Tag: writing

creativity

A Year of Yes: What does your dream day look like?

Christa Avampato

Have you ever had a dream day? What happened? Who were you with? What lasting effect did it have on you?

I had one of my dream days yesterday and it was magical:

  • Interviewed a radiation oncologist for a piece I’m writing for The Washington Post about an innovative new cancer treatment that uses protons.
  • I spent the morning getting a private tour and digging through the archives at The Explorer’s Club. I was doing research for my second Emerson Page novel, and got to see art, travel diaries, photographs, and artifacts from around the world that were collected by our most intrepid explorers.
  • Then I had a fun meeting with the fine people at Untapped Cities about a new live performance project we’re working on together. Cannot wait to share more details with you!
  • Had a long overdue visit with a magical man who’s saved my life several times, and taught me to stand in my own light.
  • Dinner with my best friend.

To write, to research, to tell stories, to collaborate with others on creative projects, and to spend time with people who are central to my life. That is the perfect day for me.

creativity

A Year of Yes: What story do you want to be?

Christa Avampato

“In the end, we’ll all become stories.” ~Margaret Atwood

Stories are so intrinsic to our culture, to the structure of our lives, that it’s impossible to separate ourselves from them. We are defined by our stories, the ones we tell about ourselves and others, and the ones others tell about us. It’s how we connect and share with each other. They stir every emotion we can possibly have. Friendship and love both grow from stories. We are our stories, and our stories are us. Let’s make sure the ones we choose are really the ones we want.

creativity

A Year of Yes: Talking about writing to 500+ students, teachers, and staff at Charlottesville schools

Christa Avampato

“The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.” ~Peggy O’Mara, editor, publisher, and child advocate

I’m in heavy prep mode as I get ready to talk to over 500 students, teachers, and school staff members in Charlottesville as a speaker for the Virginia Festival of the Book. I am ecstatic to chat with with them about my book, Emerson Page and Where the Light Enters, the process of writing and revision, character development, the importance of a book’s setting, the publishing business, creativity and imagination, and mythology in the age of hip hop. What?! Yes, it’s true. And I can’t wait!

creativity

A Year of Yes: Prepping for my Virginia Festival of the Book talk at Charlottesville schools

Christa Avampato

Screen Shot 2018-03-11 at 1.59.10 PM.pngWorking on my presentation about writing for the 7 Charlottesville-area schools I’ll be presenting to as an author for Virginia Festival of the Book in less than 2 weeks. I’ll be talking about the writing, revision, and editing process, the power of the imagination in world building, and curiosity as the best tool to generate and craft ideas. Drawing wisdom from these sages whose work has inspired mine over the years.

creativity

A Year of Yes: I’m as much a rewriter as a writer

Christa Avampato

“A good book isn’t written; it’s rewritten.” ~Phyllis A. Whitney

There is an excitement in crafting something from a blank page, but I will tell you that I’m much more excited to add the layers of revision once the bones are set. To me there is something very special about the furthering of a vision that makes me love rewriting more than I love writing. I work very hard to get through that first phase quickly. With the track laid and the outline in front of me, that’s when my creativity really takes off. I’ve learned to see revision not as a necessary evil but as an old, dear friend who helps me put the pieces together so that my stories can be shared and heard.

creativity

A Year of Yes: Writers, just tell yourself a story

Christa Avampato

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” ~Terry Pratchett

As I begin to add more layers to the skeleton of my second novel, I keep coming back to this quote by the iconic novelist, Terry Pratchett. Every time I get stuck and I don’t know what happens next, I close my eyes and I say these words out loud. It works for every part of the writing, editing, and revising process. I’m just telling myself the story, the richest, most inspiring, and truest story that I can create.

 

creativity

A Year of Yes: The relaxation of reading and how it helps us sleep

Christa Avampato

Good news for those of us who read before I bed: it’s one of the most relaxing activities we can put into our bedtime ritual. Research shows that reading, even for as little as 6 minutes!, can reduce stress by as much as 68%. However, before bed, keep it light—no horror, excessive violence, or grief, and no self-help that requires intense introspection. The emotions stirred up by those genres can disrupt sleep and increase stress.

Happy bedtime reading, friends! Say yes to a good book.

creativity

A Year of Yes: How to get a book written

Christa Avampato

“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.

creativity

A Year of Yes: The power of poetry

Christa Avampato

I haven’t written poetry in a very long time, and as I was walking to work this one popped into my mind. I don’t know where it came from, but I felt empowered as I wrote it down. I hope you feel empowered reading it.

Underestimation
Do not mistake my kindness for weakness,
or my desire to collaborate as an inability to lead.

I have been through the intense pressures of life and emerged bright, shiny, and polished.
Like clay in a kiln.
Like a buried diamond, now free.

Believe me when I say I stare into the fire and smile.

Do not underestimate me.

creativity

A Year of Yes: What NaNoWriMo gave me as an author—and a person

Christa Avampato

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.