Featured on Buried in Books

A big thank you to Heather at Buried in Books for featuring Celia on the Run on her blog today. Be sure to enter the giveaway and check back often to see what's new! http://wwwburiedinbooks.blogspot.com/

Photos Are Ideas

As much as I enjoyed writing Celia on the Run, I have to admit I had just as much fun putting together the photo album inspired by the book. If you haven't taken a peek yet, the album can be found here http://celiaontherun.com/roadtrip/ The majority of those photos are ones I took at some time or another, long before I ever wrote the novel. Many photos are from previous travels, some were taken just around the corner, but somehow they all worked together perfectly to give a pictorial telling of Nick and Celia's cross country journey. The first photo in the Celia on the Run photo album was taken back in 2003 in Arizona when I was with my parents on what turned out to be our last family vacation together. I remember snapping the photo from the backseat of the rental car, never dreaming that particular photo would become part of the inspiration for my first published novel. I just love to take pictures, anywhere, everywhere, and I suppose I'm now realizing that a lot of the ideas I get for art and writing come from my own photos, even if years go by in between the time the picture was snapped and when it becomes part of something more. Inspiration takes time!

Recently, my husband and I did a little aimless driving for fun, and as always, I took my camera and had a great time shooting all the random things we came across. Who knows, maybe these images will inspire another book years down the road? You just never know! These recent photos are of Gilreath's Mill, a rundown, rusty, gem-of-a-find in the middle of the woods near Taylors, South Carolina. Check back here in ten years to see if I ever incorporated this decrepit non-landmark into a work of fiction!

My Top Ten

It's always exciting to hear someone out there enjoyed reading Celia on the Run at the 5 out of 5 star level! A big thank you to Taeesha from a blog called A Diary of a Book Addict for her wonderful review of my debut novel. Check out her spoiler-free write up here: http://adiaryofabookaddict.blogspot.com/2012/11/celia-on-run-by-sarah-mandell-book.html# I'll admit I'm very stingy with giving out 5 stars myself so I feel totally honored here. Most books I read are 3 or 4 stars (which is good!). I enjoyed them immensely but didn't finish the book thinking, "Man, that was really and truly the best book I've ever read". So what are the best books I've ever read? Here's my top ten favorite books of from the last few years, in no particular order:

The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall

My Name is Memory by Anne Brashers

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

The Age of Miracles by Karen Walker Thompson

In the Path of Falling Objects by Andrew Smith

Dash & Lilly's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets by Garth Stein

The Sky Is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Take a Break

I recently got the chance to do an author interview on Avery's Book Nook and really enjoyed the questions, especially the one about advice for aspiring authors. I've given this piece of advice a few times because it was one of the best things I ever did for my own writing: TAKE A BREAK! I'm not talking about taking a lengthy vacation right in the middle of writing a story if you're on a roll. I'm talking about letting the novel rest once you've completed a first draft or major revision. Let your words stay as they are for a few weeks (Stephen King suggests 6-8 weeks in his book On Writing), then come back to your story with a fresh perspective. What do you do for 6-8 weeks while your unfinished masterpiece just sits there waiting for you? Work on something else, anything else. You'll be glad you did, because when you come back to your novel with new skills, a clear mind, and bursting-at-the-seams excitement, you'll be amazed the improvement. In this author interview on Avery's Book Nook, I came clean about how long it took me to finish Celia on the Run, which I began writing several years ago. I just didn't know what to do with a strange story like this at first, I couldn't end it to my satisfaction, but I was too invested in the characters and partial manuscript to abandon it. So, I took a major break from this story (way more than 6-8 weeks, more like a year), but in that time I wrote about 3 other full length novels then came back to Nick and Celia's road trip where I was newly inspired and finished it with a bang.

If the plot just isn't working, if the ending is lame (and you know it), don't give up hope, just make sure your computer files are backed up and take that much needed break!

Check out the full interview here: http://www.averysbooknook.com/2012/10/author-interview-sarah-mandell.html

A Good Listener

I have a hard time sitting still for long periods of time. There's so much I want to do, so many projects I bounce between on any given day, so finding the time to actually sit down and quietly read a book doesn't always happen for me, even though I love love love to read. So how do I still manage to get through about a book a week on average? I listen to them. I know, audio books are for old folks, right? I'm not even 30 yet! My mom used to borrow books on tape from the library when she traveled for work, and I as a teen I thought that was pretty lame, especially when loud music was an option. I'm now realizing she was onto something, she found a great way to multitask and get more out of the time on the road. I'm proud to say I have my Audible.com subscription and I go through credits like I go through a bag of potato chips. I use the Audible.com app and my story plays like magic out of the speaker on my phone, usually from my back pocket as I go about my day (not just in the car, not just at the gym). Listening to novels allows me to keep doing what I'm doing, but still offers that escape into another life, another world, that's so addictive. Audio books also give me an edge when I write dialogue in my own stories, I believe. When you listen to someone reading out loud, it's really easy to tell when the dialogue is a bit off and doesn't sound realistic, and now that I've become an avid listener of books, I think that's helped me hear the difference and carry that over into my own work. One writing tip I've heard countless times is to read your dialog out loud, and though it seems kinda silly, it really does make sense, you can hear the problems before you even finish speaking the sentence. Listening to books has also taught me to listen to the way people speak, the slang that's natural, the cadence of their comments. There's some words that seem to appear in books all the time (like cacophony, which has been in every single book I've read so far this year!), but I've never actually heard a person use in real life, so I tend to avoid big complicated words in my own writing because I gravitate towards characters that are fairly ordinary, and ordinary people use ordinary vocabulary.

I still make time for "real" books on occasion. As much as I love my audio books, I also love dirt cheap used books and have a huge stack of them on my shelf to prove it. I'm usually reading two books at a time: one the old fashioned way, one with my ears. I've started keeping track of my "currently reading" list on Goodreads, but only I know which of the two books I'm actually reading and which one is being read to me.