Trying to Get Published - The Theme Song

First off, there's still a contest going on, people! Follow the blog/twitter and post a comment on yesterday's post for the chance to win two free YA books! And maybe cookies. Okay, everyone seems grossed out by the cookies. But guys, I make really good cookies! Do it before the clock strikes Thursday!

In other news, I have chosen the best theme song ever for when you're sending out queries/on sub. Yeah! It really is about sharing your awesome stories with other people, not about $$$. Remember that young padawans. REMEMBER.



Yay!

BOOKIES CONTEST

Okay! I decided it's finally time to withdraw fully from my damp, dripping, lonely writer cave and do a contest. Yes I know! A contest! Nobody on the internet has ever done this before!

What? They have? But did they have books and cookies? BOOKIES?

Why a contest? Because, well, the YA community is so excellent and sweet. I want to know more of you. That's my only motivation really. Also, I have too many cookies. Really, it's awful. I need some sort of cookie release valve. That's what this contest is. A cookie safety measure to prevent me and the boyfriend's tummies from sploding.

To win, all you have to do is follow the blog and/or twitter, then write a comment on this post. All comments will be entered! Yay! And if you win, you will get not one, but TWO YA books. Of your choice! Not even the crap I have lying around from when I was 12! Anything you want!

Just imagine, poor, shiftless writers of the interwebz: Divergent and Wither could be yours. Invincible Summer and The Liar Society. LA Candy and A Shore Thing. Just kidding, you can't have A Shore Thing. But everything else is on the table! (um, as long as it's still in print and costs less than, I don't know, $50?)

No

Plus I'll send you cookies! Good ones even! Unless you don't want them because you doubt my hygenic-ness. Which is fine too. I'll just go off somewhere and sob while I eat fistfuls of cookies. Lonely cookies. Lookies. 

Please don't make my stomach explode.

Contest closes at 3:47am PST Thursday morning.

Oh iPhone how I heart thee

So I'm trying to write a 100K novel from May 11 to June 10. 30K of word vomit sheer poetry down so far. None of this would be possible without my secret weapon. My precious.

Oh iPhone. How did I write anything before you? It was like I never knew writing at a break-neck pace, until I knew you.

Top five reasons why the iPhone is the ultimate writing machine:

1. Incredible bed and covers synergy. With the iPhone you can write curled up in bed under the covers. You don't need a desk. You don't need a chair. You don't even need LIGHT. Because all the little keys glow. Like tiny, nurturing suns.

2. Carry it anywhere! No more lugging the laptop downstairs to the coffee shop. No more scribble-filled napkins and receipts stuffed in your pockets, purses, boyfriend's pockets, and bra straps because you didn't have a proper notebook with you.

3. No distractions. Yes, there's internet on it. But it's small and slow and I'm too cheap to afford a decent data plan. There's nothing between me and book. Nothing. Not even A KEYBOARD. Except Puzzle Quest for the iPhone. Fie on you Puzzle Quest!

fie

4. Ultimate efficiency. Now when I have a free second, I don't have to waste it texting friends, thinking or having conversations with people. Carry an iPhone in your pocket and every spare nanomoment can be spent writing as fast as your thumbs can fly. Fly thumbs, fly fly fly.

5. Much easier to write while driving. Relax, I'm kidding.

Is this what heaven looks like?

Props where props is due: I was inspired to try this by the lovely and talented Lauren Oliver, who wrote most of Before I Fall on her smart phone. Damn was she on to something. Proving once again she is a dynamo on so many dynamo-tastic levels.

The Month of Never Sleeping

Last week, I had this brilliant idea to drown my sub anxiety. I thought, "Hey me, what if we wrote a book in a month?"

Other me: "But your last book took a year."

Me: So how cool would it be if I did it in a MONTH?!

OM: It's called NAnoWRiMo. And it's in November.

M: I never know which letters to capitalize.

OM: Don't change the subject.

M: But I'm going to write 100K though, not 50K. Yeah. YEAH. It's gonna be SWEET.

OM: Excellent. So by June 10th you'll have 100K of crap. Oh wait, except your first drafts are always 160,000 words.

M: Just on the first book!

OM: Aaaaaand your second was 135,000.

M: I cut it down!

OM: But it took two months.

M: YOU DON'T OWN ME!!

Soooo, looks like I'm writing a new book this month. After the first week, I've got 30,000 words. Wheeeee!!! It has been hell on my blogging though. Also hell on my not-getting-fired-from-my-job. I'm going to make it though. Because I have a secret weapon. Which I will reveal tomorrow in all it's tippy-tapping glory. No, it's not Scrivner. But it is Apple-y. Yeeeessssssss.

Seven Stages of Submission Hell

We all know being on submission to publishers is heck, or hell even. Observe the stages and know true suffering.

Elation (Day 1): You'll probably have a book contract by this time tomorrow!

Yay! YAAAAY. yay

Zen (Day 2, Morning): You write for the joy of it, not the money. You finished your beautiful precious novel baby and nudged it out of the nest for the world to see. No matter what happens now, you're successful in your own eyes.

Stalking (Day 2, Late Morning): This book needs to fucking sell. You lurk on random editor's twitters, on the 1 in 1 billion chance they're actually the ones reading your book. Every word is an arcane code, speaking to you in anagrams about how much they actually hate your book.

Innocent Editor X: Can't wait for the Gossip Girl finale! Are Blair and Chuck finally gonna get together or what?

You: Oh God, she likes contemporary. She hates romance. She likes romance. My book has romance. I could quit my job and revise and resend tonight. I know my book is set in 1800s Croatia BUT I CAN PUT SKINNY JEANS AND COCKTAILS IN IT I SWEAR.

Obsession (Day 3, 2:00am): You trawl through blog archives for every YA deal made in the last 2 years. With horror, you realize some authors sold within hours. You create spreadsheets and graphs to better chart what a worthless loser you have become.

Repetitive Refreshment Injury (Day 3): The graph took until 5:00 in the morning. You're too exhausted to work. There's nothing left but you. And gmail.

Despair (Day 3): You realize you don't have to hit the refresh button for gmail to update. Life loses all meaning.

Phoenix-like Rebirth (Day 5): You never liked that book anyway. THIS, this new project, THIS shall be your glory. And you shall finish in ONE MONTH, not like last project, no not the one that took 4 and half years. The agent will love it and you'll be back on sub in 6 weeks. Movie deals will pour in within minutes. MINUTES! YES. Yeeessssssss...

You will never surrender, no matter how much your beta readers hate everything you write nor how long your inbox remaineth empty. For you are writer and writing your sweet sweet crack whore. YOU SHALL PREVAIL.

Can Genre Fiction be Art?

Last week, I read Kody Keplinger's great post about the tension between literary and commercial fiction. She makes the excellent point that commercial is not necessarily inferior to literary fiction, and I completely agree. The whole question got me thinking. What makes a book "artsy" as opposed to "commercial" anyway? Like Kody said, we know it when we see it. But what is actually going on that makes us feel like a book is "deep"? And what about all the genre fiction that also feels like great art?

Commercial fiction can also be literary. Think The Dark Knight (Artsy Superhero) or Jane Austen (Artsy Regency Romance). Michael Chabon's friggin mission statement is to craft fiction that blends the line between art and genre. It's a worthy goal. But what exactly makes a book artsy, if not its lack of genre trappings?

Okay, so maybe I have a teensy crush on Michael Chabon. OH GOD DON'T TELL BOYFRIEND.

 It's a tricky and sort of subtle divide. Let's take two very popular (dare I say classic now?) YA books: Twilight and City of Bones. I liked both, but I loved City of Bones. It was funny, exciting, the characters were entertaining and it scratched my eternal Buffy itch. But...I think Twilight is more "literary." Again, I don't why. It's just this subjective sensation of depth I get from the book. Twilight, I think, says something about small towns and the tension between purity and passion. I sure as heck enjoyed City of Bones. But I didn't get a message out of it. City of Bones is straight up commercial. But Twilight is something else--a hybrid of sorts. But WHY?

Do me a favor and imagine Mortal Kombat music now. k thx

I refuse to believe it's just subjective. There has to be some way of quantifying what makes an arty genre book vs. a "just-for-fun" genre book. I having a burning need to find the reason, because 1) I have a secret desire to write artistic fiction but have no idea how, 2) I WAS TRAINED AS A SCIENTIST DAMMIT AND I NEED ANSWERS. Lucky for you, lovely readers, I have the answer (sort of. not at all really. i'm a failure.) After thinking about it all week, I've hit on three characteristics that blur the line between genre fiction and artsy fiction:

1. Less Stuff Happens: Genre fiction is characterized by lots of fast, fun plot. Stuff blows up, there are love triangles, shopping montages and awesome fight scenes. Artsy genre fiction tends to be more focused. There are likely fewer characters and fewer fight scenes (sad panda). The time saved by excising sex scenes is devoted instead to developing characters and their internal struggles. A great example is two very excellent YA Dystopian novels: The Hunger Games and The Giver. The Hunger Games definitely has a message, but it's doesn't quite take the time to be literary--it's too busy fighting mutant werewolves, which is awesome. The Giver finds its drama in small discoveries and epiphanies, like technicolor apples. And if there's anyone out there who wants to argue Lowry isn't literary, you can just get right out of town on the next bus.

2. Scenes are Theme Driven: Genre books like thrillers and mysteries use almost every scene to move the plot forward. If you think back to artsy books you've read, you may recall that there are a lot of scenes where nothing happens (e.g. all of Moby Dick). There is a point to them, of course - the point is they move the theme along, rather than the plot. In Harry Potter, scenes are tight as a drum, and you come out with another clue to check off your list - "Okay, Snape was in the Room of Requirement last night - BUT WHY?" In Lord of the Rings, there are entire chapters about goddamn inns named after goddamn ponies and you have no idea why they're there. But it's that willingness to slow down and provide rich detail about the characters and the world they live in that changes (notice I didn't use the word elevates!) something from genre fic to arty genre fic.

3. The Language is Profound: Excellent genre writers have tight, efficient language that gets the job done. Stephen King is great because every sentence he writes is a shining beacon of perfect folksy-horror voice. But in a truly literary book, the writing is so beautiful or so wise it brings weight and meaning to a tale even if the plot itself is fast and fun. The stellar, wonderful, my-hero Robin McKinley's book Sunshine is a straightforward vampire urban fantasy (the best, says I. That's right, click the link. Buy it. Yeeeessss). But there are a few sort of throw-away paragraphs where she evokes this gorgeous picture of baking bread in the morning and the beauty of daily rituals. McKinley's language makes you feel like you've read a book about the comfort of routine and the danger of self-discovery, even though she never comes out and says any of it. We've got so many YA genre authors who write words like gangbusters: Maggie Stiefvater, Kirsten Hubbard, Kimberly Derting. When you're reading their books, it's hard not to feel like you're reading art, a little. Or a lot.

I suppose no YA writer will argue that genre fiction can't also be art. The question of what makes something art, is course, more subjective. These are just my thoughts. What are yours?

Does YA Objectify Guys?

One of my favorite ways to pass the time at home (and work, yikes) is reading blurbs about upcoming YA books. Like movie trailers, the little plot paragraphs on Amazon give me exquisite tingles of anticipation. But lately my happy tingles have been stopped cold by a line I seem to read everywhere these days: "And then she meets unbelievably gorgeous Boy X." Really? Again?

It wouldn't be so bad if the boys were just super hot, but too often they're perfect too. Yesterday I was reading a new book (otherwise excellent) where the main boy was the hottest guy in school, was a perfect gentleman despite the MC being a giant bitch, and devoted his life completely to the girl after knowing her for five minutes. That sounds more like a wish-fulfillment robot than any 17 year-old guy I've ever met. Crap, the 25 year-old guys I know are nothing like that.

Okay okay I know. YA readers and writers love to fantasize about the slightly dangerous but oh-so-perfect boy who will risk his life for us even though he's knee-meltingly gorgeous and, well, no one's ever actually asked us on a date before. But I think we writers need to back away from this. It's starting to border on objectification - just as bad as women are objectified in pron and really awful action movies.

Does/did anyone out there actually have a "hottest guy in school" anyway?
Are they holding elections now or something?

Of course there are loads of great books where the guy has his own awesome thing going on. Kartik from the Gemma Doyle Trilogy and Hannah Moskowitz's great boy-friendly books come to mind. But I see the reverse too often to feel entirely comfortable about it, even in my own writing. It's easy to make our lead characters flawed, because often they are a reflection, however refracted, of ourselves. Making the person "we" fall in love with imperfect is harder, because in some ways the author is as blind to his faults as the smitten MC.

The antidote, I think, is to put more thought into our male characters (or make our boyfriends read our books. The boy shredded the male characters in my first book). The best guy characters have goals and interests (and maybe even agendas!) that have nothing to do with the main girl. They have flaws like real teenage boys. They play too many video games and speak mostly in Colbert Report and Archer quotes and generally space out (my 19 yo brother is proof of this).

It's okay to make a perfect character once and a while. But there should be a good reason for it, like he's not very handsome so he makes up for it in charm, or he's grown up desperate to please his OCD mother who's the general of an interstellar space armada. Everyone has flaws. Even our mysterious demi-god-werewolf-ghost boyfriends who just transferred to our high school school from Borneo who OMG is so dreamy.

How do you avoid cardboard characters of the opposite sex?