Hong Kong Trip: Day 2

I'm behind a day! I know! But that's because we spend all day out and about Hong Kong. When I get back to my sister's flat, I'm too exhausted to blog! After driving a minivan in the U.S. for five years, I'm not used to walking so much.

We are having a fabulous time and it's so much fun to gather information and experiences for my books. On our second day, we went on a walk/hike into the hills behind my sister's flat in the pouring rain. One of things I love most about Hong Kong is the nature and all the paths through the hills. It's warm and humid here, so the rain isn't uncomfortable. But when it rains, it pours! I'm really enjoying the rain, though, because one of the books I'm in the process of writing, set in Hong Kong, has a lot of rain in it. In fact, the rain is so important, it's practically a character. So, as ironic as it seems, the weather couldn't have worked out better!

An abandoned house in a village behind my sister's flat.

The road turned into a river as we walked.

A stream running past a village house.

I spent a lot of time on Day 2 at the Heritage Museum in Shatin. They have a permanent Cantonese opera exhibit there. Like I mentioned in my last post, I'm hoping to write a historical novel about a child adopted by an opera troupe. I took a billion pictures at the museum, but here are a few:

Replica of the Foshan theatre, built in 1658.

Traditional opera dressing table

What a dressing room would have looked like

Costumes

I mentioned that it rained, right?

Hong Kong Trip: Day 1

I'm in Hong Kong at the moment, visiting my parents and my sister and conducting research for several novels-in-the-works. 

Here are a few pictures from my adventures today: 

The view out my bedroom window. Those are traditional Chinese graves, a detail in one of my books.

Bougainvillaea overflowing. I love how Hong Kong is such a mix of city and gorgeous nature.

Closed up snack shop. I want to remember what this gate looks like, because one of my minor characters owns a shop like this.

One of the main reasons I'm here: researching Cantonese opera!

I forgot what real rain felt like, smells like, tastes like, sounds like. Incredible!

Food is an important part of my novels, because Hong Kong food is amazing. Here's Gabe chowing down on dim sum.

Wall flowers

Bananas growing in my parents' village.

These are papayas, right?

Amazed by the beauty and color of rural Hong Kong.

One of my books takes place in a village. It's good to remember what the village houses look like.

When people think of Hong Kong, they usually think of only a huge city. Do any of these photos surprise you?

Tomorrow I'm planning to visit a history museum to learn more about Chinese opera. So excited!

Hong Kong Trip: We're Here!

My boy and I made it safely to Hong Kong!

It was a grueling fourteen-hour flight, but it was all worth it to see these smiling faces of family when we landed.

We're looking forward to a great trip here.

Our first item on the agenda, as soon as it's morning, is to eat Dim Sum, which is traditional Cantonese breakfast.

Traveling with my son, Gabe, has been a pleasure. He had to learn a lot about patience yesterday, but it's so fun to experience this with him because he is so filled with wonder at everything ... from the size of our plane, to the escalators and moving sidewalks at the airport, to the number of floors in his aunt Michelle's apartment building. The last time he was in Hong Kong, he was five years old and he doesn't remember a lot. I'm so excited to introduce this American small-town boy to Asian city life.

Watch out, Hong Kong! Here we come!

The Juggling Act & My Trip to Hong Kong

Hello, blog! Hello, bloggy friends!

Today I'm over on my agent Kate Testerman's blog chatting with my bud (and agent sister and valued critique partner) Krista Van Dolzer about how we juggle writing and motherhood.

If you're interested, head over there!

Also, I'm taking a trip to Hong Kong next week to visit my parents and sister, and while I'm there, I'll be doing lots of research for two new novels. I'll be posting some of the fruits of my research--photos and interesting bits of information. I hope you'll come back and visit.

How are you spending your spring break? 

Be Fearless: This is Preparation

How is an editor different than a critique partner?

Someone asked me this question awhile ago, and it's a really good one!

As in the last post (where I gave details about my revision process so far), I have to preface by saying that my experience might be vastly different from other writers'. So, take my thoughts with a sprinkle of salt.

There are a lot of similarities between a good critique partner and an editor. I have nothing but utmost respect for my critique partners. I value their opinion and take everything they say seriously. The biggest difference, then, is how my critique partners and I interact with each other. I send them my work (or vice versa), they critique it, and leave opportunity for me to ask for questions and clarification afterward. But I don't send the same story repeatedly until it's perfect.

With my editor, though, we went through revisions until he was happy with the product. I never felt a responsibility to make my critique partners happy with my books. I knew they would feel fulfilled in a sense, just as I feel fulfilled when I'm able to help them meet their goals, but there's still a certain degree of separation with a critique partner that's not there with an editor. My editor respects my space as an author, but he also shares a vision with me for the book, and we work toward that vision as a team.

With that said, my experience with my excellent critique partners prepared me well to work with my editor. I was already used to getting lots and lots of comments, long "editorial" letters, nit-picky corrections (yay for critique partners who are as anal as I am!). I was used to ripping my books completely apart. Heck, in a couple instances, after sending something off to a crit-buddy, I had started ALL OVER AGAIN.

I'm convinced that's why the ten-page editorial letter my editor sent me wasn't too overwhelming, because I had forced myself, in my pre-published days, to be fearless.

YES, take out that huge chunk of writing you love. The book is better without it!

YES, keep reworking and reworking and reworking that scene until it flows so smoothly you stop noticing the writing and feel only the feelings.

YES, start again. It's not the end of the world. And the new story will be one hundred times cleaner.

When you get used to cutting your work into tiny pieces and sewing them back together, you eventually learn the sheer beauty of revision. So, when an editor comes at you with MAJOR changes, you can skip the nervous breakdown and get to work.

That's why I'm glad for the gift of my years and years of rejection, because I learned to be a writer.

I hope this blog post doesn't come across as cocky. Notice that I mentioned WORK. I didn't sing and dance my way through the editorial letter. I had to let everything my editor told me sink in over several days. I had to think a lot. I had to rework and write a lot of new stuff. It was work and it was a challenge. The point is, I felt prepared.

How do you interact with your critique partners? If you have an editor, did you feel prepared to work with him or her? I'd love to hear your story! 

Photo credit: DarrenHester from morguefile.com

Sneak Peek: My Revision Journey So Far

Sometimes it feels like there's a thick, mysterious curtain  between the world of querying and finding an agent, and the world of signing a contract and starting work to make our manuscripts into books. I'm not sure why that is. I think writers are mostly willing to share their experiences. Maybe it's just that they don't want to show off ... or maybe they get busy (raises hand!).

I thought I'd share my own revision experience so far. Obviously, my timeline doesn't apply universally, but hopefully you'll find it helpful/enlightening in some way.

I signed my contract for Red Butterfly back in August. Of course, I'd known I had a book deal for awhile before that, but I couldn't talk about it until the official announcement came out. You all know how that goes. Secrets, secrets, secrets!

I started my first round of revisions in August. These began with the UPS man arriving at my door and handing me a large manila envelope filled with -- you got it! -- a print-out copy of my book with hand-written notes from my editor. The envelope also included an almost ten-page editorial letter and a November deadline.

MY FIRST DEADLINE!!! Ahhhhh!

Actually, I was pretty excited about it. You know how firsts are always exciting. Even when they're deadlines.

That edit was a big one. I had a ton of back story to figure out/change and a lot of extra poems to write. I added six thousand words, which is a lot for a verse novel.

I handed those revisions in early (because, you know, deadlines were still exciting), in October. My editor got back to me in a little over two weeks (he's amazing like that) with more revision notes. This time the (much, much shorter) editorial letter came by email, with hand-written notes in the UPS man's manila envelope.

This time I had a month and a half to make changes. There was still a lot to do, though not as much as the first round, and, I'm happy to say, despite my laptop crashing, I was able to turn in my edits the day before the deadline. (Phew!)

My crazy-fast editor got a third round of edits back to me by the beginning of December and gave me a week to make changes.

But this time it was little things, and the editorial notes arrived via marked-up Word document in an email. I tidied everything, sent it back and voila! Got the okay. We were finished!

Except for copy edits, which should be arriving on my doorstep sometime this month. I'll keep you posted!

In my next post I'll talk about a related subject to this: how my six/seven years of querying and writing rejected novels prepared me for my first deadlines. I hope it will be encouraging, so come back to read it!

Until then, if you're a published author, was your revision experience similar? If you're not published yet, is this the idea you had of what revisions would be like? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

And, lest I forget, Happy New Year to all!

Photo credit: Sgarton from morguefile.com

Merry Christmas!

The crazy Sonnichsen clan hopes you had a very merry Christmas!

God bless you!

I'm Baaaaack!

Hello, hello, long lost bloggy friends!

I almost had a heart attack when I saw the date of my last blog post. Gahhhh!

But I am still alive. Here I am with the dashingly handsome sidekick on a recent weekend getaway we took to a cute little town in southern Washington called Walla Walla. That's the inn where we stayed behind us. So pretty, and so peaceful! We had a wonderful time.

We needed this getaway because this semester has been ... beyond busy. We've often felt like two ships passing in the night, communicating by Morse code and flashlight beams.

The good news is: football season is over! The DHS's team did well, placing third in the 2A division in Washington. (Go Mustangs!)

Other good news is: I finished all my edits. I'm planning another blog post to go into more detail (for those of you who are interested), but basically I'm up-to-date for everything that needs to be done with RED BUTTERFLY and now waiting on copy edits arriving some time in January.

In the meantime, I'm working on a fun little time travel MG. I'm hoping to finally write an ending for this thing soon. I think it's going to need A LOT of editing, though, before anyone can see it. But what's new, right?

How are things in your creative world? If you're a writer, tell me about what you're working on. If you're not a writer, tell me about something interesting you're doing. I'm going to make an effort to run around to all my long-lost friends' blogs, so please leave a comment so I can dash over and say Hi!

Kidlit Blog Tour

R.T. Freeman tagged me in the Kidlit Blog Tour. Thank you, Rosemary!

What are you working on right now?
I'm about halfway through my second round of revisions for my middle grade verse novel, RED BUTTERFLY.

How does it differ from other works in its genre?
My book fits quite nicely in its genre, but I still hope it's unique. There are other wonderful books that are contemporary, multi-cultural, middle grade novels in verse, too, but I haven't read one (yet) about adoption in China. My character, Kara, is stuck in an unusual situation: she's a Chinese orphan raised by American foster parents in China. The story is about loss and abandonment and finding yourself when nothing of your old life remains.

Why do you write what you do?
I started RED BUTTERFLY as an experiment, because I had a YA manuscript that wasn't working the way it was. I love MG verse novels, so I wanted to see if my protagonist's voice would work better if she were a younger person, and if she told her story in poetry. It turned out to be a good decision!


How does your writing process work?
As Rosemary noted about her own process, mine is also evolving. I'm still a "pantser" (a writer who starts with an idea and lets that idea carry them along without a plan) who admires "plotters" (writers who make detailed plans before they start writing). Once I get the whole idea out in a rough draft, and am pretty sure it will work, I do revisions and then finally hand it off to a trusted critique partner who will tell me if I'm crazy or not. (I have one YA manuscript that is currently shelved after a critique partner told me, very nicely, that I WAS crazy. I have to figure out a completely different plot. So, yeah, I take my critique partner's advice very seriously.) If I'm not crazy, then I keep revising, keep sending it out to other critique partners until it's as close to perfect as I can get it. When my critique partners hand my manuscripts back to me after a few days and say they couldn't put the book down, and they've given me minimal feedback, then I know it's ready for my agent.

Any departing words of wisdom for other authors?
Write about subjects you find fascinating, something you could talk about for hours. When you have that much passion for a subject, it will show in your writing. It was incredibly fulfilling to finally discover a fictional plot for a topic that is so important to me--adoption and the plight of Chinese orphans. Of course, don't start out with the purpose of getting on your soap box. That could derail your story. At the same time, it's cool to write about something you love and to witness your own passion bleeding onto the page.

I'd like to nominate my pals, Julie DeGuia and Melissa Sarno, to continue the grand tradition of the Kidlit Blog Tour. Hope you decide to participate, ladies!

Olivia's Gotcha Day

A bunch of you probably already know that our oldest daughter is adopted from China. Her name is Olivia and this post actually comes at a very good time (I'm participating in an adoption blog carnival through the invitation of my amazing friend Kim) because recently we celebrated Olivia's GOTCHA DAY.

Here is Miss Olivia, looking happy, holding a plate full of Whoopie Pies, the baking of which is our Gotcha Day tradition:

Olivia is twelve years old, and for those of you who don't know what a Gotcha Day is, it's "The Day You Get Your Child" in normal adoptions. Most of the time, this is the day you first meet your child AND within a few days, usually, this child becomes your legal offspring.

Our Gotcha Day isn't quite as straightforward.

I first met Olivia when she was a few days old, in the Tianjin Children's Welfare Institute where I was volunteering. We had just moved to China a couple months before to work at an international school. Olivia was a tiny newborn in a crib closest to the baby room door and I noticed her right away because of her huge, sparkling black eyes. Talk about instant love!

We got to bring her home as our foster daughter when she was six weeks old (because during her short stint at the orphanage she'd become failure to thrive). The bringing-her-home part of our story is humorous--stuff of Sonnichsen-clan legend.

I'd wanted to bring Olivia home for several weeks and I'd been talking her up to the dashingly handsome sidekick (DHS a.k.a. my husband). Well, when I actually got permission from the orphanage director, the DHS was away at fall camp with his school kids and I had no way of contacting him. So, he got home from camp and....

SURPRISE!

We have a baby!

(Yes, he has forgiven me and we're still happily married.)

Fast forward six and a half years and we were FINALLY allowed to adopt our sweet Olivia and make her officially ours (gotta love China's adopting-parent age restrictions!).

So, as you can see, our Gotcha Day isn't quite like most adopting parents'. We decided to celebrate on the day I brought Olivia to our home when she was a baby, instead of the day she was officially adopted.

a snapshot from her baby book

Celebrating Olivia's Gotcha Day is important for so many reasons. Obviously, it's important for her, to remind her of our love for her, to give her a special day that's different from her siblings, because her situation is unique. 

Probably the biggest reason it's important, though, is that it's a marker every year for us to remember God's faithfulness to us. Navigating the adoption system when you have a specific child you want to adopt is difficult. When we set out on this journey we had empty hands--not enough money, no parenting experience, we weren't even old enough for the Chinese law! We had a child with a medical condition that required surgery and we weren't sure how it would all work out. (The $20,000 initial surgery price tag was a little daunting, to say the least.)

But God worked everything out. Even while we were still fostering Olivia, He provided a Chinese passport and American visa multiple times so we could bring her back to the U.S. for surgery at the Shriners Hospital in Portland, OR--a hospital that doesn't usually accept international patients, but they made an exception for us and give her all her surgeries free of charge until she's 18 years old. Besides that answer to prayer,  the fact that our adoption even went through is a miracle. So many people worried for us, told us that we'd be fostering too long, that there were no guarantees ... and they were right to caution us, but I'm so thankful we took that leap of faith.

Gotcha Day helps me remember that all this happened, even though it seems a lifetime ago. We've settled in the U.S. now and are growing accustomed to American ways, but I never want us to forget where we came from and what we've been through.

So, Happy Gotcha Day, Olivia! We are blessed and you are loved.

Anyone, anyone?

Happy Fall!

Life has been so crazy lately. (gymnastics + home school + lots of kids + football-coach hubby + writing = head exploding)

This is when I want to start pouring out apologies for how bad I've been at keeping up with all of you and this blog ... but I will refrain because apologies are boring and you all understand how life can be. (I know you do.)

But I WILL give a couple boring excuses:

BORING EXCUSE NUMBER ONE: I want to visit other blogs, but since Google Reader disappeared, I feel a bit lost. Any advice?

BORING EXCUSE NUMBER TWO: I would also like to blog more, but I'm having a hard time figuring out what to blog about.

I know a couple of you had mentioned that you'd like to hear more details about my publishing process. Do you have any specific questions I could answer? I just turned in my first round of edits a couple weeks ago (phew!). As long as everyone understands that this is all new to me, too, I'd love to be forthcoming about my experience. I just don't know what all of you would LIKE to know, you know?

If you have any questions that I can answer over the next few weeks, leave them in the comments. Thanks!

Photo credit: rosevita from morguefile.com