Young Love

I not only write YA, I also read a lot of YA. YA novels have a different pace than Romance novels. But it is hard to find a YA novel that doesn't have an element of romance.

In many YA books, the young lovers make a huge deal out of their relationships. Like every case of puppy love is sole mates. It often bothers me. So few teen relationships end in happily ever after, so why does every teen read have to end that way?

I never had a high school boyfriend. I had a handful of crushes and went to a few dances. But all my high school romances were counted in weeks if not days. It wasn't until college that I found myself in any semblance of a real relationship, and even those courtships were relatively short lived.

Perhaps that's why I find it hard to take teen romance seriously. Because all the guys I went to high school with were obnoxious and immature. They were cool enough to hang out with, but not people I could make myself want to love.

I met my now husband when I was 24. Two weeks after we met, I told my BFF that I expected to marry him. It wasn't love at first sight in a cheesy movie way or anything. It was just so clear from the very beginning that we belonged together. And now all these years later, we still never even had a first fight.

So why can't a 17 year old feel that? Why do people have to be 24 to find their perfect match? Maybe I shouldn't find the cheesy YA novel that I'm reading right now quite so unbelievable.

Foreshadow Overkill

I recently read a book that was supposed to have a huge surprise ending. This book was the first in a series, and the major unexpected twist at the end would set the hook for book two.

But it wasn’t a surprise. It wasn’t even close. I had guessed the end 50 pages into the book. And half way through the book there had been so many clues reveled that I found myself questioning the intelligence of the characters. How had they not figured it out? It was way too obvious.

My WIP has a surprise ending, and foreshadowing is something that I worry about. I don’t want the ending to come from so far out of left field that it makes the rest of the story seem disingenuous. But I also don’t want to give away the end on the second page.

I’ve dealt with this problem by not telling my beta readers the end and then asking them after they finish it, “did you see the end coming?” None of my beta readers were overly surprised by the ending, but none of them told me to cut the foreshadowing either. Hopefully I have the right balance of clue droppedge.

What do you think about foreshadowing? Do you have any secret writing tips on how to layer in the correct number of hints? How do you feel when reading books that have too much or too little foreshadowing?

And So It Begins

Everyone knows opening lines are important. They hook a reader and set the mood for the rest of the story. This weeks Road Trip Wednesday over at YA Highway is asking everyone for there favorite opening line.

Here are five of my favorites. They are all from YA books. They are all totally different. And they all tell you a lot about how the story will flow right off the bat.

So she tells me, the words dribbling out with the cranberry muffin crumbs, commas dunked in her coffee. (Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson)

The guy walking towards me is good-looking in an obnoxious way, like he’d play the hot jerk in a TV movie about why drunk driving is bad or how it doesn’t pay to cheat on the SAT’s. (Wherever Nina Lies by Lynn Weingarten)

By 1899, we had learned to tame the darkness but not the Texas heat. (The Evolution of Capernia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly)

It was 7 minutes after midnight. (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon)

If things had been different, I’d be called Natalya or Natasha, and I’d have a Russian accent and chapped lips year round. (Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin)

Now here’s the opening line to my WIP. – I had two goals that summer: to get the lead in the camp play and to get to third base.

What do you think? Does this sentence make you want to read the rest?

What are your favorite opening lines?

To NaNo or Not to NaNo?

That is the question. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, November is national novel writing month, aka NaNoWriMo. The rules to NaNoWriMo are really simple, write a novel (50k words) in a month.

I’ve never done NaNo before, because I don’t like the idea of forcing writing. I want my stories to come when they come. And even if it takes me two or three months to crank out that crappy first draft, speed has never been a big problem for me.

But this year, I’m thinking more seriously about NaNo. My October is really busy, but I will have more free time in November, so NaNo might be a fun way to force me to dive head first back into writing. I’m just putting the final polishes on my current WIP before sending it off to agents. So by November, I should be ready to focus all my attention on a new project.

If I do NaNo, I’m not going to start with a completely blank page, so I guess I’ll be a big cheater. But I don’t really care. My idea is to play Dr. Frankenstein this November.

Years ago, I wrote a truly HORRIBLE novel filled with the world’s worst writing, and an interesting plot. I’m passionate about the issues that story addresses, and I have always known I’d come back and readdress/rework that book somewhere down the line. But the writing is so bad and the characters are so one dimensional, that so far all my attempts at re-dressing have flopped.

About a year ago I started a new project that was set in the same place as my earlier horribly written novel. I totally pantsed that new project and managed to write about 45k words filled with great characters and humorous scenes but ABSOLUTELY NO PLOT! Sometimes pantsing doesn’t work. And I ended up scrapping that project after I realized it has no point.

So my NaNo idea is to try and combined these two existing projects into one readable story. I have 60k words of bad writing and one dimensional characters, one of whom faces an interesting/important issue I feel compelled to write about. I also have 45k words of good/funny writing about interesting characters that do nothing and go nowhere. So now I just have to figure out which of my funny/interesting characters gets to have all the problems from my earlier book dumped on top of them.

Can I build a monster in a month? Let the cut and paste begin.

What about you? Are you NaNoing this year?

Seeing Anew

I went to the beach last weekend. I go to the beach all the time. My husband loves to fish, and I love to walk on the beach. So we make the trek out to the coast about a dozen times a year.

This past weekend, my aunt came out and joined us. My aunt lives in eastern Washington, and hadn’t been to the beach for more than 15 years. She is a professional artist who spends all her time painting.

Yesterday, while I was busy walking for miles along the sand, my aunt just stood there staring out at the surf. The ocean was beautiful. It’s always beautiful. And I’m not a painter.

When I walked up to my aunt I asked her, “Do you think this will make you change how you draw water?”

I was more drawn to the movement of the waves, and the patterns that the surf leaves in the sand. But my aunt answered, “It’s so gray. Gray and white. Yeah, I definitely think this will affect my paintings.”

Sometimes it really is that simple. The ocean isn’t blue. At least not while looking at it from the shore on an overcast day. It’s gray and white. I can barely draw a stick figure, and will never make a career as a professional artist. But my aunts discovery does translate to writing.

The world is rarely the way we expect it. The ocean isn’t blue. And characters are never black and white. So what color are the pictures in your mind?

Lost At Sea

This week’s Road Trip Wednesday, over at YA Highway, is asking the question, “You’re packing for a month on a deserted island. What as a reader and writer, must be in your backpack?”

This question came at an interesting time, since I’m in the middle of packing for a final beach trip of the season before the weather turns. This weekend I’m packing a fishing boat, a dozen crab pots, a clam gun, and a handful of friends. I’ll throw in my kindle too, but I don’t really expect to do any reading or writing.

But 3 days at the Oregon coast isn’t the same thing as 30 days on a deserted island. So what would I take? Assuming that all the food, water, shelter stuff was taken care of. I’d need to move onto the entertainment faze of my month of solitude. If there was electricity on this island, I’d pack my laptop and kindle and be done with it. But since my island is deserted, I’m guessing it probably doesn’t have power. So I’d pack three spiral notebooks and a dozen pens/pencils. That would take care of the writer in me, and hopefully go a long way in the entertainment realm.

As for the reader in me. Depending on length, it usually takes me anywhere from 6-20 hours to read a book. If I’m alone on my island, I’ll likely spend about 8 hours a day sleeping. About 4 hours a day exploring, and foraging for food. And about 2 hours per day cooking and eating said food. That means that I have 10 hours left to my own devises. If I spend half of that time writing, and the other half reading, I’ll have 150 reading hours available. So I need somewhere between 8 and 25 books (depending on length). So if I have a large enough bag, I’ll pack 15 books.

I don’t think I’d pack books I’ve already read. Unless they are books I haven’t read in years. I’d just pick out 15 books that sound interesting that I haven’t read yet. Even if the stories aren’t as exciting as I’d been hoping, alone on a deserted island, I’m sure I’d make do.

So what about you? If you were packing for a month on a deserted island, what would go in your bag?

More on Banned Books

A lot of people, who know a lot more than me, have been talking about banned books this week. The Rejectionist delivered an especially chilling statistic. Of the 3,000 YA titles that have been published this year, 60 were written by authors of color. That’s 2%. If only 2% of the books for teens being published are written by authors of color, the later banning of those books makes things so much worse.

Yesterday, I posted a link to the ABFFE Banned Books List. Many of the books on that list are by authors of color, or deal with race related issues. It is the honest presentation of racism that is getting these books banned.

I’ve got to be honest. I live in a very homogonous community, and spend very little time thinking about race and racism. The majority of my friends and neighbors are white. And most of the non-white people I know are recent immigrants. They aren’t the decedents of former slaves. They are people who left their home countries to come to America and find a better life for their children.

But that doesn’t mean these people don’t have a story. They have lots of stories. Stories of blending cultures. Stories of new dreams, new hopes, and unexpected fears. I want to hear these people’s stories. But when I go to the bookstore, their stories are hard to find.

If these people’s stories are ever going to make it into our collective thought, we need to start listening. We need to start reading that 2% of the books that are making it onto the shelves. So I encourage you, just as I encourage myself. Take the time to seek out the 2%. Read books by authors of color. If we all read more of these books, maybe the publishers will notice and all voices will begin to be heard.