See, during the past months of revision, I daydreamed about starting a new story. I’d sit next to a waterlily-filled pond somewhere, seized by inspiration, scribbling down long, brilliant paragraphs. (Why a pond? Especially since Laptop+Water= Tragedy) Anyway, my thoughts would weave themselves together, creating a manuscript with a beginning you couldn’t put down, an intriguing middle, AND a surprising, yet inevitable ending.

Instead, I’ve found the process of writing a first draft just like I remembered it, clumsy and full of doubt. And clumsy isn’t fun. Surprisingly, neither is doubt.

And suddenly, I wished I was revising again. In hindsight, revision seems like strolling through a lovely greenhouse, rearranging plants, watering this one here, pruning that one there. Now, I find myself back on a dusty plain with a handful of seeds and a empty watering can. True, I can create whatever I want in this vast open space, but first I have to find some water, figure out what kind of seeds I have, and get digging. All of this is awkward, hard work that leaves your hands calloused and caked with mud.

Wow. Sorry, I guess I got a little carried away with myself there. Plus now, I have two competing metaphors. Puppies and gardening. Hmmm… better throw in a third one, just for good measure.

Vroom! Meep, Meep!

Right now, in the middle of my first draft, I can hear the Road Runner, I can see him, but he just keeps racing in dizzying circles around me. For the last few weeks, I’ve been forging ahead anyway. Since I know my beginning and I know my ending, surely I can find a path between the two points. But somewhere in the middle there, the story gets boring. And I’ve learned to heed the warning signs. When you sit down to write a scene and you think to yourself, ‘Ugh!’ then whoever reads it is going to think ‘Ugh!’ too.

I’ve figured out that something is missing in my story and it’s as elusive and taunting as the Road Runner himself. But this morning and every morning, I will sit down at my computer and start again, creating contraptions, building traps, and scheming new schemes. After all, I’m Wile E. Coyote, Suuuuuper Gen-i-us and I’m bound to catch him sometime, right?

Right?

As I slowed down, my mind pieced the clues together. A large spotlight. A long white trailer. A caution sign. It was a movie set. And I was driving through a patch of fake fog, the movie’s fiction intruding on my reality.

The next day, it happened again. Not fog, but the crossover of fantasy into real life. I’d been at home, watching the tv show, Bones (I can’t resist a good mystery) and then I went to meet my critique group. When I walked into the coffee shop, there was Jack Hodgins, the forensic entomologist, sitting at a table. And the just question popped into my mind before I could stop it…Was I in an episode of Bones? Was a mystery unfolding around me right now? A second later, my brain kicked in and I realized I was being silly. That I lived in LA and it was just the actor, out for coffee with a friend.

Because walking into a fictional world would be ridiculous, right?

Right?

I suspect that the lines between fantasy and reality aren’t as solid as we like to think. That a good story leaks out, like fog across a dark road. As a writer, you might be the one who imagines the characters and put the words down. But once the words are read, that story becomes part of another person’s imagination and then another’s and another’s, spiderwebbing far beyond the edges of the page.

Because who hasn’t felt the back wall of their closet, hoping to get to Narnia. Or squeezed their eyes tight and tried to make something move, hoping to get an invitation to Hogwarts. Or be visited by Obi Wan. When you’re creating new places for readers to inhabit, this overlap can be exciting, and not a little unnerving. Because the power of story is insistent and infectious. It spreads and morphs and grows. And as it does, you realize that the world of words is not quite as safe as you once believed it to be.

I’m 2 chapters out, and one week away from finishing my revision, and my back aches from sitting at the computer. And there’s no food in the refrigerator. And worst of all, I can’t think about anything except my book. A writer friend assures me that this dire condition is common and even has a name.

But every book I read, every movie I watch, everything people say to me leads me straight back to my book. And occasionally this obsession can be helpful. Inspiration will strike and I’ll finally have an answer for some problem that’s been plaguing me.

But most of the time, it’s fake inspiration. I’ll go into my manuscript to make my brilliant fix and find out that I’d already fixed it. Weeks ago.

Deja aha? Glitch in the matrix? Call it what you will, it’s still annoying. But I have a suspicion that it’s also necessary.

Because if everything, dreams, conversations, meatloaf, reminds you of your book, then you have these moments. When you can hear the underlying tension in your character’s voice. When you can see the crooked smirk and raised eyebrow when they deliver a line. When you can stand next to your main character and stare out the window with them, seeing the same footprints in the wet grass, the same dull blue of the sky, and the very same thoughts running through your heads.

Because the moment you see reality through the world you created… then you’re wearing book goggles.

Anyway, Rick Castle occasionally wears a bullet proof vest, but instead of ‘POLICE,’ his says ‘WRITER.’ My friend, and brilliant writer, Alexandra Amor recently asked me, “What writer couldn’t use one of those?”

Her question got me thinking about the public and private nature of writing stories. One day we see something, maybe a dog wearing goggles and riding around in a basket on a motorcycle. And we think, who buys their dog goggles?

Or we eavesdrop on a strange couple at a restaurant and hear the woman say to the man, “That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me all day!” and you wonder, what else has he said to her?  And poof! A story is born.

Then we go to our computers and start typing away, creating a whole world out of that one little question. This process is done in a state of delusion. The delusions that we can make people see the same thing we do. Because even if we write in a coffee shop, surrounded by people, we’re alone in our imaginations, trying to translate what’s in our heads onto paper.

So, in our vacuum, we scribble, tweak, and rearrange until everything’s as perfect as we can get it. Then we send our story out into the world. If we’re unlucky, it comes back to us, not quite right for the person we sent it to. And that hurts.

And if we’re lucky? Hundreds of people read it. Thousands. If we’re really really lucky? Hundreds of thousands. Millions even. Then we’re in real trouble.

Cause then our story, our rough translation of the masterpiece we envisioned, has to stand on its own. We have to rely on our string of words to weave worlds and speak the truth. Some people will love it and some people will hate it. And a few special people will see exactly what we saw. And for them the story will be magic and it will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

And through all of this, we, the writer, have to watch from the sidelines. All of the risk and none of the control. No wonder we need Kevlar.

For some people it might be the clickity-clack of typing. For others it’s the shush of a highlighter against manuscript pages. But for me it sounds like Battlestar Galactica.

Yes. My revision, at least for my current book, sounds like an epic battle for humanity. Every morning, I sit down and put on Bear McCreary’s brilliant Battlestar soundtrack. While I sip my coffee and look through email, I let my subconscious drift back to the story I’ve been working on. As taiko drums thrum through my keyboard and my pulse races with the music, my fictional world forms around me, along with the characters that I’d left, most likely in a lurch, the day before.

Then I’m ready to write.

All day as I fiddle with dialogue or hit the soul-crushing backspace button, the albums shuffle and repeat, keeping me in the writing trance. The repetition helps me weave a more consistent and vivid world. Like the trick of using 3 different senses to bring a climatic scene alive for a reader, the music helps bring the book alive for me. And like the music I’m listening to, my dark tones and themes repeat again and again, shifting and morphing through the pages.

Books don’t have soundtracks, but authors sometimes do. Writers often make playlists for their fictional characters to listen to. Or, like me, have specific music that they listen to while working on a specific story. Music is such a direct pipeline to our emotions, sweeping us up and away, that I wonder how much of the music we listen to makes it into the pages. And I wonder if my characters are humming along.

The query.

She’s sexy and alluring and you wish you could get to know her a little better.

And unlike the synopsis, you don’t have to show your whole hand. Whether you want to think of it as a movie trailer or batting your literary eyelashes, what you need is a few killer lines that are going to leave them wanting more.

Or maybe it’s more like writing a personal ad. In it, you show the best possible version of you. Someone that sounds like a person you’d want to meet. But remember, if you are successful, there’s going to be a first date. And there’s no way you can make yourself (or your book) 5′6, with raven hair and silver eyes, if you’re not that already.

So, how do you do this? How do you balance information with allure? How do you sound exciting, but true to your book? As other writers and I puzzled this out, here are a few essentials that came up again and again.

-Play to your strengths.

If your book is funny, make us laugh. If your writing is lyrical, sweep the reader up in your language. If its got fighting lemurs and ninjas and pirates, make us want to pull out our throwing stars. I know this seems obvious, but when you sit down to the daunting task of boiling your novel down into a couple paragraphs or a 30 second pitch, it’s so easy to forget. Plus it’s hard.

-Use active, specific language. Shorter sentences and present tense can also give your words immediacy.

As we try to sum up our beloved books, we often unintentionally distance ourselves. We write “Little Red Riding Hood walked to Grandmother’s house.”

Instead of…”Little Red Riding Hood strides into the dark woods, unaware that each step takes her closer to peril.”

For a few extra (and, I concede, cheesy) words, I’ve bought emotional impact and characterization.

-Just like in the opening lines of a book, in queries it’s important to immediately show what your main character wants.

“Everyday, Rapunzel gazes out over the sea of trees, wishing she could walk beneath their emerald branches.”

-Lure your readers in and keep them wanting more.

Remember, you’re painting a picture, and you want it to convey a character in a specific pose, a mood, a setting. Keep your sentences relatively simple, free of complex punctuation. For the sake of clarity and emphasis, avoid names of secondary characters if you can help it. Likewise, avoid terms that are specific to your book and require explanation. You only have a few precious lines to draw the audience into your world, and you don’t want anything to break the spell.

As important as it is to give your readers enough to tempt them, it’s just as important to know when to stop. You can choose the climatic moment that plunges your character into the conflict of the story. Or you can go a little farther, alluding to the way the character might get out of their conundrum. But unlike a synopsis, in a query you don’t want to give away too many answers.

“After years of living far from the Castle, Sleeping Beauty is overwhelmed by boisterous crowds and the thunder of fireworks. She flees her birthday festivities, only to find something more disturbing waiting for her behind a closed door.”

If you can make your reader or listener really feel the plight of your character and make them wonder what’s behind that door, then you’ve done it. And a request for your manuscript will not be far behind.

So, let’s dust off last week’s metaphor, mostly cause it’s almost lunchtime and I’m getting hungry. If a synopsis is a recipe for a chocolate souffle, then a query is a free sample at the chocolate shop. Tiny, delicious, and there to convince you to buy the whole box. Omnomnom!

I’d written synopses for that story before and most of them sounded as if they should be narrated by this guy.

Which is dramatic and all, but maybe not exactly what I was going for. I mean my synopses certainly got your attention, they didn’t necessarily describe my book very well.

It took me a while to realize what the problem was. Turns out, in the early drafts, I didn’t really know what my book was about. Sometimes our stories are so big in our minds, that we wander through the world, entertaining ourselves and our readers, but forgetting where we are going. And it’s not until you try to write the synopsis that you realize you’ve lost your way.

Because a synopsis forces you to cut through all the action and mystery and distill it down to exactly what your book is about. Not what happens, but what it’s about.

For example, what happens in Winnie the Pooh is that a bear and his friends survive a flood, throw a birthday party, and search for things (heffalumps, tails, friends, homes.) But what the book is about is learning how to be brave. How to be a friend. How to grow up.

Turns out that a synopsis is just another tool in the writer’s toolbox. It can not only show us if our story has stayed on point, it can direct us if we lose our way. By forcing us to distill our story down, we can look at exactly what our characters are struggling with and if we’ve stayed true to that struggle. We can see if all the pieces of the book are exploring the same questions and leading us towards the same conclusions. Most importantly, we can remember why we wrote the story in the first place.

A synopsis is like a recipe for a delicate, rich, chocolate souffle. Everything in it should be essential and with it you should be able to build something greater and more delicious that the sum of its parts. It should give enough details that you can already taste the cocoa, imagine the texture, and almost smell it baking in the oven. In other words, a good synopsis should make your mouth water.

Bon Appetit!

Amazingly, slowly, fantastic pictures of wizards or the vague dots of George Seurat take shape on that table. Until somewhere around New Years, the final piece goes in. A work of art assembled out of cardboard.

Putting together a story is pretty similar. You get all your pieces out there and start moving them around, separating by patterns and colors. In the middle of everything else… doing the dishes, walking the dog, brushing your teeth…you saunter up sideways to whatever muddled ideas are floating around. And pretending like it’s no big deal, you turn them this was and that until, snap, something fits together.

This summer, I got in the holiday mood and bought a card table and a puzzle. I studiously put the border together and then promptly got distracted. And there the puzzle sat, in the middle of the living room for months and months. With dogs bumping the table legs and people putting their bags on it, and general chaos swirling around.

Until… I started revising again. I got some feedback on my novel that was insightful, completely true, and not a little overwhelming. Turns out, my story was close, but it still had holes in it. So, in the middle of trying to figure out how to fix my story, I wandered back to my puzzle.

It was a perfect activity to do while I was thinking about my book. The problem was that the puzzle, like my story, had been sitting there for months with life happening all around it. I was positive that I’d lost a piece of it by now.

And I had.

But what happened with the puzzle was amazingly close to what was happening in my writing life. As I put the puzzle together, lost pieces found their way back to me. A friend, who’d been at my house weeks before, mysteriously found a piece at the bottom of his bag. My husband found another on the floor right before the vacuum ate it.

When the puzzle was about 90% complete, I began to suspect that there was still one piece missing. Friends would look over my shoulder and ask “Where’s that piece?” Because they could see as clearly as I could that there were no more orange pieces left on the table.

“Um…maybe it’s there somewhere,” I’d say, waving vaguely at my ever dwindling pile of pieces.

I kept putting the picture together around it, stomach sinking. Hoping that by sheer force of will the piece would magically appear. Until finally, all the pieces were gone and there was still one gaping hole in the puzzle.

I looked around the table. I scoured the floor. I glared at my dog, who’d probably eaten it. Then in a fit of desperation… I looked in the box. And there, in the corner, was one lone puzzle piece. A smudge of orange that’d never been out on the table in the first place. Something that had been waiting all this time to complete the picture. Snap. It fit into place and there in front of me, with reds and yellows and all the oranges, was a phoenix rising up into the air.

Around the same time, I started working on a new book, replacing familiar characters with new ones. Then my computer died, taking some of my writing with it.

It wasn’t until my friend Edith, who I wrote with twice a week, announced she was moving that I recognized everything in my life was shifting. I was not impressed.

Change is hard. And it seems to come all at once, disrupting your schedule, switching the scenery, and upsetting the balance. This is just the way life works. To move forward, life must change. Sad or happy, it’s inevitable. And this is true with writing as well.

Except with writing, we’re inflicting the change on ourselves. We rearrange the furniture. Kill off characters. Add new ones. It’s the nature of revision, but at times I find myself hesitating. What if I mess it up? What if the things that are good about my story get lost?  Sometimes the story seems so close to being right, that it feels risky to change it.

But we have to.

If we want our stories to be everything we’ve imagined them to be in our heads… if I want the chance to share that story with the world… then we have no choice but to step forward. We have to take our story apart and put it back together again, trusting that what we rebuild will be stronger than before.

And the same is true with life. I will always miss my puppy. I will miss Edith and typing away next to her at the coffee shop. I will even miss my computer, bulky and covered with stickers. But as pieces of my life fall away, I have to believe that what is left, that what is coming next, will be strong and beautiful too.

What?

Oh. What I meant was how dare William Steig portray the police as pigs! That is outrageous.

And this poem… it just really gets under my skin.

Clearly, it’s teaching materialism by advocating shopping as an exciting activity.

What?

Oh. I meant that Shel Silverstein is teaching our children to be disrespectful and downright malicious! This is terrible.

And how about these cute penguins?? They really make my blood boil! Cause they’re cute and they look like they’re smiling and we all know that penguins don’t smile.

And… um… tell me again what was wrong with the cute penguins?

Oh right. I hate it when books show happy families that love each other. Especially when they’re based on true stories. Those are the WORST.

Clearly picture books are tearing apart the fabric of America, one penguin at a time.

Happy Banned Books Week!