Digital Re-cap of my Weekend Hurricane Style!

I'd like to shout out a big thanks to all my new blog and twitter followers. I am slowly making my way around to all of my fellow campaigner's blogs.  I am usually on top of these things, but Irene dealt me her no-power card which pummeled me into virtual darkness for the better part of the weekend.   It did make for some exciting times though, especially for those of us who refused to sit home and wait it out.  As promised to my friends in the mid-west who have never quite experience a hurricane, here's my digital re-cap.

Dock is fine, boat -- yeah not so much

Yes that boat is mowing down a small Boston Whaler

Took them over three hours to get this boat hoisted back into the harbor.  And yes, I watched the whole thing,

This one is going to be tricky -- no way, save the water, to get a crane in to move it.

And for those of you who wanted a more interactive feel to the storm, I have posted a video here.  Forgive the jiggling camera in the middle of the video.  It's kind of hard to stand completely still when it'sblowing over 70mph!

No Preaching Allowed!

If you are starting your YA novel with the intention of delivering some moral lesson, then STOP!  I guarantee you, no matter how subtle you think you are being, any agent, any editor, even your seasoned critique partners will pick up on it instantly.  The purpose of YA literature, contemporary YA lit in particular, is not to deliver some moral message or teach a valuable lesson.  Let’s face it, teens aren't reading our books to learn and grow; they are reading them to escape their own lives, to live in someone else's reality for a few hundred pages.

It is equally important to remember that YA books are about our teen MCs themselves not, I repeat NOT, their parents.  A couple of days ago a YA editor tweeted that “parents in YA lit should be treated like eyeliner.  Use it sparingly.”  I couldn’t agree more. YA contemporary books revolve around an issue, problem, or incident that propels or MCs into action.  These conflicts can be external or internal, or more likely a combination of both.  But it is our teen MCs who need to wade through the crap. They are the ones that need to struggle, make some heinous mistakes and eventually grow as a character.  If you have a parent who is hovering, always involved, always there to guide them and intervene before things spiral out of control, then where is your MC's struggle.  In other words, how is your MC going to descend into their own personal hell and resurrect themselves if a concerned parent is always there to pick them up and carry them to safety!

Am I proposing that every YA contemporary novel have a MC who is adopted, whose parents are conveniently dead, or has been shipped off to a boarding school?  Hell no.  In fact, I am a big proponent of parents in YA literature; I just think they need to say in the background, sprinkled in very sparingly  to heighten a conflict or explain a MC’s living situation.  And trust me; this doesn’t take pages or even entire chapters to accomplish.     

PS  I recycled this title from a previous post of mine dealing with the same issue. You can find it here!  

 

Crusader Here!

Rachael Harrie from Rach writes... is running her third Writers' Platform-Building Campaign. This is my second tour of her campaign; and, not only is it great fun, but it is a fantastic way to connect with fellow writers! Sign ups began yesterday and close on the 31^st August.   She has got some fun challenges and fantastic prizes awaiting us as well.  Head on over; hope to see you there!

Titles, titles, and more titles.

So you write a book, have it critiqued, revise it to death, then spend countless weeks struggling to come up with the perfect title.  Failing to find that perfect set of cover words, you put out a call to your critique partners, hoping they can come up with something awe inspiring.  Alas they do, and you send them many thanks and ship it off, only to be faced with the sudden realization that there is another book (although nothing like yours) with the exact same title.

This is my writing curse. Does it bother me?  Not so much, anymore.  It's happened to me so often that I no longer become attached to any one working title, willing to toss it aside without a thought when my agent suggests something  less abstract. My published friends say that my nonchalant attitude is a good one, that most books go through numerous title changes before they ever hit the shelves.   I am hoping they are right!

As of now, my WIP has gone through four title changes, and I fully anticipate a few more.  How about you? how many title changes do you usually go through before you settle on the perfect one?

Where are my fellow YA Contemporary Writers

Where oh where are my fellow YA contemporary authors?  I know you are out there; I have connected with a few of you in the past :)  And now I need your keen eye and honesty.

I have hit a crossroads in my revisions and would love to find a few fellow YA contemporary writers to bounce it off of.  I'll even return the favor, line edits and all if that is what you want/need!  I have an amazingly talented base of critique partners who have been invaluable throughout this entire process.  They write some of the best YA Fantasy and Paranormal I have had the privilege of ever critiquing.  But I need the eye and creative spark of a fellow YA contemporary writer to give me one last read.

No NO NOOOOOO!

 I am doing a lot of critiquing lately; it keeps my creative mind in the game while giving my muse time to stew over my own revisions. The one downfall to this is pet peeves, little things that I purposely keep out of my own manuscripts because they drive me insane.  I find myself pointing them out in other people's manuscripts, often swearing at my computer when I come across them.  My biggest one:

"Furrowing of the brow"

Seriously, there are a thousand and one other ways to convey a boy's mood besides describing the movement of his eyebrows.  I assure you, brow arching is not the universal symbol for conveying sarcasm, annoyance, worry, sexual arousal, and so forth.  In fact, I have seen it so much lately, that I have ceased to point it out in the manuscripts, simply inserting a sarcastic "Edward Cullen much?" at the end of the chapter.

So my fellow writing cohorts, what is your biggest pet peeve?  I will make a list and post them at the end of the week!

A Fresh Set of Eyes

I am in the midst of revising a YA Contemporary manuscript of mine. One that I have had a love-hate relationship with for the past few months.  One that I can't seem to get off my mind.  With a fresh set of revision notes in hand, I tore up every chapter, then left it there to stew.  My CP's have suffered through this process with me, having looked at close to eight versions of the same manuscript, all without complaining, all offering invaluable advise.

But they, like me, have eight sets of scenes, eight sets of dialogue, revisions, and character tweaks all running a muck in their heads.  So, at the advise of a long standing CP, I took a giant leap of faith and sent my manuscript off to someone new, a writer who has no previous experience with the WIP or my writing.

Now I wait, see if a fresh set of eyes can pick up any inconsistencies, any bits and bobbles from the other versions that I intended to cut out.  It's been a long time since I let a stranger read my work; and, dare I say, I am nervous, scared witless of what she will come back with.

Unrevise I tell you, Unrevise!

I wrote a YA contemporary novel. Er . . . who am I kidding, I wrote two.  Under the watchful eyes of some amazing CP's these manuscripts were revised, characters eliminated, themes altered, and threads added.  My CP's struggled  through this with me as I kicked and fought back before making certain changes, whining like a two-year-old --"That's not what the story is about," and "but I don't want to write bubble gum and cotton candy." 

For all my complaining, I made the changes and ended up with  two well-written, cohesive manuscripts that bared no resemblance to their original versions. No matter how much they shined, regardless of how many words of praise I got on the tweaks, I had this horrible feeling that these manuscripts were no longer mine. In an effort to appease the masses, I'd revised my manuscripts to the point where I'd lost my voice. Trusting everybody but myself,  I buried that suspicion and sent them off to my agent, knowing she'd make the right call.

Her call came last week in the form of revision notes. I laughed when I read them, literally sat down on the floor and laughed until I had tears streaming down my face.  See, she'd never seen the original versions of the manuscripts; I only given her the edited copies.  Each line I read of her notes had be backing out a piece of my revisions, untweaking characters, removing entire threads, and bringing the manuscript back to its original form . . . back to my voice.

I let the revision notes simmer for a few days then got started on them yesterday.  It is not as simple as just tossing her the original manuscript. There are threads in the newer versions that I want to preserve, so it is really a matter of blending the two.   But that aside, its amazing to finally realize that I really, really, REALLY need to trust  my own writing instincts.  It's even better to know that I have an agent that truly gets my voice -- unrevised and all!

Side-note:  I would be remiss if I did not say that I have the best group of CP's a writer could ever ask for.  Although they weren't the ones suggesting the changes, they had the grueling and selfless task of watching me make them, cheering me on when all I wanted to do was toss the manuscript and the revisions aside.  A thousand thanks to you guys.

Stop Waiting!

I have a fair amount of writer friends who are immersed in the query trenches this summer. It is an exciting, anxious, and scary time for them.  I know, I have been there before.  They find themselves checking their email a gazillion times a day . . . at home, at work, on their phones.  Every response is hyper-analyzed,  Hell, even the silence is analyzed; and, in the the end, they are right back where they started . . . waiting.

My advise.  Stop waiting and start living.  For some that means starting another WIP.  For others it means turning the computer off completely, taking the kids to the beach, or going out with friends  For me, it meant checking my email only twice a day -- at lunch and before I went to bed.  I started another WIP, double-dug and re-planted the garden, and caught on some long over-due reading.  The offers of rep. came when they were ready, and me sitting glued to my email had nothing to do with it.

So there it is.  Go forth and live.  Bask in the accomplishment that you actually wrote an entire manuscript, had the fortitude to devise a query letter, and the courage to hit the send button in the first place.  Then go rediscover the world around you. 

Happy Wednesday!