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by author Caragh M. O’Brien
November 8, 2011

Nancy Mercado and I talk to each other rarely.  We’ve had fewer than a dozen phone calls over the past three years, and we’ve met in person three times total.  In a way, I know my editor most vividly as a disembodied voice in the margin of my manuscripts, and yet, because of the focused nature of our relationship, Nan has surprised me countless times by how completely she gets how my mind works.  It’s almost uncanny, really.  We laugh a lot, too, but almost never in the same room, at the same time.

When we revise a draft together, certain ongoing exchanges take on a life of their own.  We’ve recently worked on “Tortured,” a short story we plan to use as an experimental tie-in to The Birthmarked Trilogy.  Here’s a screenshot showing our Track Changes comments around a particular revision.  You can figure out who’s talking even when she jumps in my red box with her caps.

I ended up taking her advice on that one.  I usually take her advice, frankly, or pull my brains out trying to figure out why I shouldn’t.

As much as I value the small-scale editing, however, what I really cherish is the way Nan pushes me deeper into my own mind with her questions during large revisions, and how she supports when I need to take a risk.  Prized brings up a sensitive issue, the sort of topic that can divide my extended family and set tempers flaring.  A character’s unwanted pregnancy had been hovering at the edge of my story through eight drafts before I finally said to Nan, I don’t know what to do with this.  I thought she might advise me to drop it, which I could have done, but instead, she suggested I bring it forward.  Face it.  See what happened.

Until that point, I had not realized how much I’d been censoring myself.  I was afraid to write something that might make people, especially people I loved, upset with me.  I didn’t think I could write well enough to be fair or true.  Over the next weeks, grappling with the novel also involved discovering what responsibilities I had as a person and a writer, especially a writer for teens.  Nan patiently waited me out, postponing deadlines, nudging with her questions while I hewed away, rewriting and revising, rippling the consequences of my decisions through the rest of the story.  I trusted Nan would support me regardless of what I wrote, as long as I wrote honestly.  The final novel feels right to me; hard but right.

I know I would not have developed Prized the way I did, nor stretched who I am quite this way, without Nan’s support, and so when it came time to pick a person to dedicate Prized to, Nan was my only choice.  I put her name in the manuscript just before the copy edits stage and sent it in.  When she wrote back to ask if I was sure, I was caught in a funny, awkward moment.  She modestly said that writers usually pick family members, and I thought, Oh, no.  She’s declining.  I couldn’t exactly write back and say Nan’s like family to me.  She isn’t.  Nan’s like my editor to me.

In the end

Wow! It's such a strange feeling...three zero! :)

Among all Grimm's fairy tales, the one that I feel the most connected to is "Red Riding Hood". No idea why but it's the one story that I can't get off my mind no matter how hard I try! So I decided to surrender and embrace this weird feeling!

Here goes my depiction of the Red Riding Hood!

Cheers :)

"Mina" couldn't get over her goldfish death so she looked at the whole picture differently:

Inspired by Pixar's Presto and the movie The Prestige, I felt like creating something about Magic. This time I painted the whole thing in watercolor though in the end I had to add more than few digital touches to make it read better.

Have a magical day! :)

Developing a new style and trying to introduce some background to my work! Suddenly I remember my art classes back when I was 8 (considering my overly simple take on the whole thing)!

A Plea for the Sun:

I've been kept busy with my finals for the past few weeks and just found some free time to draw something for me!

I watched the movie, The Black Swan, a week back and drew a sketch that very night. Yesterday I decided on painting it. Not exactly what you call it a fan art but still it shows how I feel about the movie itself. Great performance by Natalie Portman by the way and a well-deserved Oscar in the end!

Thanksgiving week I received copies of "The Three Little Pigs", illustrated by me. Odyssey Books is the publisher and I'm really happy with the reproduction of the illustrations. You just don't know how it's going to look until it's an actual printed book.

My dedication reads, "To Gracie and Konnor. Love you forever. C.M." Here's my daughter Andrea reading the book to Gracie and Konnor for the first time on Thanksgivng. This is one of the perks of being a children's book illustrator.

If you scroll back through earlier posts you can see the illustrations as I was working on them. Or better yet, go buy the book. Either way, hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving!