Shelfari

What Authors Can Learn from Artists: Teaching Yourself to See

By Susan J. Morris

Before a certain age, kids draw what they actually see"”or so an artist told me. It might be unpracticed, but it's honest. Then, at some point, they internalize a library of symbols for everything. A "nose" looks like this. "Sorrow" looks like that. Grass is just green. So, instead of drawing what they actually see, they just register a nose and draw their default nose symbol. Artists, I'm told, go to great extents to unlearn this "unseeing" and to teach themselves to actually see again.

Does that resonate? It should! Because authors run into the exact same problems. Only when abused, our symbols become clichés, tropes, and stereotypes that taint our characters, plot points, and even our poor, defenseless landscapes. Now, don't get me wrong: I love a good symbol. Like the soundtrack of a movie, they are effective, almost invisible ways to enhance the emotion and resonance of your story. When used well, they can bring you to the brink with a handful of words. And they are so powerful, that people internalize and then use the symbols they consume without even thinking about it. But therein lies the problem.

Symbols are fantastic"”when we think about them. Of course, we don't always think about them. Like artists, we often practice by mimicking the work of those we admire"”without understanding the whys behind the lines we're drawing. This can lead to misunderstandings of anatomy, such as nostril-punctuated lips. Eventually, with enough practice, we internalize these imperfectly copied symbols and pull them out of context to use in our own writing--without ever noticing the tragic consequences of said misplaced nostrils. Understandably, such a piece, no matter how original, will read a bit off and weirdly self-caricaturized.

If you want your characters to truly live and breathe, it's important to take the time to study the anatomy of the realities you are writing about"”to learn to really "see" as artists do. But how can we, as authors, work on these all-important "seeing" skills? How can we make sure we're actually writing about the world as we see it, and not as it has been fed to us?

Learn to Listen

The most important thing any author can do is learn to listen. Listening helps authors develop an ear for dialogue"”the way different individuals talk. Try not to make assumptions, when listening, or to group people into categories, but rather collect individual voices like characters in your head. You can even practice writing like the different voices you've collected at home"”or mine your own voice, by looking at old diaries and listening to recordings of your voice as a kid.

When it comes to finding your characters' voices, it likely won't be one straight out of your now bursting library. But your exposure to so many voices, informed by the contexts of the individuals to whom those voices belong, will allow you to stitch together a new voice"”one that fits your characters' experiences and resonates with readers perfectly.

Work on Watching

And I do mean work! This isn't a passive thing, but rather a good exercise for all writers, no matter how experienced. To practice watching, try taking a journal outside and sitting in a garden. Or in a coffee shop. Or in a zoo. And describe what you see. Start small, with the way the wind moves one plant's petals"”what it makes you think of and what words you would apply to it. Then, like Kvothe in The Name of the Wind, come up with the words for leaf-falling-slowly"”but don't stop there. Describe people, the way they move and interact, and what they look like when they smile.

And remember not to lean on "short-hand" symbols! They may be an easy way to trigger your mind as to what you meant, saving you words, but the whole point here is to escape that and to write what you're actually seeing. To develop your own way of describing the world. Slowly, you will build a collection of descriptions that allow you to cobble together evocative characters filled with personality--with histories and goals of their own"”and the vivid world in which they live.

Search Your Feelings

Be like Luke "“search your feelings! For real, though: try keeping a journal, and searching your feelings for useful stuff. Not only is it one of the best ways to improve your writing on a consistent basis, it also helps get you comfortable with using a wide vocabulary to describe your emotions--while improving the realism and range of your characters' reactions at the same time. The more in touch you are with your own emotions and reactions, the less of a chance there is of you misrepresenting a character's reaction"”or worse, forgetting to have your character react at all.

Of course, your use of these emotions does not have to be limited to whatever caused them originally. Using empathy, you can apply, combine, and augment your emotional reactions from a variety of real-life stimuli to portray the emotions of, say, a knight who has just lost her horse. When a character's reactions come from your studies of real life, it allows you to give your characters a far more honest and resonant reaction than would come from merely copying society's symbols for "sad." And of course, the stronger and more practiced your skills of empathy, and the deeper your understanding of humanity, the farther from reality you can stray.

Seek Out New Experiences

Of course, it goes without saying that the more experiences you have, the wider the breadth of your writing. Do you want to write about someone who rides a horse a lot? If at all possible, find a horse you can watch or hang out with. Get used to the smells, movements, and sounds of horses. If you can afford it, take a lesson or two. Worst case scenario, when there are no horses anywhere to be found, research them. Read about them and talk to people who ride horses, finding out how they got started, what they love about it, what it's like, and if they have any cool stories. In fact, you should consider trying that last one regardless!

Use All of the Above

Say your hero has a lady he likes. And you want the audience to think she's awesome. So you use the symbol "beautiful" because beauty represents status for women in our society. Then, you make her the only woman, so that the symbol of scarcity will make her more valuable to the reader"”after all, there's no competition. Then, you make her the "healer" for the hero"”the only one who can inspire him to do great things. But you neglect to give her any goals"”either goals for self-development or goals in terms of great things she'd like to achieve. And you neglect to give her an interesting, storied back ground"”or explore the reasons for her nannylike nature. And then you kill her off off-screen in order to give the hero a reason to be angry. It all just adds up to one thing: I'm sorry to have to inform you hero, but that wasn't a lady. It was a bucket load of symbols. And she won't prove as powerful as you'd hoped, because she's not remotely real.

Instead of copying society's symbols for a valuable woman and then sacrificing her in a society-symbol-approved manner of justifying a cause, use your skills at listening, watching, and feeling"”and all the experiences you've had"”to craft a full, complete person. With goals for herself and things she wants to accomplish. With buttons you can push to make her mad, and a real self with desires and flaws and quirks built out of a bucket load of back story. Give us a reason the hero is attracted to her other than her status"”it will make the relationships stronger and any future loss more powerful. And if she must die, make her death a natural conclusion to her arc as well as a step in his arc.

Real characters are really interesting. I mean, of course, they're reality plus"”but they come from you, not from things you've copied. You have it in you to write characters people can't look away from, characters readers will dream about and cosplay as and write letters to. It just takes a little practice.

So go out and explore, keeping your journal and your pen close. Apply your listening, watching, and feeling skills to your every adventure. You never know what will come in handy"”or even prove inspiring.

*

Happy Writing!

Read more Writers Don't Cry
Follow me on Twitter @susanjmorris

 

An Exclusive Essay From Our "Writer on the Rise," Maggie Shipstead

By Neal Thompson

[We've chosen Maggie Shipstead as the first of our Writers on the Rise, a new monthly feature that recognizes the work of a debut or up-and-coming author. Maggie is the author of Seating Arrangements, her funny-smart debut novel that satirizes the rowdy, bawdy events of a three-day wedding weekend.]

Write What You Wonder About

"Write what you know" is easily the most frequently quoted piece of writing advice. When I'm asked to describe my book (which, for the record, I'm extremely bad at), I usually mumble something about a dysfunctional WASPy family having a wedding on an island, and people either nod sagely and affirm, "Write what you know," or ask, puzzled, "I thought you were supposed to write what you know?"

It's an odd window on what other people think I know, and, to be honest, I don't always know what I know. I've spent seventy percent of my life in California, including years zero to eighteen when I lived in beachy, suburban SoCal and was utterly oblivious to the existence of New England prep schools and social clubs.

Twenty percent of my life has happened in Massachusetts, including eight months on Nantucket, where I wrote the first draft of Seating Arrangements. (Let it be said that I do know about Atlantic resort islands, especially, and unhelpfully to my book, in the winter.) Miscellaneous, irrelevant locations get the last ten percent.

Depending on how literally someone interprets the commandment to write what you know, here are some questions that come up: as a Californian, how much can I really know about upper crust New England families like Van Meters? I'm not married, so how much can I really know about weddings? I'm not a sixty-year-old man, so is it wise to write from the point of view of one?

But I have an easy out. It's that I don't happen to be a believer in writing what you know. The idea of a world where people only write what they know sounds flat, grim, and unimaginative to me. I don't believe in writing in ignorance, either.

Instead, I try to write what I wonder about. When I lived in the East, I wondered about the people I met who knew how to dress for garden parties when they were still in their teens, who had vast webs of generationally intertwined family friends, whose style of dress was crisp and culturally regimented and was in no way inspired by surfers or skaters or movie stars grocery shopping in velour sweatsuits. I wondered what it would have been like to go to boarding school, to use "summer" as a verb, to know how to sail.

For a while, I thought maybe these people could be categorized and diagrammed as neatly and pleasingly as in The Official Preppy Handbook. Then I met my friend Bailey's grandmother, a formidable grand dame who was one of Jacqueline Kennedy's bridesmaids. At first glance, she seems like the distilled essence of High WASP. She has a gift for fun of the drinking-and-dancing variety, a plummy voice, memberships in clubs of the long-established and selective variety, a house on the North Shore of Massachusetts full of ancestral oil paintings and classic wallpaper patterns, and a house in Maine full of hardback thrillers and ingredients for Bloody Marys. But what I loved about this particular woman was her surprisingly fantastic closet, which resembled what might have happened if the wardrobes from Dynasty and The Love Boat had been shut inside the Copacabana to breed in isolation for several decades. Behind the classic wallpaper, she kept a pirate's horde of sequins, jewel-tone silks, shoulder pads, towering heels, heaps of bedazzled dresses and sweaters, and one very special zebra-print jumpsuit with matching belt.

In the end, I set about writing a character, Winn Van Meter, who doesn't wonder much about anything and so misses out on a lot. I know him, even though he doesn't exist. He spends his life in pursuit of correctness and an illusory social status, but there are a few zebra-print jumpsuits, metaphorically speaking, lurking behind his staid exterior. We all have our secret sequins.

--Maggie Shipstead

>Learn more about Seating Arrangements

Exclusive: "Road to Perdition" Writer on Going From Book to Screen, and Back Again

By Stephanie Reid-Simons

Max Allan Collins writes movies, graphic novels (Road to Perdition) and mysteries (Lady, Go Die, released last month). In this exclusive guest post, Collins talks about the challenges of writing for the screen vs. novels (and graphic novels), and how lessons of independent filmmaking help him make the transition.

I'm a storyteller.

That's how I think of myself, and describe myself.Everything else is a compartment: mystery writer; screenwriter; comics writer; non-fiction writer; songwriter; and so on "¦ almost always with "writer" part of the description, but "storyteller" at the heart of the beast.

Those various compartments grow out of two things: enthusiasm and necessity.Enthusiasm is what drives me "” I get an idea for a story, and I want to pursue it.Necessity is the need to keep the writing projects flowing, because this is my profession and I need to make a living.You know, to keep the lights on in the joint.

That means I need to be flexible and versatile.Starting out, I thought of myself as a mystery writer, and writing mystery novels was the goal.But I was always a big fan of movies and comics, so when I've been given the chance to work in those fields, I've grabbed it.

On the other hand, a lot of writers can't make the transition into another form.The list of novelists who are miserable screenwriters is a long one; and the list of screenwriters who become successful novelists is a short one.

The ability to write both novels and screenplays well requires developing an appreciation and an understanding of each form.The novelist who wanders blithely into screenwriting will inevitably write scenes that would work fine in a novel but are inappropriate for a film.A novelist will typically write a dialogue scene that is either too long, too short, or not necessary.Novelists have no budgetary restrictions in fashioning a novel, a freedom that is death on a screenplay, where every dollar "” like every second "” counts.

Having directed independent films, I know things most novelists don't "” like the need to minimize the number of actors and locations.These kind of basic technical concerns are a must in screenwriting.

But the most important factor is understanding that novels are interior and films are exterior.A novel is told from inside a character or characters, and a film is told from the outside of the characters, reporting their actions and reactions.

Read more at Hollywonk, the official blog of Amazon Studios.

Oprah Announces Book Club 2.0!!!

By Chris Schluep

With the announcement of Oprah's Book Club 2.0, and her selection of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed, we asked the author to write a piece for Amazon describing what it's like to take the journey from writer to author. Read on!

I wrote the last line of my first book, Torch, and then spent an hour crying while lying on a cool tile floor in a house on a hot Brazilian island. After I finished my second book, Wild, I walked alone for miles under a clear blue sky on an empty road in the Oregon Outback. I sat bundled in my coat on a cold patio at midnight staring up at the endless December stars after completing my third book, Tiny Beautiful Things. There are only a handful of other days in my life"”my wedding, the births of my children"”that I remember as vividly as those solitary days on which I finished my books. The settings and situations were different, but the feeling was the same: an overwhelming mix of joy and gratitude, humility and relief, pride and wonder. After much labor, I'd made this thing. A book. Though it wasn't technically that yet.

The real book came later"”after more work, but this time it involved various others, including agents, publishers, editors, designers, and publicists, all of whose jobs are necessary but sometimes indecipherable to me. They're the ones who transformed the thousands of words I'd privately and carefully conjured into something that could be shared with other people. "I wrote this!" I exclaimed in amazement when I first held each actual, physical book in my hands. I wasn't amazed that it existed; I was amazed by what its existence meant: that it no longer belonged to me.

Two months before Wild was published I stood on a Mexican beach at sunset with my family assisting dozens of baby turtles on their stumbling journey across the sand, then watching as they disappeared into the sea. The junction between writer and author is a bit like that. In one role total vigilance is necessary; in the other, there's nothing to do but hope for the best. A book, like those newborn turtles, will ride whatever wave takes it.

It's deeply rewarding to me when I learn that something I wrote moved or inspired or entertained someone; and it's crushing to hear that my writing bored or annoyed or enraged another. But an author has to stand back from both the praise and the criticism once a book is out in the world. The story I chose to write in Wild for no other reason than I felt driven to belongs to those who read it, not me. And yet I'll never forget what it once was, long before I could even imagine how gloriously it would someday be swept away from me.

-- Cheryl Strayed

Graphic Novel Friday: White Glove Summer Reads

By Alex Carr

This summer, there are plenty of books to pack for the beach and then there are books that don't belong anywhere near it. It's not the content that should be kept far away from the sun, sand, and water but rather the high production values. The following titles represent the very best in what comics can do when care and attention are applied not only to the stories they tell but also the package in which they arrive.

Discerning summer reading lists are already high on The Graphic Canon, Vol. 1: From the Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons edited by Russ Kick. Publisher Seven Stories spared no expense in this deluxe trade paperback release: the 500 oversized pages are full of classic literature and poetry as interpreted by artists working in a variety of styles and media, including watercolor, pen and ink, and a few that left me wondering how they were crafted. The selections are comprised of originals, reprints, and excerpts from works by name-names like Will Eisner and Robert Crumb"”but plenty of the contributors will be new to readers. There's a great side-by-side pairing midway through the behemoth: The Tibetan Book of the Dead as adapted by Sanya Glisic"”the pages are beautiful and terrifying, detailed to a heightened, wordless pitch"”and The Inferno adapted by Hunt Emerson in a mugging, cartoonish take on the grim epic poem. Seven Stories promises to release the second and third volumes in The Graphic Canon before the end of 2012, making this one of the most ambitious and decadent projects of the year.

In further boldly titled collections, Fantagraphics recently unlocked whatever crate must have been used to house Mr. Twee Deedle: Raggedy Ann's Sprightly Cousin: The Forgotten Fantasy Masterpieces of Johnny Gruelle. Over a foot long and over a foot-and-a-half tall, the hardcover features the most beautiful endpapers in recent memory. Gruelle's artwork is full of whimsy, presented in both the richest nostalgic color and black and white. The narrative involves two children on a journey through a magical land as guided by a wood sprite, but this is truthfully an art book. It's meant to be read sprawled out on the floor, the only surface in an average reader's home that is likely large enough to properly balance this fine luxury. Rick Marschall provides a lengthy, informative essay that is lavishly accompanied by further illustrations.

Daniel Clowes fans will remember 2012 as the year that they finally received the art book of their dark dreams: The Art of Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist by Alvin Buenaventura. Like publisher ComicArts' The Art of Jaime Hernandez, this hefty hardcover goes beyond a retrospective, collecting preliminary sketches, discarded artwork, alternate takes, posters, New Yorker and album covers, strips, pin-ups, layouts, and so much more. There are essays by Chris Ware and Chip Kidd. Did you know there was an action figure of The Death-Ray? Ever want to see a variety of Daniel Clowes-inspired tattoos? Further proof that we are all superhero fans at heart: photographic evidence of Clowes dressed as Batman in 1967 and his early sketches of Spider-Man. It's all here, folks!

Dark Horse Comics announced a new format for the in-continuity Buffy Season 8 comics: the "library edition," gigantic hardcover volumes that will collect two arcs apiece along with plenty of supplemental material. The first volume collects the best of the bunch: the first arc, written by Joss Whedon, and the second (starring Faith), written by Brian K. Vaughan"”plus two additional stories by Whedon. Variant covers and 30 pages of sketches and commentary by series artist Georges Jeanty wrap up the bonus content. Jo Chen's stunning covers benefit the most from this scale (she provides an all-new jacket for the book), and it's priced nicely enough so fans might not feel burned by the double-dip option.

Pack up the picnic baskets and volleyball nets and by all means enjoy the sunny weather, but best to leave these gems at home on the shelf"”next to a pair of white gloves. 

--Alex

 

June's Best Books of the Month: Love, War, Magic, Hope... and Fear

By Neal Thompson

When we select our monthly Best Books, the goal is to share a diverse mix of great new reads, from fun thrillers to important nonfiction to exciting new voices. And when the mix feels right (as it does this month) our hope is that, together, these ten "best" books tell us something about the world in which we live--and about ourselves.

June's list seems to touch on all of life's madness: death, destruction, love, war, magic, hope... and fear.

There's plenty of muted madness on display in our Spotlight pick this month, The Age of Miracles, a debut novel by Karen Thompson Walker. The Earth's rotation is slowing, gradually stretching out days and nights and subtly affecting the planet's gravity. According to our reviewer, Kevin Nguyen, "the looming apocalypse parallels the adolescent struggles of 10-year-old Julia, as her comfortable suburban life succumbs to a sort of domestic deterioration. Julia confronts her parents' faltering marriage, illness, the death of a loved one, her first love, and her first heartbreak.

"Karen Thompson Walker is a gifted storyteller. Her language is precise and poetic, but style never overpowers the realism she imbues to her characters and the slowing Earth they inhabit," Nguyen writes in our Best of the Month review. Thompson Walker (at right) has written a coming-of-age tale that asks whether it's worth coming of age at all in a world that might end at any minute. Like the best stories about the end of the world, The Age of Miracles is about the existence of hope and whether it can prevail in the face of uncertainty."

This month we're also happy to introduce a new feature, Writers on the Rise, profiling debut or up-and-coming authors. This month's writer on the rise is Maggie Shipstead, whose debut novel, Seating Arrangements, satirizes the rowdy, bawdy events of a three-day wedding weekend. (The competition was tight this month: three debut novels are included among our top 10 best books for June.)

Watch this space Sunday for an exclusive essay from Shipstead (or take a sneak peak here).

The rest of top 10 picks for June are:

• Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt: A veteran journalist and an award-winning illustrator traveled to the most depressed pockets of our country to report on recession-era America. This is the  harrowing, deeply moving chronicle of what they found.
• Fooling Houdini: In his quest to understand how magicians manipulate our minds, journalist Alex Stone taps into New York's vibrant underground magic scene and uncovers a wealth of insight into human perception.
• Shadow and Bone: This lush, dark adventure introduces an unforgettable young woman with the power to save her ravaged nation, if only she can find the strength to face an army of monsters--and the secrets in her own heart.
• The Lost Bank: As compelling as fiction, "The Lost Bank" takes us far from world financial centers--into suburban homes and Seattle office buildings--to decipher the largest bank failure in American history.
• Gone Girl: Why did Nick Dunne's beautiful wife disappear on their fifth anniversary? From best-selling suspense writer Gillian Flynn comes a brilliantly plotted, nerve-racking portrait of a marriage gone horribly wrong.
• The Watch: Based on the myth of Antigone, this haunting novel takes a timeless tragedy and hurls it into present-day Afghanistan, as the chaos of battle intertwines with one mysterious woman's mission to find her brother's body.
• Tell the Wolves I'm Home: In debut novelist Carol Rifka Brunt's eloquent story of love, grief, and renewal, two lonely people--a teenage girl and a friend of her beloved uncle's--build an unexpected friendship that heals them both.
• Eat & Run: Scott Jurek has won ultramarathons worldwide, an extraordinary achievement for anyone--but especially for a vegan. In "Eat and Run," he tells his story and challenges stereotypes about what it takes to succeed as an athlete.
• Into the Darkest Corner: Catherine Bailey barely survived her last relationship, and now her dangerous ex may be on her trail again. Lock the doors--maybe five or six times--and dive into this terrifying debut thriller.

>See more about June's Best Books of the Month

 

June's Best Books of the Month: Love, War, Magic, Hope... and Fear

By Neal Thompson

When we select our monthly Best Books, the goal is to share a diverse mix of great new reads, from fun thrillers to important nonfiction to exciting new voices. And when the mix feels right (as it does this month) our hope is that, together, these ten "best" books tell us something about the world in which we live--and about ourselves.

June's list seems to touch on all of life's madness: death, destruction, love, war, magic, hope... and fear.

There's plenty of muted madness on display in our Spotlight pick this month, The Age of Miracles, a debut novel by Karen Thompson Walker. The Earth's rotation is slowing, gradually stretching out days and nights and subtly affecting the planet's gravity. According to our reviewer, Kevin Nguyen, "the looming apocalypse parallels the adolescent struggles of 10-year-old Julia, as her comfortable suburban life succumbs to a sort of domestic deterioration. Julia confronts her parents' faltering marriage, illness, the death of a loved one, her first love, and her first heartbreak.

"Karen Thompson Walker is a gifted storyteller. Her language is precise and poetic, but style never overpowers the realism she imbues to her characters and the slowing Earth they inhabit," Nguyen writes in our Best of the Month review. Thompson Walker (at right) has written a coming-of-age tale that asks whether it's worth coming of age at all in a world that might end at any minute. Like the best stories about the end of the world, The Age of Miracles is about the existence of hope and whether it can prevail in the face of uncertainty."

This month we're also happy to introduce a new feature, Writers on the Rise, profiling debut or up-and-coming authors. This month's writer on the rise is Maggie Shipstead, whose debut novel, Seating Arrangements, satirizes the rowdy, bawdy events of a three-day wedding weekend. (The competition was tight this month: three debut novels are included among our top 10 best books for June.)

Watch this space Sunday for an exclusive essay from Shipstead (or take a sneak peak here).

The rest of top 10 picks for June are:

• Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt: A veteran journalist and an award-winning illustrator traveled to the most depressed pockets of our country to report on recession-era America. This is the  harrowing, deeply moving chronicle of what they found.
• Fooling Houdini: In his quest to understand how magicians manipulate our minds, journalist Alex Stone taps into New York's vibrant underground magic scene and uncovers a wealth of insight into human perception.
• Shadow and Bone: This lush, dark adventure introduces an unforgettable young woman with the power to save her ravaged nation, if only she can find the strength to face an army of monsters--and the secrets in her own heart.
• The Lost Bank: As compelling as fiction, "The Lost Bank" takes us far from world financial centers--into suburban homes and Seattle office buildings--to decipher the largest bank failure in American history.
• Gone Girl: Why did Nick Dunne's beautiful wife disappear on their fifth anniversary? From best-selling suspense writer Gillian Flynn comes a brilliantly plotted, nerve-racking portrait of a marriage gone horribly wrong.
• The Watch: Based on the myth of Antigone, this haunting novel takes a timeless tragedy and hurls it into present-day Afghanistan, as the chaos of battle intertwines with one mysterious woman's mission to find her brother's body.
• Tell the Wolves I'm Home: In debut novelist Carol Rifka Brunt's eloquent story of love, grief, and renewal, two lonely people--a teenage girl and a friend of her beloved uncle's--build an unexpected friendship that heals them both.
• Eat & Run: Scott Jurek has won ultramarathons worldwide, an extraordinary achievement for anyone--but especially for a vegan. In "Eat and Run," he tells his story and challenges stereotypes about what it takes to succeed as an athlete.
• Into the Darkest Corner: Catherine Bailey barely survived her last relationship, and now her dangerous ex may be on her trail again. Lock the doors--maybe five or six times--and dive into this terrifying debut thriller.

 

Summer Reading Author Exclusive: Judy Moody's Megan McDonald

By Seira Wilson

Megan McDonald's Judy Moody series is the perfect was to keep early readers busy this summer, and so are her other popular series: Stink and The Sisters Club. McDonald is our featured summer reading author this week, and we wanted to know what books she recommends for budding sleuths over the school break. Check out her exclusive summer reading list and author video below:

If you like Judy Moody Girl Detective, try these:

Judy Moody's Mini-Mysteries and Other Sneaky Stuff for Super Sleuths
Judy Drewdy is on the case!

Case of the Cryptic Crynoline (Enola Holmes mysteries)
Mystery and mayhem aplenty for this younger sister of Sherlock Holmes!

Utterly Me, Clarice Bean
Clarice takes on a mystery ala Girl Detective heroine, Ruby Redfort.

Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator
Our Lady of Sorrows girls' school is haunted"¦ by a ghost.

Harriet the Spy
The original super spy. A classic!

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Mystery awaits after hours at the Metropolitan Museum.

Sammy Keyes and the Art of Deception
Smart, spunky 7^th grade sleuth series.

Mini Mysteries: 20 Tricky Tales to Untangle (American Girl)
Read them out loud. Try to stump your friends!

Red Blazer Girls
It all began with The Scream.

How I Wrote It: Ben Fountain on "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk"

By Neal Thompson

Ben Fountain summarizes his near perfect (in our opinion) debut novel in less than 25 words: "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk - I think it's about football, cheerleaders, the Iraq war, the movie business, capitalism, sex, death, love, family, and the general insanity of American life."

Space

My writing place is kind of new. For years and years it was our garage, which the previous owners had converted into this very raw living space. It didn't have heat or air conditioning, it had just a thin sheet of linoleum laid down over the concrete and cheap wood paneling over the exposed cinder blocks. So it was a pretty rough space.

And I kind of liked having that rough, crappy space, because there was no pressure. If you had this gorgeous office in the British Museum you'd feel you have to write something truly excellent and wonderful. But if it's just me out there sweating in the garage or freezing in the winter, it was like, well, it's not like we invested any money in this office. So anything I do out here is going to be a bonus.

But finally after 22 years in this house my wife basically said it's time to remodel. And so my office now has beautiful hardwood floors "¦ One wall is bookshelves, and I've got a bunch of Haitian art up in there. I have to say, she was right - it's better to have a nice office. Maybe after 23 years of writing I've sort of paid my dues and now I can have an office with air conditioning and heat.

Tools

I write first drafts out by longhand, with black ink pens on yellow legal pads. After the first draft is done I'll put it on the computer, and do some editing while I'm putting it on the computer, then print out a hard copy and mark that up, again with pens. Then feed those revisions into the computer, print it out the next hard copy, and go from there.

I don't like to have the computer sitting there waiting on me, with that cursor blinking at me. And I just like the tactile aspect of the paper and the pens. And the pace seems right. That seems to be the pace where my head works.

I have a MacBook Air, a beautiful little piece of gadgetry. But I don't know anything about how to use it aside from basic word processing and email.  I'm a complete idiot with the technology.

Soundtrack

Not when I'm writing. Really it's just when I'm doing scut work, like cleaning up my office or doing mechanical stuff or answering emails. I'll listen to Dylan. And lately I've discovered Woodie Guthrie. Maybe I'm the last American to discover Woodie Guthrie. But he had a beautiful voice. Just a lovely singing voice.

Fuel

I try to keep a pretty steady pace. I'm not a binge writer.

My office is in our converted garage. I'll go out there in the mornings, I'll have a little bit of breakfast. In the morning hours I'm drinking tea, hot tea. Coffee I discovered early on made me too jittery. I just couldn't concentrate on coffee so I went to tea. It seems to work much better. It's kind of a crutch. I guess I drink tea instead of smoking cigarettes. I never drink (alcohol) when I'm writing.

In the afternoons: water and fizzy water. The fizzy water seems to give me a bit of a kick. Maybe I'm kind of an aesthetic. Not by intention, just by sort of falling into it. I want to keep a steady pace. Drinking tea and mineral water while I'm writing, that seems to give me a sustainable pace.

Words

Before I started writing, I read a lot about the Iraq war, mostly memoirs by soldiers or reportage, like the David Finkle book, The Good Soldiers, which is a wonderful book, and Dexter Filkins' book (The Forever War) "¦ There's been a lot of good nonfiction written about the last 10 years of American involvement in that part of the world.  I was trying very hard to get it right - the military life, and combat. A book I came on pretty late in the writing process was Sebastian Junger's War. And that is an extraordinary book, not just about the Iraq War and war in general but just about the experience of being a human. There's so much about human nature and why we are the way we are.

And then for general inspiration or just trying to understand the American psyche, I found myself reading a lot of Norman Mailer. He's been sort of a guide for the past five or six years for me, trying to figure out why America is the way it is.

Inspiration

I like to sweat. For me a really good day is get a good solid six hours of writing in and then go outside, and either run or ride the bike or work in the yard. It's pretty rare for people in North Dallas to do their own yard work, but I do my own yard work, and I like it. So if I'm not inside working or reading, I want to be outside.

Temptation

I don't have too many temptations. Procrastination has never been a problem. But I tell you what, that damn email"¦  I have gone so far as to take the computer and put it in my car. I find once I break the cycle--if I can keep myself from checking email until after I'm done writing for one day--then it's easier the next day, and by the third day I'm not even thinking about it. But when you get into those cycles where you have to be in touch for one reason or another, it's so easy to get into the habit of checking it every hour. And it disrupts the work and it's also, I don't know, like drinking soft drinks all day long. There might be this instant gratification but then you just feel kind of flat, flattened out, mentally and emotionally. So, I try to stay away from the email.

I like working. I feel much better when I've worked, done a full day's work and concentrated well, than if I've been haphazard or distracted. And a lot of that is up to me. Am I going to let myself get distracted?

Ask Augusten Burroughs: On Optimism, Irony, and Anorexia

By Mari Malcolm

In this installment of Ask Augusten, the self-help sage waxes philosophical on the perils of attempting to plan your life, the pleasures of moving beyond the protective filter of irony to true experience, and the mysteries of anorexia.

Do you think that if someone chooses to be a realistic, that precludes them from being an Optimist? Does "planning to fail" - or having a Plan B - mean you're a realistic, or is looking at the glass half empty or planning just in case a way of being a pessimist?

I see it is as protecting oneself... be real and look at the "what ifs" instead of thinking that everything will be fine. When you fail to plan, you plan to fail. "“ Susan

Dear Susan,

Being a realist is in no way incompatible with optimism: the reality of most peoples' lives is that something quite wonderful or interesting, positive or exciting could absolutely happen tomorrow or the next day or even in an hour. Though it is also just exactly as true to say that something painful or difficult or disappointing or infuriating could happen next. To be a proper realist, you must accept that both the positive and the negative outcomes are a possibility.

One must have respect for both the light and the dark. If you live your life expecting the worst, the day-to-day actions you take will be wearing bio-hazard suits and this will weigh you down, which will limit the speed, fluidity and agility with which you move through life, thus rendering an outcome that favors those already dressed for failure.

Likewise, if you refuse to acknowledge that even the most fortunate and blessed life does come factory-equipped with eventual periods of loss, grief, failure, etc., then one can end up entirely unprepared for the fall, when and if it happens.

The cliché "when you fail to plan you plan to fail" is one of those dangerous pieces of free-floating wisdom that we have all heard at one time or another and it sounds so much like something true, we never actually think it through to see if it is.

It's not. The medicinal treatments for several diseases were arrived at by accident; they were the direct result of a failure to plan. The seed of truth the cliché contains is that if you have a firm goal but have never considered the steps required to achieve it, you'll likely not get there. 

It's certainly a poor and emotionally dangerous slogan to carry around inside your head, though, because it implies that all of life can be managed and planned for, or that in order to be content and satisfied in life one must have some sort of plan. And I believe such a way of living inhibits the very spontaneous, accidental bumps and collisions that ultimately lead us into the people and experiences which will matter the most.

Also, you don't ever need to describe yourself as a realist. The fewer compartments you place around yourself, the lower number of artificial or intellectual constructs you erect, the more likely you will be to be in a position to embrace novel (new) situations and circumstances when you encounter them; thus the richer your life may become. --Augusten

Dear Augusten Burroughs,

I have a hard-to-control habit of irony. This is serious. After a couple of years, a boss of mine said to me, "You would like this book, Dan--it's ironic." You could almost see the sneer quotes around the word. And she continued to point out how often I resorted to the word and the practice itself. I find it ironic, for instance, that I'm writing to you now, at a Certain Age, long past the time when it would have benefitted me professionally and personally to jettison some of my irony. But still, I would like to see more of life unfiltered by this mental reflex of mine. What do I do?

I thank you for your attention, especially as this question is surely unworthy of it. Irony.

Sincerely, 
Daniel Menaker

Dear Daniel Menaker,

Irony is a defense mechanism that hired a celebrity stylist to help it decide what to wear and as a result, irony looks friggin' awesome and cool. This outfit that it wears gets all the attention and what lurks below irony is allowed to go undetected. 

Underneath irony there is often earnestness or tenderness or a sense of deep affinity; an emotion that, were it expressed, would make one feel vulnerable or worse, uncool. But when irony becomes your trademark, it becomes your shield. 

So think about the last, I don't know, seven times that you said the word or expressed an ironic thought or pointed out an irony that you saw. And then amputate the ironic portion and look at what remains and see if it makes you uncomfortable to look at it unadorned. If it does, why? Keep carrying this to an inquisitive and logical extreme until you reach the truth about the source of your irony.--Augusten

I'm wondering if he has any advice for people dealing with eating disorders? "“Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,

If your eating disorder happens to be anorexia nervosa, my advice is that you seek treatment based on clinical research and actual scientific understanding"”or at least promising leads"”because this is a disease about which little appears to be known. When you have a disease of any kind that is under-funded for its clinical research, you have to pull a Lorenzo's Oil and become as knowledgeable about it as you can. My personal hunch about anorexia is that it's a spectrum disorder, not unlike ADHD, Asperger's Syndrome or something like Sensory Processing Disorder. But I'm not a researcher and my hunch is just that: a gut instinct. If researchers were to learn that anorexia is, in fact, a spectrum disorder, a new world of treatment options would open up.

Of course, Anorexia isn't the only "eating disorder," but the phrase is most frequently applied to talk about it, so I'm guessing that's what you meant. --Augusten

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See more brutally honest, compassionate advice from Augusten in his previous columns and in This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. It's one of our Amazon Editors' top 10 picks for the Best Books of May.