CJ’s Comments (group member since Jul 29, 2014)

CJ’s comments from the New Voices in Fiction Authors from William Morrow group.

Carrie wrote: "Earl Grey. Hot. Cream and sugar."

Carrie: Make it so.

I swill coffee like mad, myself.

Katherine wrote: "CJ wrote: "Rebecca, I love the idea of a "tri-ology" as the study of threes. Nice.

I am working on a new book...in short: it's a Shakespeare adaptation with a sci-fi twist."

Can you tell us whic..."

Hi Katherine!

I'm tackling As You Like It, it's a favorite of mine, and narratively is kind of a hot mess....which leave me lots of room to play! Glad there are other Shakespeare wonks out there.

Mary wrote: "And maybe you need to miss a place to really want to write about it. Or, maybe, getting distance from it gives you the perspective you need to really see it clearly."

Absolutely, Mary. I think the distance has a lot to do with it. I wrote about New England when I was in New York, and New York once I moved to Florida. Next time I move maybe I'll write about swamps and gators...

If only we lived in the same city, we could start a writing-procrastinators running club...

Thanks, Nadia! I love that you snuck in a guest appearance for your great grandfather!

Like Mary, I don't have a typical workday. I think that the idea of having sacred writing time is a myth. Most of us just don't have that time in our life. It's always catch as catch can, and I've come to accept that that's okay. I wrote so much of The From-Aways on trains, on lunch hours in cafes, late nights, early mornings... and honestly? I think that books come out better for this, for letting in all the chaos and unexpected influence!

Emmi wrote: "A Shakespeare adaptation with a sci-fi twist? I can't wait to read that!

I'm actually curious - do any of you find the second novel more difficult or easier to write than the first one? Or more or..."

Thanks, Emmi!

I'm finding that each novel is a new beast...so the writing itself isn't necessarily easier. But what is easier? I'm now more comfortable sitting with the chaos of a first draft, and trusting that time and revision will get me where I need to go. I have the experience of writing the first novel to thank for this new sense of calm-in-the-chaos

The From-Aways is about two twenty-something women who move to small-town Maine looking for family. It's about the ways they build those families, the love they both struggle with, and about a small-town political scandal they unearth, working at the local newspaper, too!

I did so many wonderful events, but I have to admit that my favorite moment was going to my hometown to do a reading at our local Mark Twain Library. It was very It's A Wonderful Life, where all the people I'd ever known and loved from back home were there...even the librarian who read to me at story-time when I was four!

Carrie, I wrote my book from a place of homesickness too. The From-Aways is set in a small seaside New England town not unlike the one I grew up in...at the time I wrote it I was living in New York City and I think, at first, I just wanted to invent myself a town like my home to mess around in. Then, of course, the town got away from me and took on a life of its own...

I'm just finishing Anna Karenina which I'm reading for the first time and it's amazing-- there are so many characters I love beyond Anna herself, a phenomenon I wasn't expecting. I'm also about to start Marie-Helene Bertino's 2 Am at The Cat's Pajamas, which just came out, and is supposed to be wonderful!

Suzanne wrote: "I have an idea, part autobiographical, part fiction. Do I start with an outline or just write as I intend the story to unfold?"

Hi Suzanne!

I honestly think that some people are outliners and others are not. I know that so much of the thinking I do about a book or a story happens in the writing itself, and that there are whole scenes or moments I never would have thought to include in an outline that just pop up organically in the writing process. (But of course I know some writers who swear by their outlines too). It depends on which method is more in line with your way of thinking and working.

Sometimes, as a kind of compromise, I'll list three major turns of fortune or shifts in character I know I want to hit in a story...and then use those shifts as stars by which to navigate. That way I'm not totally in the dark....but I don't get the wriggly-claustrophobic feeling I do when I have an outline to follow.

I want to read so many of the books by those in this group--and they are sitting in a stack, just asking me to do so. As it happens I'm actually a PhD student as well as a writer and a teacher these days... so my reading list right now is a lot of books like Anna Karenina and The Grapes of Wrath and such because I'm preparing for exams. If I make it through Steinbeck's dustbowl, perhaps I'll allow myself to dip into the stack...

Rebecca, I love the idea of a "tri-ology" as the study of threes. Nice.

I am working on a new book...in short: it's a Shakespeare adaptation with a sci-fi twist.

My new carrot-stick method (or maybe I should call it a stick-stick method) is that when I wake up early I can EITHER write or go running. Usually I am pathologically avoiding doing both things, so things work out well either way.

Somedays I write because the writing spirit is with me... and somedays I'd just rather die than run so I write anyway.

Sometimes I actually run.

All of this is to say: if you ever see me looking particularly fit? The new book is in trouble and please don't tell my editor.

Busted!

There is a straight-up Easter Egg in The From-Aways. When the protesters get fined by the town, and Carter Marks, the folk-singer leading the protests, is reading out the list of everyone who owes the town money....there's a list of names. That list? It's all my trouble-making friends from my high-school days.

It didn't take long for the Easter Egg to get discovered either.

One of my old friends is a champion speed-reader...so she found it first...then snapped a picture and posted it to facebook, tagging everyone who is named. She wrote: GUYS! WE'RE IN CJ's BOOK AND WE OWE SOMEONE MONEY!