Excited to share this podcast episode where I talk about everything I love in my career: product development, science, biomimicry, the arts, writing, my book, storytelling, technology, and the power of our imagination coupled with curiosity. Thank you to host N.B., and to Carolyn Kiel for recommending me! You can listen at this link (www.crosspollination.co) and wherever you get your podcast feeds!
Tag: author
A Year of Yes: Excited to welcome Julie Gaines of Fishs Eddy to NYC’s Secrets and Lies at Caveat on Oct 9th at 7pm
Thrilled that the talented, funny, and feisty Julie Gaines, founder of Fishs Eddy, will be our special guest at New York City’s Secrets & Lies storytelling show at Caveat on October 9th at 7pm. We’ll talk about design, activism, entrepreneurship, and her new book. She rarely speaks publicly so this will be a real treat for all of us. Grab your tickets at https://www.caveat.nyc/event/new-york-city’s-secrets-and-lies-10-9-2018
A Year of Yes: How Neil Gaiman changed the way I write in one minute
“I’m not an outliner or someone who free writes. I’m more of a gardener. I plant seeds and I see what grows. I plant pumpkins and I expect a pumpkin. But if I get a tomato, I’ll figure out what to do with that. That’s how I write. I love that magic moment when something happens on the page we’re writing that we didn’t know was going to happen. I get to be the first reader of my work, and it’s very exciting. And quite frankly that magic doesn’t happen often enough. A lot of writing is just laying brick.” ~Neil Gaiman, International Literary Festival in Dublin, May 2018
By an amazing stroke of luck, Neil Gaiman was speaking as the headliner at the International Literary Festival in Dublin while I was there doing research for my next novel this week. He’s one of my favorite writers, an inspiration for my own work, and to see him in person was thrilling.
Of all the beautiful advice he offered (and you can see my tweets from his talk here: https://twitter.com/i/moments/1002678622765887488), this quote above is the one that affected me the most because it made me change the way I think about my own writing.
I’m a planner. If I were to self-analyze, I would say I like plans because I grew up with a lot of instability. I like order and organization of my tasks because I like to know what I’m doing and where I’m going, and I absolutely hate wasting time because I know what a precious and finite a resource time is. I can’t imagine a world in which I completely let that go. However, Neil Gaiman made me realize that maybe, perhaps, I can loosen the reins a bit. I certainly allow for new information and imagination in my writing. I’ve absolutely had moments where new characters and circumstances and obstacles show up that I never saw coming. That’s the fun, the magic, of writing.
But maybe I don’t need the next bit figured out before I sit down to write every single time. It’s at least worth trying, and giving something a try is where everything begins.
A Year of Yes: Leaving pieces of my book about Emerson Page all over Dublin and Northern Ireland
In two weeks, I’m going to Dublin to do research for my second Emerson Page novel. As a gift to Ireland, I’m leaving silver charms with the quote, “She believed she could so she did”, and rose gold keys in all the different places I visit for people to find. I’ll tuck them away in museums, gardens, historic sites, bookstores, libraries, and pubs I visit in Dublin and on excursions I’m taking in Northern Ireland to Newgrange, Hill of Tara, Giant’s Causeway, Dark Hedges, the ruins of Dunluce Castle, and on the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. I can’t wait to see who finds them. They are a perfect token of Emerson’s spirit. And after all she’s given me, I wanted to return the favor to the world. Happy hunting, Ireland!
A Year of Yes: Why Harry Potter and the Sacred Text podcast is so good for writers
The Harry Potter and the Sacred Text podcast has been improving my life from the moment I set ears on it. There are so many life lessons and conversations starters about our society throughout the Harry Potter books and this podcast explores ALL of them with two fantastically intelligent, thoughtful, compassionate, and hilarious hosts. Thank you, thank you, thank you to Vanessa, Casper, Adriana, and Julia for the wonder and gift that is this podcast. I’m so grateful and can’t wait for them to do another live show from New York City!
Writers, when we think about the depth of our stories and the work it takes to create this depth, a podcast like this shows just why that work is so worthwhile. Books are a lens through which to look at our lives, the world, and our place in it. It’s a hefty responsibility and an honor to be able to impact people in a positive way through our art. It’s the very best part of being a writer.
A Year of Yes: Arlington Public Library Becomes the First Library to Carry My Book
Getting into libraries can be a conundrum for authors. That’s why I’m so grateful to my friend and reader, Shakti, for going to bat for me at the Arlington Public Library in Virginia. Shakti sent an email to them before my book, Emerson Page and Where the Light Enters, was even published (isn’t she wonderful?!)
To their credit, they wrote her a note and said that in order to be considered, the book needed to be available through one of their vendors and had to have favorable reviews in one of the professional review journals that their selectors use to make decisions about what to purchase.
Yesterday, they wrote Shakti again and said, “The book is now available from our book vendor and has a positive review from a review journal (Kirkus, 4/1/18) so we will add it to our next order.”
I’m absolutely thrilled to hear this news and immensely grateful to Shakti and the Arlington Public Library. Now I need to get to work contacting every library in the country. Be right back…
A Year of Yes: The necessity of rewriting and revision
“That’s the magic of revisions—every cut is necessary, and every cut hurts, but something new always grows.” ~Kelly Barnhill, author
I’ve been thinking about this quote a lot as I prep for Virginia Festival of the Book. When I think of my favorite books, plays, songs, and pieces of art, they are the ones without any fat, the ones where every word, every note, every brush stroke is carefully and purposely chosen. That concern, that love is what strikes me right in the heart. Rewriting and editing is the lifeblood of art that lasts. It’s the cuts that matter most because that’s where we find the seeds that need to be planted and nurtured.
A Year of Yes: Never stop reading fairy tales
“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” ~C.S. Lewis
I never outgrew reading fairy tales. I became a writer and an author because of them. They’ve helped me to make sense of life, to have hope in times that seemed so bleak. I don’t believe in happily ever after; I believe in stronger and braver ever after. And that has made all the difference.
A Year of Yes: How to get a book written
“I think I’m going to take a class,” someone said to me. “That will help me finally write my book. That will inspire me, and then I can get the book written and published.”
Inspiration can give you the spark of a book. Discipline, especially when uninspired, is what gets it written. Not classes or books or even encouragement from others. Don’t write for recognition, ever, because that’s a road to nowhere. I have never written for the purpose of being published. Ever. Certainly I had and have dreams. I wanted and want people to read my work, and I want my work to help people. But mostly I write to exercise the thoughts and emotions and events of my life. I write the books I need and want to read.
Talking about writing doesn’t getting writing done.You have to always be writing. You have to write if you’re tired, calm, restless, happy, sad, angry, disappointed. You have to write your way out, up, over, and through. That’s the only way to get the thoughts out of your head and onto the page. There are no shortcuts.
A Year of Yes: What NaNoWriMo gave me as an author—and a person
I’m so honored to be featured on the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) blog. With their support and encouragement, I took an outline and turned it into a published novel, Emerson Page and Where the Light Enters. You can check out the full post at http://blog.nanowrimo.org/post/170689401897/what-nanowrimo-gave-me-as-an-authorand-a-person. Here is the text as well:
The road from plotless to polished to published can be long and filled with potholes (and plot holes). But, as NaNo participants continue to prove, it can be traversed. Today, author Christa Avampato shares her story of how she turned an outline into a published book:
In the five years after I survived an apartment building fire on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I sketched the outline of my novel, Emerson Page and Where the Light Enters. That fire was a turning point for me, as a person and as a writer. It also plays a prominent role in Emerson’s story.
On November 1, 2014, I set a goal to transform my outline into a 50,000-word first draft in thirty days as part of NaNoWriMo. It seemed impossible, but I was constantly encouraged by the supports that NaNoWriMo offers: webinars, blog posts by authors I admired, writing prompts, social messages, and special offers for books and tools.
My first draft was terrible, but I’ve never been prouder of something so awful.
Over the next two years, I completed a dozen more drafts of Emerson’s story. New characters, plot lines, and settings emerged. Save for Emerson, the story was almost unrecognizable two years later. I got feedback from several close and brutally honest friends. I agonized over every word. It is the toughest job I ever loved.
“If you are willing to do the hard work of recognizing your wounds, if you write your truth through programs like NaNoWriMo, even if your voice shakes and sputters […] there is so much light that awaits you. ”
Still, Emerson continued her incessant tap, tap, tapping on my shoulder because it was time to get her story published. I queried agents, and received fourteen rejections—and those were just the ones who bothered to respond at all! One of them, my dream agent, responded with the loveliest rejection. Twelve were form letters. One particularly prickly agent responded in less than five minutes with a one word email: No.
I’m not kidding. That actually happened.
I finally found a happy medium when I began to explore independent publishers. Six months after querying my first independent publisher, one of them accepted the book.
When you launch a book, you launch a brand and a business. I completed several full edits in 2017 with the assistance of two editors. Then I hired the artists and art directed the cover art myself. With my MBA and business experience, I put together a marketing plan, and began to work that plan every day.
On November 1, 2017, I became a published author. Emerson left the safety of my care and ventured out into the world wrapped in paperback and eBook formats on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and in independent bookstores across the globe. It’s no coincidence that Emerson’s birthday was exactly three years after I started writing the draft of her story during NaNoWriMo 2014.
And on her birthday, I began writing the draft of her second book as part of NaNoWriMo 2017. That supportive tribe of fearless writers with impossible goals was there for me again, just as they were in 2014.
Emerson and I stand before you as an unfailing reminder that if you are willing to do the hard work of recognizing your wounds, if you write your truth through programs like NaNoWriMo, even if your voice shakes and sputters, if you will honor the cracks in you rather than trying to spackle them shut, there is so much light that awaits you.
That’s the greatest lesson that NaNoWriMo and Emerson taught me: that light will flood your mind, heart, and hands in a way that you never imagined possible. That light, however small, lives in you now. Your only job is to fan it into a flame that the whole world can see through the masterpiece that is your life and your writing. You matter. Your story matters. It matters so damn much.
I can’t wait to read your book.
Christa Avampato 