I’ve been writing stories since I was nine years old. My first dozen or so tales starred a particularly familiar character named King Kaleb, who had a penchant for explosions and was friendly to aliens. My parents would dutifully print these out, draft after draft, and let me pile them in my room.

But by the time I was ten, I was over the Microsoft Word double-sided printout booklets. Normal printer paper does not fold into the same width of an actual book book, and this wrecked the realism when I signed these booklet prints for my imaginary audience*. And besides, as anyone who’s tried this knows, it’s impossible to get the staple in the exact center of those pages.

Growing sick of this cruel sequestering of my obviously superior storytelling skills, I eventually decided it was time to be published, and let them deal with the folding and the stapling. I figured being twelve years old would give me some credit, because I was only one year away from being a teenager, and teenagers were practically adults.

So, I dug up the number of the senior editor of a giant publisher, and called her office.

I was prepared. I had a pitch ready for my amazing story about a town of elves being invaded by evil flying wizards, loosely based upon a city of Legos I had built (with photographic reproductions on hand in case my future publishers needed them / my little brother smashed my enormous buildings). The title: Enchanted Memories. If you can judge a book by its cover, this would be the cover:

The editor was not enchanted by any of my memories. Somehow, my call was immediately routed to the security guard downstairs.

This might seem like a rather depressing turn of events, but the guard ended up being instrumental to me. In the process of telling me I could not simply call the head editor’s office, he informed me that there was a process to publishing. For some reason, I had thought books were published simply by calling the biggest and most powerful name in the list of editors you could find, and convincing them you were awesome sauce. But here was something new: revising and querying and researching and never, ever phone-calling.

As the guard hung up, he encouragingly said he hoped he’d get the chance to guard my books one day.

After that first rejection, I didn’t want to be naive to the publishing world any more. I refused to let myself be forwarded to security again. So I read every single book I could find on the publishing business. I went to the library, searched for any books under the categories “Authorship” or “Publishing”, and then unloaded as much of the shelf as I could carry. My mom had an educator’s card that allowed up to 100 books checked out at once. We’d cart a van-full home each trip.

In fact, I was so eager to see my book in print that by the time I turned sixteen, I knew ALL of the major publishers, their head editors’ names, the names of their assistants, their mailing addresses, and the top selling frontlist titles at each house. I would go into a library and pick up books based on which publishing house’s logo was at the bottom of the spine, until I learned exactly what type of book each company seemed to like best. Years before my first novel was even completed, I had compiled a database of agents and a dossier of New York literary bigwigs to almost-creepy proportions (Liz Szabla: in 2001, you had an assistant named Jennifer, right? RIGHT?! Of course you did…**).

To some people, this might seem like a very desperate dream at that age. But it was a big dream, and I knew that if I wanted to reach it, I couldn’t put it off until I was older. I had to start aiming for it right then, before I was thrust into the world and lost myself in a job or college or the important things that the big scary adults did all day. I knew that if I skipped my chance then, it might be years before I could devote time to becoming an author.

I had my first book signing for my first novel on my 21st birthday: a grand birthday gift to myself for nearly half my life of hard work and big dreams. I’m certainly not a literary genius like John Green or JK Rowling. But, I wanted it, no matter how many years of improvement it would take me to get published. I didn’t want to settle with talking to the guard downstairs.

For anyone who wants to write, and anyone who dreams of becoming an author: reaching for the dream is the best first step you can take. If you want something enough to work for years with no promise of any concrete reward, you will find a way to make it happen. My first stories were abysmal. The first ten drafts of my first published novel were abysmal too. But when you want something so much that you’re willing to go after it despite the rejections, you’ll eventually get an editor who will call you on the phone instead.

There’s a happy ending: the publishing house who sent me to security is now one of my publishers. Guard the books well, Mr. security.

–

FOOTNOTES

*I have been practicing my autograph since I was 9 in preparation for the time I knew I would become an author. This is why my signature now takes .045 seconds.

** Liz Szabla was once an editor at a giant publisher. This is an example of my creepy publishing spy work.

–

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Posted in About Me, Writing
Tags: Drawings, Publishing, Writing

Writing a book can cause an effect similar to self-hypnosis. After hours of clicking keys with my brain in another world and my mind blocking out all natural surroundings, I tend to fall into a type of trance. Suddenly, the words being typed aren’t even intelligently thought-out paragraphs, but just what spills out as my fingers move. In this state, though our appearances may vary slightly, little differentiates me in writing skill from a stupid monkey with a typewriter:

This works, though, because the words are flowing and the story is taking on its own life. But the phenomenon makes you lose track of time. It makes you forget lunch and then dinner and then the next day’s breakfast. It also makes you forget that you are typing the same words over and over and over.

Thus, to my horror,when I go back over first drafts, I find paragraph gems similar to this:

The magnificence of this mansion, every piece of magnificent furniture it housed: I would have eagerly thrown it all away for the magnificent device before me now. My eyes had glanced over the Bentley Coupe, the Rolls-Royce, and even the Ferrari – locking on the single piece of flaming red glory behind them. A Shelby GT500. The most magnificent car that earth had ever been graced with; the car no road deserved to feel trample its gravel. The wheels were the blackest of black, the windows tinted, the sweepingly magnificent angles of the hood and side and door like a carefully crafted ship. The silver cobra on its front seemed to whisper seductively at my heart. If I had had my camera, I probably could have photographed its two front lights, and likely would have been able to read nothing but magnificently magnificent bliss behind their magnificent pupils.

Isn’t this paragraph magnificently magnificent?

It is a very good thing to be able to write a first draft without thinking of what the words sound like or what you are repeating, because the first draft is intrinsically just getting the story out there. But when you’ve finished telling the bones of a story, it can’t stop there, or you end up with paragraphs like the above — with a kind soul and good heart but eighteen ugly arms growing out of its back. The manuscript has to be rewritten, revised, and a Search And Destroy list has to be made.

With every book I’ve written, I’ve gotten hung up on a list of words that somehow get repeated dozens of times in my drafts. My brain simply passes over the 15 times I said a character ‘hissed’ on page 211, or the 15 uses of the phrase “demonically possessed since birth” when describing any goats. But when I go back, with the help of friends, I am able to form a list of my most commonly overused words, to search them out and destroy them. For example, in my current Secret Project, this is part of my Search-And-Destroy List:

Memories

Gasp

Remember

Eyes

Direction

“face lit up”

Dismay

“All at once…”

“…only stared”

Breathless

Jerk

Abysmal

“Any mentions to someone spreading their arms because what on earth does the even mean”

The list goes on. Before anyone gets to see this book, I will have successfully found every time these words were overused in my manuscript, and VANQUISHED THEM.

Rewrites like this are a huge part of writing. My first book went through so many rewrites, I began labeling my drafts with decimals. Deep in my OLD STUFF subfolder of the BRAN HAMBRIC subfolder of the KALEB’S NOVELS folder on my computer, there are many documents labeled things like BHTFC-Draft9.7.doc, BRAN-HAMBRIC-FINAL.doc, BH-REALLY-FINAL.doc, FINAL-FINAL-VERSION-BH.doc, etc.

Even after I sent the FINAL-BH-SEND-TO-EDITOR.doc version off, there were still so many changes that now my original document only slightly resembles what has been printed. My plans of making my own pirated version of my book that search-and-replaced Bran Hambric with Uncle Pennybags are ruined.

In a few hours it will be January 2011. I recently finished the rewrite of my Secret Project, so I can start the New Year entirely fresh. Writers who ventured into their stories during NaNoWriMo will also have a chance to go back to their manuscripts with a fresh eye in a fresh year. You’ll have to become acquainted with my friend Revisions. R. and I know when the time has come for us to have lunch together, or fifteen lunches together, or when we have no choice but to stay up until 3 AM sharpening our Backspace Swords and our Delete-Key Javelins together.

As you re-read your first draft, you may be horrified by the things you placed on the page. But don’t worry. I learned quickly how to use the FIND key in my word processor, and how to remove the 823 times my antagonist feels chagrined.

Comments: what words do you find yourself repeating in your early drafts?

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Posted in #SecretKalebBook, About Me, Bran Hambric, Writing
Tags: Rewriting, Writing

This was on the Amazon.com page for THE SHORT SECOND LIFE OF BREE TANNER: AN ECLIPSE NOVELLA, the new Twilight book by Stephenie Meyer:

As if the first one wasn’t bad enough… This is the most ridiculous “vampire” series ever. The only thing Meyers’ vampires have in common with traditional vampires is the blood drinking and pale skin. She turned them into super heroes and super villains. And come on… they GLITTER in the sunlight! Even Stephen King called her a mediocre writer at best. And how many adjectives are really needed in a single sentence?! She caters to a bunch of teenagers, in essence teaching young girls that it’s okay to be in an abusive relationship with a much older guy… Just what I want my daughter to learn right? I will only allow my children to read them so they have a basis of comparison when it comes to great writing versus sub-par. I feel really bad for Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. They’re great actors that got roped into garbage roles and will forever be remembered for this nonsensical, overrated, soft-core porn for teens. (source)

Half of you didn’t even read it all the way, because you’ve heard this same review 8,341 times already. Let me translate it for you:

Years ago, there was a general feeling that the ‘cool people’ were required to hate on Twilight. This was especially true for guys. I know this from experience with my friends in college — even I, at the beginning of my TwilightGuy.com writing journey, kept the Twilight books on the furthest end of my shelf so they were least-likely to be seen, and told roommates my trips to Los Angeles were for ‘some film premiere’.

But nowadays, it’s changed somehow. You still have the ultra-purist literary folks who hate on anything not penned by Cormac McCarthy (this is coming from a former English major who’s felt this sentiment from the inside), but mostly, it’s not the ‘in-thing’ to hate on Twilight anymore. Guys who openly put the series down are branded as basement-dwellers, loveless nerds, or old men with no connection to youth culture. Every girl I’ve met or dated for the past two and a half years has read Twilight in some degree or another (ranging from the regular reader to the insane, regularly-kissed-cutouts-of-Edward-Cullen fangirl, who terrified me). Guys: you are stupid not to at least pick this book up, because it’s now the Sparknotes to 85% of young girl’s hearts.

These people who pull up the same old arguments (“vampire’s can’t sparkle!” *falls into fits on the floor*) are starting to sound like an old broken horn. It’s like the bully calling a fat kid fat in the eleventh grade. He’s been told he’s fat for eleven years. Your insults are neither creative nor new. It’s not like he’s going to go away, so you’re just making yourself look like a sad tormentor desperately trying to fill a hole in your life.

I’m a fan, and I poke fun at these books just as much as everyone else. I spent almost two years poking fun at this series, and five million readers later I still do it. But it isn’t a matter of whether or not you LIKE the series, as it is a matter of NOT LOSING YOUR MIND ABOUT IT. Girls who cut their necks hoping Robert Pattinson will drink their blood: psychotic. Girls who buy copies of Twilight just to dance around and burn them on camera: also psychotic. They’re books. Have you nothing better to do?

Literary criticism is so very important to our business, because it makes us better. But the Twilight Saga has been all criticism’d-out. There’s been no stone unturned, so these little rants on Amazon are just the same broken-record babble. It’s like people who still roar Harry Potter was written by Beelzebub. Someone at least find a synonym for ‘Vampiresdontsparkle!!!‘.

I’ve read years worth of Twi-hate sites and emails whining about how Stephenie ruined vampires, and female characters, and stories for girls, and the literary business, and caused the oil spill. But how can someone ruin what was created by imagination anyway? There’s no such thing as vampires (THE SALTS! FETCH THE SALTS!). Vampires were created by legends, myths, pop culture and stories like Twilight. There is no patent on ‘vampire’. So anyone is free to change them into whatever they want, because there isn’t a real mold from which they were formed. I could write a book with vampires who wear pink fedoras and eat dirt, and no matter how loudly someone whined, the book police wouldn’t be able to stop me.

For those many of you (I know who you are) who read my site more because you enjoy my between-the-lines pokes at the Twilight Saga, I understand your pain. It’s the Jane Eyre of our generation, but it’s certainly no Jane Eyre, because it’s not meant to be Jane Eyre, and Stephenie would probably be the first to remind us of that. When Jane Eyre came out, was it the Odyssey of their generation (“The nerve of that Brontë: her heroine’s lover not being named Penelope! Everyone knows love interests must be named Penelope!”). But at some point, the whining has to stop. Your criticism is losing its power. When he keeps yelling the same insults over and over, nobody really listens to the bully anymore.

–Kaleb Nation

but you TL;DR’d before you got this far

“THE SHORT SECOND LIFE OF BREE TANNER: AN ECLIPSE NOVELLA” by Stephenie Meyer is in stores today.

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Posted in Twilight, Writing
Tags: Amazon, Literature, Twilight, Vampires, Writing

Shannon Hale, a well-known author of ten novels, posted an interesting article on her blog earlier today which brings up some points that have long been debated regarding the disappearance (or actually, lack of appearance) of strong female leads and characters in books and film. Shannon notes in her post:

Here are a few of the highest grossing animated movies of all time:

Ice Age
Toy Story
Madagascar
Shrek
Finding Nemo
Up
Kung Fu Panda
Monsters, Inc.
Cars
Ratatouille

[...] look at their male:female ratios. It’s kind of shocking what we just accept as normal. Can you imagine a reverse? An Ice Age-type movie where every character (except one who dies at the beginning) is female? The same goes for Up. [...] [L]ook at the ratio overall of named characters – I count it 10:2. Imagine a movie with 10 girls and 2 boys! [...] I think in part this goes back to the “girls aren’t funny” belief. [Read the full post]

Hit him with an oar and we will laugh

I commented on her blog, but figured as most of my blog readers are also writers, it would be of interest, so I’ll paraphrase my response here. What Shannon says is very true  –  strong female lead characters, and even minor roles, are lacking in modern media. But unfortunately, it will be a long time before anything is done about it.

To account for the lack of minor female characters, I think a lot of this stems from the ‘girls aren’t funny’ aspect that Shannon mentioned, which is sadly held by most media. For example: it’s totally acceptable in film to see men slip on banana peels, run into walls, knock their heads on drawers and get punched and beaten comically. Take most father figures in Disney movies.

But for some reason, if you replace this comic-relief male character with a woman, it’s uncomfortable and doesn’t come across as funny at all. Imagine watching a female character (even in an animated film) being punched, whacked with an oar, hitting her head on furniture, or getting her teeth knocked in accordion-style. All of this happens to male characters in Disney films and it’s hilarious. But by nature of our society, it’s just not funny the other way around — unless the female character is portrayed as horrendously ugly, stupidly masculine, or outrageously annoying, in which case it’s suddenly acceptable again, but uncomfortable even then.

The same goes for female leads. I’ve said this in blogs before, but there is a reason why in toy stores, there are 2 or 3 ‘pink aisles’, surrounded by a dozen or more ‘blue’ aisles. In this society girls will play with toys for boys, but boys just won’t play with toys for girls. It doesn’t mean this is right: it just means that this is the way our society is built.

It’s really a question of sales. If that’s ‘just the way things are’, what company will spend millions of dollars to try to change it? Corporations and movie studios are not built to change a society. They are built to make money. Changing society does not make them more money. They don’t care what they have to do to sell stuff: they just sell it. It is for this reason Kim Kardashian is suddenly selling salads for Carl’s Jr.

Take a look at all the big film franchises: Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Transformers, Star Wars, The Matrix, etc. Even the Twilight films, despite the main character being Bella, are almost entirely centered on Edward and Jacob. Now look at the franchises with female leads: Lemony Snicket (somewhat a female lead)? Catwoman (totally failed)? I can’t even think of any franchise that actually made money that doesn’t have a male center character. Look at the list and be shocked.

As writers, I think we know and recognize this imbalance, but we also know that it is impossible for us to change an entire society. It’s too deeply entrenched in ‘the way things are’. So it does come down to money, unfortunately. If people don’t want to read/watch it, we can’t write it, because we can’t sell it. Most writers don’t  get paid 6- or 7-figures a book, and thus don’t have the freedom of trying to be different. And so we begrudgingly go on following the norms, because we really need groceries this week.

(Added: I think it needs to be pointed out that this blog post isn’t meant to show a sign of defeat in the industry. There are many authors like Tamora Pierce who write AMAZING novels with lead female characters (I grew up reading these books by her). I’m just trying to point out just how ridiculously imbalanced this is, but how it should not be seen entirely as the fault of the writer, because writers are really only creating stories that readers will read. If no one or few people will read it, no matter how good the book is, the author is regarded as a failure, because the publishing industry is driven on sales. If we don’t sell enough books, then publishers stop publishing us. Until this society changes, authors and producers will just keep on making films catering to what the public wants, and very rarely step outside those boundaries. It is basically a giant monster that keeps feeding itself and getting bigger, and that no one really has the power to kill.)

I welcome comments below, especially from other writers who recognize this trend, or have ideas on how we can improve.

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Posted in Writing
Tags: Shannon Hale, Writing

Today I returned from school to find that my publishers have finally completed the copyedits for Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse! In publishing, a copyeditor reads a manuscript even deeper than a normal editor does, checking for everything from consistency mistakes to style errors all the way to the gritty commas and exclamation points (of which I had many). A copyeditor also helps me make sure that everything lines up perfectly, and really adds the final bit of polish to the book before it goes off to the printers:

Visualization for what Copyedits do

So, as today is Friday, and these edits are due on Monday, I am barricading myself in my apartment with the Lemony Snicket soundtrack, as much Anberlin as one soul can take, and all 115,000 words of my book. My goal: to attack it with as much ferocity as I can muster whilst living off microwave Mexican food and macaroni for two days and three nights. My editors left no stone unturned, as evidenced:

Copyedits for The Farfield Curse

Each red marking is from one editor, and each blue marking is from another. I have two days to read and approve each edit — and the photo above is just two pages out of nearly 400! (ADDED: It should be noted, however, that every single quotation mark in this entire novel had to be changed to a different style, so the majority of those marks above are from that!)

It’s actually one of the most important steps in this process. A copyeditor can’t even change anything in the story, but they correct so many tiny mistakes that even after years of my editing, most of the manuscript looks like the two pages above! I have to approve or reject each change to make absolutely sure that everything stays exactly the way I intended when I wrote the book.

In OTHER news, my friend Kaza Kingsley has her first two Erec Rex books being re-released on April 9! Kaza and I met just after I signed with my agent, and I saw her book EREC REX: THE DRAGON’S EYE at a local bookstore and decided on random to write to her. She replied to my email, and we became good friends over the internets (she later got me as the designer for her book’s official website!). By amazing chance, she later signed with my literary agent without even knowing, and he sold her series to Simon & Schuster for re-release. If you like books with epic quests and boy heroes and dragons, you should definitely check her books out next week!

By the way, I had to turn in another project for my photography class today! The assigned concept was to show motion with shutter speed, either by freezing it or by having a little bit of blur. Tell me what you think of these (click to see them bigger):

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Posted in Bran Hambric, College, Writing
Tags: Bran Hambric, Kaza Kingsley, Sourcebooks, Writing