Wartime rationing sucked!

When you're writing a historical novel - my work-in-progress is set in Scotland during World War Two - you do have to trawl through a whole pile of research material, a lot of which is quite dry and sometimes even dull. But then you find a wonderful treasure of detail which not only makes you laugh when you find it, but keeps you chuckling every time you think about it! 

And here's my favorite so far. We all think we know about the deprivations of wartime rationing in Britain, but this takes the cake... erm, the carrot!

I mean, what kid needs an ICE CREAM when they can have a CARROT ON A STICK?!‪

Looking inside myself for the stubborn little bulldog

I was lucky enough to attend a reading this week by the celebrated Texan memoirist, Mary Karr, to promote her latest book, The Art of Memoir. She joined a packed and rapt audience at Christ Church Cathedral, brought together by Inprint, the fabulous Houston reading and writing organization (and I’m talking about “reading and writing” in LITERARY terms here, not LITERACY).

When I heard the word memoirist, my mind immediately went to names of dusty old chaps like Samuel Pepys and Winston Churchill, but Mary Karr is something else entirely. She is knowledgeable, witty, and self-deprecating, and she swears like the best of them. I’m really trying to describe her without commenting on her short skirt and her amazing red patent platform heels, but really, I think my eyes rested on those shoes as much as they did her face. They were, as I said, amazing!

Mary Karr read from The Art of Memoir and talked about her work with Mimi Schwartz, the executive editor of Texas Monthly, before talking questions from the audience.  But throughout all that, there was one passage about revising which really sang to me, given that I am currently struggling through major revisions on my YA novel manuscript.

In the final chapter of The Art of Memoir, Karr writes about how lucky writers are because we can go back to a previous draft, unlike a painter or a live performer, and that you should not look on the marks your editor makes on our manuscript as pointing out your mistakes. Instead, you should: 

Remind yourself that revising proves your care for the reader and of the nature of your ambition.

Writing. . . means celebrating beauty in an often ugly world. And you do that by fighting for elegance and beauty, redoing or cutting the flabby disordered parts.

Mary Karr with Texas Monthly's Mimi Schwartz

So as I battle through my scrawled-upon manuscript trying to find the elegance and beauty amid all the flabby disordered parts, it is reassuring to hear that a writer as celebrated and successful as Mary Karr has been here before. After all, she has told me: 

For me, the last 20 percent of a book’s improvement takes 95 percent of the effort – all in the editing.  I can honestly say not one page I’ve ever published appears anywhere close to how it came out in first draft. . .  I am not much of a writer, but I am a stubborn little bulldog of a reviser.

So let me raise a glass (okay, it’s a paper cup of earl grey tea) to finding elegance and beauty in my manuscript, and to finding the stubborn little bulldog of a reviser in myself.

The Art of Memoir is out now, published by Harper Collins. To buy a copy or to find out more about her memoirs The Liar’s Club, Cherry and Lit, or her books of poetry, visit her website.

For more information about Inprint and the other brilliant writers coming to Houston soon as part of the Inprint Reading Series, visit the Inprint website.

Let me introduce you to my literary agent!

I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I am now represented as an author by Danielle Barthel and Suzie Townsend of New Leaf Literary & Media, Inc. in New York.

New Leaf is a major force particularly in the Young Adult arena, representing lots of amazing authors including Veronica Roth, who wrote the Divergent Trilogy, and Victoria Aveyard whose debut novel, Red Queen, went straight to No. 1 on the New York Times YA bestsellers list the week it was published in February.

Danielle Barthel and Suzie Townsend

Every author has a story to tell about his or her own distinct path to representation and eventually to publication, and one of these days, I’ll tell you where I am on my path. But in the meantime, my enormous and heartfelt thanks go to Danielle and Suzie at New Leaf for responding almost immediately to my plaintive submission email, for reading my WW2 love story over a sunny weekend when they could have been out enjoying themselves, and then for welcoming me into the New Leaf Literary family with such open and encouraging arms.  

Every un-agented writer harbors a suspicion that agents are all mean people who get a thrill out of saying “No!” to hard-working writers who just want a break. Well, from Danielle and Suzie at New Leaf, I got a whole bunch of "Yes!”.

Nikki Loftin
photo by Rae Dollard

I must also send a huge thank you to the wonderful Nikki Loftin for being so generous in putting in a good word for me with Suzie at New Leaf, who also represents her.  Nikki is an active member of the Austin chapter of Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. She not only gave me my first ever SCBWI conference critique, back in 2012, later in the day when she also saw me standing alone at a reception, she immediately took my arm and started introducing me to other writers she knew. Some wonderful friendships began with that kind gesture and first introduction, but I could never have guessed that years later, Nikki would make yet another crucially important introduction for me. Thank you, Nikki – I still owe you that cocktail with the pink umbrella.

I can’t wait to tell you more about this roller-coaster journey towards publication, as it all plays out, but for the time being, I’ll try to contain my excitement at having Danielle and Suzie on my team, and try to work out how to round off this post without resorting to some clichéd comment about me turning over a New Leaf…

Darn it!

To see the other amazing authors and illustrators represented by New Leaf Literary & Media, visit www.newleafliterary.com.

Nikki Loftin is the author of three gorgeous middle grade novels, The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy, Nightingale’s Nest and Wish Girl. You can find Nikki at www.nikkiloftin.com.

Go get a critique group, I couldn't live without mine!

Tobey Forney, Mimi Vance, Chris Cander, me, Penny Linsenmayer and Andrea White 

I am so lucky to be part of a writers' critique group with five fantastic and inspiring women writers. 

My great author friend, Andrea White, suggested a couple of years ago that I might like to meet another friend of hers, Chris Cander. "Chris has one book out already and another heading towards publication," said Andrea, "and I know you'll get on." .

Talk about an understatement! We could have talked for hours, and by the time we met for the second time we were up to five writers, with a sixth added soon after. And although at first we did swap manuscripts around and comment on each other's work, it became apparent that we are all so swamped with our own work, as well as family life etc, that this wasn't really working for us all.  So we decided instead to meet for lunch every couple of months to share our stories, our ideas, our hopes and our panics. I now wonder how I ever wrote anything without them.

When we meet, we go round the table to catch up on what everyone is working on - writing, researching, selling or promoting.  It is wonderful to have friends who are proud to be your cheerleading team, who love to celebrate the triumphs and talk through the disappointments. We build each other up  so we will be better able withstand the next stomach-lurching loop of the roller-coaster career we have chosen for ourselves, and we cheer the loudest when one of us succeeds. We all write such different things, but we all share the joy of telling stories and reaching new people. 

Over the next few months, I would love to introduce you to my critique group friends one by one, but today I wanted simply to share a photo, taken at our lunch today, showing six women writers, some published, some almost-but-not-quite-published, looking happy, relaxed and, if you look deep in their eyes, inspired by each other.

Andrea White, Chris Cander, Tobey Forney, Penny Linsenmayer and Mimi Vance - thank you, thank you, thank you.

And to you, dear reader, if you also like to write (even if you don't yet have the bottle to call yourself a writer - yes, we've all been there), go find yourself a critique group (or one friend who has a friend, who has a friend, etc., so you can form your own group), and even if you never critique each other's work, it's a great excuse for some lunch and some laughs.

Smelling the seaweed on Google Earth

The RSPB reserve at Aberlady Bay

In case you didn't know it already, Google Earth is a fabulous thing.

What an amazing gift Google has given to writers everywhere. We can cruise down the Champs Elysées, The Strand or Broadway. We can study doorways of burger joints and pizza parlors in Melbourne or Naples, look at statues on courthouses in Buenos Aires, posters on theaters in Rome and read neon signs in shopping malls in Flagstaff AZ if we want to. We can check the color of the central bulb-roof on the Kremlin, check the height of the royal balcony on the front of Buckingham Palace and even (I’ve just been astonished to discover) find out how many steps, slopes and passages you have to negotiate to walk the Great Wall of China.

Cromarty Harbor

My Google wanderings have been rather smaller in scale though. Over the last few years, I have spent hours wandering around two small Scottish seaside towns – Cromarty, up in the north on the Black Isle, and Aberlady in East Lothian, near Edinburgh – to get vital information about life in those towns for the two novels I have been writing. In the past, writers could only pore over maps to see how far their character’s house was from the police station or the school in a distant town. I had the indulgence of being able to do that walk myself, all while sitting in a café in Houston, Texas.

When I began to write my first novel, With Cowries at her Throat, I had never been to Cromarty. I had driven up the A9 through Inverness en route to the north coast, but had never taken the right turn just past the Kessock Bridge which would have taken me across the Black Isle. I had visited Aberlady a few times as a child as it was much closer to home, but once I decided to set my second novel there, I realized I could remember very little of the village. Hence the hours I spent wandering (or is it scrolling) around the villages, stopped by Google Earth only when I wanted to trespass onto private land.

So it was a strange experience a week or so ago, when I was back in Scotland on a family vacation, to drive through Aberlady for the first time in perhaps thirty years and feel like I had been there only last month. The streets were so familiar that it was almost like I was in my own book. I knew where the church was, the school, the grocery store and the hotel. I could point out to my kids the wide green where I had set my VE Day picnic, and which of the white-washed cottages on Sea Wynd belonged to Mrs Murray, the teacher.

The same had happened to me when we visited Cromarty a couple of years ago. I knew the town so well that I could walk from the harbor straight to Fergus’s house, and when we got there, I really had to control myself not to ring the doorbell so I could say hello to him and his Grandma. Gladly, sense prevailed and we walked away. I doubt the people living in that particularly beautiful house would have taken kindly to me knocking.

The Hundred Steps in Cromarty

However, there was one huge difference between my virtual Cromarty and Aberlady wanderings and my real ones, and that was the sensory overload I got from being in the real place.  My virtual towns looked just like they do in real life, but all I could smell was coffee and cheese paninis, and feel a chill from an overactive air-conditioning system. The real Cromarty smelled of fishing boats, seaweed and fresh baking bread . And as I walked the Hundred Steps up the South Sutor, the scents changed to those of the wild garlic, the rich loam of decaying logs and of the dank moisture trapped under bowing branches.

In the real Aberlady, I could feel the pale warmth of the early sun on my face, all the while fighting to keep my chilled fingers moving so I could adjust the settings on my camera and binoculars (and yes, it was that cold in mid-July). By the time we had walked through the churchyard, the Sea Green, the RSPB bird reserve and over the golf courses at Craigielaw and Kilspindie (which sit on the piece of land I have purloined for Jock Anderson’s farm), the movement in the air had grown from a breeze to a positive bluster, making me pull my hair out of my eyes and back into a ponytail in order to see anything at all, not something I have had to do sitting in Barnes & Noble café very often.

The grass around the golf courses was luscious and soft under my feet, but Coffin Lane was stony and narrow. I also learned that when you walk, as my characters Lorna and Iris do, at low tide alongside the Peffer Burn as it threads its shimmering way across Aberlady Bay and out into the Firth of Forth, you are not walking on sandy gravel with pebbles strewn around, but on sucking mud flats, dotted with worm casts and shells. Good to know. Better go and change that bit right now.

The Peffer Burn early one morning

As we walked, I could suddenly taste the salt on the air in a way that I never could in my virtual Aberlady, though I must say, the millionaire’s shortbread and tablet from the Gosford Bothy Farm Shop tasted every bit as sweet and delicious as my drooling mouth told me it would be when I saw the shop’s sign as I cruised down Google's version of the A198 out of Aberlady.

So while I cannot recommend Google Earth enough to you other writers who need to research fine details of distant places for their books, I would also remind you that discovering a place by sight is only part of your research. Discovering it by smell, touch, taste and sound is a whole different matter entirely.

Want to read Margaret Atwood’s new book? You’ll have to wait… for 100 years

If you want to read Margaret Atwood’s latest piece of writing, Scribbler Moon, you will have to wait a while, say, for about ninety nine years.

Artist Katie Paterson accepts the first Future Library

manuscript from Margaret Atwood

Photo (c) Kristin Von Hirsch 2016

Atwood is the first contributing author to the Future Library project, for which Scottish artist Katie Paterson and The City of Oslo have planted a thousand trees in a forest just outside the city. As I said in my blog post last October when the project was launched, the trees will be looked after for one hundred years, until 2114.  In each of those hundred years, one author will be commissioned to write a manuscript of some sort and that piece of writing will be placed, unpublished, in a secure and specially designed room in the new public library being built in Oslo. They will all remain unread until the collection of one hundred manuscripts is complete. Then in 2114, the trees will be cut down and the wood will be used to supply paper for a special anthology of books in which 100 years of writing will be published.

The Canadian author delivered her manuscript to Katie Paterson this week, deep in the heart of the Future Library itself, in the Nordmarka forest just outside the Oslo, but it remains a secret as to whether it is a poem, short story, novel or memoir. No one else will know until 2114.

"There’s something magical about it," Atwood said as she handed over her work. "It’s like Sleeping Beauty. The texts are going to slumber for 100 years and then they’ll wake up, come to life again. It’s a fairytale length of time. She slept for 100 years.

"I am sending a manuscript into time. Will any human beings be waiting there to receive it? Will there be a ‘Norway’? Will there be a ‘forest’? Will there be a ‘library’? How strange it is to think of my own voice – silent by then for a long time – suddenly being awakened, after 100 years."

David Mitchell

The next contributor to Future Library will be David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks. 

He said, "Imagine if the Future Library had been conceived in 1914 and 100 authors from all over the world had written 100 volumes between then and today, unseen until now. What a human highway through time to be a part of. Contributing and belonging to a narrative arc longer than your own lifespan is good for your soul."

Katie Paterson created the image below to symbolize the Future Library. A tree trunk with a tiny blue "2014" at its center, 100 growth rings expand until, at the top right outside edge, there is another tiny blue date, 2114.

Katie Paterson's Future Library icon

As the hundred years pass, future contributors will be announced year by year. Some will be familiar to us now, though it is startling to realize that many will not even have been born yet.

For more information, visit Future Library here.

I've joined the Inprint blogging team with a celebration of young writers

One of Houston's most important literary resources is Inprint, the fabulous literary non-profit organization that supports and engages Houston's readers and writers. I am delighted to have just joined the team contributing to the Inprint blog - An Open Book. 

My first contribution was posted today and is a celebration of the first graduating class of Creative Writers at the High School for the Visual and Performing Arts and you can read my article on An Open Book.

The HSPVA Creative Writing Class of 2015