Look at the picture there on the right.

See the stack of books to the right? See the stack of books on the iPad? Which one reminds you of the stories still to be read, the books you want to reread; which one literally occupies a space in your conscience (as well as on your bookshelf)?

But in my experience, when I look at my iPad, I don’t see books. I see an iPad. On the device is Middlemarch, a Jonathan Ames novel, a Charlie Huston mystery, a couple of P.G. Wodehouse books, and a half-dozen nonfiction books I thought I wanted to read once upon a time.

This could just be a sad side effect of the way I consume books: Some people buy and read books on a strictly one-at-a-time basis. Me, I tend to buy three at a time and leave them on the bedside shelf so that I have an array of choices when I finish one book and move to the next. Today I’ll put up Mockingjay and then go back into the final hundred-and-fifty pages of Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. And then I’ll browse my shelf to see what matches my mood, and that’s what I’ll read next.

But I don’t “see” anything to read when I glance at the iPad. And when I open the iPad, I am distracted by the many other applications available on it. So instead of making reading more of a presence in my life, it has the opposite effect: It makes reading just one more media application. Provided I even remember the dozen or so books I have downloaded on the device.

I love e-readers—honest, I do. Before I had the iPad, I read on a first-generation Kindle, which comically ugly and poorly designed, was still a damn sight better than carrying around a satchel full of books and manuscripts. And the iPad’s reader is pretty spiff, as are the other reading apps—GoodReader and Nook—but the iPad (and before it, the Kindle) don’t fit into my head and consciousness in the same way.

Am I alone in this? Or is anyone out there finding that these e-readers make books out of sight and out of mind?

There’s something so energizing about back to school time. It always makes me think of getting organized, setting new goals, and accomplishing them. And is there a better time than back-to-school to refresh your commitment to your craft, your creativity, and your goals as a writer? I think not.

With that in mind, I’ve cobbled together a list of advice about the act of writing. You’ve heard some of it before, no doubt, but if you try doing just one of the things on this list,  you’ll see an improvement in your productivity—and your writing. [Find the list after the break.]

1. Write often. Blogging doesn’t count. Texting your friends doesn’t count. Tweeting that you’re thinking about writing doesn’t count. Facebooking that you have writer’s block doesn’t count. Unplug yourself from the white noise of social networking babble and write.

2. Finish what you started. You know how it happens—you wake up in the middle of the night with an idea for a novel that’s so brilliant, so amazing, that you simply have to get out of bed and write it down because you’re convinced you’re about to become the next J.K. Rowling. You work on it feverishly for awhile, then you start to feel kinda lost about where you’re going with the story, and before you know it, you’ve forsaken your novel for surfing the internet. It’s still there, languishing on your hard drive. You think of it fondly, but just haven’t found the time to get back to it. Guess what? Now is as good a time as any.  So whether you join one of those crazy nanowrimo thingies or set your own goals, commit to finishing a project.

3. Read well. US Weekly does not count. Sh*t My Dad Says (though hilarious) does not count. Sports blogs do not count. For your pleasure reading, choose something well-written (and maybe something—gasp!—out of your comfort zone) that will help you think about craft and inspire your own writing. Personally, I always seem to return to the classics. I re-read The Great Gatsby over the summer, and enjoyed it so thoroughly that upon finishing, I had to fight the urge to go back to the beginning and read it all over again.

4. Get out of your own head. Writing is quite the solitary journey, but just because you write by yourself doesn’t mean your work in progress should remain under lock and key until you’ve lovingly typed that final page. The best way to improve your writing (other than writing consistently), is to find inspired, like-minded individuals whom you trust to read and critique your work. So if you haven’t already, join a crit group, and if possible, make plans to attend writer’s conferences (either locally or nationally), where you can attend workshops, meet other writers, and get the chance to put your work in front of editors and agents.

5. Carry a notebook. Keep a notebook in your purse (or your man-purse or messenger bag or whatever guys are calling their purses these days). Use it to jot down sudden ideas, titles, thoughts, and impressions of what you see and experience. By jotting down things that touch you, impress you, strike you as beautiful or funny or odd, you’re giving yourself permission to take a break from the rush of daily life and reconnect with the world around you. It’s good for the soul—and for your fiction.

6. Set a weekly goal. Too often, I see writers tweeting away about being waaaay shy of their daily word count goal for their WIP (gee, maybe that’s b/c they’re tweeting instead of writing). Well, rather than set a lofty daily goal for yourself, why not try a more reasonable goal? With life being so busy, it’s entirely understandable that you won’t be able to write every day. So try setting a weekly goal rather than a daily one—maybe strive to write for an hour a day, 5 days a week, and see how that works for you.

7. Learn something new. The more you read and learn about the world, the more your writing and your characters will benefit from it. Read a book on a period of history that interests you, or on a subject that you’ve always been interested in that you didn’t know much about (llama farming, scuba diving, cheese making in France, whatever.). Stay curious about the world around you, and all of that good stuff will make its way into your writing.

Remember: Have fun with whatever you’re working on, and always seek out things in life that inspire you.

What about you? What books do you read for inspiration? Do you have any goals you’re working toward this fall? Do you have any tips for creativity and inspiration that you’d like to share?

Among the many helps we’ve found during our off time is this memo from the mighty David Mamet—the profane, too-often-too-thinky, shamelessly wordy (and so close to my heart) playwright, director, and essayist. His sage advice keeps us focused, our eyes on the prize and our noses to the grindstone and our shoulders to every cliché within shouting distance.

On the off chance his admonitions might help you, you can find them here. This is a note he sent to the writers of the now-defunct television show The Unit, which, despite its unfortunate name, has at least given us this kick in the ass.

Okay, summer’s over! Now put your butt in your chair and get to work!

JACK BLANK AND THE IMAGINE NATION is the story of an orphan boy who, after fighting off a robot zombie straight out of one of his comic books, is whisked away to a secret island where all the fantastic things in our world originate, including him. It’s got ninjas, super heroes, the aforementioned robot zombies, spaceships, sword-wielding kids, and a terrific mixture of action and humor that will appeal to even the most reluctant of boy readers.

Matt was the second author I signed back when I started agenting. I first read his query and sample pages when I was an intern, and even then I knew I’d found something special. Here was a take on a classic story–orphaned boy comes to learn he’s special–but told in a really fantastic and fresh way. And when I came to know Matt, I realized he was driven, professional, down to earth, and an eternal optimist. At each stage on the road to publication he’s believed in this story and these characters, and it’s so wonderful to see the book finally on shelves.

If you’re hungry for a great summer read or want something to give to the reluctant readers in your life, go out and snag your own copy of JACK BLANK AND THE IMAGINE NATION.

Bonus material!

• Learn more about Matt on his Simon and Schuster author page
• You can also order the audio book, read by Norbert Leo Butz
• Read an interview with Matt by fellow Upstart Crow client Shaun Hutchinson here
• Be the first to follow the clues and win your own copy of JACK BLANK on Shannon Morgan’s Daily Pie blog. Only one person will win, so hurry!
• And be sure to stay tuned for news about the sequel, JACK BLANK AND THE ROGUE SECRETEER

It’s award season and the results are finally in!

No, no, not those awards, which remind us that the people who create children’s books are artists as well as craftspeople.

No, I’m talking about the Bulwer-Lytton Awards for worst opening sentence. It is Edward George Bulwer-Lytton whose 1830 masterpiece Paul Clifford begins:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

In his honor, each year hundreds of writers compete to write similarly overwrought and overextended sentences, and they are always a riot. Mere badness isn’t enough; these entries are all hilariously awful. Check them out at the link above!

Okay, okay—maybe there are a few other sorts of people. (I’ve never been a fan of that whole “There are two kinds of people” routine, except where it is inarguable: women/men; living/dead; rational people/fans of Glenn Beck.)

Myself, I’ve gone from treating every book as a sancrosanct object (as a boy) to routinely scribbling in books (as an adult). Some I so love that I want to puzzle out how they work, and I buy multiple copies and mark them up (Moore, Munro, Cheever, Konigsburg, others). Some books I find so maddening that I have to immediately vent my hooting disdain (among them recent award-winners and bestsellers—don’t ask). Years later I’ll be flipping through an old copy of something and find an expletive in a margin and think, “Really? Was it that bad?”

But my marginalia is as nothing compared to the marginalia of the greats.

There is a wonderful little piece by Ian Frazier in this week’s New Yorker about the marginalia in books owned by famous writers, among them Nabokov, Coleridge, and Twain—who probably wrote the most entertaining marginalia: “At the end of an unusually exasperating chapter, [he wrote,] ‘A cat could do better literature than this.’”

So writing in books: Bad? Good? A necessary evil? A perversion that must be stamped out? Do you write in your books?

What is it? Put most simply, it is this: It is only when one reaches the twentieth or so idea that one starts entering the realm of the truly original idea.

The first five or ten? Those are the obvious ones that the brain goes to along its well-traveled paths. Most people’s heads will go that way and think of that thing. (Are you disappointed when you can see the plotline of a movie from a mile away? That’s thanks to the filmmakers working the shallows of the Rule of Twenty.) In the teens, you are starting to bushwhack into uncharted territory, where most people’s brains rarely go (because they are not as focused on craft as, say, a writer is). But by the time you hit twenty, you’ve likely discarded all the obvious and nearly obvious, and now you are working in a territory that is peculiarly yours. Those ideas you’ve worked toward will have the snap of the real and a complexity that speaks volumes.

Bruce was talking about the naming of things—characters, realms, books, what-have-you. Names are hugely important in fiction, of course, and our most beloved writers are masters of naming. But naming is about much more than simply giving a place or a character a telling handle, it is also the way the writer establishes his or her authority, where the writer becomes the author, if you will. Is the name too simple? Too easy? Too telling? Does it have hidden qualities?

Can you imagine Dickens without Magwitch or Havisham or Pecksniff? Rowling without Hogwarts or the Weasleys or Snape or her latinate spell names? Dahl without Trunchbull or Augustus Gloop? Pullman without the aletheiometer or Iorek Brynison or places like Bolvangar? The naming here does important work—so much so that a lot of exposition can be left out. Thanks to etymology, we know that “panserbørne” in The Golden Compass means more than simply “armored bear” (the Danish translation)—we hear echoes of Rommel’s panzer division, and there is an instant military air to the term. (That children won’t necessarily hear that, but that’s okay—the name is dark and rich and has extra dimensions folded within it.)

But naming is only one part of it: The Rule of Twenty can and should be used to consider plot twists and any other part of writing a story when you suspect you may have taken a too-easy route. Chances are that you have. So push yourself, reach that twentieth idea that is yours and yours alone, and see what you end up with.

Are there other rules that you use to ensure you’re being as original and creative as you can be? What are they? I’m going to try and add regular posts here under the rubric “The Rules” that collect some of the most useful ideas, and we can all use the help!

On June 8^th, my second novel for teens, Crash Test Love, was released. I truly believe that having the firsthand experience of publishing a novel—finishing that elusive first draft, going through rounds of revision with a skilled editor, worrying about the cover, reviews, and all that jazz—only makes me a more insightful and skilled agent, and I am incredibly proud to share this novel with all of you.

I am happy to invite any Upstart Crow blog readers who live on Long Island to a reading I will be doing at the Barnes and Noble in Carle Place tonight at 7pm.

More details here: http://store-locator.barnesandnoble.com/event/67004

Enjoy!

No longer do I have to tell editors, conference attendees, friends, and family that the books I’ve sold will come out “soon.” Now when someone asks what I do and I try to explain my job, I’ll have actual books I can direct them toward. So, as you can probably imagine, I’m super excited for two very talented authors.

First up is Jacqueline West’s amazing BOOKS OF ELSEWHERE, VOL I: THE SHADOWS, out today with Dial Books for Young Readers. Jacqueline was the first client I ever signed, and her debut surely doesn’t feel like one. Before writing for children, Jacqueline’s poetry and short fiction were published widely in literary journals. I could tell the first time I read sample pages in her initial query that Jacqueline was a seriously talented writer, and I’m ecstatic that the public will soon get to read her fantastic work themselves!

To learn more about the book, which is the first in a new series, head to the official website, check out Jacqueline’s author profile on the Penguin website or read what Publisher’s Weekly had to say about the project in their starred review.

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve likely heard me raving about Shaun David Hutchinson’s THE DEATHDAY LETTER, which also comes out today from Simon Pulse. THE DEATHDAY LETTER, or DDL, as Shaun and I have been referring to it for nearly two years, is a hilarious, poignant story unlike anything many readers have experienced before. This was another story that grabbed me right from the query because the concept of a boy who receives a letter informing him he has 24 hours to live was so, well, whacked out and awesome.

Read more about Shaun on his blog, check out his page on the Simon and Schuster website, and go out and grab yourself a copy of this hilarious book!

I couldn’t be more excited for these amazing books. They represent two different aspects of my taste–in THE SHADOWS, a classic middle grade that could have been published 50 years ago and not felt much different, and in THE DEATHDAY LETTER a hilarious high-concept story that will delight teen readers.

Congratulations to both Shaun and Jacqueline, and I hope for much future success down the road!

The Deathday Letter takes place in a world much like our own: the one difference? In this world, you receive a letter the day before you kick the bucket letting you know your croakage is happening within 24 hours whether you like it or not. When teenage Oliver receives his deathday letter, he embarks on an epic and hilarious last day full of risks, best friends, and pudding. Yep. Pudding. As the clock ticks down and Oliver’s staring the reaper in his surprisingly pretty blue eyes, he realizes it’s his last chance to make his mark, however small, on the people around him.

Sounds awesome, right? It is! So here’s the question I pose to you: What would your teenage self have done with 24 hours left to live? Stood up to the bully? Finally tried foie gras? 24-hour laser tag session?

Leave your answer in a comment (please limit to one sentence or less) or tweet your answer using the #MyDeathday tag. Everyone who participates before 5 PM EST on Monday, June 14th will have their names entered to win a signed copy of The Deathday Letter.

Be sure to check out Shaun’s blog for other chances to win copies, news about the book, and a special surprise video coming soon of Shaun doing something crazy as his #MyDeathday moment. And if you want to buy the book, it hits stores June 15th!