Lara Zielin

I can’t resist posting one more photo of KEEPING THE HOUSE. When Rob and I visited the Border’s in Birmingham, Michigan, there was Ellen’s book — front and center on the New Fiction table. We sort of, er, arranged things to make it a little more prominent. I’m sure the managers loved that.

I’ve pasted below, as promised, the link to the article about Ellen’s book, KEEPING THE HOUSE, from the Duluth News Tribune.

But I also want to make a quick point about the importance of writers forging friendships with each other and supporting one another. Ellen had unflagging belief in DONUT DAYS, even after I’d given up on it. And I helped her through lots of drafts of KEEPING THE HOUSE, even when it seemed like one more edit was going to drive us both nuts.

We met at a writers conference when we were unagented, unsigned, and just getting our feet wet. But our belief in each other — and, okay, some hard ass work — has made all the difference. If you’re not supported by other writers, you need to be. It’s a solitary craft for sure, but it’s also one that’s helped by having others read and critique your work, and be there for you when you need someone, anyone, to say you can do this.

And now, without further ado, is Ellen’s article:

LOCAL AUTHOR WRITES ABOUT WWII ERA

Hey look, I’ve got a Technocrati profile now. Kewl!

Technorati Profile

My dear friend Ellen Baker just launched her debut book, KEEPING THE HOUSE. How exciting! She had her first reading in Superior, Wisconsin, last night and sold over 300 copies in a single night alone. That might not seem like a lot but, trust me, in the writing world, that’s HUGE. The Duluth News Tribune did an article on her, which I’ll paste in a new post shortly. Also check out Ellen’s website, which has more information on the book, recipes, and some lovely essays on writing.http://www.ellenbakernovels.com/

Congratulations on a spectacular book, Ellen!

Has this ever happened to you? You finish your novel, write a kick-ass query letter, send it out and get a really good response? Agents want to see partials! People are reading your words!

And then — thud. Rejection after rejection hits. “This just isn’t for us.” “We liked the premise but it just wasn’t strong enough.” “We’d love to see something else.”

Blah, blah, blah.

It’s happened to me, and more than a few other writers I know.

So what do you DO? Where do you go from here?

The first thing is to play the numbers game. I know urban legend says Fitzgerald got, like, 650 rejections for THE GREAT GATSBY before someone said yes, but the reality is that if you get more than 10 on one work, it’s probably time to edit.

I know that sucks, but just hear me out.

The question becomes, then, how to edit effectively. My previous post about family relationships is a good place to start. Can you flesh any of those out? But what about other relationships? Friends? Significant others?

Here’s another example from DONUT DAYS:

Emma, the main character, likes a boy. Of course. (This is teen fiction, people). In the first draft, he was a cute boy who was out of her league. Not terribly inventive. I thought about whether or not I could add some spice to that relationship and thought, okay, he’s a cute boy, but what if he wasn’t always cute? What if Emma sees him and suddenly he’s pulled an ugly duckling, going from geek to chic?

Now the relationship is a bit more complicated. Suddenly, there’s an element of surprise there.

Then, I thought, what if he wasn’t just any boy. What if he was the son of a family rival? Ah-ha! Now we’ve got some Romeo and Juliet strains playing in the background.

I’m not saying I wrote a masterpiece, but I am saying I went back and worked on characters and their relationships to one another, and it made a huge difference.

Anyone else out there got some stories to share about this process?

I’m back, blogger than ever. Now that the wedding and honeymoon have faded to the background, I can focus on DONUT DAYS and my next novel. More details about that soon.

But first, I wanted to get into the details of some of the things I had to change about DONUT DAYS before Susanna deemed it sellable-slash-publishable. And one of the main things was my main character, Emma’s, relationship with her parents. I should broaden this and say her relationship with her family, but I’ll focus on the parents right now.

Here’s the deal. If you’re writing YA, the only way you get out of fleshing out a kid’s relationship with their parents is if the kid has parents who die (Harry Potter), or the kid leaves their household to go on a great journey (Ella Enchanted). Otherwise, you gotta go there.

Why? Because even the most rebellious of teenagers must function, at least somewhat, within the boundaries of home (and school for that matter, but that’s another blog).

In my case, I kept telling readers how my main character, Emma, had real issues with her parents, who were evangelical preachers. They talked to everyone, she complained, but never to her. Problem was, I didn’t show that to be the case in the book (the age-old problem of telling not showing). There was never a scene in the book where Emma and her parents’ awkward communication style was illustrated. So, I wound up writing a scene in a church basement where Emma and her mom are getting ready for a church thrift sale, and Emma asks her mom some tough questions, which her mom summarily evades.

My point is that most all YA characters must interact in meaningful ways with their parents (or a parental figure) in a novel, or the author risks a disingenuous structure.