For this week's Follow Friday, we bring you the agent-who-must-not-be-named aka The Agency Gatekeeper. The Gatekeeper writes a semi-anonymous blog that dishes on life in a New York literary agency. Her blog is a charming combination of great advice and humor, with tips on agency etiquette and even pie-charts. You might even find a good zucchini muffin recipe.

Check out this post.

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GETTING PAST THE GATEKEEPER is a fabulous publishing blog with a unique voice, great information and no shortage of flair.

Thomas Edison famously said, “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.”  Now, I don’t know about genius, but writing sure works out along similar percentages.  Similar, but not exact.


Because writing requires a small percentage of inspiration.  A huge percentage of perspiration.  And the rest?  Well, I guess it depends on who you are.  But I require a percentage of…you.

You see, I need my writing community.  I always thought writing was an individual sport.  Solitary.  But then I went to my first SCBWI conference and met…other writers.  Wow.  Was I hooked.  And I realized that writing is a team sport.  Not like baseball, where you can’t get the batter out without the first baseman and the left fielder.  More like…Olympic swimming.  Usually, you’re in the lane alone.  But you practice together.  Support each other.  Push one another harder.  And sometimes?  You swim a relay.

OK, so maybe my sports analogies leave something to be desired.  But do you see what I’m getting at?

The past few weeks truly made this obvious to me.  I work hard when I revise.  I tend to be a little too hard on myself.  During every revision, I have one or two crises of confidence. (That sound you hear?  Is the other Muses, laughing behind their hands, trying desperately to keep my secret – because in reality, it’s more than one or two).  So I draw on my community of writer friends not only for creative feedback, but also for emotional support.

And boy do I get it.  My actual sister and sister writer, Martha Longshore, is always my first reader and best supporter.  The Muses don’t let me get away with much, but are the greatest team of readers and cheerleaders anyone could ask for.  Rarely a day goes by that we don’t hear from each other.  (Recently with lots of good news to celebrate!  More this week, with Oetinger buying the German rights to Veronica’s Under the Never Sky).  Bret Ballou (isn’t that just the greatest name for a children’s book writer?) not only gives frighteningly good critiques (you know the kind – “but I was hoping no one would notice that!  How do you do that?”) but also pops up in my e-mail inbox with delightfully cheerful words of reassurance and inspiration just when I need them.

I could go on, but this post would end up reading like an acknowledgments page and I would be getting off topic.

The point is, in writing, we all need to find our own balance.  How much of your writing is inspiration?  Is it only one percent?  Or is it ten?  How much is perspiration? I certainly sweat a lot over every project.  Sometimes every word.  And how much is community?  Writers?  Friends?  Family?  Because some days?  They are equally – if not more – important.  They are what keep us going.

So the other day my husband commented on a Twitter post where I *might* have mentioned that I was skipping scenes in the first draft of my WIP, so I could get to the part where the MC gets together with the hot love interest. He asked me if all the hot guys in my novels were based on him. And I said, "why yes, of course they are." And I wasn't lying. Not exactly.

There are bits of him in every book I write, but none more so than in my first novel BANDIA, which started out as a fictional account of our own tortured path to romance, beginning when we were both in our teens. However,I soon realized that I couldn't write characters based on people I knew, because I could never truly get inside their heads. I was always second guessing how they would react in a given situation. I felt paralyzed when it came to giving them words to actually speak.

So I changed them. I gave them new looks, and new backstory. New names, quirks and hobbies. I couldn't be free to experiment and ultimately tell a cohesive story until I'd changed them completely. But, that doesn't mean that life can't provide wonderful inspiration.

The friend with the heart of gold who has had a series of horrible boyfriends, each one worse than the one before? Great material for bad dates, girls that are too nice for their own good and some very, very bad guys.

The friend's mom who covered the furniture and carpet in plastic covers and kept the curtains closed and the lights off in the daytime? She's real. I couldn't make that stuff up.

The boy who takes your breath away with just a smile? I might know someone like that...

So where does the line between creating a new world and borrowing from the real world start? Where does it end? The characters in my books are not intended to resemble anyone in particular, they're made up of parts of many people, real and imagined. Frankenstein's monsters.

But in every book I write, there's a bit of me in the main character, and a bit of my husband in the love interest.

Just enough to make me want to skip ahead to the good parts.

Once, at a backyard barbecue, I was speaking with a dear friend of mine's father. Papa Frank was a big, broad-shouldered man who never hesitated to speak his mind. He asked about my writing and as I explained to him that I write from a teenage boy's point of view, he stopped me and asked, "What makes you qualified to do that?"

To which I answered, "Well, I'm a writer. We make things up."

He shook his head. "I just don't see how you could ever know how a teenage boy thinks."

I've pondered Papa Frank's question for a long time. Some people come up with witty comebacks a few minutes too late. Me? I think it's been a few years since that barbecue and finally, finally the answer is forming in my mind.

Why do I think I can write a boy? Here's what I've come up with:

My life has been a study of "boy." My parents claim I wanted to be like my older brother from the beginning. I disagree. I think it started around age three or so. I wore my brother's hand-me-downs (corduroy OP shorts). I played whatever he played (Star Wars action figures ruled over Barbies for me). I even ordered what he ordered at restaurants ("I'll have pepperoni pizza, like him, but hold the pepperoni.")

When my younger brother came along, my immersion into the world of boyness was complete. This situation continued through highschool. I had girlfriends (who continue to be my dearest friends) but we were the girls that ran with a much larger pack of boys.

Today, I love big budget action films and fall weekends full of football, played out in the street or on the television. I choose throw pillows primarily for their fort-building properties and I can make an awesome paper airplane. Don't get me wrong. I love plenty of girly things, too. Fresh flowers make me happy, and while I don't like shopping, I do like cute clothes. But the point is, that some deep part of my psyche absolutely, completely *loves* boys. Gets boys. Maybe as much as a non-boy can.

It's turned out to be a great thing. I now have two sons, who've given me further insight into the male mind. For example, did you know that it's impossible for brothers to go a whole day without smacking, poking or tripping each other? I've tried to disprove this theory on many occasions. It's impossible. We'll colonize Mars before brothers can get through a full day without physical contact.

How does all this boyness fit into my writing? I think in several ways. I'm very conscious of keeping things moving on the page. I like large-scale, visual scenes, and I like them to happen as often as possible. But most importantly, my affinity for the Y chromosome inspired me to include a teenage boy POV in my story. My male protagonist gets as much page time as my girl does, and I kinda like that sort of symmetry. Makes sense, right?

I do hope boys read my story when it finds its way into world. Imagine it... A gangly fifteen-year-old sprawls on a couch, engrossed in a story about a future world. His brother comes along, grabs the book and takes off running. The chase is on.

It's what I long to see in my house someday. I can't picture it without smiling.

What about you? Are you writing a character that you shouldn't be qualified to write? I mean, we all do this, don't we? As writers, aren't we all extrapolating from our experiences and perceptions? What are your tricks for writing a male if you are a female? Or conversely, for writing a female if you're a male? And don't we all carry these sensibilities within us? Aren't we all just part of a single, fantastic, enormous, collective consciousness? How terrible it would be if we could only write ourselves. What would be the fun in that?

Papa Frank, we all miss you around here. Sorry it took me years to figure this one out but I know you're up there listening and I sure hope that answers your question.

This week I’ve been traveling. As part of my “real” job as a professor at Colorado State University and Director of the teacher and principal preparation program, I attended an educational conference at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. I enjoyed the whole concept of traveling to “normal.” I’ve definitely never been there before.

There is a long history of crazy in my family. In Texas, there is a certain respect for crazy, so it never seemed abnormal to me. Ever since I can remember, someone in my extended family was going away somewhere for their “nerves.” Usually that involved a locked ward in some mental facility and that was “normal.”

It used to concern me that I might follow this path, but I’ve come to value the inheritance of crazy. Someone told me once that most people live their lives on a spectrum from 0 to 10, but some people live their lives on the spectrum from -2 to 12. I love that idea. It makes being a little “off” seem special and unique-not totally bonkers. Besides I’ve come to learn that outside the range of normal is where I do my best work. I like the fact I believe the guy at my coffee shop with the locking silver metal computer case actually works for the CIA. I enjoy the special names (and backstory) I’ve created for the people in my neighborhood that I’ve never actually talked to—like RedLips and SadLady and MarshaMarshaMarsha. I’ve even come to appreciate the conversations I have inside my head, especially since now they often end up on the page. It’s not exactly normal, but I think the characters I create and the stories I tell when I embrace the crazy is where I do my best work.

So I guess my realization was that normal was a nice place to visit, and I’m sure a lot of people would love to live their lives here. It’s just not for me.