Monday, November 29, 2010
Music Monday - Reason #5685 Why I Love Glee
*sigh* Careful, watching this might cause your heart to explode with LOVE!
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Giving Thanks!
As Thanksgiving approaches, I'm thinking of all the things I'm grateful for. Since this is a writing blog, I'll share some of the writing related things that fill me with joy and gratitude.
Like Kristi, I'm grateful that I have the time to write and the support of my family who help and encourage me to find and make the time to meet my writing goals.
I'm grateful for the awesome crit partners I've met in the last year and who I'm also fortunate to call my friends. (Lacey, Kristi, Natalie, LOVE you guys!)
And most of all, I'm grateful for the amazing, generous, supportive, open-minded, open-hearted, talented, giving members of the YA writing community. I am constantly overwhelmed and awed by the effort this community puts into helping others whether it's in becoming a better writer, or living a better life. I am so proud to be a part of this group of people and to do my tiny part in helping others and sharing the love of great books to anyone I can.
Since this is a time of being grateful, and the season of giving is just around the corner I wanted to share a link to the Season of Love and Hope Auction benefitting children's writer Bridget Zinn who is battling colon cancer.
TONS of amazing authors and publishing people have donated some seriously awesome things like critiques and ARCs and vacations so check it out if you have the time.
I hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving! Thanks for reading this blog. I'm so grateful for all of you!
Like Kristi, I'm grateful that I have the time to write and the support of my family who help and encourage me to find and make the time to meet my writing goals.
I'm grateful for the awesome crit partners I've met in the last year and who I'm also fortunate to call my friends. (Lacey, Kristi, Natalie, LOVE you guys!)
And most of all, I'm grateful for the amazing, generous, supportive, open-minded, open-hearted, talented, giving members of the YA writing community. I am constantly overwhelmed and awed by the effort this community puts into helping others whether it's in becoming a better writer, or living a better life. I am so proud to be a part of this group of people and to do my tiny part in helping others and sharing the love of great books to anyone I can.
Since this is a time of being grateful, and the season of giving is just around the corner I wanted to share a link to the Season of Love and Hope Auction benefitting children's writer Bridget Zinn who is battling colon cancer.
TONS of amazing authors and publishing people have donated some seriously awesome things like critiques and ARCs and vacations so check it out if you have the time.
I hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving! Thanks for reading this blog. I'm so grateful for all of you!
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Why I Heart Pretty Little Liars and ABC Family!
So you might remember last month, when the folks from Pretty Little Liars and ABC Family sent me a pretty much lifetime supply of orange M&Ms (seriously, we're still eating them). Well, they've surprised me again this month and it's AWESOME!
Today the UPS man brought me...
AN APPLE PIE!!
How cool is that? I felt like Oprah or something when I saw the Little Pie Company Of The Big Apple label and opened the box to find a fresh apple pie, packed in ice! Just in time for Thanksgiving dinner. Seriously, (it bears repeating) how cool is that?
As if ABC Family hadn't already impressed me by choosing to make PRETTY LITTLE LIARS into an AWESOME TV show, and making me a Secret Keeper, surprise food gifts is totally putting them over the top.
And what would a gift from Pretty Little Liars be without a clue? Want to see another sneak peek of the upcoming Winter Season? Go here:
http://abcfamily.com/gobblegobble
Also check out the Pretty Little Liars Blog where you can enter to win cool prizes, get character low down, read cast interviews and more!
The new season starts JANUARY 3RD but you can catch up on what A's been up to (besides sending me treats) and any episodes you missed right now ONLINE or during the PRETTY LITTLE LIARS MARATAHON on ABC FAMILY also on JANUARY 3RD! If you haven't seen the show yet, you should definitely check it out! It's goodclean dirty fun!
Today the UPS man brought me...
AN APPLE PIE!!
How cool is that? I felt like Oprah or something when I saw the Little Pie Company Of The Big Apple label and opened the box to find a fresh apple pie, packed in ice! Just in time for Thanksgiving dinner. Seriously, (it bears repeating) how cool is that?
As if ABC Family hadn't already impressed me by choosing to make PRETTY LITTLE LIARS into an AWESOME TV show, and making me a Secret Keeper, surprise food gifts is totally putting them over the top.
And what would a gift from Pretty Little Liars be without a clue? Want to see another sneak peek of the upcoming Winter Season? Go here:
Also check out the Pretty Little Liars Blog where you can enter to win cool prizes, get character low down, read cast interviews and more!
The new season starts JANUARY 3RD but you can catch up on what A's been up to (besides sending me treats) and any episodes you missed right now ONLINE or during the PRETTY LITTLE LIARS MARATAHON on ABC FAMILY also on JANUARY 3RD! If you haven't seen the show yet, you should definitely check it out! It's good
Sunday, November 21, 2010
In My Mailbox -46
In My Mailbox is hosted by Kristi at The Story Siren.
Just one this week. I loved STOLEN by Lucy Christopher so I thought I'd check out her new one even though it's for a bit younger age group.
Flyaway by Lucy Christopher
Just one this week. I loved STOLEN by Lucy Christopher so I thought I'd check out her new one even though it's for a bit younger age group.
Flyaway by Lucy Christopher
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Save Some For Later
Now that we've been doing Tangled Fiction for a couple months now and I've had the chance to write two story starts for Natalie and Lacey to finish, I've made some discoveries about plotting and revealing information.
When you're writing something that someone else has to continue without knowing what's supposed to come next your first instinct is to put in enough details to explain what it is you're doing. But you soon realize that if you do that, the next writer either has nowhere to go because you already gave up all the cool info and twists, or is locked into your idea, which is the opposite of collaboration (unless you use James Frey's definition of the word) and what you've written is mostly telling and infodump with perhaps a side of interesting character.
You learn that in order to give the next writer a chance to shine, and to give the story a shot at being all it can be, you have to leave threads dangling and hint at things without explaining them. You have to trust your partners, and your readers to pick up on the subtle cues, and to want to keep reading to find out what they mean.
In a word, you're doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing when you write a book all by yourself!
You know that feeling you get when you're starting a book, (or short story, or introducing a new character) where you feel like you have to get ALL the necessary info out so readers will get what you're doing and LOVE it? Well, that feeling is wrong. Those writing books - the ones that say don't reveal anything until it's absolutely necessary are right.
It took until I had to take an idea, set it up, and then let it go for me to really understand how that works. When I write an opening to one of our shorts, like my most recent one, KISS OF DEATH, I start with an idea:
What if there was a girl so beautiful that every boy who saw her was compelled to kiss her? What if her lips were poisonous?
Then I have to do some world-building, some plotting, and I have to make sure I leave something for the next writer. In the case of KISS OF DEATH I had A LOT of ideas. There was so much I wanted to (and did in the first draft) explain. I knew how Rosemina came to be cursed. I knew what she did all day while she was home alone. I knew what the Queen really thought about her. I knew what happened after my section ended. But I cut all of those things because they would work better if they were revealed later on or in an active way. I trusted that I had an interesting predicament (Everyone wants to kiss her. Everyone that kisses her dies. And because of that, people want her dead.) and that people would want to keep reading to find out what happens next.
This is the key when plotting your story and maintaining your pace. Drop hints. Dangle potential plot twists, make your reader excited and curious to see what happens next. Let them form opinions about why a character says or does something, and then reveal the info when it will be the most active, the most important, the most mindblowing thing that could happen at that moment. Save something for later. (And, as I always say trust your reader It's scary, but you'll be glad you did.
When you're writing something that someone else has to continue without knowing what's supposed to come next your first instinct is to put in enough details to explain what it is you're doing. But you soon realize that if you do that, the next writer either has nowhere to go because you already gave up all the cool info and twists, or is locked into your idea, which is the opposite of collaboration (unless you use James Frey's definition of the word) and what you've written is mostly telling and infodump with perhaps a side of interesting character.
You learn that in order to give the next writer a chance to shine, and to give the story a shot at being all it can be, you have to leave threads dangling and hint at things without explaining them. You have to trust your partners, and your readers to pick up on the subtle cues, and to want to keep reading to find out what they mean.
In a word, you're doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing when you write a book all by yourself!
You know that feeling you get when you're starting a book, (or short story, or introducing a new character) where you feel like you have to get ALL the necessary info out so readers will get what you're doing and LOVE it? Well, that feeling is wrong. Those writing books - the ones that say don't reveal anything until it's absolutely necessary are right.
It took until I had to take an idea, set it up, and then let it go for me to really understand how that works. When I write an opening to one of our shorts, like my most recent one, KISS OF DEATH, I start with an idea:
What if there was a girl so beautiful that every boy who saw her was compelled to kiss her? What if her lips were poisonous?
Then I have to do some world-building, some plotting, and I have to make sure I leave something for the next writer. In the case of KISS OF DEATH I had A LOT of ideas. There was so much I wanted to (and did in the first draft) explain. I knew how Rosemina came to be cursed. I knew what she did all day while she was home alone. I knew what the Queen really thought about her. I knew what happened after my section ended. But I cut all of those things because they would work better if they were revealed later on or in an active way. I trusted that I had an interesting predicament (Everyone wants to kiss her. Everyone that kisses her dies. And because of that, people want her dead.) and that people would want to keep reading to find out what happens next.
This is the key when plotting your story and maintaining your pace. Drop hints. Dangle potential plot twists, make your reader excited and curious to see what happens next. Let them form opinions about why a character says or does something, and then reveal the info when it will be the most active, the most important, the most mindblowing thing that could happen at that moment. Save something for later. (And, as I always say trust your reader It's scary, but you'll be glad you did.
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