This week, instead of writing about writing my book, I’m going to actually do it. Too often, I let myself mess around on teh Interwebz, whining about how hard it is to write. Not today. Today is a day of action. Excuse the pun, but what a novel concept!

Where do you get your inspiration?

This is probably one of the most common questions posed to any author, and it’s one of the hardest to answer. At least for me. While it’s true that I take plenty of my own experiences and twist them into something more compelling, a lot of the time, I just think of stuff. Ideas spring from my imagination. And what’s my imagination tapping into?

I have no idea.

I taught writing to international college students for several years, and they were constantly asking me how they could make their papers more interesting. I did exercises with them on how to write attention-grabbing first sentences, how to play around with metaphor, how to spice up their sentences with new vocabulary. Some students worked hard and incorporated these suggestions into their own writing. Others continued to struggle with stringing together coherent ideas, but that was largely a function of the fact that they weren’t writing in their native language. I was a Russian major in college, so I know what a challenge it is to try to be creative with linguistic limitations.

Where am I going with this? I guess my point is that there are a lot of variables at play when it comes to inspiration. What are you writing about? How close is the subject matter to your own experiences? And most importantly, have you done any creative writing before? Many of my students had not. They were from countries where rote memorization and exam scores were the key to academic success. Plagiarism was a huge problem; the whole notion of creative ownership was completely foreign to a lot of them. They’d been taught that the ideas of others were much more valuable than their own, so writing was an exercise in collecting those ideas, not thinking up new ones.

Now, I know that there are very few original ideas out there. I take comfort in the fact that the things I think and feel are part of the human experience, and that somewhere out there, at some point in time, another person was thinking and feeling the same things as me. But when I figure things out for myself, I am more likely to learn and grow. If someone shares an idea or gives me advice, I may hear it but fail to truly internalize it.

So while I like to think I’m a naturally imaginative person, I have also been writing fiction in some form or another for nearly thirty years (OMG–I can’t believe I’m old enough to write that!). I’ve had a lot of practice. And that’s really what it all boils down to. Writing is very much like athletic training. You have to do it consistently and continue to challenge yourself to see improvement. And even if your ideas aren’t original to the world, what matters is that they’re original to you.

Week before last, I had the chance to go out to dinner with several young adult authors, including Carrie Ryan. Carrie’s debut novel, The Forest of Hands and Teeth, is now on the New York Times bestseller list. Last month, she released the companion to FHT, The Dead-Tossed Waves. I’ve read both and will be sharing my thoughts on them shortly.

Carrie is a peach of a gal, with a great sense of style and charming Southern accent. I was instantly drawn to her warmth and intelligence. She recently quit her job working as a litigator to pursue writing full-time. It was interesting hearing how she went from practicing law, which she enjoyed, to penning zombie novels.

Carrie had many interesting and inspiring things to say about writing, but I was most struck by her attitude toward the writing process. She said that it’s important for writers not to be too hard on themselves, especially if they don’t find time to write every day. Carrie recognizes that other life events sometimes get in the way of writing, and it’s okay. Even on the days she doesn’t write, she reminds herself that she’s still a writer.

I really needed to hear this. It’s not possible for me to write every day, and I’ve been stressing about it. Revisions on my new book are going slowly, but I’m doing the best I can. In order to speed things up, I’d have to sleep less, leave my daughter with a babysitter more often, and/or eliminate what little time I have in the evenings to relax. And right now, I don’t want to do any of those things. My day job is caring for my girl. She’ll eventually go off to school, and maybe I’ll decide to write full-time. Who knows? But in the meantime, even though it’s going slowly, even though I can’t do it every day, I’m still a writer.

I know some of you have been enjoying my Monday lists, but I’m feeling a bit, um, listless about them right now. And since this is my blog and I’ll cry if I want to, I thought I’d explore another topic. Welcome to Manuscript Monday, where I share thoughts about my writing journey.

I had no idea what I was getting into when Dutton contracted me to write TMI (scroll down to “How did you become a writer?” for more details about this). When my editor spoke of drafts and revisions, I imagined a process similar to writing college papers, only with more words. I’d do a first draft, get feedback, make a few changes, and then polish up the grammar and punctuation. I didn’t expect it to be easy, but I wasn’t at all daunted by the task.

The experience of writing and revising TMI behind me, I was seriously daunted when I began working on my new novel. I knew how much work was in front of me. I knew that thousands and thousands of the words I wrote would never make it to the printed page.

The word count on my first draft of TMI was 101,835. The final draft? 76,167. These numbers don’t take into account all of the new material I wrote for each draft, which means that I cut more than 25,000 words during the revision process. If memory serves, I nixed at least fifty pages on the final draft and added seventy new ones.

TMI’s final word count is on the high side for a young adult novel; not counting sagas like Twilight and Harry Potter, most YA novels hover around 60,000-75,000 words. If I could go back in time and do another round of revisions on TMI, I would. That’s not to say I’m not proud of it as is. But like most authors, I see things that could have been better and things that probably should have been left out.

So how am I doing right now? The first draft of my new book was 68,600 words. I’m now about a quarter of the way through revising, and I’ve cut over 10,000 words and added at least 5,000 new ones. The book is going in a different direction than I’d originally planned, and I’m pleased about it. I feel like I’ve grown a lot as a writer in the last few months. I’m not nearly as attached to my words as I used to be. I’ve taken out scenes that were funny and interesting but don’t ultimately move the story along or show the main character’s development.

Those scenes end up in the “Scraps” folder. Occasionally, I’ll go back and rescue a few sentences or paragraphs, but I know that most of those carefully crafted scenes will remain on the cutting room floor. And I’m okay with that. It’s part of the process, and frankly, I’m beginning to really enjoy it. It’s freeing to realize that something isn’t working and that I have the power to change it.

Sorry, no Friday Flashback today. I’m ignoring my dark and shameful past today. Just don’t feel like going there. I’m not sure where I feel like going.

This new novel is kicking my booty. TMI did, too, but in a different way. So what’s changed?

I know more now. I know better. I’m not saying I know what I’m doing; I doubt I’ll ever feel that way (and seasoned authors have admitted that they still feel like frauds and amateurs). But since writing TMI, I’ve read a huge stack of young adult novels. I’ve studied the genre. I’m learning from the masters. I’ve closed the cover on a number of books and said to myself, “Aw yeah. This is how it’s done.”

I’ve highlighted many of those books on my blog already. In fact, I rarely blog about a book I don’t absolutely love. I’m making recommendations. Why would I waste time writing about a book I didn’t enjoy? I’m not a reviewer; there are already plenty of those out there. And okay, I don’t want to make any enemies. But fair enough, right? It’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to.

Or recommend books. Which isn’t at all like crying, unless the books are so good they made me cry. Which sometimes happens.

Oh, whatever.

So with all this newly found knowledge about what makes a YA novel great, you’d think I could simply apply a magic formula to my own book and make it sparkle. Problem is, there is no formula. Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson is amazing in a completely different way than The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart. John Green and Lauren Myracle are brilliant in their own unique rights. I love these authors and so many more. And I couldn’t imitate them even if I tried.

So what’s a YA author to do? I’m trying hard to be myself, sing in my own voice, carve my own path. I just don’t know where I’m headed.

Stay tuned.

For all you aspiring authors out there, I’d like to direct your attention to an outstanding web site strung with many pearls of writing and publishing wisdom. It’s called Kidlit.com and is powered by the fabulous Mary Kole, a writer and literary agent at Andrea Brown, one of the best agencies in the country.

While Mary’s interest and focus is on publications for younger readers, much of her advice is useful for anyone trying to get published. She answers questions from writers about how to submit their work to agents, how to deal with rejection, and why the wheels of the publishing industry turn in such creaky, funky ways. She did a series of posts a couple of months back about revision (so, so important) and is always stressing the importance of patience, a must-have trait for anyone dealing with the publishing world. It takes patience to craft and complete a great story, even more patience to polish it umpteen million times, and yet more patience to wait and see if agents and editors are interested. And if they are (oh happy day!), there will be yet more waiting to see your labor of love hit the shelves.

Axl Rose was totally right about that patience thing.

I regularly get questions from people about how to get a book published, and I’ve started directing everyone to this site. I’ve learned a ton from Mary, and if you’re interested in getting published, you will, too.