~~~Lara Zielin~~~

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: Another exciting episode of “Guy From Nickelback, Private Eye.”

Recently, I had the great honor of being asked to interview Cynthia Leitich Smith for a freelance story. She proved to be a force of nature — as a writer, a professor, a community-builder in the literary world, and more. If you haven’t checked out her books TANTALIZE or ETERNAL, you totally should. Amazing stuff.

Of course, Cynthia being Cynthia, she turned the tables during our talk and started interviewing me. You see, this is why I love her. She’s genuinely interested in people — and especially writers.

Anyway, girlfriend was gracious enough to host me on her blog and put our interview out there for all to see. She also gives “Editing Letter” a shout-out, which is so awesome. Stop by and read the interview if you have the chance but, if not, no worries — go to the bookstore instead and get TANTALIZE or ETERNAL.

“Editing Letter” shows what it was really like editing DONUT DAYS. **

**No editors were harmed in the making of this video.

STATUS: Totally digging all the holiday music that you can listen to, nonstop, through Pandora.com.

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: This headline about the Blagojevich senate-appointment scandal. Makes it sound like aliens were involved.

I have a good friend who is facing some tough edits right now. And I speak from experience when I say editing is no easy endeavor. Writing is an artistic expression of sorts. It’s hard to hear someone say “change this” or “shorten that” or whatever manner of direction they give you, because writing comes from that personal place that all good art comes from. Plus, after working on a manuscript for months and months, it’s hard to take a breath and plunge back into revisions. Sometimes the material is just too…close.

I took this picture yesterday to summarize how even the best editor’s notes can feel overwhelming sometimes. God help the writer who actually gets this kind of direction. Thank goodness it’s not that bad for my friend — or for me. At least not yet anyway.

STATUS: Taking a break.

FAVE LINKEY POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: This video on the history of Lolcats. I heart Lolcats so much. I’m obsessed.

As I was doing my makeup today, I was thinking about the funny relationships we writers, editors, and agents all have with each other. And that got me thinking about what writers, editors, and agents all want to say to each other but sometimes can’t. And THAT, gentle readers, inspired the following shirts. They’re all available on CafePress.com for sale if you are inclined to buy one. But you don’t need to buy one to get a laugh out of them.

Here’s a shirt for agents:

And one for writers:

And one for editors:

STATUS: Thinking I need more Starbucks. Yawn city, baby.

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: Got this one from a friend who is also a mom, who was elated to discover her daughter wouldn’t have to experience needles, blood, and pain in order to get a back tattoo. Because now, they’re at Toys R Us.

The title of this post is random, as I was simply thinking about a cheap little restaurant in Surfside, South Carolina, that is renowned for it’s averageness. Or, if you’re not a fan of the way the steam from the buffet coats the windows with a milky film, you might rate it below average. But this review rates the restaurant straight down the middle. For what it’s worth.

Moving on, I’m replenishing my creative juices by reading, and I’ve got lots of good books thanks to Swaptree.com. I devoured One for the Money by Janet Evanovich, and can’t wait to get the next book in the series. I love the main character, Stephanie Plum, and it was such a fun, engaging read. After finishing OFTM at around 8:00 last night, I moved straight on to the Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and, I must say, I was literally shaking with emotion (fear and suspense, mostly) by the second page. What took me so long to read this book? I am hooked and want to run home and finish it tonight. I love how an amazing book does that.

I have a few more reads coming through Swaptree.com. One is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a classic that I just never had time for, and the other is Thou Shall not Dump the Skater Dude by Rosemary Graham. I’ve heard great things about this YA read, and I can’t wait to get into it.

So yeah. If I’m not writing or editing, I’m reading.

It’s a good life.

STATUS: Drinking coffee out of a mug that’s shaped like Bret Favre’s head.  

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: Live-action Pac-Man.

I thought I’d share one of the big editing directions that Stacey gave me for Donut Days. It might be kind of obvious, but it’s one of those little things that, in my experience, can easily get pushed to the back-burner when you’re cooking along on a book.

According to Stacey, some of my scenes seemed to be happening in a vacuum because I wasn’t providing enough detail about the environment and the people that were in the scene. So, I’d have all this dialogue – a good three or four paragraphs worth, sometimes more – where my characters would just be talking but there were no visuals to underscore what was going on. She really encouraged me to slow down and spell out some of the details. I’ve written out a “before and after” example of some text that illustrates what Stacey was talking about. It’s not from Donut Days per se, but it’s similar enough:

BEFORE:

“I can’t believe you would do that,” I said.

“Well, deal with it,” replied Jane.

“I – I don’t know how.”

AFTER:

The wind picked up and the dust started swirling. “I can’t believe you would do that,” I said, clutching the empty canteen in my hands.

“Well, deal with it,” replied Jane, wiping her mouth.

“I – I don’t know how.”

I know this seems like pretty rudimentary stuff. I guess it is. Sometimes the mechanics of writing a book seem so obvious, but you know what they say about the obvious – it’s so smack-your-head evident it’s easy to ignore.

STATUS: Just had breakfast.

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: This old commercial for Jordache jeans. There’s so much wrong here it’s right but, really, what’s with the monkey?

I’m up early tackling more edits. So far, so good. When I talked to Ellen about the editing process for her book (Keeping the House, out in stores now, some assembly required, batteries sold separately), she said that it was daunting at first but once she jumped in, she never looked back. Recently, for my day job, we interviewed a UM alum who said, “My head does not do a 180-degree turn. Therefore I never look back.” I think that’s about where I’m at right now: Moving forward, no looking back …

STATUS: Minty fresh. And probably bursting with fruit-filled flavors.

FAVE LIKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND:
This Powerthirst video features flavors like shockolate and rawberry. (This is another find by Rob, who is the master fab link-uncoverer).

The edits came yesterday! Well, at least part of them. It was the first 70 or so pages of my book, left on the front step in the rain. In a padded envelope that had the consistency of damp toast when I picked it up. Fortunately, the pages dried out and I can read most of Stacey’s handwriting. Truth be told, though, I didn’t look that closely at it yet. I am waiting for her editing letter, which, as far as I can tell, is like a vision statement about the direction of the book. I’m waiting to sink my teeth into that before I jump into the line edits.

STATUS: Holy. I am about to take a pilgrimage to my own personal Mecca – Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. There, I’ll see Brett Favre play on his home turf, maybe in his last year ever as an NFL quarterback. I also get to root for the Pack against the evil Vikings, my parents’ favorite team. They often lament how they could have raised a Packer fan. But I simply say – go, Pack, go!

Countdown until edits start on DONUT DAYS: One week exactly. Until then, I’m trying to get as much done as I can on the new book. Because once I start editing DD, I think it’ll be too hard to try and work on a second book, too.

I honestly look forward to blogging about the editing process. I’m a greenhorn here, so hopefully what I share on my blog will be helpful to other writers on the verge of a book contract. Or at least I hope it’s amusing. “She didn’t know THAT? OMG. I thought every writer knew about THOSE issues. Hoo boy.”

In other exciting news, Larawrites.com is almost slated for launch. And by almost I mean gimme, like, another week or so. At least. So prolly I’ll start blogging on larawrites directly but never fear – there’s cool technology available that will update my blogger site automatically, once I update larawrites. How cool is that? So if you’re stuck on roadtorandomhouse, you don’t have to leave it.

STATUS: Deathly Hallowed. I stayed up late last night reading the last Harry Potter and, I gotta say, I’m bummin for all sorts of reasons. One, because I stayed up late and that always makes me a little grumpypants. Two, because so many amazing people die, die, die, left and right, in the final installment of Mr. Potter’s adventures. And third, because the ending is so …well. I can’t say that. I don’t want to be a spoiler. New York Times I am not.

There is an interesting part in the book where Harry reads a tombstone and it says, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” This is from the Book of Matthew in the Bible, though J.K. never lets on that it’s scripture. Jesus does not seem to exist in the Harry Potter books though curiously they do say “Merry Christmas” to one another, and Draco at one point is home for “Easter holiday.” I’m not advocating that Jesus should exist in the books, btw. I’m just making a point.

Anyway, swell music, fade out, wipe tear.

Move on.

The paperwork is all signed on DONUT DAYS. And I got an email from Susanna saying that we’d be starting edits in September.

Yikes! I’m supposed to have all the edits done by October, according to the contract, which makes me a little stressy stressy, but hopefully the edits won’t be too extensive.

Also, I have my fingers secretly crossed that the book will come out in fall 2008 and not spring 2009. In the book world, they release the “heavy hitters” in the fall, just like they do the movies. The Oscar contenders, the Pulitzer books – everybody with heft comes out swinging in the fall. Putnam was thinking they’d hold off on releasing my book until the spring because then it wouldn’t get lost in the shuffle, thrown to the ground under the weight of massive sellers like THE HISTORIAN. But I also don’t want DD coming out as a “light spring read” and everyone assuming that just because it’s funny and quirky, that it doesn’t have something really important to say.

I guess in the end Putnam will decide all this for me, which is weird in and of itself. I learned with my last book that you lose control of a lot of things in this process. The good news is that this time around, I have the publishing world’s version of Ron and Hermione there to make sure I’m okay in the end.