I took the summer off.  Actually, I took seven months off.  Just from blogging, that is.  After the publication of Supergirls Speak Out, which was a delightful whirlwind of publicity, travel, and lots and lots of learning, I needed to take some time off and think about what kind of writer I was.  (I also needed to take my own advice and get some sleep.)  I was told by other authors that you should always wait awhile after your first book comes out before getting the gears moving on your second book because you learn so much.  And while I resisted that idea at first, I completely understand it now.

Since my last March blog post, I have completed a 95,000 word novel about college students on Long Island.  I would categorize it as “chick literary” or “chick lit with a cause” or an “issue novel.”  It’s a somewhat frilly novel for young women with more than a few social messages and lots of fun descriptive writing.  I finished it on a plane back to Albany from Washington, D.C. on October 16th (one day after the deadline I had given myself) and I’m letting it rest for six weeks, which is what Stephen King says to do after you’ve finished writing something of length.  Then I’m going to give the manuscript one more edit and then I think it’ll be officially “done.”  And then who knows?  I’m 98% sure that I want to pursue publishing the novel, but the 2% straggler likes the idea of having a novel that I wrote that I absolutely love and is completely untainted by the opinions of people who don’t love it.

I spent a lot of time this summer studying writing in the process of writing my novel.  I read like crazy this summer: Brick Lane, Should I Do What I Love, the Quarterlife Crisis, Save the Cat, and the first half of Special Topics in Calamity Physics.  I also re-read the God of Small Things about five times and have pronounced it in my top five favorite books of all time.  And I re-read the Corrections and Strong Motion–my two favorite Jonathan Franzen novels–at least 1.5 times.  The nice thing about books you get really familiar with is that you can pick up them up and start reading at any point in the novel and know what’s going on so you can just focus on the words and how the book was crafted rather than keeping up with the plot.

I also read two spectacular books about writing: Bird by Bird by Ann Lamott and On Writing by Stephen King.  They are must-reads for any writer.  Bird by Bird was important for me to read because it covers a lot of the emotional issues that go along with being a writer, and some of Lamott’s advice literally changed my life.  The book can be a little pessimistic, but the ranting is worth wading through to get to these shining pieces of advice that Lamott hands out, especially towards the end of the book.  On Writing was important for me to read because King covers, step-by-step, how to construct a novel, how to write a novel, and how to let it marinate for awhile before going back and re-writing or editing.  It was also important for me to read On Writing because it’s also very much a memoir of King’s writing career, and I had made the mistake of screening the Shining over the summer and I couldn’t stay home alone for more than fifteen minutes without getting scared (little known Liz Funk trivia: I can’t watch horror movies.  I get terrified.  Before watching the Shining in June, I hadn’t watched a horror movie since 2003).  So it was nice to see Stephen King personified in his book and understand that his stories are simply the brainchild of a sweet, docile creative genius with an extremely active imagination.

I give both books, Bird by Bird and On Writing an enthusiastic TWO-THUMBS-UP.