Get Organized and Win a Free Copy of DLS

In one of those happy Twitter meet-ups, I've been 'talking' to Geralin Thomas, one of the on-air organizers on Hoarders on A&E. She's super nice and understanding on the show and in real life, and she's invited me to guest-blog on her site. Head over to Metrozing, leave a comment before Monday, May 3 and you can win a copy of DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS signed by moi.

On this date: In 1994, South Africa held first multi-racial elections.

We Need Books That Aren't "ABOUT"

Okay, that is a pretty random title. What I mean is, books that are about being gay without being "coming out" books. Books that have Black/Asian/Hispanic main characters, but aren't ABOUT being Black/Asian/Hispanic. There have been a bunch of books lately that have non-stereotypical characters which is great, but I think we need more that have that aspect within the story itself. Malinda Lo did this really well in ASH- a beautiful, romantic story where the love interests just happen to both be female.



I just finished the new YA book WILL GRAYSON/WILL GRAYSON by John Green and David Levithan. I love both of the authors and I loved the book. It is about two guys named Will Grayson, and each author writes from one of the character's point of view. One WG is gay and one WG is straight but has a gay, football-playing best friend. The writing is excellent and intelligent, the characters are fun and the plot is wacky. You should go and get a copy. I mean like now. We'll wait.

Except for a small "coming out" thread, the gay characters are treated normally and even celebrated. What other book would include a musical called "Hold Me Closer" written by and starring a ginormous football player named Tiny Cooper? It was this "coming out" thread that got me thinking about gay characters in YA books.

Now, I'm not gay, so maybe I shouldn't be talking about this at all. Maybe we do need more books about the moment that the gay character comes out to parents and friends. But I've been thinking that maybe we also need more books where the characters just ARE gay rather than having the plot be ABOUT being gay. Does that make sense?

I think this also carries over to books about minority characters. I adore books where the love interests are of different races but it's barely mentioned and not an issue. Or the main character isn't white, but it has no bearing on the story itself. Justin Larbalestier did this in LIAR where the main character is black just 'cause. So did Jackie Dolamore in MAGIC UNDER GLASS (no, we're not going to talk covers in this post).

I think the more kids (and adults) see these kinds of characters in normal situations, the less of an issue it will become. I was just thinking about how nice it would be if there were no such thing as "coming out". Everyone would just be.

If you're a writer, you should go out and write books like this. If you're a reader, you should go buy them. Feel free to disagree in the comments. Feel free to think I'm an idiot. Feel free to name other books that have gay/minority characters as a normal part of the plot. I'd love to hear what other people think .

On this date: In 1973, "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree" tops the charts.

Good Characters/Bad Choices

When DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS first came out way back in February, I read every little scrap of information I could find. These days, I don't read as many reviews if only to keep my confidence up for the book that I'm working on. Occasionally though, people send me links to reviews and then I can't help myself. It's like being handed a plain brown envelope and having someone say - this may or may not say that you are awesome. Open it if you want. Against my better judgment, I usually want.

In the reviews lately, I've noticed an interesting trend. Several readers have said that they didn't like the book because Lucy makes bad choices. Um, yeah. That's kind of the point. One reader said recently that I didn't convince her that Lucy's choices were the best. As an author, I'm not trying to.

Most good books are about bad choices. If books were about good choices I can give you a one word review: boring. If DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS were about good choices, lets see how it would go:

Lucy comes home to find her mother dead in their hoarded home. She gasps and cries and then calls 911. She's not afraid to let anyone in, because she reached out for help years ago from her friends and teachers who all know about the problem and support her thoroughly. The paramedics and the police arrive, dig her mother's body out and take her away. Then Lucy calls her therapist and goes to live with her father.

Just taking a look at the bookshelf behind me, I can see so many other examples of bad choices making for good reading.

*Stephanie Meyer's TWILIGHT has Bella falling hard for a sparkly vampire that is clearly dangerous to her and everyone around her, yet she keeps him a secret from her parents. Bad choice.

*In Maggie Steifvater's SHIVER, Grace finds a naked, wounded boy on her back porch. Instead of calling the authorities, she moves the werewolf into her bedroom and falls in love. Bad choice.

*In 13 REASON'S WHY by Jay Asher, Hannah internalizes the wrongs that have been done to her and commits suicide after recording tapes so that people will understand why she is so upset. Yet another bad choice.

I could go on. Think about books that you love. I'll bet that there is at least one bad choice in every one of them.

The interesting thing is that teens seem to get that it is only by exploring the bad choices we can see what might have been. It seems to be mostly adults who are having issues with Lucy's bad choices. I am an adult, so I actually get this reaction. While I was writing the book there were so many times that I groaned out loud because of what Lucy was doing. Her entire life is built on a foundation of bad choices by so many people. I wanted to tell her to stop, to reach out to someone, that it wouldn't be as bad as she thought. But that's not my job. My job is to sit back and let my characters make bad choices, and hopefully write a good story.

On this date: In 1861, the Civil War began.

The Waiting Game

*Fingers drumming*
*Heavy sighing*
*Refreshing email*
*Refreshing Twitter*
*Doing laundry*
*Rearranging kitchen cabinets*
*Washing the dog*
*Washing the cat*
*Applying band-aids to forearms*
*Folding laundry*
*Fixing sprinkler system*

This is the part of writing that is actually known as waiting. It is often the most important part. One thing that writers never talk about is that you hurry, write obsessively, stay up late to get the story finished and then triumphantly submit it to your agent/editor/crit partners. And then you wait.

While you wait, you usually don't work on anything. Whatever you do, don't go over the manuscript in question, because you will find things you want to change, and nothing screams newbie louder than re-submitting a book you already submitted because you thought about it for awhile and now it's better.

If your book is part of a series, don't work on the second book because the first one might be crap. If you know the waiting is going to be awhile, then you can try to work on something completely different, just know that when you get the original manuscript back, your characters might be pissed off at you because you cheated on them with another book. It is often best to busy yourself with things from the above list and learn the zen art of patience.

This week, I went to visit a high school creative writing class and a fourth grade class. The funny thing is that both groups asked a lot of great questions, and a lot of them were the same. One that came up was if I listen to music when I write. The answer is no. I need it completely quiet when I write, or I get distracted from the movie in my head. I do listen to music when I'm getting in the mood to write though, and I thought it would be fun to show you a couple of the songs that I listened to over and over again while I was writing this last book.







On this date: In 1805, Hans Christian Anderson was born.

Thank You!

Thank you to everyone who participated in the Library Blog Challenge! I got a total of 101 comments (2 were from me) which is astounding! I'm going to round the amount up and donate $125 to the San Leandro Public Library (I never said I was good at math).

With so many school districts closing their libraries and public libraries struggling, your support in any way is more valuable than ever!

Thanks for coming by and helping us all out!

Library Blog Challenge

This is a library-loving blog challenge thought up by the fabulous Jennifer Hubbard whose book The Secret Year has gotten lots of great buzz!

For every commenter on this post between now and midnight on March 26th, I will donate $1 to the San Leandro Public Library, up to an amount of $200. You don't even have to say anything profound in the comments - 'librarians rock' will do.

Note that my pledge is “per commenter”—so if a single person leaves 50 comments, that still only counts once! But you can do more by spreading the word ... please link to this post, tweet about it, and send your friends here so they can comment and raise more money.

If you’re moved to make a flat-fee donation to your library, or to start your own challenge, you are quite welcome, and please leave that information in the comments.

For a complete list of participating bloggers (and to visit other sites where you can help libraries just by leaving a comment!) visit the writerjenn blog at http://writerjenn.livejournal.com/

The End

Last night at 12:04 (okay, technically this morning) I wrote the two sweetest words in the writer's lexicon: The End. And yes, we really do write them at the end of a manuscript. They are extraordinarily important because they mean that the story has come to a satisfactory conclusion, the characters are happy where they are, and the low, steady hum of anxiety that his been living in the center of your chest for months is miraculously gone.

A lot of people comment that many books start out strong and then sort of fall apart toward the middle. If the writer is anything like me, that is because by the time they've gotten to the end, they've gone over the beginning about a gajillion times. It is impossible for me to continue with the manuscript if I've added something to the story arc or a character has changed. I have to go back and fix it before I move on.

Yesterday was an awesome day. All afternoon, I knew I had only one more scene to write. One. I knew what it was, I'd already seen the movie in my head. The only thing left to do was get it down in the laptop and I'd get to type The End. And then a funny thing happened on the way to those magic words. Can you say procrastination? All evening I messed around on Twitter. I joined a chat. I checked my Amazon ranking. I even went to Target. All to avoid sitting down and getting to the point where I could write The End.

And then I figured out why. Because I didn't want it to end. I think you have to really love your characters (and be in love with some of them) and I realized that I was going to miss hanging out with them. Finally, after all the Tweeps and all the people in my house went to bed, I sat down and finished it in less than an hour.

But of course, it's not really the end. Anne Lamott in her awesome writing book Bird by Bird has a great chapter on finishing a book.
I think my students believe that when a published writer finishes something, she crosses the last t, pushes back from the desk, yawns, stretches, and smiles. I do not know anyone who has ever done this, not even once.

What happens with this The End is that it is now in the hands of brutally honest but kind critique partners who will read it and tell me all of the places where it stinks. Then I will fix it some more and send it to my teen beta readers (hi Devon, Portia and Liesel) who will hopefully tell me where it stinks. Then I will fix it some more. And then it will go to the fabulous Agent E who will read it and tell me where it stinks. And I will fix it some more. That last part might happen more than once. And then hopefully, there will be an editor out there who reads it, sees something great inside the mess that is the story and buys it. And then they will read it again and tell me where it stinks. See a pattern yet?

The good news in all of this is that I get to spend more time with my characters and see them grow even more in the hands of people who aren't as close to them as I am. I may get to write another snogging scene, which is probably the most fun you can legally have on paper. And then, some day many many months from now, there will be a real The End for this story.

Unless, of course, I get to write book 2...

Stats on the (sadly, still untitled) new book:
Start date: November 17th, 2009
End date: March 17th, 2010 - (I just noticed that they're both the 17th!)
Total word count: 78,542
Nights up writing past 1am: 63 (approximate)
Cups of coffee: 304 (actual)

On this date: In 1932, John Updike is born.