it becomes an equation that fewer and fewer readers have the desire to solve. I don’t know if you remember my post about gimmee points, but exceptional wordiness is a decision you have to make consciously. You have to be aware it’s going to limit your audience every time you go over the standard length for your genre. Personally, I’d rather use my gimmee points elsewhere.

Because too often length is not a conscious story choice. It’s a sign the author doesn’t really know their own story. That the focus has been adjusted too wide. That the prose is sloppy. And when I say too often, I mean, pretty damn often.

You might convince me that your 156,000 word novel needs to be that long. But I will then turn around to my bookshelf and pull out my favorites in multiple genres and quote numbers at you:

ANANSI BOYS (adult genre sci-fi/fantasy): 107,972
ENDER’S GAME (adult genre sci fi): 100,609
THE NIGHT CIRCUS (adult literary)(ish): 120,937
TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE (Adult literary): 155,717*

SAVING FRANCESCA (YA literary): 58,782
HUNGER GAMES (YA genre): 99,750
WHERE THINGS COME BACK (YA contemporary): 56,527**

*this is the fattest book on my shelf at the moment, apart from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.
**you can find out more numbers here at Renaissance Learning.

So is x>156,000 a good length for your book? It is, if you can answer the question like this:

“I can’t cut anything from this manuscript.”

But you’d better be right.