I get a lot of questions about how I got started writing, where do I get my ideas, how did I think up all this stuff. Since I’m wrestling with the outline for the second Immortal Beloved book, I’m dealing with these issues right now. The “how I got started” part is explained in a couple of places, including the recent interview at BlogCritics. I posted its link on the Blog page because I haven’t figured out how to access the News page. (Oh, yeah–I’m not technical. But then you knew that.) But I can talk about some of the other questions because 1) they’re on my mind, and 2) writing about them means I’m not actually doing them. *One of the first skills a writer has to master is the art of procrastination.*

So . . . where do I get all my ideas? I buy them in bulk from a store, like Costco. No, not really. I wish. Of course there’s no one place or one way I get ideas. Sometimes I wake up with them, or get them when I’m doing housework or raking, sometimes a picture in a magazine or a sentence in a book or a scrap of overheard conversation spurs my thought process, or a painting in a museum or a dead animal my dog brings in or just a random thought that pops into my head and who knows where the heck it came from . . . In truth, a lot of my job involves me just–thinking. Because I’m an overachiever with guilt issues, I usually do something else while I’m thinking, like sweeping the patio or washing the dog bowl. But sometimes I really am just sitting quietly somewhere, thinking, and if someone comes in and talks to me, I don’t even hear them. Ideas, pictures, conversation, emotions just come to me like bits of clay, and then I mash them all together and try to make a pot out of them. And that little writing metaphor explains why I’m not everywhere teaching writing seminars. I don’t know how to teach it, and I can’t even explain it well. I know only how to do it.

I’ve read a lot, taken literature courses, and listened to other writers talk about writing. Every writer has her own method of working. A friend of mine writes out of sequence, coming up with ideas and scenes and then later putting everything into  a normal time frame. That very idea just makes my stomach hurt.

How do I write?

I think about what I would like to read, myself. Or an idea I want to explore. Virtually all of my books are about a female character discovering her inner strength and using it to overcome bad stuff. That’s the general message I want to communicate to my readers: you have inner, untapped personal strength, and you have the ability to overcome whatever bad stuff you’re dealing with. I like that message more than, say, “other girls are your enemies and you should sabotage them so you’ll get the cutest boys and be more popular.” Or “obsess about your weight and appearance in a futile attempt to achieve perfection so that X will finally love you.” Those are not helpful messages, in my opinion.

This is just me, but I don’t think of a story, and then put people in it. I always think of the characters first, and then put them in a story that allows them to reveal their personas in a dramatic way. It’s hard for me to tell a story. It’s not hard for me to find virtually everyone fascinating and want to explore their pysches exhaustively and figure out what makes them do the things they do, make the decisions they make. So I’m usually not struggling to produce a work of a certain length because I’ve run out of plot–I’m usually overwriting because I can sit there and talk about these people forever.

I tend to think in story arcs that are three or four books long–it seems like I just need a lot of space. Because I’ve finally cottoned on to basic plot requirements after almost twenty years of writing, I come up with a story line and make sure it has a beginning, middle, and an end. Plots are not my strong point and tend to be secondary to my characters. Ideally the plot and characters should seem as if they can’t exist without the other. But this is all the technical stuff that makes my eyes glaze over–one learns it in high school and college and perhaps absorbs it. I do know writers, writers I really respect, who are all about structure and turning points and raising the stakes and first denouement and second denouement. But that’s not me. I come up with a character who intrigues me, who I want to know better, and then I put her in an interesting situation that would be fun to write about. I make sure she grows and changes by the end of the book, and that’s one of the most important aspects to truly comprehend: your characters must grow and change throughout the book. They must learn something about themselves. They must go on a journey, either physically or emotionally or psychologically, and that journey must change them. And then you put in subplots that offer interesting parallels or counterpoints to your main plot.

If I could write anything at all, it would probably be a series of romantic setups with tons of longing and emotion and tortured love that finally totally works out in the end and everything is fabulous. If someone would pay me to do that, it would be great. In my experience, they want more story and setting and the whole rest of the plot. That’s what makes it difficult.

I usually write for anywhere from an hour or two to maybe five or six hours a day. But it takes all day to do that. I’m usually at my desk most of every day. I’ll take little breaks and throw in a load of laundry or something. I do a lot of research online. I read other writers’ blogs. There are certain writers I read who, by their work, show me different patterns of conversation or humor, different ways of getting a person in and out of a room. A book will have a certain tone, a certain voice, and I’ll read it and figure out why it works, and if I can do something similar. I let the dogs out. And then in. And then out. And then in. Maybe a thousand times a day. That takes time. But the actual writing, the tapping of keys–I usually don’t do that for more than about six hours total, because after that my head feels like it’s going to explode and my eyes will bleed. And I try to be out of my bathrobe before my husband or I get the kids from school.

I do work from an outline. The outline is roughly chapter by chapter, but it can be fluid–I don’t strictly have to adhere to what I plotted out. Some people write really detailed outlines, 50 pages long, and some people work with no outline at all, which freaks me out. My outline is pretty much what needs to happen, sticking in things that are important, and it’s usually around 15-20 pages. I’ll put in bits of dialogue or specific details that crop up while I’m writing it. Sometimes it’s kind of in shorthand: They meet at the place, he does the thing, she gets mad, they run into X. From that I could write a twelve-page chapter. But I get as detailed as I need to.

So I sit down with my outline and something to drink, and I write until I need to stop. The next day I reread everything and clean it up. Sometimes I’ll think it’s no good and I’ll delete pages. Which is hard. Or I’ll have a certain bit I really love, but it actually doesn’t fit with the story, or it’s out of character, and it has to go. Also hard. And so on and so forth, for anywhere from 200 to 400 pages. The Sweep and Balefire titles were pretty short, but they came out several books a year. Immortal Beloved is about 400 pages, and it will come out once a year. I try to write at least six double-spaced pages a day. Sometimes I’m lucky to get three. If I’m way behind schedule or am writing something I’m really into and excited by, I can write twelve or fifteen pages. Usually it’s about six.

The story changes from the original outline. It goes in directions that I didn’t expect. The characters do things that surprise me and change what happens next. Or I’ll simply come up with a different idea that seems better than what I had before. It’s organic and it grows and changes. Every once in a while, it’s significantly different from what the editor was expecting, but that usually isn’t a problem, as long as it’s good.

I can’t tell you how to write–and it sounds like many of you are writers or want to be writers. I can only tell you how I do it, which is not how anyone else does it. But the one universal place that every writer comes from is: writing is communication. What are you trying to say? Who are you trying to say it to? Why do you need to say it? Figuring out those questions is usually the hardest part, and the step many people skip.

The more you know yourself, the more you’ll know and understand your characters.

Read other people’s writing. A lot.

Chocolate seems to be a crucial part of the process.

Don’t spill anything on your computer.

And now I have to go do it myself.

Cate

Here’s an interview that posted at BlogCritics.

http://blogcritics.org/books/article/interview-with-cate-tiernan-author-of1/

I never know how I come off in things like that . . .

Hi–
I’ve been getting so many great letters through this site, and I really appreciate it. I know I’m really slow at answering them, but I do intend to, swear. But there’s a whole genre of questions that I can answer right now, all at once.

Basically, I write the books and the publisher pays me, and that’s pretty much the extent of what I have influence over. Sometimes they mention cover ideas or show me ads they’re thinking of doing, but I don’t really have much say. I’m not complaining; I’m explaining. I control the words in the story, the plot of the story, the characters in the story.

I want to explain this all upfront, because I get so, so many letters from people who are upset that they can’t find certain books, or the format of books, or which countries the books are sold in, or why books cost so much. And letters about the book covers, and the models on the covers, and the art on the covers.

And the answers to all those questions is: I don’t know. I *sometimes* might know, possibly, when a book will be published for the first time, but in general, they usually don’t tell me if a book will be reissued or discontinued or get a new cover or put in a new store. But I have no idea why some bookstores have certain copies of Sweep but not others, or if they’ll make a boxed set some day, or why certain editions are really hard to find. I have no idea who the models are on the covers. It would be fun if I did, and I would feel happier if I knew why some bookstores had my books and some don’t, or if I knew when or why a publisher makes other decisions about the books, but I simply don’t. Most authors don’t. Really big name authors sometimes do. But I don’t.

I hate to disappoint you guys by writing back, I don’t know, I don’t know, but it’s just how it is.

I like answering other questions, though.

Love, Cate

This is an article about trends in YA fiction. I never thought they would actually use anything I said.

In addition to my reading, I learn from people all the time. People around me, people I know, people I don’t know. I also have a posse–we meet every couple of weeks and talk about stuff. Lately we’ve been talking about Life Lessons, and I told them about the post I put on here about the stuff I had learned. So last week when we met, we all shared different life lessons. There were a handful we had universally included–but there were also quite a few that made us do a forehead-slap and go “D’oh!”

Here are some of lessons my posse shared:

1) Everyone in your life has a gift for you, and is there to help you learn and grow in some way. Even people (maybe especially people) that you’re really struggling with. Try to find out what you’re supposed to learn from that person–it will shift all your feelings about that relationship.

2) You always have a choice. Even if you’re limited to only one possible *action,* i.e., something you *must* do–you can still decide how to think about it, how to perceive it. And which way of seeing it will serve you better?

3) It’s not about you 99.9% of the time. Other people’s lives are all about *them,* and their decisions, actions, and beliefs reflect *them.*

4) Everyone has an interesting story. (This is so, so true.)

5) Everyone has their own crap to deal with, no matter how blessed or charmed their lives seem on the outside. Believe me, it’s there.

6) Treat *yourself* at least as well as you treat your friends. Thus, be understanding and forgiving of yourself, support yourself, be loyal to yourself.

7) Failing is very useful. Chock full o’ life lessons!

8) One woman said she only ever prays for two things: The guidance to make the right decision; and the strength to handle whatever comes. I love that. It certainly makes my prayers that the cat won’t barf on the white carpet seem *extra* shallow.

9) Respect yourself and value yourself. Seems kind of basic, but is actually hugely profound.

10) Nurture your soul: try to be still and silent within yourself every day, even for just a few minutes.

11) Try to do no harm: think before you speak and act. Another simple-but-profound one.

12) No one can read other people’s minds. But you can and should expect them to really listen when you clearly state your needs/feelings/desires.

I read somewhere (where? It’s making me crazy!) that the ideal wedding vow would be: “I will not ever intentionally harm you. But I cannot read your mind.”

All this wisdom is making me hungry. What about your life lessons? What truths can you share?

The longer I go along in my life, the more it seems like the universe is cradling me, showing me what I need to see, providing teachers when I’m ready to learn, making things come together and crop up and appear when I need them to so that everything is working together in balance. It may very well have been doing this all along, my whole life, but for the most part, I wasn’t ready to see it. I do find that the more open I am to learning, the more I learn. I’ve had huge long periods in my life where I wasn’t really open to learning very much. Sometimes I’ve felt very threatened by learning, by knowledge–as if knowledge increases responsibility, and I wanted to avoid that. Responsibility does not have a lot of the “woohoo, party!” factor attached to it. Nowadays I’m finding that the more I embrace the weight of life, as well as the light, the more I get. Or the more complete I feel.

In general, I learn best visually. I create mental images that express emotional or psychological states. The image I have of myself when I was younger was–kind of like a possibly really amazing building, but with big mortar-shell holes in it. Big holes sort of blasted out, weakening the structure, obliterating some of the cooler features of the building. And some of the holes had, like, sheet plastic duct-taped over them, so the building could preserve some of its function–a lot of its function, but would clearly not stand the test of time.

I feel like many of my life experiences, both wonderful and horrible, have slowly filled in the big holes with tight, solid patches of bricks. And the more I know and understand myself and others, the more holes get filled in. I feel really quite solid nowadays. I still have a few holes, definitely. But I haven’t slapped sheet plastic over them–I leave them out in the sunlight, and look at them, and try to figure out how to fix them. I think I will continue to make progress on them.

Lately I’ve been doing some reading that’s very exciting for me. In general, I don’t read a lot of current fiction. Woefully unread in today’s literary world. I read genre fiction, some fantasy, for example, and some romance–nothing cheers me up like a fun romance novel! But I also read memoirs, mostly of women, and sometimes someone will recommend a book and I’ll try it.

Lately I’ve been reading: “The Dance of the Dissident Daughter” by Sue Monk Kidd. It’s about a traditionally religious woman who comes to see her church as forbiddingly patriarchal, to the point of feeling betrayed by her faith. The book is a memoir of her years-long quest to recreate a faith, a belief in the divine, that she feels honors both male and female spirit. It’s a fascinating account of a personal journey.

Also reading: “Eat, Pray, Love,” by Elizabeth Gilbert. This has been a very popular book-club book, which made me suspicious, but a writer I respect recommended it to me, and I am loving it! Also a memoir about a woman dealing with her divorce and her search for faith and meaning–but it’s very funny, very down-to-earth, not highfalutin, and full of emotional, psychological, and spiritual insights that make me shiver.

And rereading “The Dance of Anger” by Harriet Lerner, a psychologist and therapist. It’s all about women’s mass inability to use anger effectively, to be authentic in their anger, and to clarify and define their true positions to get to what their anger is really about. Such an important and useful book for everyone. I don’t express anger very well, I don’t argue very well, but this book helps me every time I read it. It’s not just about anger in romantic relationships–anger is a touchstone in virtually every relationship, including the one you have with yourself. I love it when I write a character just forthrightly expressing her anger, because it’s not something that I myself would be able to do naturally. I live vicariously through my characters!

I’m not saying everyone should run out and read these books. Books mean different things to different people, and what’s meaningful or useful to me might leave others scratching their heads and thinking, “Huh?” But I wanted to share some of what I’m reading, doing, thinking about. It’s forming me, informing my writing. Patching up my building.

Hi–
I’ve been meaning to write a new blog entry, but have been swamped with work. However, so many of you have written in, asking about Balefire, that I wanted to put out a general info update.

Balefire (except for the first book) is out of print. I only realized this myself a couple months ago, and have talked to the publisher about reissuing it, like they did with Sweep. As of right now, I don’t think it’s on their schedule. Balefire sold in much, much fewer numbers than Sweep, and I guess they want to be sure it’s worth the expense. (Publishing is a business, and I understand their decision.)

So I wish I could help all of you who write in asking why book 4 of Balefire costs hundreds of dollars! If I had a bunch of author copies, I would make them available–but I don’t. I myself have one copy of #4.

What might be helpful is for you to ask your local libraries if they could order one–the publisher will notice these requests. Also, if you want to write to Penguin Books USA, and let them know that you’d like to have other Balefire books, that might help too.

Here’s their address:
Penguin Books for Young Readers
Re: Balefire/Cate Tiernan
375 Hudson Street
New York, NY
10014-3657

PLEASE do not be mean or angry in your letters!! Please just say that you hope Balefire comes back (or whatever you want to say). But do NOT be threatening or negative–that only makes me look bad.

I’m not ASKING you to write–I’m only offering it as an option if you want to pursue it.

LLL–
Love, Cate

A new year. I wonder why they decided to start a new year right in the middle of winter? It would make more sense to have a brand-new year start at the beginning of spring, IMO. That’s when everything feels new. That’s when the light changes and things are budding and one has a new sense of life and possibilities after the darkness of winter.

A friend of mine posted a sped-up film clip of an entire “day” in Fairbanks, Alaska, in the middle of winter. Their whole solar day lasts about 3.5 hours, from sunrise to sunset, and the sun never gets very high in the sky. I’ve never lived farther north than Manhattan, so that whole concept is amazing to me, and it’s led me to wonder how much our natural surroundings, the light and the temperature, affects us. I grew up in New Orleans, which basically has nine months of heat and humidity and then three months of yucky cold rain. Then I lived in New York, where to me it felt like there was six months of wretched cold, a month of glorious spring, almost three months of unbearable heat, and then two months where all the trees lost their leaves. When there was snow in the winter, it was the most beautiful thing ever, coating everything, making it all look clean and new, silencing so much of the ambient noise of the city. But the summers were hard, with the buildings and streets soaking up heat all day and releasing it all night.

When we decided to find a new place to live, when my kids were little, we did research for about a year to find the best place. We both worked at home, so could move pretty much anywhere. We stayed on the east coast, because our work came out of NY and we had family in DC. I wanted four real seasons, three months of each, and I didn’t want to be too far inland, because I get claustrophobic if I’m too far away from large water. So we settled on North Carolina. It really does have four even seasons. The summer is pretty hot, but I know that the heat will break in late September. The winter is pretty cold, but spring comes in March. The spring is really long and incredibly beautiful–every day I go outside and walk around the yard or the state park and see all the life bursting out everywhere. It uplifts my soul and fills me with hope and promise. And the autumns are everything an autumn should be: crisp, lots of color on the trees, a gradual shutting down and putting-to-bed of nature. I see the deers’ coats changing from summer red to winter brown. A lot of greenery dies down and I can see through the trees, see my neighbors’ houses, which I can’t really see in the summertime. I feel like cooking and baking.

I like paying attention to all that. I live in a modern, technological world, with appliances and gadgets and email and the interwebz. I can get stuck inside of it, sometimes. So I try to get outside every day, try to observe something outside every day. It makes me feel tied to the earth, more intensely alive. It makes time slow down a little bit. It seems important.

What effect does nature have on you?

I see life as one big learning experience. I’ve learned exquisite, soul-changing things, and also stuff that I would have much preferred not to learn. But in general, I find learning to be about the most satisfying and meaningful thing about living every day. Knowledge is never wasted. It’s something of infinite value that, once owned, can never be taken away.

There are many, many things, good and bad, that can truly be learned only by experiencing them oneself. But there are lots of things that I’ve learned by watching someone else, seeing it in action, or reading about it.

On the off chance that anything I’ve learned thus far might be of use to anyone else, I’ve made a very partial list:

1) When you meet someone, if you give them a genuine, friendly smile, they’ll feel 1000% better. I learned this in seventh grade, when I met the girl who would become my best friend. She smiled.

2) Don’t eat your favorite foods if you feel at all sick; once you throw something up, you won’t want to eat it again for a loooong time.

3) One should have as many practical skills as possible: how to cook, manage money, drive a manual stickshift, sew on a button, useful phrases in foreign languages, how to use tools, how to put water in a car’s radiator, how to start a lawnmower. The more you know how to do yourself, the more you won’t have to rely on others. Having to rely on others for simple things makes you less independent.

4) Do the best job you can at whatever your job is. If your job is to type up a list of phone calls, make it perfect. If your job is to make sandwiches, make fabulous sandwiches. If your acting job is to walk across the stage in the background, throw yourself into it. If someone sees you handling a small job incredibly well, they’ll feel that you’re capable of handling a larger, more important job. If someone sees you seething with resentment over having to do a small job that is beneath you, they will not at all feel inclined to trust you with something more important.

5) Be fair and gracious whenever you can. But don’t be a doormat.

6) Good words to know: Please. Thank you. Excuse me.

7) The ability to apologize sincerely and admit you were wrong is a very, very important skill. I didn’t learn it till I was in my twenties, but it’s stood me in good stead ever since.

8) Chocolate goes well with almost any other flavor.

9) Try all different kinds of food. You might find something incredible that you didn’t know about.

10) Two main skills I work on all the time: Patience and compassion. Still a challenge sometimes.

11) Nothing is cuter than a baby animal.

12) Having your own baby will force you to be less squeamish about any number of things.

13) Scuffling through dried leaves is very satisfying.

14) Eating a Snickers bar at 10 in the morning is pretty much always a mistake. One I still make all too often.

15) A sense of humor is like an overcoat that protects you from a lot.

16) It hurts so bad to get your heart broken when you’re young. It hurts more the older you get.

17) Besides your parents, no one is as invested in taking care of you than you. So take good care of yourself, because you’re the one who cares the most.

18) If you’re embarrassed about something you’re doing, you need to get over it, throw your shoulders back, and let it rip. If you’re *ashamed* of something you’re doing, you probably shouldn’t be doing it.

19) Read your surroundings and adjust your behavior accordingly.

20) You do not need to express every thought that goes through your head. Sometimes shutting up is the best thing to do.

21) Try to do your best, be your best, but also cut yourself some slack. No one can be perfect all the time.

22) If there’s a dead animal within a quarter-mile of your house, your dog will find it, roll in it, and it will be bad.

23) It is not your job to fix or improve anyone else. It’s your job to make sure you yourself are in good working order.

24) Make sure your partner wants to be with you because of who you are NOW, not who you might become, or who you have the potential to be if only you were X, Y, or Z. Oh, my god, how many times did I have to learn this? A LOT.

25) Thoughts are only thoughts, and thoughts alone cannot hurt you. Thoughts are only thoughts, and you have the power to change your thoughts. They cannot control you. You can control them. I learned this when I was 42.

26) Being in love should not feel like a lot of work. Some work, yes. Not a lot of work. It should not feel like pain.

27) The main reason most parents do anything is to keep you safe and protect you. For better or worse.

28) Life changes all the time. Nothing stays the same forever. This is sometimes incredibly sad, and sometimes the most fantastic thing ever.

29) So, so many things are so beautiful, if you pay attention. Finding beauty in something and enjoying it costs no money whatsoever.

30) No matter how much you know or how together you are, you don’t know everything. No matter how much he knows or how together he is, he doesn’t know everything, either.

Some of these lessons were painless and easy, many of them were gut-wrenchingly hard. But I’m glad I know them.

Today is Monday, and the holiday is over. I actually went back to work yesterday, going through the copyedited manuscript for Immortal Beloved. I do love this story, and still enjoy rereading it, even after twelve times, or however many times it’s been. I love the theme of an unhappy person redeeming herself and becoming happier by becoming more in tune with and true to herself. I think that’s a life lesson so many of us need to keep learning.

Someone recently asked me for advice about how to write, and as usual I went blank and got a deer-in-the-headlights look. But really, one thing I always tell people is that they need to know what they’re trying to say, and know who they’re trying to say it to. Once you really know that, other things seem more clear.

For myself, an important theme in virtually all of my work has been the importance of girls and women claiming their own power. I still see so many messages, blatant and subliminal, that encourage girls and women to depend on men, to not rock the boat, to fulfill certain expectations, to value being thought feminine over being thought strong. There are still so, so many double standards for women in the workplace, as parents, as artists. It freaks me out, for myself and for my children. It’s crucial to me to model the behavior I hope my children emulate, it’s crucial that I provide an example of how to be strong, to be competent, to be true to myself and my feelings. I do my best, but of course there’s always room for improvement.

For me, being a strong woman is not about acting like a man. A French writer, Simone de Beauvoir, said: “Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female – whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.” It’s taken me years to wrap my mind around that thought. I try to be a strong woman, but that doesn’t mean I never need help, never break down, never feel lost or afraid. It means that I’m strong enough to ask for help, strong enough to get back up, strong enough to try again. I try to write characters who are discovering their inner strengths, their power.

I could go on and on about power! It’s a fascinating subject. But right now I have to go and get some sleep–up at 6 again tomorrow.