This is just a quick, delighted post to say that I will be briefly in the UK in June, and my UK publishers have managed to squeeze in two public events among the non-public ones. I know it's not very widespread, but I will be back at some point after THE RAVEN BOYS, I swear. Plus, a little part of me is leaping up and down because one of my 2012 New Years' Resolutions was "Go to Wales." Hay-on-Wye just barely counts, but . . . it counts. IT TOTALLY COUNTS.

So here they are:

June 10th, 11:30 a.m., Hay Festival
Hay-on-Wye, UK
This is a ticketed event! Buy tickets early to prevent disappointment.
http://www.hayfestival.com/p-4342-maggie-stiefvater.aspx
Facebook event page here.

June 11th, 6:30 p.m., Signing & Discussion
Waterstones, Bath, UK
Timing may be 6:30 p.m. or 7 p.m. — we're finalizing but I wanted to share it ASAP. So please confirm with store before traveling!
Facebook event page here.

For those of you headed to BEA this year, I have two signings at the show:

In-booth signing for THE RAVEN BOYS
June 5, 3-4 p.m. Booth 25

In-booth signing for THE CURIOSITIES with Brenna Yovanoff & Tessa Gratton
June 7, 12-1 p.m. Booth 2357

As always, all of my events are here. I know that I don't get EVERYWHERE, but I do my best to share the love. I do travel about half of the year, and I need some time to write and spend time with my family too!*


*I say this because I am guaranteed at least a dozen "BUT WHY DON'T YOU EVER COME TO SMALLVILLE, OH?????" "DO YOU HATE THE NORTH????" and "WHAT, NO CANADA?????" comments on every event post, ever. **

**I don't come to Smallville, OH, because it's inefficient for my publisher to send me to smaller towns. I do not, in fact, hate the north, of anywhere. In fact, the north of the UK is my favorite part. And Toronto treated me exceptionally well last time I was there so I'm sure I will be there again.***

***"WHAT, NO VANCOUVER??"

I know what it means to manage my time, but my question is how do you know your goals?

When i read your blog i always have the feeling that you kept the invincibility of youth, that there's nothing that can come between you and your dreams, so how did you keep that?

I am finally an adult (or am supposed to be one...) and so many people tell me what is right or wrong that i'm not sure about my goals anymore and i slowly feel how this feeling of doing the right thing slips through my fingers. How did you keep true to yourself when i bet there where times when people disagreed with your dreams and goals?

This is a reader question on the blog post from last week, and I thought it was a really good one, so I asked if I could blog about it this week. I’m going to answer in reverse order, if that’s okay. And if it’s not, you can read the post backward.

How did you keep true to yourself when i bet there where times when people disagreed with your dreams and goals?

This one, actually, I’ve already answered here. Actually, and sort of here. Both of those posts sort of boil down to “ignore other people because their opinions don’t matter” which sounds terrible and is a gross over-simplification, but is a good starting point.

When i read your blog i always have the feeling that you kept the invincibility of youth, that there's nothing that can come between you and your dreams, so how did you keep that?

Why thanks. I kept it because I decided to keep it. I believe we only go round this lifetime once, and I believe in getting to the end of that lifetime with no regrets. I think the saddest story ever is the one that starts “this is what could’ve happened.” The story that involves settling for just okay instead of great. The story that ends up with you reminiscing about the past instead of looking to the future.

I’m depressing myself.

As far as things coming between me and my dreams, that’s true. I don’t think there’s too many things that can possibly do that. I mean, I know there are lots of obstacles out there, but I also think I’m stronger or at least more stubborn than any of them.

A big hurdle, for lots of people, is money. I realize lots of people have a much lower risk threshold than I do, but I would pretty much always rather sacrifice monetary security when it comes to having the life I’ve dreamed about. Money is . . . it’s just money. I walked out of my only legitimate post-college job to become a portrait artist, because it was just time to start trying for the life I wanted. As someone who lived not just a shoestring, but on the thread of a shoestring while getting my art business underway, I assure you that you need far less of this thing called money than you think you do. Whether or not you’re willing to give up cable and square footage and red meat in your diet in exchange for pursuing your goals is another question entirely.

I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. I respect people who have made their dreams come true. But I have just as much respect for people who are trying to make their dreams come true. It’s about the journey. And I think that seeking is the key to keeping that indefatigable dreaminess of youth.

I know what it means to manage my time, but my question is how do you know your goals?

Here is a short list of things I thought I wanted to do when I was younger:

- fighter pilot

- trial lawyer

- radio DJ

- comedian

- show jumper

- soundtrack composer

- rose hybridizer

- cartoonist

- 2D animator

- rally car driver

- screenwriter

- children’s book illustrator

- pastry chef

- history professor

- archeologist

- Robert Bruce fangirl

I used to tell people I felt lucky because I always knew what I wanted to do when I grew up, but I’ve come to understand from my teen journals that this is only the beauty of hindsight speaking. In reality, I basically wanted to do everything, and I had long, agonizing brainstorming sessions where I wondered how I could possibly be, for instance, both an animator AND a fighter pilot. I could’ve made any of the things on that list the goal for my life. But I settled on writing. Not just writing, but novel writing, and not just novel writing, but commercial fiction writing.

How did I narrow it down?

All of my career goals up there scratched some sort of itch of mine: how I wanted to be remembered after I was gone. How I wanted to see myself. How I wanted to look at the world. How I wanted to spend my day. How I wanted people to view me at cocktail parties. How I was most content. What I was most willing to happily devote years to improving at.

Many of the things on those list still satisfy one or more of the conditions above. But writing is the only thing that satisfies all of them. After I’m gone, I want people to have known me as a writer. I want to see myself as someone who finds stories everywhere. I want to look at the world through the lens of character arcs. I want every day to be different and unpredictable: some days writing, some days researching, some days touring, some days doing things I could’ve never imagined. I want to shift people’s lives in tiny ways through my stories; convince them that they’re all heroes too and make them look at nature and magic in a different way. I love to write, I love to get better at it, and I love that it really lets me do everything else on that list too, if I really want to. I never get tired of the work aspect of it.

We have dreams for lots of reasons, but we don't have every dream for every reason. Once you narrow it down to one that fulfills everything you want, your real dream should be obvious. And then you just have to make it happen.

Discuss?

On Monday, I had my first classroom visit.

I think this is different from normal school visits because instead of speaking to a bunch of students at once, I hung out in one classroom and spoke to each class, and also had a lunchtime chat with some of the students who’d read INCARNATE.

From what I can tell, I think it went well. I loved talking with the students. Since they’re working on their own books in class right now (think picture-book-length stories), I started off with the story about ditching a whole draft of Incarnate 3 — all 75,000 words. Once they were properly traumatized, I further traumatized them by showing them my pile of rejection letters. And those, of course, were just the rejections from before e-queries became the preferred method. I didn’t print out those. I like trees too much.

While my examples of revision and rejection are pretty extreme — and traumatizing to today’s youth — I think it helped at least some of the students deal with those things in their own lives, since some are trying out for next year’s sports teams and things.

Most of the classes, the students just stared at me while I spoke. (Suddenly I have so much empathy for my teachers in school.) But one of the classes was pretty talky. They actually said “Hi Jodi” when I said “Hi guys!” After the talk, I bribed each class with stickers. Ask a question, get a sticker. All I had were INCARNATE stickers, so I thought the boys wouldn’t be into it, but surprisingly the boys were most into it. They didn’t mind wearing a butterflyface girl sticker on their forehead. In fact, they were really proud of it.

The bribes kept them talking and asking questions, but a lot of them were really interested in things like how much input I had on my cover, how long it takes me to write a draft, how many drafts I go through from start to finish, and whether I knew how many copies of the book have sold so far. I also got a few questions about how a movie would happen, if I have kids or pets, how/when I knew I wanted to be a writer, and if I am a millionaire now. (I wish.)

They asked a lot of really excellent questions and seemed genuinely interested in how the publishing business works. I was really impressed with them. (Though I know part of their question enthusiasm was because they didn’t want to do work. Hah.)

During lunchtime, some of the students who’d read INCARNATE came back to the classroom where we ate and talked a little about the book, but mostly about silly things. One girl kept asking if Ana would die at the end of the series. I had my knitted Ana and Sam (and dragon) dolls, so I pretended to strangle Ana. This apparently made people nervous. But everyone snuggled the dragon and at the end of lunch, I took out one of my copies of INCARNATE — which was met with a bunch of gasps — and got them to sign it for me. Then I signed the back of Incarnate postcards for them. Hehe.

I had a great time with the classes, but here are some things I’ll do differently next time:

1. Bring bookmarks as well as stickers, since the stickers are a little on the spendy side and I can’t afford their enthusiastic questioning. Or find cheaper stickers. Or do something different as a bribe. (But not candy. They don’t need the sugar and so many kids are allergic to things I’m afraid to feed them.)
2. Leave the heavy things at home. I’d brought page passes and a printed and marked-up Asunder manuscript to show them a little about the revision process, but this ended up being unwieldy and unnecessary. They weren’t that into it. The pile of rejection letters was much more effective. (And not as heavy.)

But overall, I think it went really well. I had the benefit of having read about others’ school visits before, so I was mostly prepared and ready to have a good time. Hurrah!

Originally published at Jodi Meadows. You can comment here or there.

I’m still just spinning away on the Little Princess fiber.

I’ve actually done more work on the camel/silk, but I’ve been lazy about taking pictures. Here’s where I am now. I have just a little more to spin and then . . . I don’t know. I’ll put it aside and figure out what to do with all my pretty little samples.

Originally published at Jodi Meadows. You can comment here or there.

EIGHT MILLION GODS

3: In the Kitchen, With a Blender

Nikki liked pens. She took some comfort knowing that most writers did. Only her obsession for ink-based writing instruments was on the same level as a wino's fixation on wine. The only things she had ever stolen in her life were pens, usually cheap ones off people's desks. The only new pen was a six hundred dollar Cartier Diabolo fountain pen with an 18K gold nib. (One couldn't really blame her; her mother had dragged her down Rodeo Drive in some vain attempt to make Nikki presentable during an election campaign and triggered a writing fit in Neiman Marcus. She had locked herself in a bathroom stall and wrote out a vivisection on a fist-full of paper towels.)

( Read more... )

This week has been a delightful one. First of all, my new Metloef bodhran (Irish drum) arrived in the mail on Monday, and I'm so looking forward to recording with it.





Secondly, the Old House of Stiefvater is getting pretty empty, and the New House of Stiefvater, two hours away is getting pretty empty (as is evidenced by the above video). Our move in date of the 31st, right before I head off to BEA, is looking actually plausible.



Thirdly, I have those two Virginia events (Fredericksburg and Alexandria) with John Corey Whaley tomorrow and the next day, and I adore Corey, and not just because I love his book and he looks like Samwise.



Fourthly, I am working on the sequel to THE RAVEN BOYS and it is going well, so everything in the world is rosy that can possibly be better by being rosy, and all things that are bad when rosy are not rosy at all. 



Anyway, all this delightfulness and rosiness reminded me that I haven't addressed reader questions in awhile, and there was one question that multiple readers asked in multiple ways, both in my blog and at last night's chat. Here it is:



Is your office in your home? If you are alone in a very quiet house all day with no children or husband underfoot, how do you get yourself going each day and stay motivated to write without dropping everything and putting in a load of wash? These are the kinds of things I wonder about my favorite authors... 




I have a question! Though I don't want to infringe on your privacy, so if you'd rather ignore it I totally understand. I'm just wondering how you balance young kiddos and writing - do they get to go on tour with you? :)




I do indeed have children, Thing 1 and Thing 2. They predate my writing career by a very little bit, but not my art career, which had a lot of the same demands. Namely, that my office was in the house, there was a lot of travel, my hours were theoretically amorphous and flexible. I had the Stiefvater Things pretty early in life, so I basically have always had both children and a career.



Here's something that I should put right out front: both of those things are very important to me. I'm not going to do percentages or a pie chart, but I should tell you that I always knew I wanted a creative career and that having children was going to complement that dream, not crash it. I firmly believe that if you don't believe the same thing — that you are entitled to a career same as any other human of any other gender — you will not accidentally fall into an agreeable parent-career balance. 



 Now that that's out of the way, the practical nitty-gritties. Part of this question is really about time-management. I've blogged about this before. In some respects, kids, laundry, day jobs, cat litter boxes, lawn mowing, college courses, and freelance fighter pilot lessons are all the same: they are all demands on your time. And so it just comes down to prioritizing and being clever and honest about the time you really do have.



Next, the womb warts themselves: Things 1 and 2 have known for a very long time that my writing and art are important career things for me, and so they respect quiet time when I'm on deadline and they're home from school. And before they knew about careers and paying the rent, they had an established "quiet time" — at first they had a nap from 12-2 every day, and then, when they no longer napped, they knew they had to watch a movie in their room with the door closed or play quietly with the door closed or devise evil plans that will eventually come back to bite me with the door closed.



Next, next, Lover: My husband has always been supportive of my career, because he knew I took it seriously. If your Lover doesn't feel the same way, I highly suggest you get an upgrade.



Next, next, next: Last year, I was away from home more than I was home and I wrote two novels. Lover quit his job to help with the kids, and I brought all of them or some of them along when I could. But it's important to point out that before that, I was writing and touring and Lover was working full time himself, and we still pulled it off. We have a good parental network within an hour's drive, so that definitely helped, and we also were equally committed to each person getting down what they needed to get done. We wanted it to work. So we made it work. There is a way, I promise. I wrote Lament on Wednesdays only, from 4-6 p.m., because I was working such long hours with my art show stuff. It took me four months. It can be done, I PROMISE.



Next, next, next, last: Women. There is a lot of guilt associated with taking time for your career versus spending time nurturing children. Every time you leave the house and the kids have a babysitter or a substandard dinner or no bedtime story, our culture screams at us for being bad mothers. But guess what. Working mothers are not bad mothers. Women who have a sense of self-identity, either through a career or through a home-based activity, are women that kids respect. My father was on an air craft carrier for six months out of the year when I was a kid. I adored him and still do, and what's more — I'm pretty much just like him. So it's not the amount of time you spend sitting in the presence of your kids. It's how you use that time.



So: Prioritize. Educate those close to you. Surround yourself with like-minded people. And kick some ass.

That’s all for today.

Originally published at Jodi Meadows. You can comment here or there.