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This is crazy fantastic to watch. Be warned though, it’s two hours long. I also have to wonder if it’s going to get pulled sooner or later for copyright issues.

The Girl of Fire and Thorns

The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson

Rae Carson is one of those authors. I first read her work at SFF/OWW (an online workshop I highly recommend to writers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror).  So when I heard the news that her book, The Girl of Fire and Thorns (ISBN 978-0062026484, list price $17.99 hardcover, $9.99 Kindle version) had been picked up by Greenwillow Books  (an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., New York, NY), I was thrilled for her. I put it on my reading list and recommended it to my local library as a new purchase.

When her book was shortlisted for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award and nominated for the Cybils Award, I was doubly thrilled for her. But the book stayed on my reading list until early January.

What moved it from my reading list to my Kindle? This post at the Greenwillow Books blog, where she talked about misogyny, and how a woman’s worth is so often tied to her body image:

Thousands, maybe millions of women have their accomplishments waved away or ignored daily, even as their bodies suffer devastating scrutiny—from both men and women.

These experiences were very much on my mind when I sat down to write The Girl of Fire and Thorns. The protagonist, you see, is fat.

Body Image

I haven’t made any secret of this, but I don’t think I’ve ever come right out and said it either: I’m fat. Medically, I’m overweight now, but I’ve also been obese and even morbidly obese. I’ve struggled with eating disorders for years and viewed most of my life through the lens of a ‘fat chick’ even  when I was starving myself to stay thin. I’m okay with my body image these days, but before I even cracked the virtual spine of this book, Elisa resonated with me. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book with a fat protagonist before.

I bought the book in early January, and finished reading it in three days. Two nights in a row, I stayed up well past my bed time, promising myself over and over, “Just one more chapter.”  It has been years since I have devoured a book like this. Elisa’s story, but more importantly, her character, left me astounded. I started reading this book because Elisa was fat, but I kept reading it because I grew to love her.

Not Just For Teens

Although Rae’s book is marketed as a YA novel, her web site touts her as an author of books for teens, and the protagonist herself is a sixteen-year old girl, do not be mistaken: This is not a just a kids’ book. There are no vapid vampire-wannabes. There is no catty backstabbing. There are no wacky teenage hijinks or sappy melodrama. This is a book about growing up, finding your strength, and coming into your own. In other words, this is a book for anybody who ever has grown up, or ever will grow up.

Elisa is sixteen years old, thrust into an arranged marriage and a politically charged situation, imperiled by her family’s desire to protect her by keeping certain truths from her while she was growing up. In almost every chapter, she faces her fears and discovers new strength within herself — discovers that she is capable of much more than she, or most people around her ever thought possible.

This is the kind of book I want my daughters reading. These are the kinds of messages I want running through my daughter’s brains: Even though you are scared, you are capable; you can face this; you can get through this. 

As an adult, I found the book to be affirming and uplifting. While reading other YA books, I’ve often wanted to reach through the pages, grab the protagonist by the shoulders, and scream, “Get a clue!” Not so with Elisa. I took comfort and joy in every step she took to overcome her struggles.

What Else I Loved

Another aspect of The Girl of Fire and Thorns that I found not just refreshing but absolutely captivating, is the shades of gray throughout the book. There is very little black and white, although many situations are first presented as such. The antagonistic characters have their own stories, and they are facing their own struggles as best they can. In some cases, I found myself outright sympathizing with some of these characters.

There are romantic elements to the story, but I didn’t feel that they overpowered it. As a 40-something mother of two young girls, I can’t stand most romantic storylines or romance novels because I find them unrealistic. They relay messages I don’t want my children to be ingesting about what love is. Love is not the flutter in your belly or the long hot kisses or anything below the neckline. Love is commitment and doing the right thing and putting someone else’s needs before your own. While there are some belly flutters in The Girl of Fire and Thorns, I enjoyed reading as Elisa learned to separate those feelings from reality.

What I Didn’t Love So Much

There were only two things that felt a bit bothersome to me. First, there were two “bad guy” characters who felt more one-dimensional than others to me.  With most of the other characters who first came across as unsympathetic, Rae eventually showed us how they were the heroes of their own stories.That multi-dimensionality was hinted at with one of these two bad guys; it just wasn’t explored as fully as it had been with other characters. Based on Rae’s treatment of other characters though, I expect this to be remedied in future installments of this series.

Second was the way that Elisa lost her weight and how it was tied to revealing her strength. I’ve lost a hundred pounds in my lifetime. It doesn’t come off easily, nor does it come off quickly. While body image is intensely personal, particularly body dysmorphia, Elisa’s weight loss did not feel entirely realistic to me. Although she does begin to find her voice and her power before the weight comes off, that weight loss becomes the symbolic transformation point for her. Although Rae makes the effort to point out that Elisa is not supermodel thin, I worry that the message could still be misconstrued as “If you just lose weight, everything will be okay” or “Thinner is powerful.”

Recommendation

Did these two things detract from my love of this book? Absolutely not. I think the strengths of this story far outweigh these two potential weak points. In fact, several of the characters balance the potential misconception of “Thinner is powerful” by accepting, admiring, and loving Elisa just as she is, before she loses the weight.

As a woman who grew up with weight issues, as a woman who grew up struggling with owning her own strength, and as a mother of two young girls on the verge of figuring out who they are and what their place in the world is, I highly recommend this book.

Elisa is a beautiful example of someone learning to face her fears, trust her instincts, and own her own power. It’s affirming to read for someone who’s been there and a beacon for girls and young women just setting out on their journey to discovering their own identity.

His first draft left me with my jaw hanging on the floor. I had to cut almost all of the first four paragraphs out of the post. It was completely unacceptable.

Oh, he didn’t say anything wrong. His post was wonderful, I loved it, just as I had expected. I just hadn’t expected him to say such nice things about me.

I probably should have known better.

As I mentioned recently in Creativity’s Top Ten Most Wanted, Paul is on my cheerleading squad. He’s one of the co-captains in fact. He tells me amazing things about myself when I can’t. Usually, it’s in private chat when I need an egoboo or a shot of confidence. And that was the problem with his post. He said some amazing things about me and he wanted to say them in public.

I blogged a while ago about accepting criticism. Maybe I need to blog about accepting praise. Except that I’m really not very good at it. The only thing I know about accepting praise is something a fellow I dated in college once told me (yes, I’ve had this problem for most of my life): Just say thank you.

The thing is, Paul didn’t just say amazing things. He did an amazing thing too. He did something nobody has every done for me before: he drew a picture of me. I think it is just the coolest thing ever, and wanted to share it with all of you. This is just a small version of it:

kembers by paul tristan fergus

It was meant to go with the very nice things he said about me in his guest post, but I made him take those nice things out and put a picture of himself in it instead. (If you really want to see them, you can find those nice things here.)

So, Paul, my friend, this is my really long-winded way of saying “Thank you.”

paul tristan fergus

I’m a weirdo storyteller, and that means various forms of life count on me to tell them marvelous tales of strange excitement. Hanging out with Kimberly, or Kembers as I call her at times, ups my chances of finding clues on my quest. She’s like a bonus to my rolls.

Because I tend to be a bit of a recluse outside of people I know, she asked me to share some of my formula for removing creative blocks. Said it would be good for me to run my yap in an unfamiliar shared imaginary space.

Blocks Are Specifically Personal

My thought on blocks is that oftentimes getting into a rut is specifically personal. I experience it as a deflections field that bounces me over to some autopilot form of behavior — checking tumblr updates with a blank stare or fretting over the junk mail instead of just tossing it.

Other people might know where the invisible off switch is, or knock such an obstacle aside because they’ve got no time for such nonsense. They’ve got a different wisp of toilet paper on their shoe to outwit, so to speak.

Chewing Crayons

Persistence with the deflections field is what tends to work for me. This is certainly not an easy quality to practice, since I’m impatient with delays. When I’m ready to go to town, roadblocks and washed out bridges get on my nerves!

So I wear the deflections field out by wasting time.  A phrase I heard somewhere is chewing crayons, which is a good approximation of the psychological state one enters. I look at the goofing off as research and development, and keep at it patiently despite my wanting to gnaw the leather straps on my shield.

Super Deflectoids

Some deflections fields take longer than others to overcome, mainly because pressure from the creative flow reinforces them. I might have to spend several days working one of those super deflectoids down to size. That’s a lot of research and development into zilch.

Nothing is what I’m working with though, coming into affinity with emptiness and uselessness. Disheartening and exhausting amounts of play is required until I’ve reached a sufficient level of fooling around.

Reaching the Ecstatic State

Slowly, the deflections field becomes a wave carrying me along a rush of exuberance and I enter an ecstatic state. That’s when the gold shines brightest and leaps into my writing pan.

Another few nuggets of writing toward the next jackload I haul out of the zone.

Back to the Crossroads

When I crawl back to the crossroads for a breather, good ol’ Kembers will likely be at the hallways pub. She might listen to my latest foray, swap some shop talk, or maybe have a clever suggestion I hadn’t though of.

If I can manage it, her snacky cakes are on me. It pays in psychic treasure to have smart friends in weirdo storyteller land.

Image via Wikipedia

This isn’t really a Top Ten list. Instead, it’s two Top Five lists. The Top Five Creativity Killers and Top Five Creativity Boosters. These are ten things you should be seeking out — and avoiding to keep your creativity flowing.

Top Five Creativity Killers

Criticism: Carefully guard your work. Julia Cameron, in her book The Artist’s Way, says that “[a]n act of art needs time to mature. Judged early, it may be judged incorrectly. [...] Art needs time to incubate[.]” I wouldn’t even talk about The Hunter’s Daughters until I was half way through NaNoWriMo, and that book has been brewing in my head for years already. Maybe you don’t need to incubate your work as long as I did, but give it some time to mature before exposing it to criticism. Even the most constructive criticism can be a creativity-killer for our fledgling art.

Perfectionism: Expecting your work to be perfect the first time, or constantly editing and re-editing instead of just writing.  Julia Cameron calls perfectionism “an obsessive, debilitating closed system that causes you to get stuck in the details of what you are writing [...] and to lose sight of the whole.” This is the beauty of NaNoWriMo, thirty days of writing with abandon: “By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.”

Competition: Comparing yourself to others.  This is Perfectionism and Criticism’s bigger, meaner brother.  Julia Cameron describes competition as poisoning our own well, that “[i]t asks us to define our own creativity in terms of someone else’s.” Richard R. Powell, in Wabi Sabi for Writers says competition “generate[s] fear and anxiety and squelch[es] creativity.” This is one of the reasons I’ve dropped out of several writing groups — writing groups that I highly recommend to others regularly. I became too caught up in comparing myself to others.

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Media: Media is the biggest creativity killer for me. It numbs your brain. As Julia Cameron says, “We gobble the words of others rather than digest our own thoughts and feelings, rather than cook up something of our own.” In The Artist’s Way, she talks about going on a Reading Fast. I think going even farther and taking an occasional Media Fast is good for your creative soul.

Procrastination: Procrastination can be part of the process at times, like idling your car in the winter to warm up the engine. But eventually you have to actually get in the car and drive somewhere. You can’t just leave it idling in the driveway for hours, days, or months on end.

Top Five Creativity Boosters

Cover of BECOMING A WRITER

Journalling: Julia Cameron calls this Morning Pages. I call it Detox. In Becoming a Writer, Dorothea Brande says that “if you are to have the full benefit of the richness of the unconscious you must learn to write easily and smoothly when the unconscious is in the ascendant. The best way to do this is to rise half an hour, or a full hour, earlier than you customarily rise [and] begin to write.” This was written in 1934, almost sixty years before Julia Cameron told us about Morning Pages, and well before 750words.com came along. While the morning may be the best time to do this, I don’t believe it is the only time. I often do my Detox at the end of the day as a way to clear my brain so that I can go to sleep, sleep well, and dream — which leads to the next Creativity Booster.

Dream Catcher: I keep a dream journal tucked in between my mattress and bed frame, with a pen tucked in the pages, and a small LED book light attached to it. Whenever I wake up, whether it’s in the morning or the middle of the night, I try to jot down at least some notes or images from my dreams. Dreams are the voice of your subconscious, or the unconscious, that Dorothea Brande is talking about. You may or may not ever use the images from your dreams, and you don’t even need to be well-versed in dream interpretation to benefit from dream catching. Just the act of writing them down can help untangle the messages in both your daily life and your writing life.

Idea Catcher: I’ve mentioned part of this before when I talked about my compost bin. This is a place you keep to catch stray idea seeds that aren’t yet ready to germinate. Chris Brogan calls it an Idea Locker and keeps them in a spreadsheet. But having an Idea Catcher is more than just a pretty box or a spreadsheet. Carry a notepad with you so that you can catch those stray ideas before the wind of your daily life carries them away. I keep a small notepad in my purse and at both of my computer desks. Some times I use the voice recorder on my smart phone. Even just having a pen in your shirt pocket can help — I know I’m not the only person who’s written ideas down on the back of a napkin or cash register receipt.

Ritual: Find out what works for you. Writing in the day, writing at night. Stealing time, making time. Pantsing, plotting. If you find yourself stuck, switch it up a bit to jump start if you need to — but when you have found what works, stick with it. I’ve heard this referred to as being present at the page and being available for your characters. Julia Cameron talks about making an Artist’s Altar. This isn’t about building an author’s mystique though. It’s about creating a habit that works for you. Scientifically, it’s about creating neural pathways — literally ingraining the habit of creativity into your brain.

Image via Wikipedia

Cheering Squad: Gather to yourself friends who are encouraging and supportive of your creativity. Your own personal cheerleaders. My husband is one of my biggest cheerleaders. He reminds me not to be so critical of myself and encourages me to follow my creativity. My friend, Paul Tristan Fergus, is another. He tells me amazing things about myself when I can’t. This is one reason why you want to join a writers group — it’s one way to find your own personal cheering squad. Yes, to push your craft to the next level, you need friendly critics who can tell you why your baby is ugly, but balance that out with the sweet grandmothers who will just pinch your baby’s cheeks and squee with delight about how adorable she is too. If you find a friend who can do both, that’s a true diamond of peerless value.

Coordinate Adjectives

You might be thinking, “Wait, what’s a coordinate adjective?”

A coordinate adjective is one that appears in a sequence with one or more related adjectives to modify the same noun. 

- CMS 16 5:90

In this silly, frivolous example, both silly and frivolous describe the example.  The key to coordinate adjectives is that each adjective describes the same word. They can be reversed and still make sense. They still make sense if you separate each adjective with an and, or use them individually. The example is frivolous, and the example is silly.

In this long, wordy, repetitive, redundant example, the example is not only long, it is also wordy, it is also redundant, and it is repetitive as well.  I can say it’s repetitive, redundant, wordy, and long, and it will still make sense. No matter how I mix it up, you still get the point.

Comma or No Comma

Did you notice the commas? If you did, then you’ve already figured out half of the rule.

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As a general rule, when a noun is preceded by [coordinate adjectives], the adjectives are normally separated by commas. 

- CMS 16 6:33

The trick to putting this rule to work for you though, is in understanding the second half. If the adjectives can’t be separated by and or reversed, you would not use the comma.

If, on the other hand, the adjectives are not coordinate—that is, if one or more of the adjectives is essential to (i.e., forms a unit with) the noun being modified—no commas are used.

- CMS 16 6:33

She’s just a frightened, hungry girl. Both frightened and hungry describe the state of this particular girl. You could say she’s a frightened and hungry girl without losing the sense of the sentence.

She’s a frightened little girl. In this example, little girl is telling us specifically that she’s a young girl, and frightened describes the state of this particular little girl. The sense of the sentence would be changed if we said she’s a frightened and little girl, or a little, frightened girl.

Splitting Hairs

Could you split hairs on this rule? Absolutely. Focus on the sense of the sentence when you apply this rule to your own writing or your editing: Can you reverse the order of the adjectives and retain the sense of the sentence? If you can, use a comma. If you can’t, skip it. If you’re unsure, query the author or, in your own work, try re-wording the sentence for more clarity.

A Word on CMS

Image via Wikipedia

For the past fifteen years, I’ve worked primarily on US fiction. While the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) is intended for formal writing rather than fiction, my experience is that it’s relied upon often  in my work. Even so, many CMS rules are regularly broken in fiction. Sometimes, breaking the rules gives strength to the author’s style or character’s voice. Other times, relying on the rules will clarify the author’s intention or eliminate confusion for the reader.

If you have any other questions on commas, punctuation and grammar in general, or other points of style and usage, feel free to ask in the comments below or contact me directly.