This week’s Road Trip Wednesday over at YA Highway asks: What author’s career would you love to emulate?

There’s no one author I’d model my career on; I think each writer’s life is different and varied enough that it’s pretty impossible to find others who are in exactly the same boat as you. That being said, my career aspiration since about halfway through my MFA has been to find a way to write full-time–to be a career writer. Barring that, it’s been to find a job that doesn’t intrude on my life so much that I can’t write. It’s not that writing is all there is. It’s that it’s the way I know I can make the greatest positive impact on others and still feel happy and fulfilled.

There are a few writers who exemplify the sort of life (and attitudes) that I’m aiming for. The big one is Ursula K. Leguin. Her writing not-with-standing–and she’s a great, great writer; a beautiful stylist who tackles big ideas in her books; stunningly smart; unafraid to demand respect “despite” the fact that she writes genre works–she says some stuff on the FAQ of her website that I’ve found incredibly inspiring:

Who helped/hindered you in your early career?

My parents never encouraged me in the sense of making a fuss about what I wrote or praising my determination to write. They encouraged me greatly in the sense that they believed that if you have a talent, you ought to work hard at it.

When I was getting near college age, my father talked with me about getting a ‘salable skill’ — learning a trade that I could live on. Because most writers don’t earn enough from writing to buy catfood, this was wise advice. I loved languages, so I went into French and Italian literature in college, and went on for higher degrees that would qualify me to teach.

Then when I got married, my husband never questioned my right to write. This is fairly rare, especially in husbands. My advice to young writers is, if you can’t marry money, at least don’t marry envy.

When I was young, the few older writers I knew were encouraging; and the writers who are my friends now are generous people with a strong sense of community. I keep away from writers who think art is a competition for fame, money, prizes, etc. What matters is the work.

How do you feel about your life now? What would you change or wish had been different?

I love living almost as well as I love writing.

It was tough trying to keep writing while bringing up three kids, but my husband was totally in it with me, and so it worked out fine. Le Guins’ Rule: One person cannot do two fulltime jobs, but two persons can do three fulltime jobs — if they honestly share the work.

The idea that you need an ivory tower to write in, that if you have babies you can’t have books, that artists are somehow exempt from the dirty work of life — rubbish.

I’ve probably quoted the above a gazillion times, here and elsewhere. And I never get tired of it.

Another author whose career I’ve recently found inspiring is Maggie Stiefvater. She’s young–twenty-eight, I believe?–but has been making a life for herself via artistic pursuits for years now. I’m reading her book Shiver right now and it’s so good that it hurts. She’s also a bit of a dabbler–portrait painter, (kind of goofy) musician, amateur animator–and she wrote this about the subject, which I found incredibly spot-on. Her career’s built slowly; she wasn’t one of those debut authors who got a six-figure contract right-out-the-gate. But now she has one. Which I think says something about dedication and hard work and sheer awesomeness paying off. We tend to hold up the Stephenie Meyers of the world as an example: must be successful immediately, and young, must be fresh and new and perfect and stunning on our first try. I think that there is room for other narratives of success, other models. I think Maggie’s success is proof of that.

Amazing video blog from YA Rebel Victoria Schwab on risk taking:

I have to say, one of the ways I think that an MFA was not helpful for me was that it made me more afraid to take risks in my poetry. I have a very loud, very vocal internal editor already. In my very last workshop, I quite literally made apologies for emotional content in my poetry.

And I love emotional content. In 2007 and before, before I came here, I never even considered sentiment a risk.

This might have something to do with why I hardly write poetry these days. I’ll get an idea (I think of ideas in my head as seedlings–admittedly a hackneyed metaphor but I think creative ideas germinate in exactly the same way) and think “How can I make this a good story?” rather than “How can I distill this into a poem?” Part of this, sure, is that I’ve gotten used to having space to develop my ideas–poetry forces you into a sort of conciseness that fiction, even spare, sparse fiction, doesn’t. But I know that part of this is fear. I can take risks in fiction that I don’t feel comfortable taking in poetry. I’m undoubtedly more skilled, more controlled, but to be an effective artist you need to be able to forgo control every once in awhile to make an emotional impact.

I’m not sure what the cure is for this, except, perhaps, time (and maybe intoxication? That’s helped in the past, but I’m too busy these days to be drunk, which is probably a shame). Right now, I’ve been focusing on fiction–and sitting back passively, waiting for the poems to come. Victoria’s vlog is a nice reminder that sometimes, you have to grab these things, to be proactive, to be rash.

(Oh, and if you’re not following the yarebels, and you like YA fiction, you should be.)

In fact, the poems of James Davis and Jessica Hammack (would link, but they’re, like, sitting in my kitchen instead of on the internet) are making me incredibly happy right now.

In related news, Jordan’s been playing Europa Universalis III all day today. He named his army The First MFA Army, so that he could say things like “The MFA Army has no leaders! The MFA Army is underfunded! The MFA Army is starving to death!” to make me giggle. Life is all right, I think.

I’ve been meaning to write a blog post on editing for awhile, but I’ve been busy . . . editing! Who would have thunk it?

I’ve said before that editing is hard work. That’s true. But I don’t think the phrase “hard work” really even begins to encompass the sort of hard work it really is. Last week, I was deep, deep, deep in editing hell. The eighth circle of editing hell, which is, I think, where writers who feel like frauds live.

I’d already added a few chapters to my novel and marked up the manuscript for line-editing, something I’ve come to think of, thanks to Saundra Mitchell as decrufting. Just marking up these changes took about two weeks in total, perhaps because the core of THE STONE SORTER was created in about a month for NaNoWriMo and was, therefore, a bit of a mess. To give you an idea, and because I always find this sort of thing interesting, here’s some snapshots of a few MS pages:

But about halfway through committing these pages to computer file, another beta reader finished the book. And suggested changes–big changes. And she was right. But what she was suggesting was a lot of work–ohgodthework–and I suddenly hit a wall, a flip-out wall, the first big one that I’ve hit since starting to write long-form fiction. It felt insurmountable. I was suddenly a hack, unable to see these things for myself–and how could I ever expect to get an agent and be published if I couldn’t see these things for myself?!

In her blog, Gretchen McNeil refers to this as the “Faux Suckitude Doldrums.” I think it’s a perfect name, she gives a completely terrific definition:

Faux Suckitude Doldrums -noun \foʊ sʌkˌɪˌtud ˈdoʊldrəmz\
A morbid state of self-imposed dejection whereby the writer/artist/musician has convinced his- or herself that they suck beyond all hope of redemption and the best and most effective course of action is to crawl under the bed and hide there until the zombie apocalypse of the coming of the Anitchrist, whichever occurs first.

Example: – “I’m thinking that I should just burn this manuscript and then cut off my hands so I can never inflict my pathetic excuse for fiction on the planet ever again.” – “Dude, put the machete down. You’re just suffering from FSD. Have some chocolate.”

In my feelings of terribleness, I decided that her writing about it was a completely great excuse to email her. So I did. And you know what’s great about YA writers, especially Gretchen McNeil? They’re really, really nice. She wrote me a totally reassuring and generous email back, the gist of which was: Quit worrying and keep writing. That evening, I wasn’t convinced. But I watched a few episodes of SuperNanny (perfect for times like these, when you don’t want to make any decisions for yourself but instead have the morality of a situation spelled out for you. Oh, those terrible parents!), slept on it, had a good conversation with my beta reader again the next morning, and realized what I had to do.

I had to keep at it, of course.

Which is where I am now. I’ve added another chapter, done some more shifting, have two or three more chapters to add, at least, before I think the knots will be untied, but I continue to press forward.

And improve. Which feels odd, in a way. After I finished this MS, I was all aflutter at how much I’d learned about novel writing in a year: that I need to know how the story ends, and the major stumbling blocks the characters face, and that I need to write a fairly clean MS to have any chance in hell of editing, and all of that. But the passages I’ve added are better written than what’s come before, and I don’t think it’s just on account of having more time to write them. Because I recently went back to a short story I wrote this summer and excised about 800 unnecessary words, easily. Editing, I realize, is a skill, too–and, like writing, one best learned by doing. Maybe that should have been self-evident. But at least now I feel okay going a little easier on myself (myself, mind you–not my drafts!), because I am, of course, still learning.

The Guardian recently posted some rules for fiction writing from fiction writers (Part One, Part Two). Some were terrific. Some I disagree with pointedly (what’s with all the internet hate? Any time I try to turn it off while writing, I just end up running to the computer every few minutes to “research.” The internet is as much a tool as it is a potential distraction). But it made me realize that I’ve learned a few things, too. I’m not full-of-myself enough to give you ten, but here’s five lessons I’ve learned the hard way:

1. Writing makes you a writer. Nothing else–not self-identification or delusions of grandeur or academic credentials. When people ask me about MFA programs now (and oh, do they ask!), I tell them that they’re a good place to make friends, drink, and avoid student loan payments. But they do nothing to make you a writer. Writing makes you a writer (and of course, plenty of MFAs don’t write any more while they’re in their MFA program than they do out of them. If you can’t write while working a desk job, you probably can’t write with a pile of papers to grade and friends urging you to go get smashed, either.)
2. A novel is a problem to be solved. Which is to say, your characters must face problems and solve them, but also you, as a writer, need to be actively engaged in resolving your characters’ conflicts too. Otherwise you just have a 300-page-vignette of word vomit, and the reader won’t care. Or this reader won’t, at least.
3. Novels are written in two places: while you have the manuscript in front of you, and at quiet moments when you’re doing something else, like going for walks or staring out the train window on your morning commute. Or in the shower. Give yourself time to be in it. This makes you a terrible guest at parties, but a much better writer.
4. Eventually, your characters will get away from you. Let them. This is scary at first, and will make you sound and feel like a 12-year-old fanfiction writer. But if your characters don’t have their own motivations, then you’ve failed to breathe life into them. Let them become their own people and shape their situation, not their actions, to drive the plot.
5. Write. When inspired, write. When in doubt, write. You’re smart enough to get through this, but smart isn’t enough. Talented isn’t enough. If you’re not working so hard it hurts, you’re not working hard enough.