Farewell music! Even your sweetest tunes are best kept silent The Taliban on the edge of the village have stilled all lips When the Taliban invaded Afghanistan, Sami lost everything — everything except his grandfather, and the rebab. Sami and his grandfather make a new life in Boston. But one day when Sami is playing the rebab at a T station, a teenager snatches the instrument and jumps on the T. The doors snap shut, and the rebab is gone. When Sami finds it again in a pawnshop, the shopkeeper won’t return the instrument, but he offers to...
It’s been a bit quiet here. Why, you ask? Because I have been up to my ears in writing deadlines! Once upon a time, my agent Amber Caraveo asked me to send her information on my other projects. Among other things, I sent her the synopsis and first few chapters of (what was then called) The Great Tanboor Trade. She loved it… like, a lot. Like, she sort of wondered if it should be my debut level of a lot. After having a 24-hour panic attack/identity crisis (“Me? Writing middle grade contemporary? MEE??”), I agreed to do a speed-draft of...
Scrivener metadata is one of my favorite not-so-secret tricks when it comes to drafting and revising. I’ve seen some posts about the metadata options Scrivener offers, but none of them use it the way I do, so I thought I’d add to the noise. For a person who likes to be crazy-levels of organized, this is a lifesaver on both ends of the writing process. But even if you don’t consider yourself borderline fiendishly obsessed with lists and colors, there are ways to adapt my insanity to the flexibility your methods (or lack thereof) require. (This post contains affiliate links,...
Good writers are experts in many things – most of them eccentric, odd, and (let’s admit it) kind of awesome. One of my writer friends is an expert on life aboard ships. Another knows a bizarre amount about animal biology and physics. As writers, we normally gravitate toward subjects we’re interested in. When I started Illuminate, I knew I wanted it to include illuminated manuscripts because I love looking at old books. Though I had some basic knowledge from my medieval literature classes and from exhibits in museums, I didn’t know much beyond the word “vellum” when it came to the...
As a writer, I collect so much information I often find myself dreaming of an organized library archive. I’m constantly processing nuggets for my current projects – which can include anything from body disposal in 14th century Venetian quarantines to the household traditions of Afghan families to the most popular aiming techniques in Mongolian archery – while also on a constant stream of pirates, economics, star lore, and whatever other thing I’ve recently read about. What I’m trying to say is, there’s a lot in my head. The reality is, I’m not going to remember it all. Especially if it...
When your friends start to leave the nest and send out queries, sign contracts, and talk to publishers – or commission their cover, finish up formatting, and prep to self-publish – it gets pretty gosh darn exciting. Everyone’s on alert, waiting for the next tidbit of publishing news. Their dreams are all becoming real! Highs and lows come hand in hand with the publishing journey. Sometimes a high can be just as stressful as a low – like when a friend of mine was caught between two amazing publishers in a bidding war. Though it’s an awesome problem to have,...
Literary agent. Offers. First refusal. Revision. Contracts. Murder. These are all words that could describe my journey to signing with an agent. (Except for that last one. I was just joking. Or was I?) Readers of the blog might remember that I signed with Amber Caraveo of Skylark Literary back on December 16. But like all stories, it doesn’t actually begin there. When most writers decide to go the route of traditional publishing, they start by querying literary agents. They send out a juicy story blurb, tantalizing first chapters, maybe a sexy synopsis (two words you never thought you’d see together)....
Back in 2014, I finished my MA in Writing for Young People. Workshops were a vital part of the coursework, my love for them grew exponentially. We officially stopped workshopping for class in May of that year. But unofficially? We never actually stopped. Sure, people pop in and out of the group as schedules change, and we’ve added another writer in the meantime. But a year and a half after our workshops “ended,” most of us meet every other week to critique each other’s pieces, even though we’re now split across three different time zones. How do we do it?...
Antagonists are tricky. Too little work, and the antagonist comes across flat. A flat antagonist is easy and boring, because he or she won’t push the protagonist hard enough. Plus there’s that practice of making fleshed out characters and having interesting three-dimensional people, blah blah. We all know the saying: Every villain is his own hero. Though I wrote these questions and prompts with famous antagonists in mind, you could actually pose them to your protagonist or other characters (just switch out the protagonist-themed questions for antagonist-themed) and it will still work. I’ve always found it most helpful to answer questionnaires...
NaNoWriMo is around the corner! I’ve participated for the last several years, and I’m planning to have a go again. Over the summer, I pounded out a (very) rough draft of Popinjay, reboot edition. My plan for NaNoWriMo this year is to retype the whole thing, fixing the biggest problems as I go. I’m looking forward to exploring Talvas’s dialect more, and emphasizing the Mongolian influences in his culture. But mostly, I’m just anticipating writing a character voice that is so jaded and dry and basically the opposite of most of my other guys. It’s fun to dabble in something...
