My Russian teenage poetry

So this is something that my Twitter followers asked me to do, and I'm obviously scared shitless, because not only is this poetry written by a teenager (I was 15), my translation is probably not the best (haven't done much translating lately), I hope it does it justice. Anyway, you asked for it, I warned you. Here you go.

Everyone thinks - words, beauty
But for me it's - noises, empty
I would really want to write
But it's hard to reach right
I'm left with gazing out the window
Maybe it will tell me what to do
Why do I need words?
In the spring's green-glow leaves sing
Wind twirls
Dances on the rooftops
To the glee of cats, 
Chimney sweepers and mice
On the wires,
Like on a feverish violin
Plays the spring
With a stretched linden tree
Trembles and shivers
The melody of life
Now it shakes a branch
Now it hangs in the sky

Sky opened its blue mouth
Golden teeth sparkled inside
Now the heat blew from the top
Started spitting, my blue friend
He just finished smoking his cigar
Smeared grey smoke across his face
How naive - he decided to eat Earth
Only his mouth is way too small
Opened his mouth, trying. "You fool,
You won't have time to devour Earth
Night is over!" A loud screeching noise
He closed his mouth. How about sun?
Then he opened his only eye
Brightly glanced at Earth, silly cyclope
In grey fog, his face turned light
And acquired a turquoise tone
"Do your thing, stop doing nonsense
Warm greenery and water, come on,
Spill some tears on the Earth...
Cry some, you sorry blue guy!"
He doesn't want to, but what else? Oh,
There are tears falling fiercely down
Into black mounds, ending first flight
And their last, like a woman's caprice

Poems are pushing themselves out
Marching in rhymes, ready for war
But whom will they fight?
Ah, anyone they can find
Why do they need extra suffering?
Ah, just do they won't die of boredom
Who reads them? 2-3 people
They won't see light till end of time
Let them die then, fall into abyss
Rather then vanish slowly under dust

Flat face of incomprehension
Doesn't pay me any attention
It's such facial mania
Spits in your face and stomps goodbye
What crazy thought
But it's thought through thoroughly
Well then, it's time for sleep
Take my goodbye sweep
Au revoir. Excusez-moi.

MINIMIZE interruptions while writing

Photo by Sarah Ann Wright

Once upon a time while tweeting (of course, what else?) I've been asking people what they want me to blog about next, and the topic of interruptions came up. Namely, one of my Twitter followers, Bridget, asked me to write about how to minimize distractions and interruptions like the Internets and such, and although my typical answer to this is, turn it off, silly, there is much more to that than simply turning off your Internet. I'm by no means a time management expert, but I'll share here you with you what I do and how it helps me, and perhaps it will help you too. Because I had to learn it the hard way, by trial and error and through tears and tearing out my hair in frustration. My methods are as follows.

Turn off everything, and I mean, EVERYTHING. Literally, when I start writing, not only do I close all my browser windows except Pandora (gotta have my music), I also turn off my mobile phone and don't pick up home phone if it's ringing. Kids in the house have been trained not to knock on my door while I'm writing, unless it's an emergency. If I come out to grab a snack or a glass of water, they know not to talk to me. I do have a connection to the real world, in case something happens, as in, true emergency, when my family needs to reach me. They can reach me through my boyfriend who is always on Skype with me while I'm writing, so he can let me know if something is going on. And that is the only window into any human contact that I leave open. Even there, we don't chat much, it's mostly me either whining that my writing is shit (and him yelling at me that it's not, usually takes him 3 to 4 lines in ALL CAPS to shut me up), or it's me asking him questions about something technical, like cars or motorcycles or some other gadgets I'm writing about. That's it. The other most important part to this is, I lock myself up like this for at least for 4 hours straight. I don't allow myself out of the room until I either do 2,000 words or 4 hours of writing. I don't check my text messages. I don't look at my email, don't skim through Twitter updates. Nothing. Nada. I keep my mind clear of it. Why? Because. Let me illustrate my second point.

Protect your train of thought like it's your life. When you write, you pull ideas out of you by association. One thing leads to another, leads to another, until they form a kind of translucent imagination web in your mind that allows you to wander into it and record what you're seeing. The problem is, this web is very fragile. In fact, it's terribly fragile. A single word can kill it. A single knock on the door can break it and send the rest of your ideas tumbling to the ground in a mess that you won't be able to untangle later. If you have a mess left. Typically it leaves you completely blank, with all this beautiful stuff gone, your face puzzled. A second ago you had a whole story in your head, and now you have nothing. It's empty. This kills your flow. A simple phrase like, Mom, I lost my jacket! turns your attention to the jacket and breaks your concentration. Puff! It's gone. You can kiss your writing time goodbye. It's extremely hard to be able to pull yourself back together after an interruption, and it's extremely hard to write in short little bursts (it's why writing retreats are booming). This is why so many writers are excited when their writing seems to flow. You know why it flows? Because they finally were able to focus on it, that's all. That's why it's important to have a writing cave, be it as little as your closet, as long as you can shut the door on the world. If you can't do it, it will be very hard for you to battle the world and produce anything at all, because the world will insist on interrupting you and wreaking havoc.

Learn how to say no, and say no every day. I'm one of those people that doesn't like saying "no". I want to help people, I want to interact, it's extremely hard for me to decline any kind of request, so this was the hardest lesson for me to learn. Because I had to. I had to tell no to parties, to dinner invitations, to emails, to offers of promotion, to... many more things. In short, I had to clean up my social life and my life in general, to be able to create a quiet space for me to write. 4 hours every day is a long time. 4 hours in the middle of the day, when people like calling you, and emailing you, and talking to you, is a very long time to stay hidden from them. People will be pissed. People will demand an answer from you right away. People will bang on your door, and it's your job to let them know that you're busy. Without any explanations, without any interactions. Because interactions will suck out your creative energy. You have to learn to respond with a simple NO. Why can't you go with me to this party? Come on, let's go! NO. Why not? Because I said NO. But explain it to me! Because I said NO. But so-and-so will be there, and what kind of a friend are you anyway, if you're... I'm sorry, I'm busy, my answer is NO. 

Make the world evolve around your schedule. My entire life I spent my time according to other people's schedules. When someone would ask me to meet for coffee, I would always ask in return, what time would you like to meet, where? And then I would arrange my life around that request, to accomodate the time that is not convenient for me, to go to a place that is difficult to get to and will lose me more time. It never even crossed my mind that I did it, until I started writing. Because all of a sudden these invitations to meet and chat started distracting me from my work, and I felt increasingly uncomfortable adjusting my schedule to other people's schedule, until one day I realized that all of this diddling-daddling is depriving me of my precious writing time and energy, with its constant interruptions of my daily routine flow. And routine is very important to producing art, no matter what anyone says (yell at me here all you want), it's like a safe boundary where your creative genius can feel safe and start blooming. Unless you create it, it won't bloom, won't grow, afraid to open up and be interrupted. It's a fragile thing, it needs to be protected. Human drama will kill it in no time. It's only by sheltering yourself from any interaction that you'll be able to tap into your inner self fully. Of course, as time goes by, you will learn to be more flexible. For example, I can hold my thought mid-interruption better now than 1 year ago, when I was only starting. Still, it's very hard for me. I imagine, it's very hard for you as well.

So, the conclusion to this is... BECOME A HERMIT! And ignore anyone who tries to stop you. 

ROSEHEAD excerpt, Draft 1

It seems like I started a fashion of posting excerpts to my novels on my blog, with SIREN SUICIDES Draft 4 excerpt and SIREN SUICIDES Draft 5 excerpt. Well then, by popular demand (after asking my Twitter followers), here is an excerpt to ROSEHEAD, 2nd novel that I started writing this Monday, so 2 days ago. Meaning, this is an excerpt from unedited Draft 1 (please forgive mistakes and such). On 1, 2, 3...

Photo by Rosie Kernohan

ROSEHEAD

A novel by Ksenia Anske, Draft 1

Chapter 1. Arrival

The garden reeked of rotten sweetness as if the roses were not blooming, but rather decomposing in the heat. The sea of them, like a hungry red tongue, licked the west side of an enormous white mansion, forming a spectacular dead end. On its east side scores of linden trees framed the sky in a lacquered pattern of green. As far as the eye could see, the entire road was planted with these trees, which confirmed the name on a tall post, Lindenstrasse in German. Lilith Bloom wrinkled her nose and pushed the button to roll up the car window, having a peculiar feeling that once she steps into this house, she won’t be able to get out. It will swallow her whole and smack its lips in the process. Goodbye 8^th grade, goodbye ballet lessons, goodbye books. She shuddered, feeling frozen despite the hot weather.

“Panther.” Lilith whispered. “Panther, wake up.” She reached out and urgently shook a black curled up shape on the back seat to her left, warm from the sun. The shape shivered and yawned, revealing a long pink tongue and rows of pearl-white teeth, then promptly sat up, looking up expectantly at his mistress. It wasn’t exactly a dog, not in the most typical sense of how one would describe it. It was rather a cat in a dog’s body, an independent creature with lithe movements and a mind of his own. In one word, a whippet, Lilith’s pet and best friend. Faithful, smart, and, as Lilith would ascertain her parents, a talking one too. Of course, they refused to believe her.

Panther was the runt of the litter. Lilith’s father, Alexander Bloom, or Al for short, was a whippet breeder and he gave Panther to her for her 12^th birthday last year. That was back in July, in her hometown in Massachusetts. Now it was June, and they just arrived to Germany this afternoon and drove up to her grandfather’s house on the outskirts of Berlin, for a grand Bloom family reunion.

“Does it stink to you too?” Lilith asked Panther to confirm her suspicions. Panther tipped his head to the right, blinking his black jewel eyes. He didn’t dare talking in front of her parents, lest they decide to take him away and show him off to their whippet breeder friends like some otherworldly miracle.

“I thought so.” Lilith palmed the end of her skirt.

“Well, we’re here.” Her father professed, without glancing back, turning off the car engine and pulling up the parking break.

“Did you take your pills?” That would be Lilith’s mother, Gabrielle Bloom, swiftly twisting in passenger seat and gazing through metal-rimmed glasses with her typical demand, her fingers in a momentary pause from constant knitting.

Lilith rolled her eyes. “Pills are for sick people, mother.”

“Well, did you?” Her mother insisted, her lower lip beginning to tremble slightly. Overall, she looked like a lost bird perched on top of a roof, not knowing whether she wants to take off and fly towards summer or stay and nest for winter, risking to freeze off her feathers and talons and such. Her greying brown hair stuck out this way and that in a sort of an artistic halo, and she liked sticking in her knitting needles behind her ears where they would stay and sometimes drop into the frying pan while she was cooking dinner.

“Lilith, answer your mother.” Her father demanded, without turning his head, rummaging in his pockets.

“I flushed them down the toilet in the airplane. They looked like two tiny boats in an excruciatingly blue liquid.” Lilith said with an innocent face. She liked using sophisticated words like excruciatingly, especially when annoying her parents.

“Al?” Gabrielle addressed Lilith’s father.

He only shrugged his shoulders, without looking. “Oh, Gabi, no use for worry. She can skip a day, can’t she?”

“Lilith!” What followed was a frenzy of activity, her mother’s hands performing an intricate dance of pulling out her bag, stuffing rolls of wool into it, her half-knit sweater, a bunch of needles, and then rummaging for the vial of pills.

Lilith and Panther exchanged a glance, suppressing a collective giggle, as much as you can imagine a dog giggling.

Next, her mother stuffed a small translucent cylinder into her daughter’s hands and watched her reluctantly open it and take out two bright blue capsules.

“Now.” Her mother said, and Lilith obediently stuck two pills under her tongue, with the intention of spitting them out as soon as she stepped out of the car. Which her father did already, slamming the driver’s door carelessly and stretching out his legs.

Here we can take a good look at him, tall and awkward and scrawny, kind of like a whippet himself. You know how they say, show me your dog, and I will tell you who you are? Yes, like that. His mess of black hair matched the shade of Panther’s black fur exactly, not a single silver line in it, contrary to his wife of fourteen years. His left shoulder was higher, right shoulder lower, his neck long, and his head small, balancing on the very tip of it. He wore beat up jeans and an old polo shirt, with dog hair all over it, from hugging and kissing and squeezing his 7 whippets, oh, about 20 hours ago, upon departure to the airport and giving last instructions to Missis Parks, a neighbor and an avid dog lover who would be taking care of the litter for three weeks that the Bloom family was gone.

Lilith patted Panther, and with words, “Come on,” opened the car door and stepped onto gravel, promptly covering her nose and coughing into it.

“It smells wonderful, doesn’t it?” Her mother exclaimed, and hurried off to open up the car trunk and take out multiple bags. Lilith and Panther exchanged another glance, now standing in the middle of a neat oval-shaped plaza, covered with gravel and packed with cars of all types, Bloom’s rental Audi being the very last.

Now is a good time to take a look at Lilith herself, a slender and petite for her age twelve year old girl about to turn thirteen, sporting an indigo pleated skirt, a white-blue marine shirt, striped knee socks, and black patent-leather mary-janes, with which she energetically ground two pills into dirt, having just spit them out. Her head tilted, she fetched a stray hazel lock and tucked it behind her ear, straightening her ruby knit beret, the one her mother knit for her. She had a collection of those, white beret for going to ballet lessons, black one to take Panther on walks, blue one for reading, lavender one for gazing at the clouds, and ruby one for special occasions. For festive outings which rarely happened, and so it was a big deal for her to be able to wear it now, covering up the top of her head and making her dark-blonde shoulder length hair attain a special shine. Her freckled nose sat between two huge blue eyes, forever open in wonder or daydreaming. Her lips were always parted, as if ready to utter something yet not sure of themselves, doubting, and falling silent in the end.

She dragged out her knit bag and slung it on her shoulder. Her mother made it as well, from navy wool, shaped like a messenger bag, which held a few useless now dollars inside a dog-shaped wallet, a plane ticket, a passport, a pack of Kleenex tissues, a few dried flowers forgotten in one of the pockets, a lip balm, a light pink leotard, tutu, tights, and ballet slippers, for emergency ballet training, a journal with a pen stuck between pages, and a book. Always a book. Presently it was Sir Arthur Canon Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, a corner bent on page 9. 

***

Well, what do you guys think? I'm dying to know.

Starting to write a novel is EASY

Photo by Karrah Kobus

This is actually a very timely blog post for me, as I'm starting to write ROSEHEAD, my 2nd novel, on Monday. But it was one of my Twitter followers, Olly Cromack, who asked me to blog about this. Blog about how does one start writing a novel. And I, of course, oblige. I know you're probably expecting an extensive list of things and to-dos that will prepare you for such an arduous task as writing a novel. On the contrary. There is nothing simpler than starting to write a novel. In fact, it's so easy that anyone can do it. What, you don't believe me? Well, before you will turn your back and saunter off, all hurt, let me demonstrate to you how simple it is, if only one knows where to look.

Start from the deepest pain you harbor. That's it. This is the key to you starting, the key to selecting that 1 idea out of 20 whirling about in your head, that true inspiration that you've been searching for. It's there, in the darkest corner of your psyche, hidden and covered and tucked away, lest it tries to disturb your daily equilibrium. Because to write a novel, this is precisely what you need to do to yourself. To rock your boat. To dig deep where you didn't dare looking for years, maybe even decades, to find that one thing that maybe you haven't told anyone about, not even your best friend. That is the hard part. That is why, once you find it, it's easy. Once you puncture it, it will flow, no, it will gush out, it will spill so fast that you won't be able to type fast enough, because it's pain you always wanted to talk about and couldn't. Well, presto. Now you can! Because in your novel you can exaggerate it all you want, you can speak up through your characters, you can show what it's like, and it will be all disguised as fiction, but the source of your story will be a very real emotion, so it will ring true to you reader. The question you have to ask yourself is, are you willing to go there? Because, as easy as it will be writing it all down, it's extremely painful to cut a hole in your soul. It will hurt. This is the hardest part.

Write the first thing that comes to mind. Literally, once you decided that you want to talk about your pain, once you touched those forgotten feelings, you will feel a jolt, and an image or two will pop into your head, I can guarantee you this. Quickly, grab a pen or your laptop and start typing away, describing in detail what you see. Don't worry about grammar, or story structure, or plot, or characters, nothing of the sort. Just write what you see with your inner eye. Here the key is to never stop, until you're done with 1st draft. Not even pause. Of course, it's impossible, you have to sleep and eat and go to work (if you don't write full time). I mean, don't pause for longer than a day or two. Before you start writing your novel, make sure you have a place dedicated to your writing and time set aside, something that you can maintain for months, maybe even for a year, because this is how long it will take you. I personally rely on a very rigid schedule. I don't know how you decide to do it, but you simply can't be interrupted when you're writing down your 1st draft. You can't look back or rewrite what you've written the day before. Because as soon as you slow down, doubt will settle in. The longer you wait, the worse it gets, until your drive will be lost. It's very fragile. It took me 6 weeks to bang out 1st draft of Siren Suicides. if I can do it, you can do it. 

Abandon everything you learned and go crazy. This is again one of those things that stops many beginning writers to write a novel. They want to learn how to do it, before attempting it. They study books, go to courses, dabble in short stories, to test the waters. Wrong. It's not how you learn. You learn by doing. And you learn by having fun. Meaning, you don't worry about what will come out in the end, you go crazy and write down things that make no sense but feel right. The worst thing you can do is think that your 1st draft will look like a finished book. Nope, it won't. It will look like shit, and it's okay. It should look like shit, it's the purpose of 1st drafts. So this is why you have to go crazy, because if you won't be afraid of how it will look in the end, you will be able to access those layers of your memory that you wouldn't be able to otherwise, without cutting loose. Pretend you're five and are learning how to bike. Pretend you have no idea how to do it, you take off, and for a few seconds of balance, you have this fool's bliss, unaware that soon you will fall, and cry, and your knees will be bloody. Starting on your novel is like that, like those first few seconds of complete exhilaration, without fear or doubt. It's the only way to sail through it without getting stuck in writers block. Don't worry, you will cut out the crazy parts in later drafts, but for now it's the liberty to be nuts that will keep you going.

Read your most favorite books. Many people told me in the past that they don't like reading while writing their novels, just so that they won't be influenced by another writer's style. This is a strange idea. Reading will fuel your writing. So I suggest you read books that leave you in awe. Read your absolute favorites, read your favorite authors. When you start writing your first novel, it's not the time to discover someone new, it's the time to rely on old and trusted fun. I will be doing it too, by the way. I'm starting to write ROSEHEAD on Monday, and on Monday I'm starting to reread the entire Harry Potter series. Because I loved the books when they came out, and I am dying to dive into potterland non-stop and see what it does to me. I know what. It will inspire me to keep moving forward. It will inspire you too. I bet you have a bunch of those books that made you catch your breath and exclaim, "I want to write a story like that!" Yeah, read those. You will see what I mean.

This is really all there is to it. Look for your deepest pain. Drag it out from your subconscious to your conscious. Quickly write down what you see. Don't stop writing until your entire 1st draft is done. Write the first things that come to mind, without any structure, simply because they come to you. Go crazy. Oh, and don't forget to create for yourself a writing cave, both place and time, where you can go into your inner world, where it can thrive. Don't start on your novel unless you have that established, because otherwise you will be at the risk of being interrupted and you'll will never finish. Now, why are you still reading this? Shoo! Go! Start! I know your novel is aching to get out. It told me.

Art is not about COPYRIGHT, it's about COLLABORATION

Photo by Joel Robison

I think ever since I posted an excerpt to SIREN SUICIDES Draft 4 on my blog, I've been getting private messages from people wondering if it's a bad idea to post an excerpt, worrying about copyright issues, about someone stealing their idea, asking me for advice. I even wrote a blog post on forgetting everything you ever heard about copyright in favor of sharing your work. This post is an expansion on that idea, and it's going even further. Art is not about sweating over it in fear of it being stolen, it's about giving it away and collaborating with others to create more art. For example, right now two of my twitter followers, Adam Silke and Lori Lesko are collaborating on writing a screenplay based on SIREN SUICIDES. The book is not published yet, but they are both my Beta Readers who have already read it and wanted to try and adapt it, because many people are nudging me about how cool it would be to make it into a movie. So I said, go for it! Do it! In fact, I will post Word files of all SIREN SUICIDES drafts here, on my site, so you can futz around with them any way you want. Write fanfic, short stories, novels, screenplays, songs, anything that strikes your fancy. Do you think I'm crazy? I'm not. Here is why you should do the same.

Stories are meant to be shared. Ever since mankind started speaking, we have been processing the world around us through stories, trying to make sense of lightning, famines, diseases, and other things that were unexplainable. Stories became a vehicle to share our experiences and learn from each other, without having to witness the actual events. They took root in one mind, changed in another, transformed in the third, and sometimes didn't look like the original story when the forth person was telling it. But that didn't matter. What mattered was the fact that a certain message was passed around, and it changed and grew and adapted as it did so. We changed with it. Any art works this way. A painter looks at a painting and gets an idea. A musician listens to a piece of music and hears a new tune forming. A writer reads a book and gets inspired to write a new one. It's even more inspiring for an artist to witness another artist create something, participate, walk away and create something new in turn. It's like a chain of events. It's how we feel connected to each other, making sense of this crazy life together, like we used to when sitting around the fire after a hunt, processing the world around us. Give yourself away, give your art away, and you will inspire others to create, who in turn will inspire you again, and you will never feel stuck anymore. Forget about writer's block. Only imagine being able to watch another writer write. I know, because I did a live writing session and people who tuned in said that they felt like they wanted to write too. Together with me. So give, share, inspire.

Books are no longer the product. I know for this many of you will pelt me with rotten tomatoes. Go ahead. I will still say it. Look at the music industry. Look what happened to CD's. CD's used to be the product for sale. Not anymore. CD's are promotional material now. Musicians make their money from doing concerts and other various performances and appearances. What do you think is happening with the book market? Do you see the signs? Why are big publishers merging? Why are we flooded with books from self-published authors? Why are book prices falling? Yes, you get my drift. The book industry is moving in the same direction. Books are less and less the actual product that sells. Don't yell at me, don't roll your eyes, let me finish my thought here. What I mean is this. Digital books are given away for free or sold for very little money, for readers to taste them, to like a particular author, and then the actual physical copy of the book becomes a souvenir, a collectible item, something a reader would buy after she or he has already read the book and simply wants to own it, to reread it over and over again. Authors travel extensively on book tours, teach classes, give lectures, for all of which they get paid. With the advent of eBooks, book piracy will be on the rise. It's merely a digital file that can be downloaded and stolen. Then why not simply give it away? Why not give people a chance to support you as an author, rather than make them pay for your books, which they can download off of the internet for free anyway? I propose a new model for making money as a writer. Don't make your readers pay for your work, let them support you. Let them donate, or pay what they want, after they have read your book, not before.

Unlock a million new ideas in your head. Imagine never having to experience writer's block ever again. Imagine never being stuck pondering what to write about next. Imagine never having a problem to finish what you have started, never having to shelve your half-done novel because you don't know where it's going and are stuck. That would be nice, wouldn't it? Well, collaboration will do this for you. Here you can shout obscenities at me all you want, but I actually, for once, know exactly what I'm talking about. I have created a collaboration community with my readers, primarily on Twitter, but also on Facebook and Google+, and there people have unblocked others simply through sharing their experiences, in short bursts of ideas, tips, tricks, and hand-holding that has nothing to do with professional advice you get from experts, but is simply an outreach from one human being to another via shared emotions. And that support alone has moved people. Ever since I started doing it last year and since it really took off several months ago (I suppose it tipped, as Malcolm Gladwell would have said), people have been sending me numerous messages on how they got back to writing simply because they saw someone else struggle with the same issue. I went further than that. I have created flash fiction chain story events on my blog, where I called on 10 to 20 writers at a time, and they wrote a chapter each, weaving one story together. Together. You know what that did to people? People who never wrote in their life before, are writing their first novels now. You know how powerful this is? This is what collaboration does. 

I could go on and on with examples, because this is a hot topic for me. Growing up, I tried writing but was always told my writing is awful. I wouldn't have even started, if not for my boyfriend who believed in me. It was he who urged me to post my except on my blog, because I was scared shitless. And it was the tremendous amount of comments from people that kept me going, and it was messages from my Beta Readers that made me a better writer. Some people call it crowdsourcing, I call it collaboration and the sharing of love. It wouldn't have happened if I didn't share my art with people. I would still have been hidden in my cave, slaving over my art, and maybe by now I would've given up. So, open up, let people support you, and you will be one happy writer.

My novel number 2. ROSEHEAD.

Photo by Natalie Shau

While finishing Draft 5 of Siren Suicides, my 1st novel, I was having a hard time holding back complete scenes that would come to me from Rosehead, my 2nd novel. "Why?" I thought. "Why is this bugging me, when such deep pain of mine is seeking an outlet in the shape of my 1st story?" It was puzzling, until one day I realized that the reason these scenes come to me is because I was ready to move on. I guess in any artistic endeavor there comes a point when you know you're done. You need to stop. You need to start something new. I learned how to write better dialogue, and I couldn't wait to try it out. I learned how to plan and plot and weave in suspension, and I wanted to test it out on a new idea. Above all, I was holding back all the bizarre and macabre and circus-like and extravagant things that I witnessed, the fabric of my childhood, where violence mixed with extreme intelligence, neglect went step in step with exquisite meals, designer dresses, and dance classes. And I wanted to create a character very different from Ailen, (the main character in Siren Suicides), not a raw emotional teenager, but a very polite and quiet preteen who is incredibly smart and broken on the inside. That would be Lilith Bloom, the main character in Rosehead. 

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS DISTURBING IMAGERY. 

Why Rosehead as a title? I must step back here and give a little bit of backstory. Where did the idea come from? Well, like I said on my editor Colleen Albert's blog, my ideas come from my past which was so rich with odd eccentricities and simple-minded brutal force, that at times I didn't know what reality I belonged to, utterly confused. In short, I grew up in Soviet Russia where all normal girls would wear the same dress that every other girl in USSR wore because it was the type of dress that all state malls sold. In contrast to that, I would be wearing crocheted concoctions made by my great grandmother (I still have that dress, by the way). Or I would wear exceptionally cute hats that my mother would knit for me (she was and still is a starving struggling artist back in Russia, knitting amazing things that she doesn't know how to sell). I remember being invited over to a friend's house, and hearing my friend roll on the floor in hysterics as soon as the front door was closed (I was leaving) and yelling at her mother that she wants a hat like mine. On top of it, my aunt has cut my hair to a French bob, and almost none of the other girls in class had their hair like mine, they all had braids, or their hair was in long pigtails. This is not all. One of my grandmother's sisters sent me real wooden clogs from Holland, and I think every girl wanted to kill me from envy. That was Soviet Russia. I was aloof and didn't understand why girls didn't like me, so I hung out with boys. Rosehead is the name for a many-sided pyramidal head upon a nail or a nail with such a head. I had severe ADD and PTSD and I want to write about what it feels like to be inside the head of a child like that.

The double world of abuse. Now comes the not so pleasant part. Ever since I remember myself, and I don't remember much, because most of it is blocked out, I was abused in all possible variety of ways, from being constantly yelled at, to being pulled from under bed (where I liked to hide) and beaten, to being painfully smacked on my forehead with a table spoon to make me eat (or having soup turned over my head in punishment), to the most horrific experiences that I only started piecing together about 5 years ago, after launching into a series of panic attacks and becoming suicidal again (I ran away from home at 16 and wanted to kill myself then). I was sexually abused by the second husband of my grandmother, my step-grandfather, a butcher and an alcoholic who just got out of prison for stealing. It was done mostly at his dacha, one of those summer houses everyone in Russia flees to, to escape the scolding heat of the city. They were neighbors, and my grandmother frequently left me with him. My mother was mostly absent from my life, which is a whole another story. I was also sexually abused by my father. He was (and is) a prominent writer and an intellectual who took me for visits once in a while (my parents divorced when I was 4) and taught me lessons, as he would say it, so I wouldn't turn out like my mother, which, in his view, was a prostitute. His plan was to root out of me any sexual desire, which he indeed managed to do, for many many years. He would go into these violent fits and after all done, would kiss my hair and wonder why I was crying, saying I'm silly because he loves me. I escaped into my head. So here again is my wish to describe the double world of a very sensitive child who has to flee reality for one reason or another.

The richness of appearance against the poverty of soul. The juxtaposition of my mother showing up at home once or twice a month, teaching me how to properly eat a grapefruit, how to slice it and sprinkle it with sugar and spoon out the flesh, and then disappearing again, leaving me to being constantly hungry (there wasn't much food in the house, I rather needed chicken and potatoes, not a grapefruit). The juxtaposition of dirt and filth and piles of grimy dishes in the kitchen in the apartment I lived, to handmade amazing knit dresses that I wore. The juxtaposition of my father reading to me out loud the poems of such Russian masters like Pushkin, Akhmatova, and Blok, even Chekhov's stories, and then painfully pinching me, forcefully sticking his fingers between my buttocks for fun, and slapping my face, and then later sexually abusing me when we were alone, claiming later to everyone that I'm a drama queen, an actress, and a liar, that I have my mother's genes and will turn out a whore, when I grow up. All of this often left me in such state of confusion that I couldn't tell up from down or left from right. Literally, I remember trying to burn into my brain which of my arms is left and which is right, and I remember it slipping me. Thus Lilith in Rosehead will be in the world of shifting rooms, appearing and disappearing doors, growing houses and spinning gardens. Since I was a loner, she will be too, with her pet whippet Panther for company (I grew up in that filthy apartment with 4 dogs, 3 cats, rats, mice, and even a hedgehog... oh, and cockroaches).

Sarcasm as a cover for pain. One of the ways I survived all of this was, actually, something that my father's side of the family taught me. Humor. Sarcasm. On the positive side, whenever something drastic happened, there was always a good joke to go with it, and this is what I'm dying to write about in Rosehead, spicing up the dialogue with bitter biting funny sarcasm, the type that hides layers and layers of people's personalities and their life experiences. I mean, I'm itching, I can't wait. Each of the characters will be a grossly inflated version of that or another person I've been in touch with, but they also will be their own people, as opposed to characters in Siren Suicides, who are closely tied to my own relationship with my father. Hence, I can't wait to start on Rosehead because I have no restrictions anymore. It will be drawn from that exuberance of experiences that I had growing up, the macabre, the horrific, the rich, the beautiful, the eccentric, the... the... I'm catching my breath here to stop. To summarize, it will be a feast.

Well, I suppose I need to give a one-liner for Rosehead here. Rosehead is a story about 12 year old Lilith Bloom, who travels from her American hometown to Berlin, Germany, for a big family reunion in her grandfather's house (I lived in Berlin for 4 years in my teens). With the help of her pet whippet Panther she discovers that her grandfather is not just a famous rose grower, but a murderer. He kills women and turns them into roses, hence his incredible success.

MY TWITTER ROUTINE, or how I got 44,000+ followers

Photo by Pandiyan

Almost every day I get a direct message on Twitter, a public tweet, an email, all asking me the same thing. Hey, how did you get so many followers? Hey, are you famous or something? Hey, can you give me the secret? Hey, how do you do it, do you do it all by hand? Automatically? Are you a robot? Do you sleep? And on, and on, and on. You can imagine various juicy questions I didn't include here. Honestly, I wanted to write this blog post for a while, but simply didn't have the time. I'm done with SIREN SUICIDES now (it's off to my editor), so I can do it! Plant your palms on your knees, sit up straight, hold your breath. Here is how.

Wake up with Twitter on your mind. That's what I do. The first thing I do is post an update while I'm still in bed. Actually, sometimes I reach for my phone with my eyes still closed, thinking about what to post. And, please, don't do the typical "Good morning!" It's boring. Nobody wants to hear that. It's what we hear every day. It's not what Twitter is about. Twitter is about going away from everyday life and expressing how you feel without any filters, and, at the same time, giving value to people in those 140 characters. So, my tactic is, being funny. I always try to come up with something that is true to how I feel yet will bring a smile to someone reading it, like: "I thought I had my brain yesterday, but I can't seem to be able to find it this morning..." Now, this is me. Very much me. You need to be you. Very much you. Ask your friends, if you have to. Who are you? What makes people like you? Don't copy anyone, don't be artificial. Be yourself.

Tweet all day until you go to bed. Yes, Twitter is the very last thing I do before closing my eyes, in bed, again. I used to tweet about 20 times a day when I was starting out, but about a year ago, when I began writing full time, I started tweeting more, and today I average about 100 tweets a day. That's a lot, and I don't suggest you do the same, but I can tell you that if you do less than 20 tweets, then Twitter might not be a choice platform for you to talk to your readers, you'll be better off on Facebook. Seriously. Don't torture yourself, think about it very carefully. Have you thought about it? Still want to do Twitter? Okay, let's talk about the content of your tweets.

Promote others, encourage, give. This will be a hard pill to swallow for many writers who are used to blasting a gazillion tweets a day about their book or how awesome it is. Please, don't. Not only will you turn me off, you will also make sure that I won't pick up your book any time in the future. Why? Because I don't know you, and when I don't know you as an author, I want you to simply be a nice human being. Why would I want to read your book if you're constantly shoving it under my face when I didn't ask for it? So please turn off you automatic DM's (annoying), stop talking about how great your book is, and let your readers do the job. Or people who know you. For this, I use Hootsuite, which might be a new word for you, but I used to do social media for companies in the past, and I highly recommend you play with it. There you can create a search column with your name and the name of your book/books, and retweet it any time anyone mentions it. What, nobody mentions you? No problem. Mention others. Start actively seeking out authors on Twitter, read their books, review their blogs, and tweet about them. Here is the catch, though. NEVER EVER ASK THEM FOR ANYTHING IN RETURN. And I mean, print this out and stick it on the wall in front of your computer. This is what giving is about. Just wait. People will give back. Because we love to help each other, but afraid to make the 1st step. It's up to you to make it.

Retweet, mention, quote, answer. If you simply populate your Twitter stream with yourself, it will look a bit, how to say it politely... you don't need me to explain it, do you? Good. You see my point. Twitter is about conversation. So state something, then see what others respond with, find a great response that you like and retweet it, answer people's tweets, quote them, but make sure that you don't pollute your conversation and are not too random. That will turn people off too. If you look at my stream, you will see that I watch my content with an eagle's eye, always making sure that there are clumps of conversations on the same topic, before moving on to the next. So people who are late to the party can catch up easily. And, of course, when you talk to people, same rules apply. Be polite, be nice, be funny, deflect anger with humor, play the underdog, and, in general, be that person that you yourself would have liked to follow. One more thing I do. I never answer tweets with simple "Yeah!" or "Nope!" or "Cool!" This is also boring and pollutes my feed. I try to answer each tweet in a way that if someone happened to read it, separately from the person who originally tweeted to me, they would get the idea of what it is we are talking about.

Follow and unfollow every couple of days. If you think you will be sitting there and new followers will simply fall into your lap, you're mistaken. Other people follow you, yes, but you also have to get out there and follow new people. Unless you're Neil Gaiman, of course. I use JustUnfollow tool, and every couple of days (I used to do it every day, actually, but the amount of my followers is simply too large now) I would go there and unfollow people who unfollowed me and follow new people, mostly other writers, because I'm a writer. Why every couple of days? Because if you followed someone and they are not following you back within 2-3 days, chances are they never will. The way Twitter works, you can't follow others without any limit. So in order to follow new people, you have to unfollow some. Now, if you look closely at the tool, what you will see is the option that says Copy Followers. I will explain how it works. I used to chit-chat with a writer, and if we liked each other, I used to go and see if other writers followed her, and then would follow those people by hand. I can no longer do it without using some kind of a tool, having to manage my 44K+ followers. The tool allows me to do it faster, simply because it's my choice to follow everyone back. At the moment I get 250-500 new followers a day, depending on the day, and I think soon I will have to abandon my policy of following everyone back simply because I won't be able to. You can't follow more than 1,000 new people a day. Also, I do everything by hand, I don't use the automatic follow everyone back feature. There are a lot of spammers out there you don't want to follow.

Post pictures, videos, links of interest. Try to spice it up with things that would also be interesting to your followers. Links to great articles, pictures that you took, that somebody else took, videos that are somehow relevant to what you're talking about. In short, try to make the whole experience as close to real life as possible, if these people happened to meet you on the street and you started taking about common interests. And you happened to have the same shoes, OMG, how awesome! Or same purse. Or same makeup. Sorry, guys, let's see here... same car? You got it. The idea is, share yourself unreservedly, and people will share themselves back in return. 

To summarize, be human. Be you. Be real. Be humble. Be funny. Be there every day and connect as much as you can. Admit to your failures, if you have any, and share your successes, if you have any. That's really all there is to it. I could, of course, attempt to give you my 8+ years of marketing experience here, but my blog will burst. Ask questions in the comments, and I'll answer as best I can!

Oh, and here is what you SHOULD NOT DO ON TWITTER.

P.S.: I wrote this post yesterday, and now that I'm rereading it before publishing, two more things need to be mentioned. One, don't think that if you do what I do, you will suddenly get a crazy following, and don't come back screaming at me that it didn't work for you. When I started out last year, I had 2,000 followers. This growth took me by surprise. I didn't think anyone would be interested in the stuff I had to say. Two, go out there and try things. Don't be afraid to fail. Let people catch you. There is so much love out there, if only you will allow people to hold your hand, you will feel it. And Twitter happens to be the best platform for it, I think. I love it. And I love every single one of my followers, they make my day, every day.

THE MAGIC of moving from your 1st novel to your 2nd

Photo by Joel Robison

Yesterday I finished the last, 5th, Draft of SIREN SUICIDES, my 1st novel. I felt like everything in me turned upside down. Let me try to describe it. It was a mixture of terror, terror of failure, and some maddening exaltation, to the point of wanting to run around the house and jump up and down like crazy, and a sense of loss, sweet loss, like you experience when you fall in love and your object of adoration vanishes from your eyesight. Like a part of you is gone, but also that empty spot is ready to grow something new within you. A certain creative vacuum, if you will. I would want to add twenty more elaborate sentences here in an attempt to capture what it felt like, but I would rather you experience it for yourself. Because writing and completing your 1st novel does magic. Seriously, I'm not being corny here. Here is what's different, magically different, about starting to write your 2 novel (as opposed to your 1st).

My fear of the 1st Draft is gone. I simply know that it will be shit, and I know it's part of the process. Actually, if it will turn out anything but shit, I would be worried. I also know that the first thing that comes to mind is the right one, having been through 5 drafts and having come full circle. Some ideas I planted in the 1st draft, took out in the 2nd, forgot about in the 3rd, was reluctant to add in the 4th, eventually made their way back to the 5th one. Go figure. So now I'm jotting down short scenes that come to me about ROSEHEAD (title of my next novel) as they are, without any squirming or moaning over them or doubting or anything of the sort. What should I name my main character? I thought one morning. Lilith was the first name that came to mind. Done! Who should be her sidekick? A pet, a dog, a whippet. Done! What would be his name? Oh, he will be black and he will be... Panther. Done! I mean, it's incredible, the freedom that came to me. I know that I won't know what the story is really about until I'm done with Draft 1, so I'm free to start writing tomorrow, if I wanted, which brings me to the next point.

I'm free of the tyranny of planning. Okay, so with SIREN SUICIDES I freaked out about continuity, about character bios, complete with their dates of births and places they grew up and such other elaborate nonsense. I won't be doing it this time around, because now I know that no matter how many notes I take, how much stuff I plan, how meticulous I am and how many hours I spend on research, it will be all a huge gigantic enormous waste of time. Because all of it will change, and it will not change in the direction I will be able to predict. Hurray! The freedom! I can simply let it evolve and pick details out of the air as I go, without dreading the correct setting details, of the proper plot development, or the like. Who said anything about writer's block? I'm almost tempted to say that a way to conquer it is to drag yourself through writing your 1st book by the hair. Because it seems like each following book is easier and easier to write.

I can't wait to indulge in dialogue. Now, this won't make sense to those of you who don't know me. Those of you who do and who have read a bunch of my blog posts will know that one of my biggest fears is writing dialogue. Here are my favorite excuses. Ready? 1. Oh, English is not my first language, how can I! 2. Oh, I don't have a musical ear, I don't know how people talk! 3. Oh, (this is my favorite), my dialogue just sucks! If you were to ask me why, I would say, it just sucks because I said it sucks! And I would promptly run away, lest you poke any more holes in my carefully built up defenses. Now, I can tell you, all of these excuses are utter bullshit, because suddenly in sketching quick scenes for ROSEHEAD I found myself eager to dive into dialogue to cook in my own sarcasm there, making it sound biting and funny. I surprised myself. What the hell??? I can tell you what. SIREN SUICIDES was very personal to me, so I was locked into translating in my head from Russian to English to capture the flavor of spoken ideas that I grew up with in Russia. I did the best I could, but it would't let me go away from it and practice actual spoken English from ground zero. I feel like I can do it now, in my 2nd novel. Oh, I can't wait! (See how different this sounds from excuses above? Yeah...)

I already know how my 2nd novel will end. This instability in not knowing how SIREN SUICIDES will end until I finished Draft 4 was maddening. Not so with 2nd novel. Once I grasped the concept from a few disjointed scenes that I already sketched out, it became clear, and I didn't dismiss it like I did in my 1st novel. I'm not even mentioning my 3rd novel here (not true, I just did!) because I already have that too, with a title, main characters, beginning and end, all planned out in 1 day after an inspirational talk over coffee with Michael Gruber, an awesome local author of 25+ novels. What does this tell you? It tells you that writing your 1st novel is like a wall that has to be broken, for the flood to flow. At least it's how I feel. And the most important part is, I won't need to complete as many drafts as I did with my 1st, because instantly the search for the end of the book is over. Isn't it nice? I think it is. I'm totally grinning right now.

I stopped trying to impress. This has been a terrible thing in Draft 4 of SIREN SUICIDES, and I honestly don't know how my poor Beta Readers read through it and even said that they liked it. I tried so hard to describe certain things, tried so desperate to be poetic, that I confused the hell out of people in places, going on some insurmountable tangents 1 or 2 paragraphs long, when 1 sentence was all that was needed. No more. I calmed down. For ROSEHEAD, I simply write down what happens, and it flows, it doesn't hiccup, it doesn't feel forced. I'm almost too afraid of this easy feeling, I want my writing angst back! Well, I think it will be back once I start, but my state of my mind is much more peaceful than it was while writing my 1st novel. 

I better stop here. It seems like there are at least 10 more awesome things that happened, like believing that I can actually write, and knowing how long it will take me, and scheduling my time so that I can write it fast while it's fresh, and what kinds of books I want to read, to fuel my own writing, and more. But then I will bore you to tears with total self-indulgence. I hope the above was helpful? In convincing you to finish that 1st novel no matter what? Is that a yes I hear? Okay. And if you have written a bunch of novels already, tell me, am I off the mark here? Is this how you felt too? 

Read books INSIDE OUT and OUTSIDE IN

Photo by Joel Robison

I'm very tempted to blog about being done with Siren Suicides, because I'll be done in a few days! But I want to reserve it until the real moment of really being done to really write about how it really feels. Presently, I've noticed I haven't done much blogging about reading books, and I should. One particular topic has been on the forefront of my mind lately. We all have a couple of these books in our library, the ones we read, and reread, and reread. For me this book is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, both because it reminds me of my past, and because it's been one of those "controversial" books that I got my hands on as a teenager back in Russia, and because I have just read it for the first time in English, and am rereading it now in Russian. Also, because a few of my friends are trying to push me into translating from Russian to English, so I decided to study the subject matter on this particular example. Well then, what did I learn that can be applied to writing?

Each book is layered like an onion. This is a kind of invaluable lesson I glimpsed, and it's an idea I intend to borrow for my writing. When I read Lolita in my teens, I saw only the lusty part of a pervert, and it was both yucky and interesting at the same time. I sailed through it and never took another glance at the sentence structure, or plot development (not like I knew what any of this meant back then), or the like. A few days ago, when I got done reading Lolita in English (Nabokov originally wrote it in English and later translated it into Russian), I was struck by the layer of literary poetry hidden within. The feelings of the main character that shaped his actions and propelled forward the story were those of pain and longing, albeit directed at the wrong subject. Still, I didn't see this before. Now I'm rereading it in Russian, and I see another layer. A kind of very Russian humor that didn't quite come across in the English version, but is clearly coming across in the Russian one. Everything is the same, yet it isn't. I'm not sure how I can intentionally apply this layering to my next novel, but I do know that a great book needs multiple levels. This is why Harry Potter is so popular. There is something for everyone.

A great book has a strong personality. I understand this is not a proper way to describe it. Let me try again. A great book is like that person you see on the street and are struck with her or his presence, be it hair, or clothes, or speech. It's that person you will remember for many days, or maybe even years, a stranger that was somehow special. This is what I get from reading Lolita in English and Russian. Although both versions have a slightly different air about them, English version being more melodramatic, Russian version more sarcastic, both have the same strong presence of the story. It's like, it doesn't matter what language the story will be translated into, it will retain its core. That core is a very specific desire of the main character, to the point of obsession, even to the point of mania. And that desire is Lolita. I think I mentioned this in the previous post on character development. The main character must have one clear goal, and the clearer that goal is, the more invested the reader is. I never saw this message executed in a more brilliant way as I saw it when reading Lolita in 2 different languages. That is truly its core, and it's what will carry it though in any language.

Emotion tramples word choice. Because my English vocabulary is not very rich, I struggle with being able to explain things in my book with enough flair so as not to sound boring. After reading Lolita in Russian, I realized that what Stephen King mentioned in his book ON WRITING, about never reaching out for a Thesaurus (which I'm guilty of) and only using the words that are on your mind, is true. Minute details, such as describing a restroom in the hotel, for example, bear a very different mood in English as opposed to in Russian in Lolita, but the feeling they evoke stays the same. I suppose that is why they call translation "a literary translation", with enough room to wiggle, to capture that essence of the scene. It actually gave me courage to keep using the same principle in my own writing. To stop worrying about how to wow my reader with exquisite prose and start really writing how it really feels. This caused me to cut out some over-flowery descriptions, and for the best. Never thought that reading the same book on two languages would do that.

Good writing takes good time. This was an unexpected benefit, one of those things everyone tells you about but you don't see it until you experience it for yourself. My biggest fear was the fact that I'm taking too long to finish Siren Suicides. May 15th it will be 1 year since I started! What reading and rereading the same book did, it opened my eyes to all those little details I didn't see before. They are especially apparent in different languages. All of a sudden I saw author's craft and the time that went into creating the story, into polishing each sentence, into thinking through each line of dialogue. This calmed me down, giving me a permission of sorts to take my time, to take good time and allow myself to shape my story. How did I see this, you ask? I saw it when rereading Lolita in Russian immediately after being done reading it in English. Nabokov's style rang through both so distinctly, that it made his story his, and not anybody else's. His personality meshed with his narrative. Ultimately, each writer is part of her or his story. This made me see the fact that I, too, am starting to develop some semblance of my own style, and it's okay that it takes so long. It just does. Great art takes time. The only thing I can do to speed it up is to keep writing every single day, to keep shaping it.

Hmm... this post ended up on reading as much as writing. I guess it ended up being more about how to read as a writer? Anyway. I can only keep guessing how Lolita would read, say, in Italian or French, and maybe one day I'll learn these languages. Until then, if you have an opportunity, if you know another language besides English, pick up a book and read it in both. If you can't, pick up a book you haven't read in years and read it, and then immediately reread it after done, a second time. Perhaps you'll see what I saw? Or something else? Let me know.

Character development, or PINK TUTUS RULE!

Photo by Leah Johnston

My heart is all atremble as I'm starting to write this blog post because until I was asked by my Twitter followers to write about character development, I didn't think about it in formal terms, not even when writing Siren Suicides. So let me gather my brain here and see if I can come up with general rules I adhere to and hope that maybe it will help you too. 

Follow the arc. I think I picked this up from some book on how to write novels, back when I was reading books on how to write novels, because I don't read them anymore. I read actual novels to see how it's done, not books about books about books... Anyway, back to the point. Every character has to go through an arc of change. If you were to draw it on a piece of paper, it would look like a curve in those math lessons, with the low point being the beginning, the high point being the middle, and the other low point being the end. Every character wants something, even if it's as simple as a pink tutu. At the low point there is no pink tutu, at the middle point the pink tutu is in reach, and at the final point the pink tutu is either in the character's hand (I got it! I got it! I will live!) or flown out the window (I didn't get it! I didn't get it! I will die!). This is as simple as it gets, yet it's fascinating to see how many writers miss this and get lost in a mire of wishes. Pick one, and at the end of the book decide how your character completes the arc, because... *drumroll* ...to get this pink tutu your character will be forced to change. To change emotionally. Let's say, she starts out as angry and then changes to happy, or starts out happy and changes to angry, whatever it is, at the end we have to know one way or the other. If we don't, we get confused and hate the book (or, we never finish reading it).

Grow it like a flower. This is not from some book, but more from my own experience. Your character starts out small and insignificant, and your job is to pour the story on it so that at the end of the book it grows and even changes color. To get back to our metaphor, pink tutu changes into a purple one. Because, often in life, when we are on hunting for something, when we actually get that thing, we also get something else. So we think we will get a new friend, but we also get a new enemy. Or we think we will get disappointment, but instead we get a newfound joy, something unexpected. I hope I'm being clear here. What I mean is, once you have established your arc, as in, what does your character want (pink tutu), does she get it in the end (YES!), and how does she change while getting it, you can add layers. Because it's never just one thing, but unless you have a very clear arc first, you will lose your reader by adding too many layers too fast, do if this is your first time writing, keep it very simple. Grow it like a flower, by watering it along with action, with interaction wit other characters, etc. Which, again, brings me to the next point.

Conjure disasters galore. Once you got your arc going, and your extra layers, look at your character development from another point of view. From the very beginning of the story, keep torturing your character, literally. Imagine it like this. Your character wants a pink tutu, and she is climbing a tree to get it. Now make this tree poisonous. Now start a storm to blow her off the tree. Now send a squad of killer monkeys. She is still climbing? Wow. Turn the tree upside down, uproot it, send it into space, make bugs eat its very core. See what I'm doing? Create a disaster upon disaster upon disaster, keep making it worse to see what your character will do (of course, as a writer, you already know that she will get her pink tutu). As readers, we might be guessing that, of course, such a nice girl absolutely must get her tutu, but we're more interested in how she will go about obtaining it, especially amidst the madness you have created. In this sense, you character is forced to develop, to grow, or else. The else here being, your story will get boring and we will put it down. Because it's what we want, to grow, to change, and we live through fictional characters to obtain this goal.

Keep it real. And that's the truth. Meaning, no matter what you imagine, no matter how complex and fantastical your story is, it's real people who will read it, so you have to keep it real. Your character has to act human, act normal, cry when it's appropriate to cry, laugh when it's appropriate to laugh, say hi and bye and please and thank you. Simple stuff like that. Little details root us back to reality (and make sure you describe them, like she has torn her knees by climbing, or she broke her left pinky nail) and make us believe that your character, she, is real. Like us. Struggling, like us. Hoping, like us. The easiest way to go about it is trusting your gut. If it feels right, do it. If it doesn't, don't. When you write, instead of focusing on what the character does or says, focus on what she feels. From there her actions and words will flow naturally. If you try to figure it out the other way around, she will seem flat and robotic. As readers, we can forgive stupid decisions and not very good dialogue, but we can't forgive cheating. I felt cheated recently when reading how Hazel Grace in The Fault in Our Stars didn't want to change sheets for Augustus, her supposed love, when he, overtaken by cancer, peed himself. She called his parents, disgusted. I wanted to put the book down that very moment. To me, that was not true love. But then, again, this is only my personal opinion, and maybe John Green precisely wanted to portray Hazel as a selfish girl.

I think this sums it up. Any other thoughts or ideas on the topic? Let me know in the comments.