Last weekend I completely forgot to write a blog post because I was in Columbus doing a presentation for the annual Columbus State Community College Writers’ Conference. I had intended to post about the topic I covered in my presentation, so I’ll talk about it this week. My presentation was titled, “Then What Happens?: Getting Unstuck in Fiction Plotting,” and it was about how to blast through that specific kind of writer’s block that occurs when we just can’t for the life of us figure out what should happen next in a story.

I provided 7 tips to help my fellow fiction writers get unstuck. These are all things that work for me when I face this problem, though no one technique works 100% of the time. At the heart, really, of each tip is the idea that it’s important not to get too caught up in getting your story to its conclusion. Let your story meander a bit; let your characters do things that might not seem to be directly related to the plot. Whatever doesn’t work can be revised out later, but you might find that you discover new, inventive, interesting plot points through letting the story run free for a bit.

Here are my 7 tips for getting unstuck in fiction plotting:

1. Use writing prompts. I’m a big time advocate for writing prompts. Damien and I keep a prompt bowl, which we add to anytime we can think of new prompts. When you just can’t figure out what should happen next (or when you want to write but can’t decide what to write about), a prompt can help point you in a new, unexpected direction.

2. Write a concrete, in the moment scene—have your character DO something, ANYTHING. Avoid writing a scene in which your character is simply thinking. One way to do this is to make a list of possible settings and a list of possible characters. Then have your main character interact with another character in a setting. What happens when he or she runs into So-and-So at X location? What will they talk about? What will happen? Something interesting and worthwhile might come of it, and even if the scene gets revised out of a later draft, writing a concrete scene like this might be just what you needed to break down that writer’s block.

3. Open a blank document to free yourself from the rest of the story, and place your character into a new scene. You might also remove yourself from the computer altogether and start writing a new scene with pen and paper (or if you’re already writing with pen and paper, try moving to a new notebook or start writing on the computer). This method will probably leave inconsistencies between this new scene and whatever you had already written in this story, but that’s okay. As with everything, these things can be fixed later through revision. In the meantime, separating yourself from what you’ve already written might help your mind to look at the story in a new way, and you might think of interesting things that should happen in the story that you wouldn’t have thought of when you were so attached to the entire story as a whole.

4. On the other hand, you could read through what you have so far and try to key in on elements that are already in the story but are not being fully explored. Maybe there are issues, characters, or objects that you’ve mentioned briefly with no intention of pursuing them in a more in-depth way. What would happen if you went ahead and pursued one? As an example, in my story, “This Is Not a Fairy Tale,” from Peter Never Came, in the drafting stage I just briefly mentioned that one of the characters, Stephen’s, hands were rough and dry. This detail ended up getting woven into the story pretty thoroughly, and in its final incarnation, the story relies very heavily on Stephen’s hands and how the other main character, Lucy, reacts to them.

5. Step away from the computer for a while. Go for a walk (but bring a pen and paper!), or listen to music. Watch a movie or read. Taking the pressure off of yourself to write might be all you need to overcome your writer’s block.

6. Combine two stories that you’re stuck on. Obviously, this is only useful if you’re stuck on two stories that have similarities. Personally, I tend to work on several stories at once, and I do often find that X story and Y story have similar main characters, or settings, or situations (or sometimes all three). Combining such stories can result in one, much more complex and interesting story.

7. Finally, if all you can come up with is a cliché, go ahead and write it anyway so you can move forward. During the revision process you can look for and rework clichés.

This past year at AWP, I spent the majority of my time perusing the booths and tables in the book fair. Though I actually tend to enjoy panel discussions and lectures—even though there’s rarely ever anything new said at this point in the game—my favorite part of AWP (not counting seeing old friends) is the book fair.

This year at the book fair, I took a slightly different approach than last year. Last year, my primary interest was as a submitter. I wanted to see the variety of places I might submit. While I bought quite a few books and journals, and I bought only ones I was truly interested in reading, I also only bought ones that were published by venues I was interested in submitting to. I wanted to get a better idea of what these particular editors liked.

I believe this is precisely what most people do at the AWP book fair. The journals and presses know it too. They plan for it. They have on the ready printouts with their submission guidelines; they advertise their upcoming contests on glossy postcards.

But when you really think about it, it’s kind of sad. Here you have this huge market, full of hundreds upon hundreds—surely thousands—of books for sale, many of which are difficult to find in brick and mortar stores, yet the people shopping in the market are interested mostly in selling their own wares. There’s this great disconnect between what the publishers want—to sell the customers their books or journals—and what the customers want—to get published.

This year, when I hit the book fair floor, I didn’t do it as a writer, but as a reader. I wasn’t looking for places to submit. I didn’t care about upcoming contests. I just wanted to spend my leftover Christmas money on some good books and journals; I wanted to find some great stuff to read. Some of the journals I bought I would never consider submitting to—like Kugelmass, which publishes entirely literary humor. I don’t write humor, but I thought I might enjoy reading it, so I picked up their latest issue. And I bought books not because I was considering submitting my novel to that press, but because, simply put, the book looked good.

In the coming months, I’m going to review some of the journals I came home with here, on my blog. I decided to do this partly because it will encourage me to actually read the journals all the way through. Also, though, I hope to share my experience reading them with you. If I find a great gem in the batch, I want you to know about that gem. Likewise, if I come across a journal that I don’t think is that great, I’ll tell you why and let you decide for yourself if you want to read it or submit there.

Happy, happy Mother’s Day, everyone! This is my first Mother’s Day as a mama, and it also happens to be my little Ami B C’s eight month birthday—happy birthday, baby bean! This week, I bring you the close of my discussion of the AWP panel, “Barefoot, Pregnant, and at the Writer’s Desk: Managing Motherhood and the Writing Life.”

Hope Edelman is a nonfiction writer with five books to her name. Like Kate Hopper, Edelman said that before motherhood, her writing days were unstructured. Not so, now that she’s a mother. To work her writing time into her hectic mommy-life, Edelman keeps an office outside of the house and schedules writing time around the family schedule. In addition, Edelman has become a binge writer: she’ll often check into a motel something like 100 miles out of town—far enough to justify not popping home for dinner, but close enough that if a true emergency arises she can easily get back home—and spends the entire weekend just writing.

Edelman said that she sees her life as a sort of pendulum, which swings back and forth between her life as a mother and her life as a writer. She doesn’t seem to have much trouble maintaining the right balance between the two, and she says her kids really don’t have a problem with her disappearing sometimes to write—though her husband, she pointed out, doesn’t always like it.

Edelman gave a hilarious list of things she can’t do because she’s a mother and a writer, but she followed it up with a list of things she can do only because she’s a mother and a writer: her writing is enriched with details and a range of emotions that she’s only privy to as a result of the experiences she’s had as a mother; she’s much better now at budgeting time (though part of that is a result of reduced expectations); she can help her kids with their English homework way better than most parents can; she can offer her kids the exciting, interesting experience of going on a book tour.

Edelman said that of course motherhood has cut into her writing time—of course she could have written more books by now had she chosen not to have children—but she doesn’t mind. She’s focusing on the children she does have, not the books she doesn’t. I LOVE this attitude—this is exactly how I feel. I know I’m less productive now that I have Amalie, but that’s okay with me. I’d much rather have Amalie than the extra stories I could be writing.

Jill McCorkle is a fiction writer who has published eight books to date, five of which appeared on the New York Times notable list. Immediately after becoming a mother, McCorkle noticed the effects of motherhood on her writing. She’d been struggling with a novel that was just not working. After having the baby, she was able to go back into the draft from a new angle, focusing her attention on the character of the mother in her story, and suddenly the whole novel came together.

Like the other authors, McCorkle said all of her established rules for writing went out the window after she’d had a baby. She had to really convince herself that writing is a legitimate way to spend her time, that it does count as work and it’s okay to set up boundaries to make sure she has time to do it. Still, she noted, “Some of my best work has been written in the carpool lane or outside the grocery store . . . No one ever seemed to mind if I said, ‘I’m going to the grocery store to get dinner.’” So she would drive to the store, spend five minutes quickly shopping, then spend another half hour sitting in the car writing in a notebook.

She would also just take little notes throughout the day—everybody can find a minute or two to jot down an interesting idea, an image that really strikes them, a sentence or two that will evolve into something greater down the road. She would store these notes away until she was able to scrape together a chunk of time to write. Writing, for McCorkle, is not like a faucet that she can turn on and off, but rather, “a slow, steady drip.”

Like Edelman, McCorkle felt that being a writer enhanced her as a mother, and her children have developed a true appreciation for literature. No doubt the same will be true of Amalie. At a reading this weekend, someone was marveling at how well Amalie does at these events, and I pointed out that she went to her first reading when she was only two or three weeks old. She attended her first conference at five months old. She’s growing up in a house with overflowing bookshelves. She’s growing up surrounded by writers—not just her parents, but the vast majority of her parents’ friends and colleagues, too. She’s getting a very different view of literature than most children do, and I just don’t see how this all could not affect her (I believe in a good way).

It’s been two months since AWP, but I finally want to talk a bit about one of the two panels I managed to attend while there. This panel felt like it was tailored to me. The panelists talked about the exact issue I’ve been struggling with these past few months. The panel’s title? “Barefoot, Pregnant, and at the Writer’s Desk: Managing Motherhood and the Writing Life.” When I saw that this panel was being offered, and furthermore, when I saw that it was in the morning and so before Damien would be on duty at the New Ohio Review table, I almost, sort of wanted to believe in a higher power (well, not really, but you get the idea). It felt like destiny.

I told Damien, “If I only make it to one panel during the entire conference, it should be this one.” And I was right. I won’t go all hyperbolic and say this panel changed my life, but it did help me, and I came away with some concrete ideas on how to be a mom without giving up my writing self. I’m going to break this up into two posts because there’s so much to share from this one panel.

Katy Reed is a journalist who, since becoming a mother, has carved herself a niche writing articles about motherhood. Reed talked about how, when she first became a mother, she thought she was “doing it wrong.” Parenting guidebooks, she said, would lead you to believe if you aren’t stimulating your baby’s brain every second of every day, your baby will turn into a brain-dead zombie. She described, also, the “rosy, blissful, peaceful glow” parenting books and articles seem to think all mothers are supposed to emanate when they’re spending time with their babies. This didn’t match Reed’s experience at all. Sometimes you’re tired. Sometimes you’re busy. Sometimes you don’t even know how to stimulate your baby’s brain, since (in my experience), half the suggestions they offer in the guidebooks don’t even get your baby’s attention.

So Reed took her own feelings of shame over “doing it wrong” and began to write about them. She offered, as a result, mothers like me, who are struggling with the same sorts of feelings and uncertainties, an alternate way of looking at motherhood. I imagine, too, that in the process she came to terms with her own style of parenting and accepted it as legitimate.

Though Reed didn’t offer any concrete suggestions on how to juggle motherhood and writing, hearing her talk about her own feelings of inadequacy made me feel much better about my own. This is exactly what I’ve been going through. For the first couple months of Amalie’s life, I’d pass into hysterics fairly often, frantically telling Damien over and over, “We aren’t stimulating her enough. We’re messing her up! We’re terrible parents!” It was incredibly reassuring hearing someone else talk about having felt the same way, and knowing that her kids turned out just fine.

Kate Hopper is a nonfiction writer and a contributing editor for Literary Mama. Hopper shared her experience juggling writing a book while raising her young daughters. At one point, when she told one of her daughters, “I love you more than anything,” one daughter asked, “Do you love us more than your book?” Ouch! Hopper calmly explained to her girls that if she had to choose, she would choose her daughters, then added, “But I’m really glad I don’t have to choose.”

Hopper found that the time is there to write—when your kids are at preschool, for example—but you do have to make writing a priority. She recommended that writing parents should figure out what they can realistically do as far as writing goes—what goals and schedules can you reasonably expect yourself to keep?—and then really commit to it. Writing as a parent is different from writing without children in that way. You have to be very disciplined. Before she had kids, Hopper could procrastinate and waste time waiting for inspiration. Now, when there’s a window of time, she has to use it.

While finding the time to write can be difficult as a mother, Hopper, like Reed, seemed to feel that writing helped her to deal with the struggles of motherhood. “The truth is,” she said, “I can’t imagine motherhood without writing.” I can’t, either. As fulfilling and rewarding and all those other cheesy things as motherhood is, writing is a much needed break from it all; it’s a means of thinking through and understanding yourself and your child(ren); and it’s a way of hanging on to your old self, of being more than just a mother.

Next week, I’ll tell you about nonfiction writer Hope Edelman and fiction writer Jill McCorkle’s takes on the subject.

Well, my March interview series is complete—I hope you enjoyed it. Now that I’m back to blogging like normal, it’s time to talk about AWP. Now AWP, of course, was a month ago—everybody else has finished with the subject by now. But I do have a few things I want to say about my experience this year, which was wholly different from my experience last year. Also, I went to a couple of interesting panels, each which I’ll probably dedicate an entire post to soon (though I’ll break it up, I think, so as not to inundate you with AWP topics all month). For now, though, I want to give a sort of general overview of what it was like attending AWP with a six-month-old baby in tow.

I went to the conference knowing that, because I was there of my own volition (unlike Damien, who was there for work), I would be responsible for tending to Amalie most of the week. That meant, I was aware, that I might not be able to go to many panels or spend much time at the bookfair, but I was hoping, worst case scenario, that Ama and I could spend some time kicking around Chicago, and if nothing else, Damien was going to be able to watch Amalie during my off-site reading on Friday night and my book signing on Saturday.

Well, I was right about the panels. I tried to go to one with Amalie on my lap, but she started getting restless before it even started, so we went back up to the hotel room to play. Kicking around Chicago, it turned out, was unrealistic; it was freezing cold most of the week, and I didn’t want to take Amalie outside any more than was absolutely necessary. The bookfair, though, was an unqualified success. Amalie loved the buzz of activity, the many things and people there were to see, and she LOVED all the attention everyone paid her. People love to see a cute, little baby in an unexpected place, and Amalie, at six months, is already a sucker for anyone who tells her she’s pretty.

She even liked being carried around the bookfair during naptime. The truth is, she prefers to sleep in mama or daddy’s arms, so the bookfair was kind of a dream come true for both of us. She could doze off while being carried around, and I could peruse the tables and booths, and feel like I was making the most of my AWP experience. We even scored a free picture book—on the last day, the day the presses were all trying to unload whatever they hadn’t sold yet, a man at the Biblioasis table stopped me and gave me a free book for Amalie, saying they didn’t want to take it back with them, anyway, and they’d rather it go to someone with a child. I thanked him and bought another Biblioasis picture book as well. (Both books look excellent—FABULOUS illustrations. I can’t wait ‘til Amalie’s old enough for me to read them to her.)

My reading and book signing both went well (I signed up to do my book signing for the last day,  the day they were going to discount copies of the book, and I think it made a difference. People are far more willing to take a chance on an unknown author if the book only costs $5), and like I said before, I even managed to attend two panels (Damien watched Amalie for me). In addition, I got to spend time with my UAF friend Jenni Moody, who, it turns out, is GREAT with babies. By far the best part of AWP, just like last year, was getting to hang out with writer friends I don’t otherwise get to see very often.

The countdown to AWP is upon us. We’re heading off first thing Wednesday morning and will be in Chicago until next Sunday. I’m excited, though for different reasons than last year. Last year was my first ever AWP—just the idea of going, of being in the same place at the same time as all those other writers, of having so many interesting events to attend, was thrilling.

This year is going to be a very different experience. For one thing, I’ve got baby in tow and don’t know how many events I’ll actually be able to attend, or how many I’ll have to leave early because Ama’s getting bored and talkative. When I originally registered, my main intent was to spend some time wandering around the book fair—by far my favorite thing about AWP last year (well, not counting reconnecting with old friends). After I’d already registered, I found out that the book fair is free and open to the public on the last day of the conference—doh! I could have just gone, kicked around Chicago with Amalie, and then checked out the book fair for free on Saturday. Ah well.

Since I did register, though, I do plan on at least trying to attend some events. I’ve been reading The Blind Assassin this past week (and falling in love, hard, with Margaret Atwood) and would really like to attend Atwood’s keynote address. There are also some panel discussions whose topics sound really interesting.

But I know, with a five-and-a-half-month-old in my charge and daddy Damien working the New Ohio Review table for half the day, every day, I’ll be at the whims of Amalie’s moods (and feeding and napping schedule—if you can call it a schedule . . .). And that’s fine. Because AWP feels different for me this year not just because I’ll have a baby this time. It’s different, too, because I’ve been through it once before, and while I had a ton of fun, the magic has sort of gone out of it already.  

I know I’m not going to meet an agent in an elevator, suddenly become charming and outgoing, pitch my novel to him/her, and land myself a book deal (I didn’t even have the guts to sign up for a scheduled pitch session with an agent last year). And I know that at my book signing, I’ll be lucky to sell any copies to people I don’t already know—and since the people I know have already bought their copies, I’ll be lucky to sell any at all this year. And I know that, while I like the idea of all these people with shared interests and goals congregating together and sharing this thing with each other, there’s something overwhelming about seeing 10,000 writers together all at once and realizing that they’re all competing for the same publications and the same jobs—it really hammers home your chances: slim, at best.

But like I said, I’m excited, nonetheless. I got some Christmas money that I have yet to spend, so I plan on really letting myself loose on the book fair this year. And I’m looking forward to a fun vacation with Amalie. And I’m going to see some old friends just like last year (I’m really excited about seeing fellow UAF MFAer Jenni Moody!). And I’m definitely looking forward to my off-site reading. I like doing readings, oddly enough (odd, because I’m shy and introverted, and because readings tend to be a sort of dismal affair, where hardly anyone shows up, and of those few, maybe one buys a copy of the book, if you’re lucky), and this reading should be especially good, since several people have already committed to attend.  

Oh AWP, for me, you’ve changed. But that’s okay. I still love you, all the same.

(Don’t forget to check back next week, when my March interview series kicks off with an interview with self-published author Ken Brosky.)

I just got back from the AWP conference in Washington DC, and while I had a lot of fun, I’m utterly exhausted—there was just so much to do and so many people to see. I did a book signing for Peter Never Came at the Autumn House Press table; I went to tons of awesome, interesting panels (and a few flub panels, but that’s just the way it goes, isn’t it?); and I got to spend a lot of quality time hanging out with people I don’t normally get to see.

The sheer volume of people in the industry was a bit overwhelming at times, and many people at the conference seemed to have one of two opposing viewpoints about how it felt to be surrounded by thousands of other writers for four continuous days. Some people talked about the sense of community, how nice it was to get so many people with similar interests and career goals together in the same place. Several people, though, said that they knew they should feel that way . . . but they didn’t. Instead, they found it kind of depressing, having such a tangible, concrete reminder of just how many people are submitting to the same places, how unique we each absolutely are not. 

I lean more towards the former opinion, and there are a few reasons why:

1. Even though a huge conference like this is a cold reminder of how much competition you have, it’s also a reminder that people do make it in this field. Many of the writers in the sea of people had books out, had published in a variety of journals, had won awards, had landed agents—and most of them are not any better or doing anything much different than the writers at the conference who hadn’t yet reached those achievements. The breaks, they do come; you just have to stick with the game long enough to start getting noticed.

2. The book fair reassured me that there are many, many possible venues for publication. I’ve been researching, submitting to, and getting published in journals for so many years now, I sometimes feel like there are probably no journals I haven’t heard of—but there are. And being new to the book publication game, there are also many small presses that I either am not very familiar with or haven’t heard of at all. There are tons of places I can send my work out to, and I suppose I say this in part because I’ve had enough small-scale publication success to feel confident in my abilities as a writer, but just the knowledge that there are so, so, so many options available makes me believe that anything I try to publish, will get published eventually—I just have to keep sending it around.

3. Even though I understand the complaint I heard from many other writers at the conference—that it got to be grating being immersed in this limited world where everybody you see is in the same field and everywhere you go people are having the same conversations—I really like talking about writing. Talking writing, even when it’s nothing new, even when it’s just the same conversations I’ve heard or the same panel discussions I’ve sat through hundreds of times before, still gets me going. I leave this kind of thing feeling totally keyed up and ready to write.

That’s not to say there aren’t depressing things, too, for example, the stark contrast at the book fair between the people working the tables, who were mostly trying to convince people to buy their books, journals, and paraphernalia, and the people stopping by the tables, who were mostly looking for places they could submit their own work. I have to admit, I find it disturbing that unknown authors who publish with small presses don’t always seek out and read other work published by unknown authors through small presses; likewise, people who want to publish their work in journals don’t always read journals. I would be a hypocrite if I only read work published by major publishing houses and famous authors—if I don’t even read unknown authors like myself, how can I expect other people to give me a chance?

This has been especially on my mind because I did see one such hypocrite up close at the book fair. She was an editor from a small press (I won’t say which one), and she was a bit curt with an editor at another small press table for trying to tell her about some book she had never heard of. “I believe you that it’s a good book,” she said, “but I don’t know who this author is. There are probably tons of good books that I’ll never read. I want to buy something I’ve heard of.” How did she live with herself when she returned to her own small press table and tried to sell the unknown authors and books her press publishes?

Still, overall, I found the conference far more encouraging and motivating than depressing. I left the conference exhausted, as I said, but also anxious to get back to work. I had a ton of fun, went to some cool panels, and bought some new books I would probably never have heard of anywhere else. I could definitely see doing this every year if I could afford to.