i know that i'll need this for the rest of my life

i haven't gotten any work done on my novel this week, but i have a really, really good reason.

i'm nursing a broken heart.

seriously.

i had a really emotional night on sunday, and even though it's days later, i'm still reduced to tears when i think about it. i'm sure to many my reason will seem silly, juvenile even, but i can't help it. i have a hollow spot inside me, and i'm afraid it might never get filled.

you see, my favorite band of all time is breaking up for good. forever. never to tour or make music again and i'm gutted.
i first fell in love with them as a girl 25 years ago. i mean, look at them! who wouldn't?

clearly there's some damn good breeding in norway.

but my love didn't subside after their overplayed first hit disappeared from MTV. their second album i hold dear to my heart. it's their most passionate, in my opinion, and it really spoke to me. not just as a kid, but through junior high, high school, college and as an adult.
i bought all their albums through the years, including solo projects.

my love for them never waned, not even when they went on a seven year hiatus. and in 2000 they delivered an amazing album along with an amazing european tour. i even had tickets to see them play in brussels and paris, but at the last minute had to cancel my travel plans.

they have since released three more albums, and have toured all over europe. i always hoped i'd get to see them here in the states, and last sunday my wish was granted.
but at a cost.

i can tell you i had the best time at the concert. i danced and sang during the entire show, doing my part to honor the band that gave me so much. when they played songs off their second album, well i was very affected. it brought me right back to those nights i'd lay on my bedroom floor with my head touching my speaker so the music could flow directly through me. and when they closed out the show with their biggest hit, well.....
i stood there. and cried. i tried to savor every note, every last second of their performance.

photo by Catherine 

i had no idea i'd feel like a part of me was torn out when they walked off the stage. i always knew their music had a special place in my heart, and that i used their songs as a way to cope through many rough times in my life. but intellectually knowing something and emotionally feeling it are two separate things.

luckily mr. write is very understanding and allowing me to grieve. and really, that's what i'm doing.
it's one thing when your favorite band goes on a break. another when they announce they will no longer record or tour as a group.
the soundtrack to my life is made up of a-ha songs, and it hurts to know they will never contribute to it ever again.

it's all so heartbreaking. and final.

i know this is something i'll get over and it's not the end of the world, but for right now i'm willing to be consumed by my sadness. so, i've been spending my spare time watching uploaded clips of their final american concert (the one i attended) and trying to keep from having a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes.

it's all subjective

i was a senior in high school the first time i saw this piece by boccioni.
to me it was the representation of tenacity - the total unwillingness to be anchored down. it was the human spirit thrusting forth, no matter the obstacles.
my teacher, however, curtly informed me that i was wrong. that it was a representation of how traditional thought keeps us from moving forward and the artist's struggle with a society tied to the past.

in my opinion you are never "wrong" when it comes to your personal impression. no matter what the teachers, experts, or even the artists say, whatever message you take from an artwork is completely valid.
because it's all subjective, isn't it?

i think about boccioni's sculpture a lot because it's symbolism applies to my everyday life.
whether i'm running to get back into shape, or working on my novel, i often have to dig a little to find the endurance needed to complete that mile or chapter.

now, i could look at it the way my art history teacher did.

i could struggle with every word i type, hoping to string enough of them together to make a coherent sentence. i could check my word count every minute hoping to see progress, but realize i'm basically at a stand still.
when running i could focus on how heavy my legs are, as if i have lead weights around my ankles. how every step depletes my energy reserves and soon i'll be running on fumes.

but i don't view it her way, just as i didn't in high school.

sure, i might find myself struggling to finish a chapter, but every page that gets written is a page closer to completing my first draft. and if it takes me two days to write two hundred words, so be it. but those two hundred words are two hundred more than i had previously.
and every mile i put in, no matter how sluggish i may feel, is another mile of strength training. and every day i can measure the proof in my improved stamina and determination.

personally, i prefer my method of thinking to hers.

do i or don't i?

perspective.
it can change everything, can't it?

one of the big arguments (or area of differing opinion) in YA is whether cursing is necessary when writing for a young adult audience.
there seems to be two main camps on this issue: those who believe bad words have no place, at any time, in YA fiction, and those who believe it adds realism to the story.

well, let me tell you my wip has A LOT of cursing.
not like in a quentin tarantino "i'm gonna strive to make every other word the F word" way, but in a normal teenage angst sort of way.
but not only are there bad words, there's smoking (from a certain faction of characters), references to sex, and some marijuana use.

wow.
when i look at it on paper it looks like my book is very gritty and dark.
and yes, parts of it are, but as a whole it is not intended that way.
as i've been writing the book i've felt the cursing, drug use and sex references were necessary because it's what the characters are doing. yes, i was the one who created them, but i think most writers find their characters flesh themselves out. they are the ones who tell you how they should be depicted. so when my character reached for a cigarette, i wrote that in. when i write his diatribe filled with swear words, it's because he actually said those things.

and honestly, i felt "hey, these are the kinds of things kids are doing nowadays anyway. it's YA fiction, not middle grade." BUT i have to say i'm starting to have some concerns. and my concerns didn't appear because someone made a good argument for no cussing in a blog, or that i happened to read an awesome YA novel that was PG. nope, my concerns are named max and connor.

i have known max and connor most their lives. they just turned fifteen this year and are great kids. they are both extremely athletic, and get good grades in school.
when i was thinking of rounding up beta readers later in the year to give me feedback on my manuscript, i though max and connor would be ideal since they are part of my target audience, and they could tell me if my male main character was real enough.

but then i got nervous. what if max and connor saw the language, sex and drug use and thought since i wrote about these things, i must condone them? what if reading about the situations made them curious to try them? all of a sudden i was doubting whether what i'd included in my book was absolutely necessary.
and then i wondered why i never had any cause for concern when i though of anonymous fifteen year-olds reading my work. why did it not cross my mind that they might think i was condoning the behaviour i was depicting. or that they might be influenced by what i had written.

well, after some reflection i've decided to keep writing in the manner i started.
i'm not saying it's set in stone, but since i'm halfway through the first draft i think it would be a mistake to go back and tweak things. so i will forge ahead, finish the manuscript and then give it to my beta readers.
if the consensus is i have too many gratuitous bad words, etc., then i will look at possibly changing parts of the novel.

but of course, that is waaaaaay in the future.

a crime of fashion

besides working as a barista, i was also an assistant to a fashion photographer.
it was an extremely fun, high-pressure, and intense learning environment. i met some wonderful mentors, artists, and just plain great people at this job, but i also met my fair share of kooks.
there was one woman, a former model from brazil, who was very pleasant, until she found out i was a writer and became very clingy.

mi's mistake #1 - upon our first meeting i offered to read her manuscript and tell her what i thought.

mi's mistake #2 - instead of corresponding through email, i gave her my phone number. which she used. often.

mi's mistake #3 - within first three pages i could tell the manuscript was a train wreck, but instead of telling her it was not for me, i forced myself to read all 768 pages.

i think we've heard the old adage so many times: write what you know, but sometimes what you know isn't worth putting to paper, feel me?

this ex-model's manuscript was about the fashion industry.
ok, at first glance that's fine, right?
the book started out with a former model receiving a phone call from her ex-agent, in fact - the opening paragraphs weren't that bad. but this ex-model character (the first character the reader is introduced to) did not reappear until after page 300.
really?!?
her ex-agent was only mentioned a couple times later in the book, and the subject of their phone conversation was never revisited.

the book was supposed to be about a high-powered fashion family and their exploits. apparently the reader was supposed to glean from the descriptions that the writer was referencing all the great designers, like lagerfeld, galliano, and donetella versace.
well, all that flew over my head, but maybe someone else could have sifted through the endless pages and description to come to that conclusion.
the most memorable character in her novel was one of the adult children in the high powered fashion family.
i take that back - he wasn't that memorable but his parrots were.
the author took great pains to tell the reader about this character's twelve parrots. she spent over a page on each parrot, giving physical descriptions and personality traits, as well as the best events and designer outfits suited for each parrot.

BUT this wasn't even the worst part of the novel.
the worst part, in my opinion, was that her manuscript was full of misspelled words, incorrect subject/verb agreements, and had no contractions. at all.
everything was "i am, can not, there is". let me tell you, 700+ pages of no contractions will make your brain hurt.

so, when it came to giving her my opinion i tried to be honest.
i told her that it needed to be edited. heavily.
it needed a fluent english speaker to proof read it (she asked if i could edit/proofread. i think you can deduce my answer).
it needed to have a different opening because it was very misleading to the reader.

she listened to me, told me that i just didn't "get" her book because i didn't know much about the fashion industry, and that she really needed some money so she was just going to self-publish it as is so she could sell copies to her friends.

it was at that point i wished her good luck and left our coffee meeting.
and decided i'd never again offer to read the manuscript of someone i'd just met.

julie & julia & mi

i recently watched the film Julie & Julia.
for those of you who haven't seen the movie, it's the true story of a woman, julie powell, who begins a blog documenting her year-long journey to cook every recipe in julia child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. the film cuts back and forth between julie's blogging adventure, and the story of how julia child became a great chef and the author of one of the most popular cook books in history.

i really enjoyed the film, and as a blogger i found a sort of kinship with julie powell.
i remember so well getting that very first unsolicited comment on my blog. i remember how validating it felt to have more than a handful of people regularly reading my posts. i felt honored when people linked my blog on theirs, and downright giddy when i had on average a hundred page hits a day.

when i started my former blog, i had no expectations at all. it was just a way to blow off steam so i wouldn't blow up at customers. it was also an exercise in writing - a way to help fine tune my craft.
it wasn't a way to make money or gain notoriety. in fact, since i was writing anonymously, i wasn't really looking to make any waves in the blogosphere.

but then a crazy thing happened.
in the matter of one day my readership increased 400%.
i discovered an online article had mentioned and linked my blog. i now had readers from all over the globe. more and more online journals and columns began mentioning and linking me and i began to fear i'd be outed and fired from my job (which thankfully never happened, although someone in starbucks corporate was a regular reader of the blog).

during this time i was querying agents, hoping to land representation for my novels.
i mentioned my blog in my query letters, and received quite a bit of interest in it, but not in my young adult novels. i had a few agents suggest i write a proposal for a non-fiction book about my blog, and at one point i even sat down at the computer and tried to write one. but i couldn't.
i didn't want to.

now mr. write, to this day, thinks i blew a golden opportunity. although very supportive of my writing, he doesn't quite understand why i do it.
it's not for money, nor is it for notoriety.
it's for the sheer love of it.
of course, it would be a DREAM COME TRUE if i could one day be published and get paid for doing what i love. but even if i never land an agent, i will still write.

as crazy as it may sound, i did not want to be known as a blogger-author. i didn't want my first published work to be a regurgitation of a blog i did purely for enjoyment. i didn't want my passion for writing fiction to fall by the wayside because there were agents who wanted to jump in on a trend.

so, it's funny.
even though i felt that kinship to julie powell, i actually related better to julia child.
it was julia who was driven by her passion. it was her passion that led her to perfect recipes. and those recipes became part of a seminal work.
it's her journey i'd prefer to emulate, truth be told.

not blocked - bored!

for the last four days (well, nights really, since the KidLit won't let me write during the day) i have been stuck on the same chapter. it's not uncommon for me to spend close to a week working on a chapter, but usually i've got momentum, pushing the plot forward.
this time i've written about  six pages and all i feel is *blah*.
i thought maybe my order of events was too linear, so i mixed things up a bit.

yeah - that didn't help.
so now i'm thinking of changing the order again. but i'm afraid i'll end up with the same result. oi.

the issue with this chapter is the exposition.
it's ALL exposition. too much "tell" and not enough "show".
the individual elements are necessary, and do indeed push the plot forward, but the manner in which i've written the chapter is just dull, dull, dull.
i mean, you know there's a problem when the author is bored to tears by her own work. i've found myself skimming through paragraphs while i proofread. THAT is just WRONG. so tonight i'm using a trick i haven't used in a while. tonight i'm doing my cut/paste/erase method.

that is to say, i'm going to cut/paste the chapter in a different file, but i'm erasing it completely from my wip. this way i'm not actually "losing" the work i've already done, but it's also not taunting black-type sitting there in front of my eyes, keeping me from looking at the work from a different perspective.
this method has worked for me in novels past, and i'm hoping it will work again. it's pretty obvious that i need to let go of what i've already written so I can move on and have the manuscript flow again.

it's kind of like cutting the dead weight. it's leaving an anchor behind so i can sail on unencumbered.
it's what i'm hoping will work to get me back on track.

tragedy and comedy

last night, in between writing chapters, i watched part of the 1944 film Laura.
it's the kind of old film i love, filled with cliched characters: the brooding masculine detective, the beautiful and somewhat mysterious female lead, her charismatic yet immature fiance, and the older man-of-the-world who not so secretly loves her.

gene tierney plays the title role, and she is quite beautiful and alluring. i didn't know much about her as an actress, so i did some googling. i skimmed over the basics, like where she was born and how she began her career. what did catch my eye, however, was that she contracted rubella while pregnant at her only appearance at the hollywood canteen. as a result her daughter was born prematurely - deaf, partially blind and severely mentally retarded. years later at a tennis party a woman approached gene tierney and confessed that although sick with rubella, she'd snuck out of quarantine against her doctor's orders just so she could meet her favorite actress at the hollywood canteen.
i can only imagine the flurry of emotions running through gene tierney at that moment. i'm sure a part of her wanted to kill that woman who claimed to be her fan. a part of her must have felt relief that her daughter's condition was not her fault. there must have been a part that mourned for the normal life her daughter almost had.

my heart broke for her when i thought of her in that moment, facing the woman who had unknowingly changed two lives forever.

agatha christie used this incident in her mystery The Mirror Crack'd, and i can't blame her for using this story because it's so dramatic it almost seems like something out of a greek tragedy. but i don't know if i'd ever have skin thick enough to weave someone's true pain into a work of fiction.

and for the bit of comedy: did any of you read about this? just goes to show that spellcheck alone isn't always enough. wonder where the copy editor was on this one.

write, read, revise!

i'm feeling good about my current novel.
no, i haven't miraculously found more time to spend writing it, but the fact i'm still enthusiastic and pushing forward is pleasing. also, i've been getting positive feedback from my two readers, which really makes me happy.
i've posted before about my different state of mind with this novel - that i'm not rushing full steam ahead, and am carefully listening to my readers' critiques. for my first draft, i've only two people reading my chapters as i write them. neither of them are authors, and only one is actually familiar with the young adult genre.

"so why the hell did you choose those two to give you feedback?" you might be asking.
well, i'll tell you:
my female reader is a voracious reader. she often reads two books at a time and can spot surprise endings a mile away. i picked her to critique my wip because she can clearly articulate what works plot wise for a reader. she knows which characters need more development and when the pacing needs to be picked up. i picked her because she is part of my target audience.
my male reader has never read a young adult novel except for twilight (and he read that only because of the vampires). i picked him to critique my work because he's a screenwriter and knows how to develop a storyline and characters. he can easily tell when there are plot holes, or when scenes are overwritten.

every writer knows how important it is to edit their work (well, at least every writer will learn how important it is). i'm not even done completing my first draft and i'm already thinking about the changes i'll be making when i do my revisions! but no matter how much you revise/edit your own work, you still need feedback from other people, especially if what you write is intended for an audience.
i'm really lucky to have two readers who are willing to read chapter by chapter and give me feedback. i'm lucky to have already been able to use their critiques to improve my novel, even though it is still a work in progress.
and i'm lucky that they are willing to read it all over again once i've finished my second draft.

but even though my two readers are fabulous, and have great insight, i still will search out other beta readers when i've finished my novel (and my first edit). and i will listen to everything they have to say about my manuscript, whether it's positive, negative or indifferent. and i will use what they say in the best way i know how to make my novel as strong as it can be.

book review - the body finder by kimberly derting

my two cent(ence)s - great premise with a great prologue. loved how the main character finds the bodies, but not in love with the writing or how the plot develops.

the body finder has one of the most promising openings i've ever read. had i not already bought the book, i would definitely have slapped my money down on the counter for it after reading the prologue. there was a beauty to how the paragraphs formed, and a wonderful sense of suspense as we are introduced to the main character. i absolutely loved the opening pages, which is probably why i felt so let down by the rest of the book.

violet is a high school student who has the ability to find the bodies of dead animals if they've been hunted or killed by a predator. she senses the bodies through "echos" which she can either see, hear, smell or taste. unfortunately for violet, these echos persist until she can give these animals a "proper" burial, and only then will the echos fade. she is also able to detect these echos on the predatory animals, like her cat who loves to hunt mice and birds. the reader discovers that when an animal kills, it is imprinted with the echo of its victim.
when violet is just a child, she discovers the body of a murdered girl, which the reader knows will not be the last she discovers.

see? really good premise, right?

violet doesn't just sense echos - she senses the changes her lifelong best friend, jay, has gone through over the summer. now, for the first time, violet sees jay as more than just her partner in crime. she can't help but want more from him, though she is too scared to admit this to jay, or her other friends. now, to the reader it is GLARINGLY obvious jay wants to date violet, but still violet goes through her inner monologue of "does he? or doesn't he?" which for me got old quickly.
now, i'm sure there are a ton of readers out there who love to know all the details of every encounter. they want to know every time jay's hand brushes against violet's how her heart begins to beat faster, and how her temperature rises, or how she's positive her cheeks are flushed, yadda, yadda, yadda.
obviously, i am not one of those readers.

the "tension" between violet and jay felt so drawn out to me that i was skimming the pages to get to the "body finding" part of the story. and when the author did bring us back on track to where violet discovers a girl who'd been killed by a serial murderer, well, it still fell flat for me.

at page 40 i knew violet would find more than one victim of the killer, the killer would realize violet is responsible for his victims being unearthed, the killer would come after violet, and violet would realize it's the killer because of the imprint he carries on him. and i didn't mind that i knew this in advance (i think most people would be able to figure it out) because the premise was so good i was sure i would enjoy seeing how everything unfolded. but i didn't. though i do have to give the author credit for an interesting twist (which i won't reveal here).

i REALLY wanted this book to be good, but it didn't live up to the promise of the opening pages. in fact, i felt the book was about seventy pages too long (due to the redundancies of violet's inner monologues). obviously i am in the minority. it appears to be pretty popular, and clearly enough people believed in the author's writing ability since it did get published. i'm curious to see how kimberly derting's follow up book will be.

distracted by prince charming

i haven't posted or worked much on my wip in the last week because of two reasons:
1. i'm fighting off a bug, and
2. i've been distracted by the first man i ever loved

it started with a dream - vivid although extremely short, which got me thinking non-stop about the first person ever to make my heart flutter.
and this past week i've been hooked. i've been looking at pictures and videos, remembering the different places i saw him, basically obsessing.

i've been driving everyone around me bonkers, including mr. write, with my non-stop talking, researching, watching the former object of my desire. i couldn't really understand how one small dream could trigger my journey into the past, but a close friend of mine brought up a really good point.
"you've been reading nothing but young adult books that take place in high school," she said. "and your current novel also takes place in a high school. it makes sense your brain is processing things like a teenager because you're trying to recreate that world in your book. so it's no surprise to me your obsessing over your first love."

and i totally concur with this. although i first had feelings for this man at age 4, it wasn't until high school that i REALLY went overboard for him. i even told my high school boyfriend that we were only dating temporarily, since i was convinced i would end up marrying the man i was gaga over.

so, i'm hoping that this (wonderful) trip down memory lane is coming to an end so i can get back to writing!

btw - here is the man who swept me off my tiny feet at age 4, who was on my mind non-stop while in high school, and who i will always, always love and admire:

yes, the dandy highwayman himself: adam ant.