The Fifth of November: Celebrating The Fallow Year

"Read. Read constantly. Read the kind of stuff you wish you could write. Read until your brain creaks. Tolkien said that his ideas sprang up from the leaf mold of his mind: your readings are the trees where your fallen leave would come from."

"The first thing is that writers should be voracious readers. We live in a narcissistic age, which means that many want to have the praise that comes from having read, without the antecedent labor of actually reading. Wanting to write without reading is like wanting to grind flour without gathering wheat, like wanting to make boards without logging, and like wanting to have a Mississippi Delta without any tributaries somewhere in Minnesota. Output requires intake, and literary output requires literary intake."

"Read like a reader and not like someone cramming for a test. If you try to wring every book out like it was a washcloth full of information (and nothing but information), all you will do is slow yourself down to a useless pace. Go for total tonnage, and read like someone who will forget most of it...Most of what is shaping you in the course of your reading you will not be able to remember. The most formative years of my life were the first five, and if those years were to be evaluated on the basis of my ability to pass a test on them, the conclusion would be that nothing important happened then, which would be false. The fact that you can't remember things doesn't mean that you haven't been shaped by them."

All of these very, very excellent quotes come from a slim little volume by Douglas Wilson titled Wordsmithy. I was given this book in the coffee shop I'm sitting in now. It was a gift from a friend who, I hope, didn't feel like giving it to me because she could sense my drought. I must confess the year 2014 was a year of output. Massive output. I published two novels and a novella, started a new job, and worked my precious little butt off. The understandable assumption was that the year 2015 would be the same. It was not, however. 2015 has been a year of immense personal schedules. The girls I mainly nannied in 2014 I am now schooling, which adds a dimension and a half. I now plan their lessons, teach them, and have had the huge privilege of seeing them go from their alphabet to real books, explaining our ridiculous English language, and showing them the world, such as it is. This year I have also rediscovered my love of reading.I'm sorry to say that I forgot about it for a little while. Not about my love of stories - that never faded. But of how easy and delicious it is to lose oneself in a book. To nose so deeply into the pages and words and characters that one forgets present constraints. Is it summer? Is it autumn? Does it rain outside or are we having dry weather?
I forgot about this love because I consciously kept myself in. I am a book drunkard. I give myself up entirely to the story and if I lose myself early in the day, I am lost until whatsoever time the book has coughed me up ashore like a word-soaked Jonah. Knowing this about myself, I was careful not to get too entangled in a book. I only read if I deemed I had time to read. And, predictably, my word output shriveled. If I had no time to read, I certainly had no time to write and here was the vicious cycle. Friends, however, gave me books for my birthday. I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. and bought a couple more. Pretty soon I had a stack of unread books waiting on my shelf. Waiting for that day when I had "time to read." The temptation was, quite simply, too much. Since summer began, I have given into my passion and picked up Wodehouse's Summer Lightning. I don't have hours upon hours to read - I am a busy working woman. Still, I elbowed other things to make time. From Summer Lightning, it was a short step to swallowing Schindler's List piecemeal between bouts of more Wodehouse. Harper Lee's Go Set A Watchman grabbed me and shook me by the throat as I soared through it in two or three days, and Wordsmithy dribbled through my fingers as well. Cocktail Time rounded to a close and Blandings Castle was waiting, all uncracked-spine and crisp pages. And do you know what? I found a piece of myself that had gone into hibernation. Ever so slowly, I'm coaxing her back out. I do have time to read. I can choose to put aside my phone, to postpone that drawing commission, or to go to bed a little early and pick up a book before sleep. I can choose to spend my evening reading rather than watching White Collar or The West Wing, as painful as that choice is.

Reading opens massive, massive worlds. How could I ever have let it go? Since picking my books back up, I have found that my mind is brighter. I am not at a loss for things on which to think. Words spring readily to mind. I've almost finished the first draft of my story for the Five Magic Spindles contest with the overflow. But you know what? The paradigm shift was as subtle as it was important: I did not read to turn the words like so much straw into WIP gold. I read for reading's sake; for the sake of losing myself in another world for what might be half an hour, or a full afternoon. I found the joy again of diving so deep that when I emerged, I had to shake myself a bit and look about and remember where and whom I was.

Farmers rotate crops so that a given piece of ground is not stripped of a particular nutrient; different crops suck different things from the soil. And though the farmers, by rotating the variety of crops grown on that piece of ground, can keep the soil fairly healthy and thriving, fallow years are necessary. A year of rest for the soil. A year of building up again the depleted stocks, of fertilizing the ground and waiting. A year where nothing will grow that is lucrative, but wild-flowers and grasses will knit its wounded, harrowed soul back together, leaving that field fresh-faced and ready for the following spring. 2014 was my insanely productive year. 2015 has been my fallow year. But a fallow year is necessary, and I will not apologize for (unofficially) taking it. I will only turn back to my books with a fond smile, write as I can, and thank God for the great, great joy it is to be literate and to know the thrill of traveling lands afar through the wilds of an unread book. I feel myself healing. Oh, rest is a beautiful, needful thing.

It has been a year today since my last release of 2014.  A warm happy birthday to my dear first mystery: Anon, Sir, Anon! If any of you feel like burying yourself deep for a cozy, British afternoon, head thataway to say hello. Supporting independent authors is a wonderful way to explore deeper waters in the joy of reading. Buy a copy for yourself, for a friend, or to show a lonely little mystery that though the promise of a sister-mystery has been delayed, it has not been forgotten.

All My Love,
         Rachel

5 Ways To Become Your Author's Favorite Reader

Ever read a book and enjoyed it so much that begin to wish you knew the author in real life? Ever become a little bit of a fan-girl and wondered if there was more than stalking their Facebook account and blog back-pages that you could do to support their career? Ever wanted to be more than "that one guy who always comments" in your favorite author's mind?

Good news: I have a list for you. 

Of course this list doesn't help you a bit if your favorite authors are dead, but we are supposing you have a modern author you admire. This, then, is the skinny:

#1: Buy their books. Look, we are flattered when you borrow one of our books from a friend and love it, but it does very little for sales. What really helps is you buying our books for yourself, putting them on your birthday and Christmas lists, and buying them for friends who are having birthdays or Christmases. Buy. Our. Books. It's super helpful. It makes them go up in the ranking on Amazon. It gets them on the New York Times Best-Seller list. It's helpful.
#2: Review their books intelligently. When someone is waffling about Position No. One, they might click on the reviews tab for that book on Amazon, or look it up on Goodreads. I know I do. And when I look up a review, I don't want to see all caps-lock, "OH MY GOSH IT WAS THEBESTTHINGEVERRRRRRR." I am looking for someone who actually seemed to have their wits about them while they were reading, who can tell me something (but no spoilers) about the plot, the quality of the writing, and what I liked best. I love hearing what other people liked best...and if it happens to be something I'm inclined to like best, I'll probably end up buying the book.
#3: Start a blaze. Carefully. No, please don't burn our books. But if you tell your friends enough about the book (and buy a copy for them, maybe) then they'll read the book, and if they read the book and enjoy it, they'll tell their friends, and pretty soon you'll have started a wildfire which is extremely helpful for your favorite authors who are, in this way, fans of pyromaniacs.
#4: Give them a hand on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. I can't tell you how much I love a few of my followers on Twitter who, no matter what sorts of links I share, will share them from me. And not just retweets, but an actual, "I went to the site and tweeted it myself" sort of thing, while still mentioning my name. Those people are valuable because they care enough about what you said today in a blog post, or what you recommend they read next, or whatever it is. They care enough about it to share it in their own words and ways. It's precious. (Also, liking a post on Facebook brings it up in other peoples' feed. That's actually how I've found several of my favorite pages to follow. It works on authors' feeds too! ;)
#5: Surprise them. Several times since my debut novel, readers have surprised me with an email in my inbox, writing about what they enjoyed in my book, or how they came to read it, or something else interesting. One reader emailed me an amazing drawing she'd done of the main character (I happen to already be a fan of this girl's art. It was good). Sometimes a reader will post on the page, or message you via Facebook or Twitter, or something else. It's uplifting to the author to get a message like that and not expect it. We don't need the reader to gush, but it is heartening to hear that, independent of your reach, a new reader got hold of your book and enjoyed it. We thrive on approval ratings.

Skeletons, Blog Design, and A British Holiday

(By the time some of you read this post, you will be looking at a new blog design. I thought you might like to know. It's pretty fabulous, isn't it? I think so. And now there's a button you can take! Hrar-hrar.)

Once upon a time, I was a young and naive writer and my brain was full of stories. By stories, I mean little, episodic pieces of stories that I was fond of mincing up and packing together into an odd sort of SPAM that I was also fond of calling a novel. Then I began to learn about plotting and how you can't exactly write episodic hash and call it literature.

I used to pride myself on not having to edit so terribly much between versions of a given book. Let that sink in for a moment. I'm not exactly certain what sort of book I thought I had written, or what sort of genius I considered myself. Probably a cross between a child protege and Mark Twain. Suffice it to say, most versions of my books (plot-wise) looked exactly the same from one to the next, and I was quite happy with that. Perhaps I was dealing with such simple plots that they didn't need much work. Or maybe I just had that joyful assurance born of never having experience writer's block.

Now, though, I've realized that the first draft is a skeleton. Dear mercy me, it's just a bag of bones. Halfway through writing Anon, Sir, Anon, I had a slight moment of panic as I realized that I would not ace this book on the first draft. I know for most of you, that's a silly admittance. Of course you can't win laurels on the first draft of the first novel you've written in a given genre. I've never written a mystery before and I could tell that there were gaps in the plot that will need to be filled in. Usually, this would cause me to panic and decide this story was terrible. But just about this halfway point, I began to look at my story like a skeleton and I knew it was perfectly normal to slightly freak out, and that I could go on:

The first draft is the frame of the thing. When you build a house, you begin with the footer and build up to the framing. Eventually you sheath the house, and at that point you've got a house, all right. It just doesn't look like much but a cardboard pop-up of a gingerbread cottage. The first draft of a story is just like a gingerbread cottage. In subsequent rounds, you'll need to add siding, and flashing, and shingles and porches to the outside. You'll have to run electricity and plumbing and then insulation and sheet-rock and then paint and put in all your appliances and cabinets and tile and carpet and wood-flooring and hang all your doors and put in all your windows and build a deck and cut vent holes and install all the lighting apparatuses. If you're really good, you'll even install hose-bibs, outdoor electricity, and landscaping. Do you know how many doorknobs there are to install in a house? Until you've built a house, you won't realize all that goes into it after it already looks like a house from the road.

In the first draft of any book, we've built that house on the road that looks finished. But as the author, we can give ourselves room to realize that there will be several more months of work to fix plumbing, install electricity, and make the place livable.

This the great joy of multiple drafts. I have given myself license to write a skeleton this time, rather than a full-fleshed novel. That being said, I'm nearing the end of the first draft of Anon, Sir, Anon. My goal for this week is going to be to finish that first draft. Starting Monday, I'll be doing a March Madness challenge to finish it up and count it "finished" (from the road). That may or may not leave room for much blogging, but it will certainly be fun for me! I will endeavor to keep you updated with my word-counts, snippets from scenes, and my progress. I am looking forward eagerly to the second draft in which I'll add more description, refine dialogue, expand characters, etc. This is a different method than that I've used before, but it feels like a good fit. Since I tend to be a "pantser" and not so much of a plotter, I can get panicked over not knowing what is next in my book. Writing a skeletal first draft means that I have the plot tacked down, the characters mostly developed, and I know a start, a middle, and an end. I'm eager to begin to deepen shadows, bring out highlights, and work this story till it's completely different than its skeleton. But first things first: I've got to see the first draft through to the end.

For those of you who have purchased/won and read Fly Away Home, I would love to hear what your favorite quotes/parts were. If you so desire, you can email your favorite parts to me at theinkpenauthoress@gmail.com, or add them to the Goodreads page! I love quotes and have always enjoyed hearing what lines/turns of phrase capture other people. Also, I wanted to tell you about a fabulous reader of mine, Ness Kingsley. Ness is a fairly new blogging friend, but she knows me well enough to know that I adore all things English. She is also aware of my mania for the Lake District. Well. Ness, being the clever, sweet thing that she is, knew she was headed to the Peaks District (not quite the Lakes, but still gorgeous) and decided to bring Fly Away Home along with her so that a part of me would have been to the place to which I feel such a deep connection. She photographed it with herself, some goats, and even on a lovely old stone wall:

I probably needn't even tell you how much this made my day. Ness, thanks a mil for your thoughtfulness, and for obliging my silly whims by carting a piece of me all through your lovely Isle. <3

Well. Le Brother is here for the weekend and I am supposed to be helping to organize a fundraiser for our Romanian Missions Trip (read more about it here) for tonight so ciao! I shall keep you updated on my Mad Marchishness later on in the fresh, new week!