New duds

So you may have noticed (if you're not reading this on Google Reader), that I changed things up here a little yesterday.

I get bored pretty quickly with a particular color scheme or design, so every couple months I feel the need to play. Yesterday, in poking around the Internetz for pictures, I discovered Flickr Commons.

Yee-HAW. How could I resist this? Or this? Or (*giggle*) this? But I wanted to use them ALL.

So I'm going to rotate!! Every week (for a while) I'm going to change the big picture on the left. Stop by the actual page once a week and check it out!*

*okay, I may be more excited about the Commons pictures and the rotating than y'all will be. But it PLEASES me. :)

A drop of encouragement

I had a full-circle moment this morning.

I was driving to work after dropping Child off at school, loaded up with 6 packages of cookies to be mailed out, Brownie gear to deliver later today, my cup of coffee. I was thinking of a scene I want to add to my WIP today, a plot twist I might add.

My grown-up life.

And then Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade came on the radio--and I was 17 again, instantly, sitting in the box of a theatre, watching my first symphony performance. And plotting--worrying, really--how in the hell I was going to review it.

In my first semester of college at U.C. Davis I was enrolled in a "Freshman Seminar," a supposedly low-stress way to introduce freshmen to college life and to the faculty. I ended up in a seminar with two other freshmen and D. Kern Holoman, a distinguished professor of music, and the conductor of the UC Davis Symphony.

He scared the piss out of me.

I don't remember what the focus of the seminar was, really, but somehow we were writing art reviews. We watched a movie, went to art exhibits, and had to write reviews as though we were submitting them to a newspaper. It was fascinating for just-dabbling writer me, and eye-opening. Before that I had NO IDEA how much harder it was to watch a movie or view art when you knew at the end you were going to have to summarize and say something intelligent (and entertaining!) about the art for others. I was scribbling notes in the movie theater about themes and characterization, though I couldn't read my notes afterwards. And he was a stickler--imposing, professorial, strict about word count and interpretation and style. Every time I submitted something I was petrified.

But that was nothing to reviewing a symphony performance. I'd been a ballet dancer, so to me the symphony was background, something I moved to. I'd never been to a concert just to listen. And then not only to listen, but to write a review of it, for a CONDUCTOR?

Eeeek.

So I can still remember vividly the mix of emotions of my 17-year-old self, sitting there in that box as the lights went down. Anxiety, but also excitement--and the opening of a whole new world.

At the end of the term, Dr. Holoman pulled me aside, and told me I'd shown promise. That I could be a writer, or a journalist, if I wanted to pursue it. Of course I was an Animal Science major at the time, determined to be a comparative psychologist working with dolphins or chimps. I was thrilled, and flattered...but I didn't think it would come to anything.

Still, I think that encouragement put me on the path. When a few years later I started on this crazy writing thing, his words were still there. They still are. I thank him, and all teachers who take the time to nudge students, to show them the possibility of worlds they'd never considered.

I have season tickets to the symphony here in town now, and Child goes with us to every performance. She loves classical music, at 7. She also loves words. But maybe someday a professor will pull her aside and tell her she has promise in biology, or medicine, or painting, and those words will eventually shape her life.

You never know how the circle will round out, in the end.

Shift for the Better

I've been in a bit of a funk the past few days. Don't know why, exactly--it happens occasionally. Doesn't usually last 3 DAYS, but...

The good news is I feel *back* today, cheerful, optimistic. My usual self. Part of it is the character/plot revelation for SALVAGED I had in the shower this morning (yay Magic Water revelations). Part of it is also probably the show we saw last night, in the first concert of the season.

They're called CANTUS, from Minnesota. They were exactly what I needed.

Here's a song to lift your spirits too. Enjoy!

Brain break

If you need my brain, it will be here:

Brains need vacations too.

Tease

Sorry, I had to take the SALVAGED teaser down. It's a work very much in progress, after all.

Thanks so much for all your kind words, though!! They made my morning.

Now, I made a promise to a few Twitter peeps this weekend that if my recipe last night worked out I'd post it here. It was YUMMY. So the rest of this post is foodie stuff!

I actually got this recipe from an American Heart Association cookbook...but really, in spite of that and in spite of the inauspicious name, it's delicious!

Spicy Glazed Pork Cubes

A traditional Haitian recipe: serve over rice!

Ingredients:
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
2 pounds boneless pork loin, all visible fat removed, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup fresh orange juice (about 2 medium oranges)
1/4 cup fresh lime juice (about 3 medium limes)
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
1 habañero or jalapeno chili pepper, seeded and finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/8 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions:
In a large skillet, heat the vegetable oil over medium heat. Brown the pork cubes for 6 to 8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the onion and garlic, lower the heat to medium-low, and cook for 2 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients and bring the mixture to a simmer, then cook, covered, over low heat for 40 to 50 minutes, or until pork is tender.

Uncover pan and cook over medium-high heat for 5 to 10 minutes, until juices have reduced to a thick glaze. Serve warm.

Citrusy and very yummy. The turmeric turns it bright yellow, which Child liked.

The other recipe, for homemade potato chips, is over at Simply Recipes but the site isn't loading right now.

Basically all you do is slice baking potatoes in 1/8" slices, and set out in one layer on a baking pan. Drizzle with butter, and broil for 20 minutes or until the edges are brown and crispy. Sprinkle liberally with coarse salt (sea salt) and eat!!

Love Day Friday

I think it's time for a little Friday love-fest.

Today I'm sharing the love for:

• Movie: The Tale of Despereaux. I watched it with Child the day she was sick, and we both adored it. Great story, great flick. My first exposure to Kate DiCamillo! I don't think it'll be the last for either of us.
• Book: SKINNED, by Robin Wasserman. Great concept, plot, voice, complex characters. And look, I can get the sequel, too! This is the bonus for being slow on reading.
• My WIP. I know, I can't actually *share* it. But SALVAGED is finally skipping forward again after a facelift of the first 50 pages, and I like where it's going!
• Music: This is an oldie, but The Psychedelic Furs. Hubby and I went to Seattle on Monday to see them live (probably my 4th time (?) and hubby's in the tens), and LOVED them. As always.
• Food: Cupcakes. Particularly this one. (hee hee) And these. YUM.

Please join in!! What are you loving today? Post in the comments!

Craziness

I'm back at my desk for my first full day of work in a week! Between me being sick, our mini-trip, and Child being sick yesterday (she seems fine now), it's been a little odd. I like getting back to routine after a time away, listening to my Pandora stations while I work, with TweetDeck open on the second monitor. :)

September is my busy month at work, too--I'm putting together next year's calendar (should be at the printer by next week), helping prepare slides for the Board of Regents meeting, getting my researchers settled in again after a summer in the field, and working on a few *new* projects. Yay new projects! Plus we're moving to a new building in December, so I really should be packing things up. AHEM.

And Child's in school and now in her new routine of 3 dance classes a week...to which we've just added Girl Scouts. Add in all the concert series starting up, school activities, husband's work functions...

Fall is crazy, though mostly in a good way. Am so very glad I'm not in school this year, though!!

and out!

I'll be away for a couple of days, so no posts here.

In the meantime, enjoy a couple of blogs I recently stumbled across that you definitely want to add to your reader:

Blue Rose Girls: 7 children's book professionals (7!) talk about the industry and their experiences

Nova Ren Suma: Her book DANI NOIR is coming out this month, and I can't wait! You just might see a bit of her around here at some point too...

And of course, The Intern. If you're a writer and you haven't read this yet, you haven't been paying attention.

Later!

Sock Knockers: VOICE

*Note: This is in a series of sock-knockers posts, trying to analyze why particular books stand out above the rest for me. Click on the label below for the others so far.

Ah, voice.

Voice is a tricky little squirmy thing for writers. It can be the reason given by agents and editors for why they don't clamp onto a book ("the voice didn't grab me"), or the reason--whether or not they realize it--why readers can't get immersed in a story. If done well, it's the reason some books excel. But voice isn't really something you can be taught. It has to come naturally and it has to come with practice.

WHAT, you ask. And then you start rolling your eyes at me for being obscure and mysterious. I get ya. I'll explain.

Okay. To me, voice is the representation, the...well, voice (sorry) of the main character(s). If third person, it can be the narrator speaking or a character. If it's first person you're down in the head of that character, and voice has GOT to be representative of their singular perspective.

A good, unique voice should consider the character's:

• vocabulary (rich or sparse? long words or short words? slang?)
• cadence (how do they phrase their sentences? Different characters should have different rhythms)
• experience (does your character know what an IPod is? Does he or she use one every day, or has seen but never owned one? how does that affect her description of it? what does she or does she not notice around her?)
• beliefs (attitudes should come out in descriptions as well as dialogue and thoughts)
• feelings (how does the character sound when she's angry? What auto-reactions does she go to? How often does she GET angry?)

At the least. I recently read a book where there were two POVs...one male, one female. And I could NOT TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM. Every time I had to stop and look to see who was speaking. I should have been able to distinguish the two voices, easily, for any of the reasons above. This does not make a sock-knocker.

Above I said nailing voice has to both come naturally and take practice. I believe there is some talent inherent in the ability to immerse yourself in a character: to truly imagine yourself in that skin. Some people probably just can't do that. But it takes real practice--more than one novel practice--to figure out how to pour that imagined person onto the page well enough to portray a whole, real voice. It takes awareness of every word, every choice of dialogue or action, to see if it *fits*.

Though maybe not on the first draft. :)

So what are my sock-knockers for voice?

I thought back to come up with a "classic" example, and it fell easily into my head: Anne of Green Gables.

I know! It's third person! But Anne is so clear to me, even this many years later. I feel as though I Know Her. She is a real person with clear likes and dislikes and foibles and an attitude (who can forget how Anne felt about her red hair? Or her name? Or diamonds?), and every inch of the text reflects Anne as Anne.

Well done, L.M. Montgomery. Generations have loved Anne's voice.

For a modern book:

I tried not to use a friend's book as an example. REALLY I TRIED. But the problem is, see, I know a lot of writers, and they tend to write rather fantastic books which are perfect examples...

So my modern book is Joanna Bourne's The Spymaster's Lady, for which she happened to win a Rita this year.

Jo's book is a textbook example of How to Win at Voice. If you haven't read it, please, please do. You will thank me. The book is set in Annique's head so skillfully that she is able to even pull tricks on you, and it makes sense and you don't care and you only see what Annique sees. It is breathtaking.

There are other books that excel at voice, but I've mentioned several of them in other sock-knocker posts already, so that isn't really fair, is it?

*cough cough, Courtney Summers, cough cough*

Anyway. The book I'm writing now is particularly slippery in terms of voice and perspective, so I've been thinking about this a lot. Man, I hope I'm able to nail it. I'd like to blow YOUR socks off too, someday. *hope*

Twists

I was going to do a post today on my day job--I realized I've never really talked about being a technical/scientific editor, and there may be a few interested in what that's like.

But it's Friday before a long weekend, and I'm full of donuts. I'm cheerful and kinda loopy. This calls for something more FUN, don't you think?

So I'm going to talk about airplane safety videos.

WAIT! Don't go away! I know, we've all seen safety videos or heard the spiel a zillion times. My 7 year old could probably recite it by heart. Passengers have long since stopped paying attention.

But this presents a serious problem for airlines. They need people to listen to those instructions--on the off-chance something does go horribly wrong on the flight, they actually are necessary.

So how do they get and keep your attention? How do they take an old, tired story and twist it?

Watch this. I'm serious--it's only a little over 3 minutes. Watch the whole thing.



Did you catch the twist? Yes, ALL OF THOSE CREW MEMBERS ARE NUDE. Seriously. The whole time--it's all clever camera angles and body paint.

How awesomely creative is that? It's not crass--there's nothing you can actually see there--but it's CLEVER. It's also done with humor and grace, and I for one paid attention the whole way. :)

Lesson from this? Be *that* creative with your own stories. Maybe you're telling about vampires or lonely teens or a detective on a murder case--scenarios that have been done so many times the very thought is cliche. But you still see a story there.

Find a new way to do it. Dig deep. Twist the heck out of it, until it's new and fresh and funny and YOURS. Make readers pay attention through it all, and end saying "Wow, that was original."

If they can do it with a safety video, you can too.

And if you liked the video? There are more here: http://www.nothingtohide.co.nz/

Good news!

Today is a day of good writer-friend news that I can't help but share!

First, my great friend Victoria Schwab (who I got to hang out with *in person* a few weeks ago) just announced the sale of her book, THE NEAR WITCH, to Abby Ranger at Hyperion!

Watch her most awesome video announcement here. But come back--I'll wait.

*humming*

Don't you have a smile on your face now? I THOUGHT SO.

Smile #2: Courtney Summers got her ARCs in the mail for Some Girls Are!! Better, she's giving one away!! Go and ENTER NOW. You want to read this book, I promise. (*I* want to read this book!)

Tiara Day Contest WINNERS!

What's that? You're tired of waiting for the winners to be announced?

Really, if you're breaking into publishing I should do you a favor and make you wait a few more weeks. Just to get a taste. :)

But NO, I will not do that! I will announce the winners Right Now!!

All entries were judged independently by SIX judges, and the entries with the most votes won. We actually had a consensus right away with the two grand prizes, though the other ones were difficult to choose!

So, in reverse order:

Winners of BOOKS!! We loved these entries. They were original, well-written, and even funny.

• Annika:

Bella Cullen was tired of being Edward’s princess. She took off her tiara and threw it on the floor, shocking her perfect, sparkly prince.

Our judges loved the twist on TWILIGHT.


• Kari Lynn Dell:
  

When the ambulance had gone, we caught the horse, straightened the saddle, dusted off the formerly pristine white hat and replaced the tiara, sparkly in the sun. “Perhaps,” I said, “someone should have reminded the rodeo princess to tighten her cinch.”

This was an original take on the tiara/sparkly theme, and showed Kari's voice really clearly--in just 50 words.


• Terri:
  

Tongues wagged as the newlyweds left the church.
"Ain't she just pretty as a princess in that sparkly tiara."
"Old fool's got forty years on her. Where's her family?"
"Got none. She's an orphan."
"Bet he's happy."
They were right. The local taxidermist had finally found the perfect trophy wife.

This one felt like a mini Twilight Zone--the implications gave us chills.

Winner of the 1-year subscription to Poets and Writers magazine, for Best Twist on the Theme:

• Bill Cameron:
  

She gazes into the sparkly depths of gin and ice, fingers her sash. "Princess," it reads. Runner up . . . Loser.

"Screw that." She sips gin and smiles. On the floor at her feet, the red-splashed tiara protrudes from a long, elegant throat.

If the winning contestant cannot perform her duties . . .

I LOVED this little story. I want Bill to write this book now.

And the winner of the 50-page crit from Suzie Townsend, for Best Story:

• Julie Butcher-Fedynich!

Thorns encircled the tower, huge pointy thorns. They dripped crimson poison and waited for the unwary climber. In the oval window, the princess in her sparkly tiara sighed and looked into the distance. She was so beautiful.
He looked at the thorns and again at the princess.
Bummer.

This one is so traditional...until the last word. Love that.

AND I would be remiss if I didn't announce a special sparkly Honorable Mention prize that was voted unanimously by all the judges:

Janet Reid!!

The princess phone jangled at Sparkle Sparkle and Wheeze headquarters.

"You called, you talk," answered Miss Tia Ra, of the royal Egyptian Ras.

"My sparkle isn't sparkly anymore," sobbed Miss Schwab. "My GRE is making me blah"

"Medicinal cupcakes!" TiaRa barked to her minion. "Spectacular redazzler on their way ASAP!"

Miss Shark, you win the undying love of all of Team Sparkle. Oh, wait, you already had that! And cookies. Lots of cookies.

Congratulations to all the winners--and to all of you who took the time to play. Thanks SO much. And keep your eye out for the next Tiara Day, even if we don't have a contest!

Winners, I'll send you an email shortly! Those who won books, first to respond gets first pick!

Update...

Wow, you guys rocked that.

We're working on judging the pile o' excellent entries. Winners will be announced sometime this week.*

*I'm thinking tomorrow or Wednesday, but by entering a writing contest you have stepped into the Publishing Time zone, so "this week" will be my official statement!

Thanks so much for coming by, and for entering. This was amazing.

Tiara Day CONTEST

It's Tiara Day!! Tiara Day is all about creating positive energy, being a little silly, and having fun. To play along put a tiara on your avatar for the day--or use a picture of your tiara AS your avatar.

And enter the spectactular, sparkly, first-ever Tiara Day Contest.

I posted the rules and prizes below (here's the link for reference). They're great prizes. (I'm so excited!) Contest open NOW for 24 hours, entries in comments! Please don't forget to include your email addresses. Winner will be announced next week.

Also, not X-rated please. My kid probably won't read them, but I do write YA. :)

So, the prompt:

Write a complete story in only 50 words (less is allowed, but not more!). The entry MUST include the words 'tiara', 'sparkly', and 'princess'.

UPDATE: CONTEST CLOSED! And holy wow, batman, that was a lot of entries!! You guys are fabulous!

Those posted after midnight MST won't count, I'm afraid--in the interest of being fair. But we'll still have plenty of great entries to choose from. I'll post the winner sometime next week!

Thank you!

Tiara Day contest: pre-post with rules

Are you ready?(this is a waterlily tiara from Leigh-Anne McCague tiaras. Isn't it gorgeous?)

Tiara Day Writing Contest: RULES

1. The contest will be open from midnight tonight (when it hits Friday, August 28, MST) to midnight the next day (when it hits Saturday, August 29, MST). All of Tiara Day.
2. The prompt will be posted at midnight--it'll be a contest to write a 50-word complete story including certain words.
3. All entries will be posted in the comments to the prompt. Emails must be included too, so I can reach you if you win!
   
4. The contest entries will be judged by a distinguished and very sparkly volunteer panel, all of whom are barred from entering, much as they might want the prizes. :)
5. Winners will be announced next week. We'll be looking for best story and most original twist!

Tiara Day Writing Contest: PRIZES

There will be two grand prizes, donated by Janet Reid and Suzie Townsend, both of FinePrint Literary (thank you thank you thank you!)

1. A critique of the first 50 pages of your manuscript by Suzie Townsend, assistant/junior agent at FinePrint Lit. Suzie is fabulous--read an interview with her at The Blog Realm.
2. A one-year subscription to Poets and Writers magazine.
   

You want to enter already, don't you? But wait, there's more. There will be three runner-up prizes, also donated by the lovely Janet Reid. BOOKS!

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander
A Trace of Smoke by Rebecca Cantrell

Now you HAVE to enter. Right? And wear your tiaras?

Look for the prompt at midnight!

(I can't wait. This is SO fun)

Sock-Knockers: Worldbuilding

This is the second in the famous* series of sock-knockers posts. Because these books knocked my socks off, people. I am barefoot in my office.

Actually, I AM barefoot in my office. Hmmm.

Anyway, today I'm looking at the Very Difficult to Master art of worldbuilding--without a slug of backstory.

Worldbuilding is tough as it is. I've heard some historical writers say how easy fantasy must be: "You don't have to research! You get to make everything up!"

Well, yes. But you also have to make sure every little piece of that made-up world is consistent, and reasonable, and would actually work together. The people in this world need to interact with each other and with their world naturally, but in ways that are different from real-world interactions: because environment, knowledge, and experience radically affect behavior. And hardest of all, you as the author need to *show* the differences to the reader, explain how this world works and why it is the way it is, through a character who is so immersed in the world they don't notice the differences. Why should they? It's how they've always lived.

Enter the standard trope of writers everywhere, the "outsider" character. Time-traveler, immigrant, came in through a portal--like the reader, the outsider is new to the world and its people and can spot differences. Ask questions. Make gaffes and have the rules explained to them.

The outsider is useful. But kind of overused, maybe? Kind of *easy*? How much harder is it to write a story through the eyes of a character who is used to this world, to dribble the rules and worldview in slowly and naturally? It is harder. But it's stronger.

The other primary method of building a world for the reader is to dump backstory on them. Writers are getting pretty good now at waiting past the first couple of chapters, but there's a point where the paragraphs of backstory come, weaseled in there somehow. "This is why the world is the way it is..." Sometimes it's necessary. But again, it's kind of weak. There's got to be another way.

There is.

"When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping."
(under fair use)

That's the opening paragraph to THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins. Oh, you've heard of it? Yes. It's extremely popular, and it should be.

This book has no cheats. It is completely immersive from Word 1, in a world very different from ours, from the point of view of a character born and bred in that world. There are no outsiders. There is, at least as far as I remember, no backstory. If there is it's maybe a sentence here or there. No swaths of explanations, just Katniss picking up and trying to deal with horrible, real circumstances. It's amazingly well done.

I think that lack of backstory absolutely works to the benefit of the pacing, too. The reader is busy trying to figure out what's going on, and by the time they do they're hooked, irreversibly.

Other readers? Am I right here?

Another book that handles worldbuilding Really Well is UGLIES, by Scott Westerfeld. We are thrown into Tally's world immediately, without any delay of explanation--and it works. I hung out in Tally's world for four books, and I didn't really want to leave.

But the most recent book that knocked my socks off with worldbuilding? Sorry, peeps, but most of you can't read it yet.

It's called NEAR WITCH, and it's by my good friend Victoria Schwab. If you liked HUNGER GAMES and UGLIES, and you love to be immersed in a world so real you can breathe it? Watch for Victoria.

What books have knocked your socks off with worldbuilding?

*famous in no one's mind, but it's a good, interest-building adjective, y?

Double Heads-up!

Stay tuned--don't touch that channel. Heads-up 7Up. Like that. :)

Tomorrow will be a new sock-knockers post, focusing on worldbuilding.

Friday is Tiara Day!! But not only that--this time I'm going to be hosting a *fabulous* Tiara Day writing contest. With a prize(s) donated by The Shark herself! The writing prompt, rules, and prize announcement will be posted at midnight Friday and be open for 24 hours.

Be ready!

Dreaming of killers

Though I don't write thrillers—right now—apparently my brain loves them. I often have "chase dreams", whole night-long sequences of action and suspense.

Last night my brain came up with a doozy. I have to say it's pretty good at suspense; if I was watching this in a movie, my heart would've blipped there at the end.

It began in a safe house.

I was there with my husband and my daughter, along with about 10 other families. Every one of them had at least one child, and every one of them was crazed with worry.

Out There—somewhere—was a killer, who had reason for revenge against every one of us. The awful signature of this killer was that he took out his revenge, always, on the children. I had a memory of seeing a shot through the back window of a car, a limp, small form in a carseat…a mother screaming.

The bulk of the dream was all in the safe house, with the dynamics of the people there. We had meetings, we stressed out, we eyed each other's children and thought terrible, selfish thoughts like Don't Let It Be Mine, followed by a guilty "or theirs either". There were meetings and crying.
In the dream my husband was there in two capacities, as one of the potential victims and as a cop, helping to guard us. This made us a particular object of frustration for the other families, as they thought maybe he'd be biased towards us (maybe?).

But the high sign came that it was all clear—the killer hadn't been caught, but he'd made some move that showed we were out of danger for now. We could all go back to our houses for the time being.

So we packed up all the children and traveled by bus or train; it was a long, tiring trip. Then finally we arrived back at our own car. My daughter jumped in the backseat and my husband sat next to her while she buckled in. I stood next to the car with the door open.

And the killer walked by, aimed, and shot into the back windshield. He looked at me and said "So that's your little one," and grinned. The Bastard.

There was a moment when everything stopped, the point of all my fears, lengthened to an unbearable moment. Then I heard her voice, words. He'd missed. So I slammed the door shut, jumped on the killer, and knocked the gun out of his hand.

In the next movement I scooped it up, cocked it, and shot him point-blank in the forehead. No consideration, just pure mother defense reaction. He was dead. And then I breathed.

And then I woke up. :)

Not bad, eh? And just to clarify: though the dream was VERY scary at the time, I enjoyed it. I woke up energized. I love my chase dreams, and in this one I actually got to get the bad guy! Most of the time I wake up before it's over.

Head vs. Page: CAGEMATCH

So I'm only a third of the way into SALVAGED, and I already had to take a brief pause in forward progress to wrangle it.

Why? It's the age-old dilemma: the utterly fabulous, sparkly, life-changing, AMAZING book that's in my head is...not the same one on the page.

This always happens (apparently to Other People as well), so at least I know to expect it. But still, it's disappointing, that first failure, when I realize that the book is NOT going as I want it to.

See, when I first start it is SO glorious. It is the biggest rush ever, like "oh I am SUCH a genius", "this is the best idea in the universe", "how has everyone else not written this brilliant book already", "but no it was waiting for ME to excecute this idea, because I know how."

Yes, ego in the first 5-10k knows no bounds.

Then at about 10k, usually, I look up from the feverish happy-writing and say HMMMM. "This is kind of tangled," I say. "This is not as shiny as it promised to be" and "What the HELL is going on with this book anyway?"

I keep writing it, because I know I must. But then it gets more messy. And I change my mind about what's going to happen, and one paragraph invalidates about 3 previous chapters. By the time I get to about 20k or so, I lay my head down on the desk and weep softly.

Okay, I don't. But I do stare at the screen with great irritation. I don't know if it's ME who has failed the sparkly book, or the book who has failed the sparkly me. But one of us has to figure it out, and fast, before it becomes another idea withered on the vine at 20k.

So this week, I'm reconciling. I did a *gasp* OUTLINE of where I really want it all to go, and how it will fit together. I did character backstories, so I'm consistent and they're all a little deeper than my first shiny glances. I take a look at structure and figure out where it's going waytoofast and way...too...boring.

And then I FIX it. Hopefully. I'm about done with all my notes and thoughts and planning stuff, and about to go straighten up that first 20k.

And then, my friends, I get to Keep Going, but at least I won't be all twisted up in myself.

At least I know that at some point it DOES get sparkly again. Maybe 24 drafts from now, but some happy someday!

Sock Knockers: TRUTH

After a long blank spell (writing my thesis), I've been reading a lot lately. Mostly YA: catching up on some classics I'd missed, and diving into new ones.

I don't know if it's the books I'm choosing or the general kick-assness of the YA market right now, but I've enjoyed almost all of the ones I've tried. These are good books: entertaining, fun, engrossing. But you know how you read a book and you think it's really good, and then you read another book and you are just blown AWAY?

I'm going to start a new series of blog posts on those books, taking a look at why they are above and beyond for me. It's called WHY THIS BOOK KNOCKED MY SOCKS OFF. "Sock-knockers", for short. (Because WTBKMSO is not a good tag.)

So today, I'm going to look at two books that blew me away for the same reason.

LOOKING FOR ALASKA by John Green,
and CRACKED UP TO BE by Courtney Summers.














Now both of these books are great reads for plot, for beautiful language, for interesting situations. But that's not what put either of them over the top for me.

Both of them are A++ in TRUTH. By that I mean emotional truth, the kind of resonance that makes you read and cringe because you've done or thought that very thing even when it's not a particularly flattering thought or deed. That makes you smile because you have done or thought that very thing, joking around with your friends. It is a realistic portrayal of a life, good and bad.

Neither of these authors was afraid to face darkness in their characters, in the realities they show. And because they face the darkness unflinchingly (and the light moments too), we recognize it. It's no longer superficial entertainment--it is CONNECTION.

I don't think you have to be a "serious" book to attain emotional truth, though maybe it stands out more clearly there. You can attain emotional resonance in any kind of book in the small things your characters do, in their dialogue, in their deepest thoughts. Just don't be afraid to GO THERE. Don't step back and be safe. Take a step--or two, or three--further than you thought you could.

I aim for that. I think we all should.