“Hey guys,” she said, a nervous smile spreading across her face. We all nodded back and I gave her a little smile. I was new to poker too and it was more than obvious she was newer than me.
Her hands shook as she stacked up her chips in little piles, hiding the larger values behind the higher stacks of smaller value chips, as if we wouldn’t notice them back there. A newbie mistake, but one I understood. I had only started playing a few months ago on a whim and turned it into a weekend obsession. Well, maybe a full-time obsession if you counted all the hours I spent reading books by Harrington.
The dealer tossed out the cards to each of us, each card lightly skimming the felt and landing in front of us. Not one askew.
I waited until all the cards had been dealt before picking mine up. I noticed she, the girl with the long red hair, picked up each card as it fell. Big faux pas, but I wasn’t about to call her on it.
I glanced at my cards. Two jacks. A pair to start was great, but I knew enough to be cautiously optimistic. The flop could bring anything. I held my expression steady, not wanting to reveal it.
She held her breath. My guess? She had a good hand too. A gasp signifies surprise, a sigh means a bad hand. I had to watch her.
The flop came out king, queen, ten – a rainbow. I had a high pair and a straight potential. She looked down at her chips, her fingers fiddling with them.
“Is it my bet?” she asked the dealer, flashing him a big smile. The other guys at the table rolled their eyes as one by one, they chucked their cards to the dealer. It wasn’t her turn and based on all the folds, it was mine now.
“After him,” the dealer said politely, pointing at me.
I looked at her, trying to get a measure of how strong her hand was compared to mine. She pulled her hands off of her chips and stopped smiling as I stared at her. In fact, she stopped looking at me altogether and took another glance at her cards. Another tell.
I felt my blood pump harder, knowing that she wasn’t sure if her hand was good, otherwise she wouldn’t have looked at the flop again. If it was a winner, she might have stared back at me, but she didn’t.
I love trees. Ask my husband who has had to endure me planting at least a new tree every year in our yard. Unfortunately I'm about to kill a lot of them.
Revision on my novel begins soon. While I write the entire novel on my laptop, including any notes I need to take or journaling I do about the novel, I have to read my drafts on paper. My printer is about to get quite a workout.
Not only will I be printing out the 200 pages I wrote, but I'll also be printing out the notes given to me on my first two chapters by my
SCBWI crit group, any notes my hubby makes and all of the comments made on
Nathan Bransford's blog when my first page was critiqued by over 50 strangers.
I'm going to read, highlight and mark with tabs. I'm going to brainstorm, take notes and hand-write new passages.
To make this process even more fun, I'm going to Target on Thursday to buy myself a fancy three-ring binder to hold all of the pieces of sacrificial dead tree in one neat and tidy spot. Can't wait!
I also wanted to give you a heads up that tomorrow I'll be taking part in a new group blog. I will update this post tomorrow with the link. We'll be hosting contests and giving away some awesome swag! Hope you stop by!!!
Hate Crime
They teased him mercilessly. I could tell he wanted to cry, but he gathered every ounce of strength within him and held firm. He stood feet apart, shoulders slumped and listened to their taunts.
“Hey, I thought you were supposed to be smart. Haven’t you looked in the mirror lately?”
“What, are you some kind of genetic abnormality? No one is as stupid as you. Must be a disgrace to your people.”
He didn’t do anything, didn’t say anything.
He wasn’t an idiot, not even close. I’d always thought he was smart, even though he’d faced challenges since he was little. He’d attended therapy for years and finally caught up, but the other kids didn’t see that. They only saw the little boy who couldn’t pronounce the letter “s” until third grade, the little boy who was slow to learn reading, the little boy who never raised his hand in class for fear of being wrong.
Adam stood firm as the boys laughed and walked away. He didn’t move from his spot, like he was frozen in place. I walked over and wrapped my arms around him. I didn’t care who saw. He was my little brother and I loved him, but there were parts of him I worried I would never understand.
Mom and Dad adopted Adam when he was just a baby. There were complications after Mom had me and she’d been unable to have another baby so they turned to international adoption, Korea to be exact.
I’d loved Adam since the day he came home. In my heart I felt responsible for my mom’s infertility and I’d promised myself I’d always take care of Adam. He was my redemption.
“Why don’t you say anything?” I whispered in his ear. He pushed me away, embarrassed to be seen in my arms. I didn’t blame him, he was ten and I was his stupid older sister. His sister with the golden curls and blue eyes, the one who looked nothing like him.
“You don’t understand,” he said with a sniffle. “I’m Asian, I’m supposed to be smart. I’m adopted, which makes me different. I’m not as smart as I should be either. They have every right to make fun of me.”
“They do not,” I insisted. “None of that it who you are inside, Adam. You are awesome. Why don’t you see that like I do?”
He turned away from me, his shoulders heaving. I didn’t dare try to turn him around. I could hear the tears falling and I knew he wouldn’t want me, or anyone else, to see.
“I’m not allowed to say anything,” he said slowly, annunciating each word.
“I don’t care what she says,” I spat back at him. “She’s wrong, you know. You should stand up for yourself. You should care that people make fun of you for your ethnicity.”
“She told me not to say anything. She said it’s private and that I shouldn’t have to defend the whole Asian population because of some stupid kids." He rubbed his sleeve against his face and turned around to face me. “It’s not my fight.”
“If you don’t say anything, they’ll never stop.”
“They’ll grow up someday and realize how wrong their were.”
“Maybe. And in the meantime, you suffer. It makes me sick, Adam. You have to say something to those kids or I will.”
Adam grabbed my arm. “Don’t, please don’t say anything. I don’t want to get in trouble.”
“With who? Them or her?”
“Her,” he whispered so quietly I could barely hear him. “I’m not afraid of them.”
Monday I finished my first draft. I filed it away on my computer and tried to put it in a tiny oubliette in my mind. By yesterday afternoon it was screaming and yelling at me, "LET ME OUT!" It also put the annoying
"Look at You, Look at Me" song from Camp Rock in my head....you know, because it wanted me to look at it. (sigh...more drama from my
insane writer brain.)
I managed to hold strong and not look at it, even though I really, really, really, really wanted to. What helped? Well, I continued to read
Brightly Woven by
Alexandra Bracken and I finally told my husband he could read my retched first draft. I told him to expect nothing and to make many comments. You see, he's a good reader for me. He reads YA fantasy - luckily for me, he also doesn't read my blog because I don't know if he wants to world to know that, even though he did read Twilight in public.
Anyway, I'm also beginning to think about my path to revision and thought I'd drag you along with me. Want to know exactly what my revision process is like? Well, I'm going to share it with you. My process may be very different from yours. Instead of writing a bloated first draft and then cutting it in half during revision, I instead write the bones and then add, probably as much as 10K, to my second draft. Third draft is where the cutting happens.
While my WIP is sleeping, though not as quietly as I'd like - she's still banging on the door and yelling, "Maaahm!" - I am now going to purchase some books for research. I want to study backstory in successful fantasy novels. How did they weave it in and how much was revealed and when?
To help me out with this, I'm following the advice of
Carmela Martino, author and my friend, who posted about this very topic today on her blog,
Teaching Authors.
Oooh, and how do you like my new blog background? Kinda kicky, eh?
I DID IT!
I finished my first draft! I broke 50,000 words yesterday, which was my goal. I'm beyond thrilled because while 50,000 has always been my first draft goal, I've never broken it. Third time is a charm, right?
So what now? Am I sending it out to agents? (Pardon me for a moment while I laugh hysterically.) NO!
My manuscript is going to take a nap for probably three weeks. In that time I'm going to think about it, maybe doodle a bit and just let it marinate. When three weeks are up, I'll print it out and tear it to shreds, metaphorically speaking. It'll be fun! I don't know how long revision will take, but it will take at least a couple weeks, probably more.
So, what am I doing in the meantime you might ask? Relaxing? Enjoying the first few weeks of summer?
Hell no! My fellow YA writer,
Karly Kirkpatrick, and I are going to be announcing a contest soon so you have to stay tuned. There are going to three ways to win awesome, autographed prizes. So please, pass the info on to your friends because this is going to be epic!
*FYI - I'm giving this an R rating for violence and language - you have been warned*
Just Desserts
He cowered in the corner like a rat. I couldn’t help laughing out loud at the comparison. His body shook, his nose twitched, his eyes darted around the room in an attempt to find a way out. He wouldn’t. There was only one door. I stood in front of it and the tattooed, muscular man stood in between us.
“Get over here right now you little pussy,” the tattooed guy said to my husband. “Get your girly little ass in front of me or I’m going to drag it over here myself.”
Aaron’s eyes met mine. I saw the begging, the pleading, in them. But I didn’t care. My heart closed to him years ago and anything that happened now wasn’t my fault.
The tattooed guy, I called him Ed to myself because in a business like his names are never given, strode across the room and kicked Aaron in the face. Just like in the movies, blood spewed out of his mouth along with a couple teeth. A whimper escaped his lips too. I was surprised – I didn’t feel a thing.
Ed bent over, pulled Aaron up by his collar and threw him against the wall. His body smacked the cement so hard I heard bones crack.
“Why are you doing this to me, Mary? I never meant to hurt you. I swear I'll never do it again!” Aaron cried out. Tears streamed down his face, mingling with the blood.
Ed grabbed Aaron again, this time thrusting his knee into Aaron’s stomach. A stench exploded in the room as he slid to the ground, landing in a pool of his own blood and shit.
“That good enough?” Ed asked me, licking a drop of blood off of his fist. Aaron quivered on the floor, helpless. I wondered how he liked being on the receiving end.
Would it ever be enough? But that was Aaron’s question to answer, not mine. I nodded, handed Ed an envelope filled with cash and followed him out of the room.
“Mary?”
I shook my head, the voice pulling me out of my daydream, and opened my eyes. In the mirror I saw my expression, cold and hard, but Kayla’s reflection was one of concern. I had hoped to have a few minutes to myself before work, but someone always managed to come in. It was the nature of women’s restrooms.
“Mary? What happened to your eye? Are you okay?”
I looked at the bruise, black, purple and brown, circling my eye. The smile I’d practiced so many times in the mirror at home almost came naturally, spreading across my face in record speed.
“Oh yeah. I’m such a klutz. I got up last night to use the bathroom. I didn’t want to turn on the lights for fear of waking up Aaron and get this, I walked right into the bathroom door,” I lied.
In real life I throw away everything and my husband hangs on to things older than me because he thinks he might need them someday. We argue about this frequently and while I've never thrown out anything of his without his permission, I've been very, very tempted.
But when it comes to my writing, I hang on to everything. I have short stories I wrote in grade school. Fake newspapers I wanted to publish in junior high. Weepy, angst-filled lyrics I wrote in high school. Papers on medieval history I wrote in college.
I. Have. It. ALL.
I have boxes of things I wrote on paper and my hard drive is filled with all of my work since 2003. I'm guessing there are some files I can't even open due to compatibility issues. Good thing they are also printed out and collated in a binder, you know, just in case I need them.
There's a short story I wrote more than ten years ago that I never let go of. The characters talk to me once in a while (remember that whole
insanity conversation?) and recently my mom said, "Remember that great short story you wrote ages ago? It's always been my favorite."
Well, I think when I'm done with my current WIP, I'm going to revisit that short story and see if I can expand it. Lucky for me, Blair Hurley wrote an amazing post on her blog Writerly Life.
How to Turn a Novel into a Short Story was just the kick in the butt I needed to rethink one of my mom's, and one of my, favorite short stories.
It's Monday and I'm back again with a list of awesome links for writers. This series has quickly become one of my favorites. Why? I find so much greatness out there on the web and I love to share. Maybe a link will lead to an agent you didn't know about or help you claw your way out of a problem in your novel. Give these links a try and you won't be sorry.
First, is agent
Jennifer Laughran of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency, Inc. Sound familiar? She should. This is the THIRD time I've featured one of her blog posts. No, I'm not trying to suck up to her, nor does she pay me for the excesive promotion. She simply has some awesome blog posts. Like this one,
Work Your Inner Fierceness. It's amazing and I've had Ru Paul songs in my head all weekend thanks to this post. Jennifer's advice is like a cupcake - cute, yummy and so crave-worthy.
Next is Kiersten White, debut author of
Paranormalcy, coming out on September 21st. Her amazing post on
love triangles in YA rocks. Read it once, twice, three times. Then maybe a fourth just to hammer it in your little gourd. I've read it three times and plan to read it a fourth when I'm done with this blog post.
The ever-amazing agent, Nathan Bransford, offers up a post on
the odds of nabbing an agent. It makes me feel better....I think....???
Finally, I get so caught up in writing my novels that sometimes I forget I'm a parenting journalist! I've had more than 100 articles published in magazines since 2004. Not bad for an at-home mom, right? Well, I owe everything to Kelly James-Enger, my personal freelancing Yoda. She's a journalist, novelist, certified personal trainer, former lawyer, mom and wife. She just debuted her new blog,
Dollars and Deadlines. It's awesome, like Kelly. If you've ever wanted to make money freelancing, listen to everything Kelly has to say.
People often ask me why I'm a writer. Yes, I love reading and books. Yes, I excelled in English in high school and college. Yes, I love a well-turned phrase. Yes, I am a freak for proper grammar. Yes, I'd rather read or write than go to a party (or pretty much anywhere else). Yes, I've always wanted to be a writer since I can remember....blah, blah, blah...
But why I am
really a writer? One simple little reason:
I am completely mental.
When I'm driving down a dark, wooded road, I don't think:
Look how beautiful the trees are. I want to explore those woods and see various squirrels and birds.Here's what I'm really thinking:
Oh my God, some crazy person is going to jump out of the woods, landing in front of my car. I can see he's holding a machete and has crazy eyes. I could swerve and miss him, but then the car might crash and he'll come over and kill me. But if I hit him and the machete flies away, never to be found, everyone will think I killed a poor, innocent man whose only joy was frolicking in these gentle woods. They'll put me in prison and my kids will grow up without their mother. My husband will fall into a deep depression, lose his job and everyone will be bankrupt and die unhappy. All because I drove down this beautiful, scenic road.So there you have it. I'm a writer because I don't see things normally. I see a story in everything. I can't help it and sometimes it drives me insane (not to mention my poor husband who has to put up with me) if I don't get it down on paper.
I don't think I have demons in my head, but there are little imps wreaking havoc around every turn.
So now you know the truth. Don't ever ask me what I'm really thinking because you might be sorry....
I have a website. I have this blog.
But now Blogger allows pages so I've been wondering if I really need both my website and my blog....
Any thoughts????
....and the winner is....
Shari Maurer!Shari won three books
Bird by Bird,
When You Reach Me and
Eon: Dragoneye RebornYou should go to her website - not only is it gorgeous, but she also has a YA book out,
Change of Heart. You can read all about it on her website - it sounds amazing and I must get my hands on a copy.
This contest was fun. I'm sure I'll run more in the future so stay tuned!!!!
Today I also have a list of awesome links...
Tabitha Olson wrote an awesome blog post on how and why characters take hijack the novel and how to keep them on track. Tabitha has been an inspiration to me for a long time now, and I'm thrilled to feature her today.
Debra L. Schubert's blog featured a top 10 list on acquiring an agent. It's hilarious and true. Anyone searching for an agent needs to read this post.
Are you afraid of ebooks ruining the book industry as we know it? Then you must read
this post from the IBPA, the Independent Book Publishers Association. It's really interesting.
By:
Michelle,
on 5/12/2010
Blog:
Reading & Writing by Candlelight
(
Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
Amy Nichols,
contest,
Rebecca Stead,
Anne Lamott,
Alison Goodman,
Teaching Authors,
Scotti Cohn,
Karly Kirkpatrick,
Will Write for Cake,
CA Marshall,
Add a tag
Today I'm giving out awards and running a contest for one lucky reader to win THREE BRAND NEW BOOKS!
See this awesome award to the left? I received that yesterday from
Amy K. Nichols. Amy is an awesome writer and I was so thrilled to receive this unexpected award. Be sure to check out her blog - you'll be impressed!
Now to pass the award on to some of my favorite blogs that I hope will soon become yours too. I'm supposed to pick 15, but instead I want to highlight five blogs that are three times as awesome as regular blogs!!
1.
Karly Kirkpatrick - YA writer, awesome blogger, hilarious woman
2.
Teaching Authors - six children's authors who teach writing
3.
C.A. Marshall - writer, literary intern, great blogger
4.
Scotti Cohn - author, award winner and one cool lady
5.
Will Write for Cake - seven excellent children's authors
Now on to the contest!!!!
Want to win BRAND NEW copies of my three favorite books I either read or reread in the last year? You know you do!!!!! When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, Eon: Dragoneye Reborn by Alison Goodman and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.
The rules are simple. Leave one comment on this post. Then you must do one of these three options:
1. Tweet the contest. Include me @michellesussman in your tweet for verification.
2. Blog about the contest with a link back here.
3. Mention the contest on Facebook and send me a friend request if we aren't already friends.
Since my writing life is going to be on hold for a few days due to family obligations, the contest will run through Monday, May 17th. Winners will be chosen through a random generator. Thanks for stopping by and helping me celebrate my 100th post!
View Next 25 Posts
I am unsure I have the correct amount of patience and I always thought I was the patient person. I know exactly how you feel!
People always told me I'd naturally become more patient as I aged.
Ha - they were wrong! :-)
Some of us just are this way...
A few years ago, after I submitted my "Phil" script to the Columbia U Film Fest for the first time, I had to wait four months before they announced the winners. Instead of working on my next script or doing anything creative, I did nothing. Well, I tried reading Moby Dick. I had four months, right? I could tackle it. Didn't get past 80 pages. So I went back to doing nothing. I surfaced every so often for a class while daydreaming how I would cast the script for the table read if I was one of the winners. Four months passed of nothing, and I didn't win. I should've spent that time writing another script that could have won the following year or gotten me the credit I needed to graduate a year early. Oh, well.
That sucks, but hey, lesson learned.
I don't take breaks. I'm always writing something. OCD? ;-)
I understand completely! I'm the same. I get so wound up, constantly thinking what if this and what if that. My e-mail page is always up too, just waiting.
"Patience is a virtue" <---- that's a quote I hear often and I always wonder who said it since it so doesn't apply to me.
Bah - virtue is for boring people... ;-)
It's like we're the same person! But I think we've already discovered that...hang in there!