Write What You Love and Love What You Write

Otherwise known as: Finding my joy in writing again via romance.

So a few months ago, I decided to try something completely different - to write a romance novel. Years back I'd made some attempts, but hadn't managed to finish one (other than a Historical Undone that got a form R). I'd spent the past year writing novels that I really enjoyed writing and were structurally sound but kept getting rejected, and I was frustrated with myself. The idea of trying out romance again had been niggling in the back of my mind, so I figured what the heck? You only live once. Might as well give it a go.

Writing Just One Week was a bit of a revelation for me. I'd forgotten that sometimes, writing can be easy. Obviously there's always work involved, but the words really flowed for me on this project in a way they hadn't in a long time.

And the end result really helped restore my flagging confidence as a writer. For the first time ever my mom (yeah yeah I know what they say about family but listen guys my parents are the harshest critics EVER. Trust me, handing my stuff off to them is like borrowing Lady Gaga's meat dress and diving headfirst into a pit of wolves) actually blazed through the chapters I sent and demanded more. That's an amazing feeling. Not only that, she forwarded it on to other friends and family who ALSO wanted more.

When I was writing just for myself, I came up with screwball comedies about physics and the nature of reality. But life isn't all about me. When I wrote Just One Week, I wrote it with the fond wish that it would make somebody else happy, and it did. And I think it's a better book - and I'm a better writer - for it.

So what I'm getting at here is: Even if nobody  gives my novel a second glance (though I'd prefer they did, plz and thx universe are you listening), this will have been so completely worth it, even more so than any other novel I've finished.

The Written Language Was Probably Invented to Torture You

Lately, I've found myself writing an awful lot. And not on my WIP, ifyannowhatimsayin.

Essay tests, essay answers, all hail our new essay overlords. Seriously, I've written so many of these that I've started having dreams about formatting Microsoft Word into 1.357" margins so that I hit seven pages.

And I have to say, the more essays I've written, the more I've noticed how similar they are to writing a story.

Seriously! So, you start out with this plan, and you should probably write down the plan and add footnotes and jenk, but of course you don't. You start writing, and you get totally lost, and you hit one page and look around like "dude why am i still writing".

Then you go through and re-read, and you see something that actually resembles a sentence a chimpanzee would not write by accident, and you capitalize on that. (Then you remember that you meant to capitalize, not make it all capitals. You ctrl-Z.)

Eventually you hit four pages and you're like man, I'm a freaking genius. Maybe I should go into this professionally. Be a teacher. I could churn out research papers like Shakespeare, and with way less plagiarism.

Then you hit page six.

NOOOOO you have one more page to go and the written language was invented solely to torture you. Why is this happening? Why did you go to college/high school/pre-k? Why did your parents have you in this time period? What was wrong with the Cretaceous period? Grunts and sighs are totally acceptable forms of communication.

No. Wait. You think you might... no, you definitely found a thread there that you can grab onto. You write and then... HOCRAP YOU HAVE AN ESSAY.



...




What, you don't write like that?

Who Have You Written Into a Book?

This Week's Topic:

Who have you written into a book? Be honest.

It could be someone that just inspired one specific trait in a character. Maybe your MC's ex has a weird obsession with anime, kind of like a certain ex of yours. Or maybe the evil witch wreaking havoc on your other characters is straight-up Mrs. Hawkins, your 3rd grade math teacher. Confession time – who's in your book?

This is YA Highway's excellent question of the week. Can't lie, I'm really looking forward to reading the responses on this one!

While I've never straight-out tried to recreate a person I know in a book, I have definitely had character traits inspired by people I know. The best example of this I can think of is a girl in my current WIP named Brianna. Brianna is a girl who has the ability to make people listen to her, and make people want her to like them.

This is the kind of girl that usually gets villainized in YA books. But while Brianna definitely does some things she shouldn't, she is a real person and her actions have actual motivations inspired by her own dreams, hopes, fears, and insecurities. And that's definitely because of being close to someone in real life who has the same sort of personality. My real life friend is a force to be reckoned with, but she's certainly not the devil.

I think that this character would be boring and one-dimensional if it wasn't for the real life insight of my friend. So, while I will NEVER EVER EVER tell my friend Brianna was based on her, here's a secret thank-you!

Injuries!

BUMPS & BRUISES SURVEY! Wear & Tear Record: (Fill in a number) Broken Bones = ___ Stitches = ___ Scars = ___ Surgeries = ___ Concussions = ___ Other Serious injuries = ___

This is a thing on formspring that I've seen, and since I always find this kind of thing interesting about other people, I thought I'd fill it out for any/all stalkers I have out there.

Broken Bones = ~4. I've broken two fingers (possibly three but I'm not sure on that last one so I won't put it), my tailbone, and my nose. One finger was broken by a friend accidentally slamming me in the finger (though she was not very apologetic about it, which still ticks me off). The other three (possibly four) injuries were all from horseback riding. Horseback riding is dangerous, folks!
Stitches = 0
Scars = 2. One is, predictably, from riding - well, sort of. I got bitten on the finger and it left a scar. The other is from when a dog dragged its extendable leash across the back of my legs and the owner was an idiot and didn't stop it.
Surgeries = 0
Concussions = 1. Guess what this was from?! Another horse bit the horse I was riding on the butt and it took off, flinging me off its back. I received this one a day before my IB exams, to add insult to injury.
Other = 0

The Saddle Club #1: Horse Crazy

One of the dearly loved book series of my childhood is The Saddle Club. Three girls who are bffs and obsessed with horses. It was the perfect combination. But how do they hold up over the years?



We begin the first book with Stevie, who has exposition duty. Apparently there's a big horsey camp-out coming up and if Stevie doesn't get good grades, her parents aren't going to pay for her to go. This is only bad news until Stevie figures out that her parents said that they wouldn't pay for it if she got bad grades, not that she couldn't go. So she perks up and decides she's gonna earn a bunch of money doing odd jobs. I don't know about Stevie's parents, but that would not have flown with mine.

Then we switch to Carole, and learn that she's obsessed with horses and her mom just died. Downer. Carole is the only one out of the three who isn't a walking stereotype, so she actually had what I thought was the best-developed personality of the three. Anyway, Carole's talking about how her dad is always sorry and Mrs. Reg (deus ex grandma) suggests that he's sorry he can't be her mom and her dad. This is getting way too deep for a Saddle Club book. Abort! Abort!

Lisa walks into the barn with her overprotective, upward-mobility minded mother. Everyone can tell she's super smart, but Lisa is embarrassed by her mom talking her up to everyone. She starts to ride and everything's going well until somebody slams the door and the horse takes off.

I kind of take issue with this - loud noises are not exactly uncommon, and I don't think anyone would consider a horse who's terrified of them to be a good horse for someone's first ride ever. The beginner horses I've known you could pull a grenade under their bum and they would be too lazy to move.

But okay, we need this to happen because when Lisa meets Stevie, she starts to suspect Stevie of being THE DOOR SLAMMER. Fair enough because Stevie takes the stirrups off Lisa's saddle so she can't mount up for her first lesson, thereby humiliating her. Stevie, you're an ass.

Lisa befriends Veronica instead of Stevie & Carole, although she quickly learns that Veronica is a huge spoiled brat because we all know that rich people are the devil. Carole knows that Veronica is actually THE DOOR SLAMMER, but won't tell Lisa under pain of not being able to ride Veronica's STALLION WTF (who puts a beginner rider on a stallion? Whatever, book).

I call shenanigans at this. Slamming the door was obviously stupid, but Veronica could easily say, "Oh yeah, sorry, the wind blew the door out of my hand. I'm so glad you weren't hurt!" Plot thread over. But no, we have to go on for 80 pages with Lisa thinking that Stevie is out for her blood.

A bunch of really boring stuff about Stevie earning money happens, and Lisa finally overhears Veronica being the biotch she is. Carole finds Lisa crying and they kind of clear the air, and Carole invites Lisa to TD's. Prepare to hear a lot about TD's.

Sadly the rest of the book is mostly about sorting out Stevie's money dilemma, which is extremely boring. Basically Lisa tells Stevie to use the racketeering setup she's come up with as her math project, and saves the day so Stevie deigns to like her. Stevie really comes off as a jerk in this book. All's well that ends well, and they establish The Saddle Club.

This book is basically just background info with a story thrown in to tie it together. Unfortunately, the background info is a lot more interesting than the storyline. I ended up skimming all the parts about Stevie because guess what - 7th grade math projects don't get more interesting over time. The parts with Carole and Lisa are the most interesting, but the temporary friendship Lisa has with Veronica is boring at best because she's so obviously a big bad (or as bad as this series gets). Also, I picked this cover because I'm pretty sure it's the cover I originally read it with, but there's about a bazillion others as I found out when I looked it up on Amazon.

That's all for this time! Tell me if you enjoyed it; hopefully someone else gets a kick out of going back in time for these books.

Teaser Tuesday!

From my recently completed novel, Timekeeper.

“Will you tell me about Connor?” I whispered. I hadn’t forgotten that day in the gym. But I felt like the words were made of glass; too fragile to bring out at just any opportunity.

The van jolted and as Alex yelled back, “Sorry! Bus with nuns!” I windmilled in the air for a second before falling flat on top of Neil.

He made a surprised “whuff” noise when I hit and knocked the air out of him, but his arms opened automatically and he hugged me to him.

I said, "Sorry," but anything else I might have added was cut off as Neil squeezed me to him like a kid grabbing onto its teddy bear when the night-light goes out for the first time. He was even stronger than he looked and I gasped for breath, but quietly. I didn’t want him to hear me and feel like he had to let me go.

We lay there for a long time, the sound of the engine drowning out our breath and jolts from the bad suspension making it difficult to fall asleep. Neil didn’t say anything, and I didn’t either. I was too afraid to break the moment, and I felt in a strange way that maybe Neil was answering my question in the only way he could.

Why I Think We're Too Hard on Our Heroines

This past week and weekend has been my own personal hell. I had a test on Tuesday and a test earlier today, both of which required me to study. So, in spite of the fact that my word count on my WIP was trundling along nicely, I had to stop around Saturday and pretend to study because I felt way too guilty writing.

Over this dreadful past week I contemplated many things (like why am I a finance major? am I a masochist? or just stupid, and my teachers are too nice to tell me?). One of these things was, of course, about YA books.

I'm going to give it to you straight, gentle reader: I am an exceptionally picky person. I hate lots of people for lots of trivial things, and it only gets worse when it comes to fiction.

However, I do think that we are a little hard on our heroines from time to time.

There are a lot of demands on an author who's writing a teen girl these days. The girl has to be independent, but not unbelievable. She needs to be witty, but not so sassy she's annoying. Being too upbeat isn't realistic, but being a downer all the time isn't okay either. She needs to be completely whole without a man, but have many hot smooches.

Basically, you're screwed, authors.

The problem is that real girls do have flaws, and while people talk about needing a heroine to be flawed, there are certain flaws the YA community is awfully hesitant to accept: being whiny, being helpless in the face of lots of danger, and being dependent on a guy for validation. All three of which are EXTREMELY realistic flaws.

That's why it didn't bother me that the whole of Bella's self worth centered around whether or not Edward liked her. Because guess what, this is precisely what teenage - and let's face it, older - girls do. They fixate on a guy and obsess about him until their brain dribbles out their ears. While it isn't the most desirable state of being, it's not an unrealistic one and I didn't have a problem seeing it in a book.

No, Bella bothered me because she was boring.

So, authors of the world, here is my opinion: I don't care what flaws your character has, who she's codependent on, or what validation she needs. If she's interesting and 3-dimensional, I will read about her. If she's interesting and doesn't pay the slightest attention to guys, I will still read about her, but I'll be awfully skeptical. Because I don't care if you're a werewolf assassin from a future dystopian society; if you're 15 and have the giggles for that cute leprechaun glassblower, you are going to be 100% fixated on that.

Speak

People have been talking a lot about banned books, especially because some supervillain wannabe (seriously, Wesley Scroggins? You belong at Lex Luthor and Sauron's tea party) has been trying to ban Speak.

Banning books is sort of like banning the third-floor corridor(if you get that, give yourself a big nerd cookie). As soon as you say NAY THY SHALL NOT READ, a bunch of people who otherwise would have completely ignored its existence say YAY I HAVE NEVER READ IT BUT NOW I MUST.

In this particular instance, I think the implication that rape = porn is much more disturbing. Rape is not about sex. Rape is about power. Rape has nothing to do with how pretty you are, or what kind of short skirts you wear. These are all horrible, uninformed views that lead to victim shaming.

People like Wesley Scroggins are the reason Melinda Sordino (and countless other real teens) are afraid to speak.

Road Trip Wednesday

If you could travel back to any historical era for research purposes, which would you choose?

Okay, this one's kind of cheating for me. Anybody who knows me well can answer this for me: I'd go back to Macedon circa 330 BC, as Alexander the Great conquered the known world.

I have a huge Alexander the Great obsession; I wrote my thesis on him for high school. Everything about his reign was epic and groundbreaking, from his religious and cultural tolerance to his military genius.

Ahem...

So yeah. I'm a huge history junkie, so there's tons of other places I'd love to visit. Elizabethan England when Francis Drake conquered the Spanish Armada. Jamestown, when the colonists eked out a living from hostile land. Rome under Vespasian, a strange mix of savagery and civilization. The Meiji period in Japan, when Japan lost its innocence and leaped forward several centuries in 45 years.

But I'd visit 330 BC Macedon all for one person. Now that's the kind of thing novels are based around!

The Writing Process

Here is a sampling of a day in the life.

6:00pm - Realize I've written nothing all day.
6:05pm - Find Cinderella II A Stitch in Time on youtube.
6:15pm - Get tired of hearing Cinderelly sing about how awesome her life is and write 200 words.
6:30 - Watch Evil Stepmother get the magic wand and think that if Cinderella had just gotten the bluebirds to pluck her eyes out this never would have happened.
6:34 - Get embarrassed that I'm watching Cinderella II and pound out another 500 words.
6:50 - Recover from embarrassment. See Cinderella sneak off to the palace and think that this never would've happened in the original because it requires doing something. Decide I like Disney sequels.
6:55 - Hear another song composed by rabid squirrels and an organ monkey and decide otherwise.
6:57 - Write 1,000 words to avoid thinking about how my life has come to this.

So there you have it. That's my writing process (sub in other Disney sequels, the Twilight movies, L.A. Ink, or anything else bad/dramatic). What's yours?

Writing Jealousy

Oh sweet goodness I haven't posted since April. Just smack me in the face now; go ahead.

There are lots of semi-good reasons; tests, full time internship, etc, but oh well. This summer was not the best one writing-wise; I've written more this week than I did the whole summer. And, well, let's not get into how much I've written this week.

It's weird; when I write I love reading writing blogs and I follow author's twitter accounts like the stock market. But when I'm not writing, I can't stand to read any of it. I guess when I don't write, I feel jealous of everyone else who is writing. Is that normal? Does anyone else do this? Tell me about your writing jealousy!

Teaser Tuesday

Thursday March 14th, 3:30 pm

In my room, picking out my outfit for tonight. Princess Sparklepoop (or as she’s decided to be called today, MorbidTears) is nosying around my room, poking at my desk and asking lots of annoying questions. I guess this is what it would be like if my parents were interested in my life. Thankfully they have their own stuff and pretty much only bother me when report cards come out.

This makes it a lot harder to follow through with my “dress slutty and hope someone hits on me in front of Cooper” plan. I mean, I can’t lead Caroline down a path of debauchery at only 13!

Thursday March 14th, 3:40 pm

Waited until she went to the bathroom and stuffed a low-cut halter top into my bag, along with a denim belt that was mis-marketed as a skirt.

Thursday March 14th, 4:30 pm

FREEEEEEEEEEEEDOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM! I managed to escape my family by telling them I had a study date with Mia and then a date date with Cooper.

The only downside of this is that now I am stranded outside for the next three hours.

Teaser Tuesday

“Well hey there, peeping tom,” an amused-sounding voice said.

Startled out of my terror (minimally distracted, anyway) I looked up and realized that I was at the next door neighbor’s second story window. And there was a guy leaning out the window, grinning at me.

And may I say (as a loyal girlfriend intent on getting it on with her current boyfriend)… damn.

He was some sort of Hispanic; dark skin the color of yadda yadda, as they say in those Romeo and Juliet but Nobody Dies movies. He had a plain white T-shirt on, but I was pretty sure there were some muscles under those sleeves. His hair was cut close – really close – but he managed to avoid the “I’ve been scalped” look so popular among skinheads.

I swallowed and said the first words that came into my head.

“Save me please?”

Neighbor Boy gave me one of those “she might be crazy” looks that I get a little more often than I’d prefer.

“Save you from what, exactly?”

“Um… the ground?”

He cocked his head to the side and gave me a flat-out “you’re insane” look.

“I’m serious! Look, I was bored so I climbed up this ladder because it was there, and now I’m very high off the ground. And I don’t want to climb down, because I’d have to do it without looking and knowing my luck I’d put a leg through the gap, knock the entire thing over, and come crashing through your living room.” I paused for a second. “And die.”

YA Highway: Whose Writing Career Would You Have?

The question over at fabulous YA Highway today is: Whose writing career would you like to emulate?

I've read a bunch of these and the general answer is "I'd like to be popular, but not J.K. Rowling."

Okay, well, I'm not afraid to admit that I would love money and fame and if I become the next Stephanie Meyer there will be nobody more happy than me. :) If I could provide for my family and tell my parents they never had to work again, any amount of dealing with the downsides of fame would be worth it.

Maybe one day.

My Thoughts on Paranormal Romance

Okay, this is a topic that's been coming up a lot recently. There have been already been a ton of great posts like this and this and this , so I'm not going to go over why this trend of psuedo-rapist love interests is a Very Bad Thing.

Instead, I'm going to talk about why I think these books have become so popular.

Paranormal books are (mostly) about escapism, for a lot of people. They whisk you away into magical adventures with magical creatures that you wish you could see and talk to.

Or do you? Most of these books (for instance the Wicked Lovely series by Melissa Marr) involve extremely dangerous creatures who hurl the main characters into life-threatening situations. Often friends or family members die, or at least are put in extreme situations. The main character has to grow up fast and make hard choices.

Do you really truly want to live in that world? Probably not. And yet we gobble up books like Twilight where the main character has her uterus ripped open by someone's teeth.

I think that the romances in paranormal books operate on this same principle. It has to be more extreme than real life. If someone were to hop into our bedroom at night and be like "Oh hai there how ya doin", we would be mightily freaked out. If a guy sexually assaults us, trust me, we will no longer find him attractive. Ever. Real life sexual assault is horrifying and frightening and demeaning.

But in books, this romantic intensity operates on the same principles of all the rape books that were so popular in the 50's and back. Girls like the idea of a boy being absolutely overcome with need for them, to the point where the girl can keep turning him down and he'll come back. In real life this doesn't happen because if we like someone, when they ask us out we go "YES PLEASE AND THANK YOU SIR". There's no chance for a guy to go to extremes chasing us. Books like Twilight and Hush, Hush let us live the fantasy without ever having to be in danger or discomfort.

Teaser Tuesday

From the WIP, now named Getting Some.

June 13th, 5:20 pm

Trying to research (aka reading Cosmo). It’s difficult though with Princess Sparklepoop looking over my shoulder in what is in her opinion a sneaky manner.

It’s not.

June 13th, 5:25 pm

Gave up reading; went onto mybook.com instead. It’s basically a glorified excuse to cause drama, but I like to look at the “In a Relationship with Cooper” on the side of the page. And there’s a little picture of the two of us so everybody can see how hot he is. Cooper doesn’t go to my school, so mybook.com is one of the better ways to make sure everybody knows that in fact I am not a widow.

I clicked through several people trying to get me to join a “Compare People” app. Oh good, an opportunity to give people a reason to hate me! I was sort of tempted to join the “Anonymous Opinions” app, but decided that leaving “You ruin people’s lives” on Mia’s page was probably not very best friendly.

Then again, neither was ruining my life in front of the entire cafeteria. Still, you win some you lose some. Although I seemed to lose more.

Author Appreciation Week:K.A.A. Applegate

Oooooops.

Okay, so I may have not done #3 yesterday. I was busy with... school? And life? Anyway. I'm gonna try to do TWO today to make up for it, but don't hold me to it. Now, on to the author!

K.A.A. Applegate is the creator of what is still one of my favorite series of all time: Animorphs. To me, this work embodies what good young adult is all about: it's exciting, has characters you fall in love with, and it doesn't pull any punches. The books were short and I think technically shelved in middle grade, but I don't think a lot of parents would want their children reading these books if they knew the content. Aliens that crept into your ear and took over your mind, constant war with humans and aliens dying and limbs being torn off, massive internal struggles between good and evil. Not to mention kids sneaking out all the time.

Not your average young adult book. But I absolutely could not get enough of them. I loved the moral battles they had to go through, and the way they never seemed more than human. I loved the creation of the whole world of aliens (and how they weren't just humans with bumps on their foreheads).

Animorphs wasn't the only thing K.A.A. Applegate wrote, though. She also wrote a lot of teen books during the 80s, all of which I also dug up at used bookstores. And loved. The most well known of these is probably the Making Out series, which was awesome. I have to admit, when I was about to go to college, I read the ones where the characters go to college over and over again. (Although at the end I still wasn't quite sure what was happening with Nina and Ben...)

Thank you, K.A.A. Applegate for giving me some of my most beloved books and characters. Although for some reason Blogger won't let me do the < thingies.

Author Appreciation Week: Louise Rennison

My author appreciation today is an author that I actually did find when I was legit in my teens. And these books... wow. I can't really tell you how much they affected me (which sounds funny since they're a completely comedy series).

Louise Rennison and the Georgia Nicolson books. Wow. These books are so side-splittingly funny that I cannot help but laugh out loud every single time I read them. In high school, my two best friends and I would sit around my kitchen table and take turns reading them out loud, even though we'd all read them before. The language in the book became part of our language (and still is, even though we were about 14 when we read the books for the first time). We tried out all the british words and kept the ones that didn't make us sound like huge posers (mostly). I go to Scotland every year, so I would snag up the books early and bring them home in all their shiny hardcover glory. On the occasion the release date wasn't timed right, my dad would always go to some lengths to get it from amazon.co.uk. Guess he knew how much I loved them.

These books really influenced my idea of good comedy, and how to make it. They're real life, but then they go that little bit over the edge that makes them hilarious. Which is basically my model for good comedy, and good novels in fact: real life, but more.

And, though this is really neither here nor there, the Fabbity Fab Fab Journal is the place where I first wrote down, "My boyfriend just said he loved me. Whaaaaaaaaaat?!"

Bison Horn dance to you, Louise Rennison!

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesday time! This is from the (still, yes) as-of-yet untitled WIP


Freezy’s, the ice cream store, was packed when we got in. Since I was holding Cooper’s hand I looked around hoping to see someone I knew, but no luck. We've been going out for almost a year, but it's never too late to lord your good fortune over other people and reduce your own karma to zilch.

We hung out there for awhile; I got fat and Cooper got a health shake. Bleh. He says they’re good; I say they’re rabbit food. Then again, this may be the reason that he is 170 pounds of pant-worthy muscle and I’m 155 pounds of barely-mobile flab.

Then we got back in the car and headed toward my house. Neither of us turned on the radio. The silence got really thick; it almost obscured the gigantic pink elephant dancing in the backseat. I shifted in my seat; this car ride was about as comfortable as when Dumbo went on his acid trip.

Author Appreciation Week: Tamora Pierce

This week is Author Appreciation week! Hosted by Heidi King, who has a book coming out that I'm vair vair excited to read.

The really difficult part of this was figuring out which author I wanted to talk about first, but when I got down to heavy thinking (management homework? what management homework?) I realized that the first one I thanked could only be one person: Tamora Pierce.

I think pretty much any girl even somewhat into fantasy who's between the ages of 13 and 25 will recognize this name and start squeeing immediately. Tamora Pierce wrote incredible quartets set in the fantasy kingdom of Tortall. Her best known books are probably the Alanna series and the Daine series, and Kel is pretty well known too.

I flat out adored these books. These are the kinds of books that the covers are falling off of because they've been read so many times. They featured strong female heroines who still had believable flaws and lovable personalities. There were some pretty frightening bad guys (some who even rose from the grave with the help of the good guys), and guys I fell completely in love with (hello Shang master and GEORGE THE THIEF. YES.).

These books dealt with a lot of complex issues - sex, teacher/student relationships, poverty, the idea of the world needing teamwork more than it needs lone heroes. Nothing was simple, and nothing was preachy.

I honestly feel like these books changed me a little. Not in any concrete way that I can point to, but their presence affected my life and my dreams as a kid.

So thank you, Tamora Pierce, for writing these books. I'm seriously looking forward to the Numair series!