Life. Writing. NaNo.

*Shrugs off Worst Blogger Ever Mantle*

*Dusts off blog*

*Breathes deep*

OMG IT'S NANO TIME, GUYS!

:) This, as you can probably tell, makes me very, very happy. I love NaNo. I've been doing it both officially and unofficially for a couple years now and even though I've never actually won, I adore it all the same.

I never really set out to win. Mostly I just try and get words for new ideas from my head to the paper and let the chips--or the word count--fall where they may. As I generally write more intently in the winter months (and let's be real here, Texas doesn't really HAVE winter months), November's the perfect time for me to reestablish my Butt In Chair routine.

NaNoWriMo: Just what the doctor ordered.

This year I'm less prepared than normal (which is no small feat, let me tell you). I have absolutely no friggin' clue what my project is going to be. (Can you tell I'm a pantser to the core?) I've got a new idea for a YA contemporary that sure is tempting, but I've also thought about going back to an older story and restarting it from a clean slate. What to do, what to do. I guess I'll find out tomorrow. (And yeah, I'm that person at the restaurant who can't ever decide what she wants until the waitstaff is eyeballing her over the order paper, foot tapping impatiently. It's a disease.)

That said, I'll probably pop by every couple of days to give an update, even if it's only for my own accountability: I'm going to shoot for 30k in 30 days.

Anybody else participating in NaNo? Got a project in mind? Got opinions about what my project should be?

Best of luck to all!

Currently listening to: Ballada by Gusstavo Lima

cover design: when boredness strikes.

When you develop a blister by 9 a.m. you know the day is going to be a long one. True to form, by the time I got home all I wanted was a cup of coffee, a chocolate bar and a nap, not necessarily in that order.

Still, I had things to be doing besides caffeinating,  bingeing or sleeping. Most specifically I should have curled up with the monstrous stack of papers in dire need of my red pen's attention, but I just couldn't make myself. Opening any WIP revisions made me want to eat fifteen pounds of m&m's, and that's not really conducive to the current fitness torture regimen.

Instead I dragged my body and laptop to the nearest recliner and collapsed. Ended up opening GIMP 2, a program I've been meaning to master and just haven't put in the time or effort. (Because I'm pretty goal-oriented, jacking around--on something that's not writing, anyway--with no real project in mind isn't my idea of a good time.) I needed a project that was simple and pretty straightforward to A) not murder my little fried brain and B) not exceed my very limited GIMP skills. The end result was a mock cover for the WIP, which felt like actually working on it but at the same time not. (Best of both worlds, really. Delusions are wonderful.)

In the end I edited the flowers in GIMP and then crapped out and copied/pasted/rearranged/resized in Paint, which is when things got a little distorted, but hey. All's well in procrastination. Some of the text, the tagline specifically, is kind of hard to read, but I'm actually pretty pleased with it. Hereyago:

Right. Now to [try and] actually get something productive done.

Currently listening to: The Perishers--My Heart

Ah! Janitors!

Hi folks.

Long time, no blog. I know. [hangs  head]

Even though I haven't been blogging much (erm. AT ALL), there's still been lots going on with me. Firstly, I completed all my summer classes, which means that I'm done with real classes FOREVER*. Yay! Secondly, I've been overrun with labwork, and the IT guys at my university apparently hate the genetics lab because they killed our internet to the room**. So that's where I've been--cooped up in the cold, boring lab without Pandora to keep me company. Que terrible!

Anywho. [Knows none of the above is particularly interesting]

So the point of this blog post is to thank Ellen over at WordThief for sending me JANITORS by Tyler Whitesides. Admittedly, in all my awesomeness***, I won the book, but still, she sent it.

Like it arrived. In the mail. For the realsies.

I've had a little trouble focusing as of late, so I haven't quite finished it yet, but I'm really enjoying it thus far. The main character, Spencer Zumbro, cracks me up with his mannerisms. Daisey 'Gullible' Gates is JANITORS version of Luna Lovegood, and who doesn't love a Luna? All in all, I'm sure I'm going to really enjoy it (once I find two seconds to sit down and finish it.) And seriously, how can you not love that cover? The little stripey newt thingy is twelve kinds of adorable and you know it. But I digress.

I have a feeling I'm going to really love this book. Not to mention, once I get done with it, I'll probably hold my own giveaway for it--pay it forward and all, y'know.

So. Follow Ellen. She's a YA writer who always has some great blogposts going on, as well as some rockstar-awesome contests. (And Ellen, I'll be getting you a picture with the book--once I drag a rake...er...comb through my hair. :)

Until next time,

~l


*Thats a lie. Sort of.
** Damn them.
***This is also a lie. The only awesomeness in this post is Ellen, who hosted the contest. I just posted a comment.


What I'm listening to: New Slang by The Shins

Yep. This.

In Real Life.

Recently, a post in the Wall Street Journal has garnered the ire of many a YA author and aficionado. Before I say more, find the article here .

The particular piece has been rebutted (aka, torn to shreds) by many, many other people thus far. It's caused a veritable outrage on twitter, making the '#YAsaves' tag/conversation the third most active twitterthingy going on in the US. That is A LOT of conversation.

And it's a good thing, don't get me wrong.

But for me, instead of getting all wound up over it, it's easy to just let it slide. Roll off, no problem. Why? Well that's easy: Because I don't care what some obviously narrow minded  woman has to say about my genre. Seriously. Couldn't give two shits. (Como se dice 'publicity stunt'?)

Should the article have been filed under the 'Opinion' headlines? Probably. Would it have still sparked off this wildfire of a debate? I think so, because we're all so passionate about what we write. (Which is why we write in the first place, right?)

I don't think anyone with a lick of common sense will allow the article to cast a cloud of distaste over all YA. It's clear to me that the woman in question didn't look very hard to find something suitable for her daughter to read. Anyone who does think blood and guts and torture is that all YA is, well, fuggetaboutem.

What I obviously DO take very obvious issue with is the free and easy way the writer drops names--not cool. She obviously never learned the golden rule of writing: Respect your fellow writer. If we don't respect each other, who will? It's hard enough to make it out there like it is, without all the backstabbing, etc. in the workplace. Who hasn't gotten the "Why don't you get a REAL job?" question? Pisses you off, huh?

That's the aspect of the article that made me most irritated--the lack of writerly respect. THAT pisses me off. THAT makes me want to say "Okay, darling, if you can do it better, by all means...."

Then you'll hear the crickets chirping.

I don't have gratuitous violence in my YA. As a matter of craft, it's my intention to not have gratuitous ANYTHING in my YA. Everything in the story plays an integral role. But there is violence. There is blood. There is loss. Because the stories I try and tell could be real to someone, somewhere. My characters get broken down, kicked around, but come out on the other side stronger for it. Some of the best people I've ever met in my life weren't raised in 'perfect' homes. Everything wasn't marigolds and roses all the time. They had hard lives, much harder than mine was as a child. And if I can ever measure up to 50% of them, I'll consider myself extremely blessed.

The YA section the lady perused obviously didn't fit her tastes. That's okay. Real hurts sometimes. I just turned off the news because hearing about some poor little girl who may or may not have been murdered is all anyone's talking about and it makes me think lots of people shouldn't be parents to dust bunnies, much less children. The story is incredibly sad. Should we not talk about that either?

If you want to shelter your children from some things, fine, I don't care. (And just because FOX owns the WSJ, it doesn't make this a conservative/Republican movement. My folks are VERY republican, but have always encouraged me to read whatever I wanted to.) Don't make this a politics issue; it isn't one. This is one misplaced opinion that's gotten a lot of attention, nothing more, nothing less. (We're so pumped about about it, I think we're actually making it more than it is. A LOT MORE.)

If you don't want real, I'm sorry, you won't like my YA. But that's okay. Because maybe there's someone out there, somewhere, who needs it more than words can say.

They're the ones I'm writing for anyways.