The following is just my opinion on the matter. Different things work for different people. I’m assuming you don’t want to know about my failed submissions, so I’ll tell you how it worked for me with MATCHED. And as you read on, you’ll find out why the girl in the picture below is my secret weapon when it comes to revision…

*First, I wrote the book, which took from Fall 2008 to August 2009. (I was working on another project at the time as well-BEING SIXTEEN. But it does usually take me nine months to a year to write a book. I am slower than many authors I know.)

*I knew from writing my other books that I had to give myself time off from the manuscript in order for it to be good. So, after I’d revised it several times, had my first-round readers go through it, and made all the changes I could, I took a month off before coming back.

*Then I had even more people read it. By the time I was ready to submit, I had had thirty people read it. That is wayyyy too many, FYI. While all the readers were great, it was just way too many voices. So I wouldn’t recommend thirty readers. Maybe five. Five would be good, if they are good readers. You MUST get a reasonable amount of feedback and work through it. Over and over.

*Then I revised it again. Significantly. Several times. And then, the key…

*I have an “it’s getting worse” reader. Elaine. My sister (pictured above) is unbelievable. She has read MATCHED so many times. And she is fantastic at being honest and discerning. So, as she read the revisions, she was able to tell me when I started spinning my wheels. When she sent it back and said, “This is getting worse, not better,” I knew it was time to fish or cut bait.

*And, also: I had a deadline coming up for another book with Deseret Book and I was almost out of time to get that in.

So here is my equation (which is super scientific and very, very mathematical) regarding how you can know when it’s time to send your book in:

Manuscript + extensive revision + a month off + feedback from x amount of trusted readers + more revision + your most trusted reader telling you it’s time to let go + other important things in your life getting overrun by book = time to submit.

And if you do want to know why my previous submissions failed to result in an agent, I can sum it up for you in this second, also very scientific equation:

general badditude* of writing + not enough time spent away from manuscript/in revision = rejection.

Opinions? Questions? Let’s talk.

*I think this should be a word, and you read it here first.

Remember that movie What About Bob? And Bob, the main character, has this great line where he says, “I’m taking a vacation from my PROBLEMS!”

My dad loves that movie. He came to visit this week. He’s working in the northern end of the state (where I live) but he’s also doing a little road-tripping and visiting of children. And we kept quoting this line to each other (it’s probably only funny if you’ve seen Bill Murray say it in the movie).

So I actually don’t have that many problems. But I’m kind of a wimp so I like to pretend I do and think about taking vacations from them. My problems right now mostly stem from 1) my inability to write anything good this week and 2) the way I like to not clean my house and then 3) be annoyed that it is never clean.

My husband took this picture of a bookshop in Cambridge this summer. (He called me while he was there and said, “They have a first edition Dylan Thomas. Should I buy it for you?” And I said no because it was super pricey but I loved that he asked.) I think this would be the perfect place for a vacation from your PROBLEMS. Let’s all pretend we’re there right now in Cambridge reading books in a used bookshop and then going for a walk along the river Cam. Let’s. Want to join me?

It’s the running time of year right now. When the cross-country season has started and the mornings are getting cooler and the smell of fresh-cut grass mixes with fall smells– like the smell of smoke from woodburning stoves. When the grass is still green but the leaves are beginning to change colors.

Those of you who have been visiting the blog have probably noticed that I write a lot of posts about running. Those of you who have read my books have probably noticed that the characters are often runners. I joke that this is because running is the only sport I was ever any good at (and this is true)–but it’s also because running has been part of my life for so long and is so important to me.

I started when I was fourteen. This is my nineteenth autumn of running. I’m not in those high school races anymore; the state race in October goes by and it belongs to other girls, other teams. But I can’t drive by Sugarhouse Park in Salt Lake City without getting a feeling that is half anticipation and half fear. I can’t help but want to stride it out at the end of every run.

I’m still running. And it’s because of the man in the picture above. Coach Corry.

I owe him so much.

Coach Corry, who is also a medical doctor, taught us to appreciate the body for what it can do, not how it looks. He taught us to work hard but not to be stupid about it. He took us seriously, and our health seriously, and he cared about us. He is a fantastic coach–his girls’ cross country team has won the state championship many, many times–but he cheers as loudly and is as thrilled for the girl in last place as he is for the fastest girl on the team.

Everyone should be so lucky to have such a mentor.

And a good mentor, which Coach Corry was (and is–he’s still coaching, and still cheering) teaches you things that you can apply throughout your life. I remember one conversation in which he told me that he thought I didn’t have a lot of natural running ability. The way he said it was a compliment: that I’d made up for a lack of ability with hard work. It’s not like I was the fastest girl on the team, ever. But, for Coach Corry, it was all about the team and about the PR. The personal record. Running your best and winning against yourself while caring about your teammates.

I remembered his comment when I was soundly rejected in 2004 when I queried my first book. No agents were interested. And I had worked really hard and I had queried a lot of agents. “Okay,” I thought. “I’m not good at this yet. But I’m a hard worker and I’ll keep writing every day and maybe someday I will be.”

It’s six years later. There are lots of writers who are much, much better than I am. But I didn’t give up, and I think I owe a lot of that to a comment made years ago when I was in high school. To someone who told me the only value isn’t in being good, but in working hard. In trying to get better.

The best coaches and mentors are the ones who not only changed your life once, but help you change it over and over again even after the passing of years and the changing of circumstances.

Coach knows he taught me to run, but I don’t know if he knows that he also taught me to write.

Thank you, Coach. And best wishes on the upcoming season.

1. Thanks for everyone’s great comments on last week’s conversation! I think next time we’ll talk about the most-requested topic: How do you know when a draft is “finished,” or ready to submit? The other questions on the list are discussions about revision and poetry. If there’s anything else you’d like to see, please please please feel free to post it in the comments here!

2. The Writing for Charity event was wonderful. So many people excited about getting books into kids’ hands. This is a yearly event, started by the lovely Shannon Hale, and if you are anywhere in the area, please come next year!

3. I just heard from my agent that we have now sold MATCHED in 25 foreign countries. This is thanks to the fantastic foreign rights’ team at Writers House and I am very, very thrilled.

4. I am tired today. Are you tired?

5. We’re going to be revamping the site a bit in the next few weeks, just FYI. So if you come visit and everything is a mess, just pretend it never happened and come back again soon.

Friday, August 20, 2010
11:00 a.m.-1:00 pm.
Book Signing
BYU Bookstore
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT

Saturday, August 21, 2010
6:30 p.m.-8:30 p.m.
Writing for Charity Evening Extravaganza
www.writingforcharity.com

So here’s how these conversations will work. I’ll post about the topic with my opinion/ideas. Then we’ll talk in the comments. And please bear in mind, that I always know that I’m just sharing one person’s ideas. I know these things won’t work for everyone, that lives change, that I could be writing a completely different post myself in one year’s time. It’s just about getting the conversation started.

I started writing seriously at about the same time I became a mom. Which was nice because I’ve always built the writing around the kids–but also challenging in its way too. I’ve been doing this for 7.5 years now. And here is the only secret I have learned: things change.

I used to write during naptime, then during naptime/preschool overlap, and then when I had my third son, I realized that three schedules very seldom overlap. But it’s still very important to me to write every day–I’m a somewhat slow writer, in that I complete about one book per year–and that’s the way I get it done.

So what to do?

In the past few months, I’ve been able to hire my adorable and lovely college-age cousin Caitlin to help out with the kids for six hours a week. It is sort of stunning how much you can get done with an extra six hours per week. But that isn’t something I had during the first seven years I was writing.

Here are a few ways that I make writing work with small children:

*I cannot do two things well at once. I can’t write when the kids are awake or when they need me. Answer an e-mail or take a phone call here and there, yes. But really write? Really create? That needs my full-time attention–and, even more so than that, so do my kids. They are crazy and cute and the reason I quit teaching was to be at home with them because I knew it was the right choice for our family. (Definitely not trying to tell anyone else what to do!) So I have to find/make the time to write at other times.

* This means evenings and weekends, for the most part. My husband’s job is such that he works every day after he gets home once the kids are in bed. So we work side by side at our computers almost every evening. Such is life in the Nerdery. And then, on Saturdays, I always get in a good block of time–say 4-8 hours. This is very, very important to me because it’s when I can do lots of drafting and really dig in.

*I write a little every day no matter what. The hardest time to write was when I had two small children and was the house mom in a sorority of forty girls. I lived in the sorority and was in charge of running the house, the staff, looking after the girls, etc. While parenting. And writing. My writing was definitely the slowest then, just 300 words a day sometimes. I did get discouraged. But I tried to be very disciplined and at the end of the year I had a book. Not a great book. But a book, and I had gotten better at writing.

*I don’t write on Sundays. This is for religious reasons, and I’ve found that a side benefit is that it is so good to have that day off, to let go of the manuscript and just live.

*I keep notebooks everywhere to jot down ideas that come to me so that I can get back to them when it’s time to write.

*I accept (some times more gracefully than others) that this is a situation that requires constant calibration and balance. What works now will not work later. No solution is permanent.

*I accept (some times more gracefully than others) that I’m not as active online as I feel I should be. When I sit down at the computer, I usually know that I don’t even have enough time to write, let alone do all the other stuff I feel like I should be doing (like blogging more, being a better commenter on other people’s posts, etc.).

*I accept (some times more gracefully than others) that–for me–being a good mom/wife and writing are the only two things that I can really do right now. It’s like letting go of a bunch of very bright, very beautiful balloons that represent different lovely or good things. (And I have to admit that maybe I’m sort of gleefully popping some of these balloons, like the one about having a clean house. Really, was that ever going to happen anyway?) But some are harder to let go. Goodbye, training for a marathon. Goodbye, television shows I once loved. Goodbye, all hopes of my children having updated photo albums. Goodbye, making homemade bread. Goodbye, learning how to ballroom dance, doing a great job of keeping in touch with old friends, taking that economics class at the university, etc., etc.

But here’s why it’s okay. Because those other two balloons–the ones I hold to very, very tightly–are the ones that lift me up and make me feel like flying.

Let’s discuss in the comments: what questions do we have for each other about writing with small kids (or making time to write in any situation)? What tips do we have?

The two winners of the signed copies of The Eternal Ones are:

Damaris

and

Carolyn V!

Please e-mail me your addresses so we can get those copies to you ASAP. Congratulations! And thanks to everyone who entered. What great comments. Next month’s Penguin Five feature will be Brenna Yovanoff’s The Replacement, and rumor has it I’ll get to give away copies of that as well. Excellent.

Also, one last plug for Writing For Charity, which takes place this Saturday. You can get your manuscript critiqued by a professional author, go to lots of great workshops, etc., all for a very reasonable price. All of the authors are donating their time, etc., for the conference. Authors include Shannon Hale, James Dashner, Brandon Sanderson, Brandon Mull, Sara Zarr, Bree Despain, and others. Learn more here.

Kirsten, welcome! Can you let us know the top five things you think we should know about you?

I come from a long line of eccentrics, and I, myself, am a little bit strange.

My heroes are David Attenborough and Julia Child. (Yet I steer clear of wildlife, and I can’t cook to save myself.)

My idea of a perfect day would be renting a boat and visiting all of the islands in New York Harbor. (Especially the ones you aren’t allowed to visit.)

For the past ten years, I’ve been trying to convince my Scottish husband to wear a kilt. (He has great knees.)

I honestly believe that Bigfoot exists, and as soon as I win the lottery, I intend to find him.

Let’s talk about your book. The Eternal Ones is about true love and reincarnation. Which is so fascinating. So I’d like to know: who were you and/or your significant other most likely to have been in a past life?

Ha! I suspect my husband and I fought side by side as members of the French Resistance. We’re a pretty good team, I think, and we’ve always enjoyed a marriage of equals. I hope that for our very first date he took me on a tour of the bone-filled catacombs beneath Paris. That’s the kind of thing I would find terribly romantic. (Especially if he brought cheese, and we got to beat up a Nazi or two.)

The book is dedicated to your parents and, in keeping with the reincarnation theme, says, “To my parents–if not my first, then certainly my best.” As a writer, who do you find has been instrumental in helping you have time/space/encouragement to write?

To borrow from a former first lady, it takes a village to make a writer. (In my case, it’s more like a borough or two.) I can’t even begin to list all of the people who have helped me along the way. My parents, my siblings, my teachers, and my husband (who is always my very first reader) all deserve a great deal of credit. But if I’m going to choose one person to thank, it would have to be my eighteen-month-old daughter, Georgia.

I wrote all of my Kiki Strike books with Georgia in mind—even though she hadn’t yet come into the world when the first two were published. Still, she was my inspiration. There’s even a character, Iris McLeod, who was meant to embody all the traits I hoped my daughter would have. (And she does!) And though Georgia probably won’t read The Eternal Ones until she’s in high school, her extremely good behavior as an infant made the book’s creation possible.

For me, one of the most evocative (and universal) parts of The Eternal Ones is the way Haven leaves her home and falls in love with New York City. That feeling of discovering a home away from home–or even a finding of a place where one feels one was meant to be–is one that many people experience or hope to experience. Is this something that happened in your own life? Is there a place in the world that is especially important and dear to you?

Haven’s journey from a small town in the rural South to New York City is much like the one I took at the age of seventeen. This city has been my home ever since, and I’m not sure I have the skills to convey exactly how much I love it. There’s never been any doubt in my mind that this is where I’m meant to be. The city is dirty and smelly and beautiful and strange. You could find the inspiration for one hundred books on a single block. I honestly can’t bear to be away from the city for more than a couple of weeks.

Can you share with us one of your favorite paragraphs from your book?

Do you long for a place you’ve never been?
Do you often experience the sensation of déjà vu?
Have you ever fallen in love at first sight?
Do you possess skills or talents that defy explanation?
Are you haunted by fears or anxieties that make little sense?
Do you feel unusually close to certain people in your life?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may have experienced a previous life.

I’m quite fond of the paragraph above (which my heroine discovers on the website of a rather unusual secret society) because I’ve often wondered could be responsible for phenomena like déjà vu. I’m not saying I’m a believer in reincarnation, but it certainly is an interesting subject to ponder.

And finally, what are you reading right now?

I like to read three or four books at once. Right now, I’m reading . . .

Incarceron, by Catherine Fisher, which is pretty awesome.

The Anglo Files, by Sarah Lyall, in order to understand the Brits a bit better. (Since I’m married to one.)

Up in the Old Hotel, by Joseph Mitchell, because a couple of the essays feature my new neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Thanks for the great answers, Kirsten! It has been a pleasure to talk about this book this week and to get to know you a little better.

And now’s your chance, readers! If you want to enter the giveaway for the second signed copy of The Eternal Ones, please leave a comment with your e-mail address below. You can comment until midnight (MST) tomorrow (Saturday) night. I’ll choose two winners at random over the weekend and announce the winners Monday morning. (Sorry, this contest is open to USA and Canada only.)