When I was in high school I had a huge crush on a boy in a scarf. He was all lovely and blonde and mysterious. He wore the scarf every day, winter and summer, indoors and outdoors. No one knew why. There were theories, of course. Some people said that he was trying to hide a freakishly long neck. Other people said that he had a parasitic twin, and there was an actual baby’s hand growing out of the side of his neck. Nowadays, I bet people would have speculated that he was covering up the bite marks from a vampire. In any case, by the time I graduated, I was no closer to discovering the truth.

Funny how sticky some things can be. Years later, when I sat down to write my novel THE KNEEBONE BOY, the only thing I knew was that I wanted to write about the boy in the scarf. I wanted to solve the mystery, fictionally at least.

Whenever I start writing a book I begin with a character. No outline. It’s a fairly scary way to write but it’s the only method that seems to work for me. I start with a character, then I stalk him or her, trailing behind them to see just what the heck they will do next. So I stalked the fictional boy in the scarf (ironically, I did pretty much the same thing to the real boy) and I discovered many interesting things about him and his siblings. I found out that their mother had gone missing under suspicious circumstances. I found out that the boy had stopped speaking soon after the disappearance.  Page by page the characters revealed themselves. Yet by page 205 I still had no idea why he was wearing that darn scarf. And I had to know. It was the key to the whole story.

Plus, the manuscript was overdue.

I’m not a religious person but I actually said a prayer. I said it in the women’s locker room at the YMCA, which seemed reasonably secular. “Please, please, please! Tell me!! What is up with the SCARF?” Believe it or not, ten minutes later, while on the treadmill, I suddenly knew why the boy in my book was wearing the scarf. It was so right. It was so clear. I felt like someone had told me the story years and years ago, but I had simply forgotten it until this very moment.

As for the real boy in the scarf—the one from high school—he is now a pretty famous guy. If one were to Google him . . . ok, when I Googled him, there were many pictures of him. And you know what? The scarf was gone. As it turns out, his neck is a perfectly fine length and there are no tiny limbs hanging off of it. Now he wears suspenders all the time. So the scarf was probably just a fashion statement. Huh. Real life.  Go figure. I’ll take fiction any day.

I have a confession to make. Every time I read an author’s bio I become insanely jealous. Authors always seem to be nestled in valleys or perched on mountains, surrounded by adoring spouses and a gaggle of little ones who don’t need any help wiping. When the bio says “She has five golden retrievers” I can quite plainly see them all sitting obediently at the author’s feet in her well-appointed writing room, their coats gleaming from a meticulous brushing. I can see said-author tapping away at her computer keys, glancing up every now and then to gaze contemplatively at the mountain/valley/ocean view from her writing room. A knock on the door.

“Honey, would you like a fresh cup of coffee?”

“Yes, my love. Are the children behaving?”

“Like angels. Don’t worry your pretty head about them.”

Ahhh.

When you squish an author’s life down to three or four sentences, you can’t help but make it sound enviable. Tidy, picturesque. No bad smells. It’s just not fair.

Never, NEVER does an author bio say:

“She lives in a house which is perpetually being renovated by boozy, perspiring construction guys, located on a woody road plagued with black flies in the summer and black ice in the winter.  She is surrounded by her loving family who do not pick up after themselves and leave the soy milk out of the refrigerator all night. Her poorly-groomed dogs have chronic ear infections. She spends her days trying to find time to shower. Oh, and also, she writes.

See, now THERE is an honest author bio. That’s all I’m saying.

Today is the day! Spilling Ink, A Young Writer's Handbook is finally out in stores. To celebrate the book's launch, my co-author Anne Mazer and I are hosting a book giveaway contest on the brand new Spilling Ink web site. As a special treat, illustrator Matt Phelan is inaugurating the site with a fun and fascinating post on our Creativity Blog. Go on. Have a peek at the new Spilling Ink site!

Yes, there is a connection! Take a peek at my new post at MacKids Blog to read more.

Photo by Alan WardI remember the first time I mentioned the subject of revision at a school visit. The kids began to look all squirrelly while the teachers shot significant glances at them.

“Oops!” I thought. “What did I say?”

I felt like I was a guest at a family dinner and had just asked about their Uncle Herb. And Uncle Herb had recently been found in the local 711, licking the salt off the hot pretzels while dressed in a cowgirl costume.

Many author visits later, I now understand that there is often a battle of the wills when it comes to revision. The kids hate doing it. The teachers know that you have to do it in order to get things right.  Heels dig in so deep you can actually see the indentations on school floors.

Not to be wishy-washy, but I do understand both sides of the battle. For instance, I have tried several times to knit a sweater with no success. You know why? Because I hate do-overs. If, by accident, I purl a row instead of knitting it, the prospect of having to unravel the whole darn thing and do it over makes me want to scream.  It just seems like a colossal waste of my time. Instead, I get out my L.L. Bean catalogue and shove those pesky skeins in the back of my sock drawer.

On the other hand, writing is ALL about do-overs.  I not only appreciate the power of revision, but I have actually come to enjoy it. It’s all about perspective. In our new book Spilling Ink, A Young Writer’s Handbook, co-author Anne Mazer and I try to help young writers find enjoyable ways to reconnect with their stories, and to take the agony out of the do-over. Below is an excerpt from the book that focuses on revision.  Anne and I  hope that it helps make those heel marks in the classrooms just a bit shallower.

Excerpt From Spilling Ink; A Young Writer's Handbook (Flash Point; Pub. Date March 30, 2010)

The View from the Boulder

Writing your first draft is like taking a long, meandering hike through unfamiliar countryside. You don’t quite know where you’re going. You pass through crummy little towns that turn out to be captivating, walk down promising roads only to discover that they’re dead ends. You keep taking wrong turns and have to backtrack and start all over again.

At the end of the hike (or sometimes when you are only partway through), you perch yourself on a huge boulder. From that height, you can look down at all the places you have been and can see where you got lost and where you found your way again. The view from the boulder gives you perspective. 

When you are ready to revise your story, you are sitting on that boulder.

You need to have the view from the boulder to really see what your story looks like and to figure out how to make it better. Trust me, you can make your story better. All writers revise their work, often many, many times. It’s nearly impossible to get a story just right with the first draft. I revised this section on revision four times!

Here are a few reasons new writers (and not-so-new ones) often feel squeamish about revising.

1. “I’ll see all the things that are wrong with my story!”

You will but that’s okay. You have the view from the boulder now and can see your story much more clearly. When you understand what went wrong, fixing things is not such a scary process.

You’ll also be amazed at how much you got right. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself thinking, Hey, that was some pretty slick dialogue or That description of the twin-engine plane crash in the African bush was kind of . . . well . . . dare I say genius!

2.  “Writing the story was the fun part. Revising is sooo boring.”

Hardly. I’m not saying it isn’t frustrating or difficult. It can be. But boring? Nope. Revising is like doing an elaborate, interactive puzzle. You rearrange some pieces. You toss some away and add new ones that you create on the spot. You try out different endings and see where they take you. It’s actually fairly entertaining.

While you’re having a cut-and-paste party, though, try and save all your drafts so that if you wind up wanting to use an earlier version of something that you changed (as I often do), it’s not lost forever. That will just make you cry.

3. “My story is perfect just the way it is.”

It’s not. Sorry if that sounds rude, but chances are pretty slim that your story is without a single flaw. This business of creating universes out of thin air is pretty tricky. A lot can go wrong. Personally, I can revise a book dozens of times and still find things that need improving. That’s why I almost never reread my books after they’re published. I always find things that I wish I had caught and changed when I was revising. 

4. “I just like to write the stories for myself. I don’t care if they’re perfect.”

Fair enough. People like to write for different reasons, and some people don’t care if no one else ever reads their story. If you are one of those kinds of writers, you may decide to skip the whole revision thing and no harm done. However, if you’re the kind of writer who wants to have readers (as most of us are), you should probably have a second, third, and fourth look at your story to make sure it’s read-worthy.