Running Out of Steam

I've reached what is probably the worst faze in the book writing process. It's easy and fun to talk about the good stuff, but the bad is often ignored. Today, I'm going to admit the dark truths. Well, they aren't that dark, and most if not all writers face this sometimes so it's probably worth mentioning.

I have run out of steam, turned ambivalent, and essentially stopped writing. This happens. I get a new story idea and go nuts, writing like crazy. Then I get over it and writing becomes a chore.

I started my current WIP just over a month ago. It's a fun story with lots of characters I totally love. For a while there it was really fun to write. I cranked out 40k words in about three weeks, loving every second of it. Finding time to write was the only thing holding me back. I couldn't seem to write fast enough.

Now, two weeks later, I'm still stuck at 45k words. This isn't writers block in the sense of not knowing what to write. I know what happens next. I've got the whole book written out in my head already, I have for weeks.

The problem is that I feel done and I'm not. I've already told myself this story. I've thought about it to the point of obsession. I've scrutinized every detail of my characters lives, or at least every detail that matters to the story. And now the only thing I have left to do is type the last 15k words, pass it off to my CPs and agent, and get busy revising.

But I don't feel like it. This isn't an all consuming obsession anymore, it's a job. And I'm lazy. Seriously, I know that I can at times accomplish a lot, but deep down I'm a very lazy person. When required to do something I don't want to do, I act like a spoiled little kid. And when I don't feel like writing, I don't write.

I do want to finish this book, because I like it and I want to share it with other people. If it stays forever in my head, nobody else will ever be able to meet and fall in love with these amazing characters. I just don't feel like doing the actual work of sitting down and typing. It's sad and pathetic and I need to grow up and get the job done.

I know I wont have as much fun writing this last 15k as I had writing the first 40k though. And that, probably more than anything else, is what's holding me back and stopping me from writing. I LOVE to write. When I'm in that manic stage I was stuck in three or four weeks ago, it's heaven. There was nothing in the world I wanted to do more than write, and I spent every second I wasn't writing pining to get back at it. I don't want to taint that feeling and turn writing into an annoying chore. But if I want to finish this book, I have to.

I once saw a Neil Gaiman quote where he claimed that there was no distinction in quality noticeable to the reader of his words that came out like pulling teeth and the ones that came out as a passionate love story. The difference between professional writers and hobbiests is that the pros like Neil write brilliant novels even when they aren't in the mood. If I want to take my writing seriously, I need to start pulling the teeth. This is a good story I'm writing, and I need to finish it. I really do. I just want to complain about it too. So thanks for humoring me.

Planning My Escape

Last weekend, I attended the Early Day's Gas Engines and Tractors Association annual swap meet. It was about as exciting as it sounds. My husband has an unnatural fascination with rusty metal and somehow that translates to me spending far more time than I should at swap meets and tractor shows. This weekends event was additionally dismal because it rained all weekend. So the fun task of wandering around a field looking at piles of rusty metal became wandering around a field in the rain looking at piles of rusty metal.

Fortunately, we shared a booth at the swap meet with Melissa's parents. Yes, my husband has been collecting antique machinery long enough to justify having half a booth at a swap meet. He sold most of what he brought with him, but still somehow drove home with more in the trailer than he headed out with. Selling a tractor just so you can turn around and buy a steam engine doesn't feel much like progress to me. But enough about swap meet fun, and onto what I really did this weekend.

Our friends that we shared the booth with have a daughter, Melissa. She's a great kid with enough sense to find swap meets and tractor shows just as dismal as I do. About five years ago we ended up at a tractor show together when there was a circus in town at the same time. Naturally, I had to sneak Melissa (who was nine at the time) away from the tractors and take her to the circus.

This weekend there wasn't a circus to sneak off to. Instead, Melissa and I headed for a nearby outlet mall. After she'd spent all of her allowance for the past several months, I found a movie theater and treated her to a movie. We watched, The Avengers. It was a typical super hero movie, filled with stupid on-liners and great action sequences.

So I ended up having fun last weekend. I bought myself a new pair of shoes when I was at the outlet mall with Melissa, and my husband sold a tractor to clear space behind the shop for his new steam engine. I know there will be several more swap meets and tractor shows in my future. I'm going to at least two more this summer. But fortunately, Melissa's parents will drag her along to all of them as well. So I'll have a fourteen-year-old to discuss YA Urban Fantasy with (Melissa is a huge Hush Hush fan which really is kind of tragic) and sneak away to the movies.

What about you? What did you do last weekend?

Sex in YA

I recently read an article that lamented the large degree of violence in YA and simultaneous shunning of teenage sexuality. Are YA authors really telling teenagers that it's okay to murder each other but not okay to sleep around? I think I'm reading different YA books than the author of that article. I did read THE HUNGER GAMES, but didn't particularly like it because I never like books about children committing extreme acts of violence. Sex on the other hand, I read about sex all the time, especially in YA.


I've only read one Harlequin romance novel in my life. I got it as a gag gift from a friend. The story was clearly formulaic, but still pretty fun to read. The thing that shocked me about it was how little sex there was in it. Most contemporary YA has way more sex, or at least way more discussion of lust and romance and general hormonal teenage behavior.

I often joke that every YA book is a romance novel regardless of plot or sub-genre, because all teenagers are hormonal. Lots of hormones is basically the definition of puberty. The love story might be entirely unrequited, but every teen character is crushing on someone. Since I write contemporary YA, my writing involves a lot of hormone infused teens.

My current WIP is more of a straight romance and less of an "issue book" than anything I've written before. And I put a lot of thought into my decision to not specifically write sex. The characters in this book do have sex, but I've chosen to have it happen off the page. I can handle penning a good kissing scene, but actually writing straight erotica for a teenage audience isn't something I want to do. I am still writing a book where my teenage main characters fall in love and after a great deal of thought and reflection, chose to become sexually active.

I don't think this is new or groundbreaking. When my MC gets "the sex talk" from her autistic sister and the scene opens with the line "Are you mating?" it's a little different. But sexually active teens really isn't a new thing in the world of YA, nor should it be. Still I expect I'm similar to many other YA writers in my decision to keep sex off the page in books written for teens. This decisions feels right to me, but maybe it is sending a mixed message to young readers. Books with extreme violence are gore are very popular but widely accepted, but something as natural as human sexuality needs to be kept firmly locked behind closed doors.

What do you think? Should there be more or less sex in YA? And is the lack of sex in YA sending the wrong message to young readers?

One Time at Camp...

For this week's Road Trip Wednesday, the good people over at YA Highway are asking the question

How did you spend/how will you spend the summer after graduation?

I spent my summer after graduation the same way I spent every summer of elementary school, junior high, high school, and college. I went to camp. As a kid I absolutely loved camp. For a while I actually considered being a camp director when I grew up as a genuine career ambition.

So the choice to spend my summer after graduation working as a CIT (counselor in training) was a no brainer for me. I held many of my camp friends in higher regard than my school friends and was thus thrilled to spend a summer with them. It was a very fun summer, that involved the proper mix of being idolized by little kids and flirting with boys that only a CIT can manage.

I haven't spent a summer at camp in ten years. I did take a year round administration position at a summer camp immediately after graduating from college and quickly discovered summer camp isn't very fun when it isn't summer. So I left camp behind and forced myself to finally grow up. Still I get a twinge of nostalgia at the start of every summer as a part of me longs to pack a duffle bag and tromp out into a cabin in the woods ready to sing silly songs and pull pranks on the boys.

What about you? What did you do the summer after you graduated from high school?

That Was Awful

Last night I finally went to see the Hunger Games movie. I liked it more than I expected to. It followed the book pretty closely and was well acted. As a result it left me feel similar to how I felt after reading the book, with the small exception that I'd already read the book and thus knew what to expect.

I saw the movie with one of the kids I mentor, who hadn't bothered to read the book first. As I drove her home after the movie she announced, "That is the worst movie I have ever seen. Seriously, why would anybody want to watch that. They murdered little kids. It was awful."

Yeah, kid, that's about how I felt too. When I told people I hated the Hunger Games after reading the book nobody seemed to understand why. If they weren't well written, they wouldn't have been able to elicit such a strong emotional response. Still, I can't exactly claim to enjoy books or movies that are that disturbing.

There are books and movies that make people laugh and cry and feel a million other things. The Hunger Games feels like getting stabbed in the chest. There is no other way that I can explain it, but I think it's brilliantly awful. The kid I mentor is sort of a punk, being an at risk youth that requires a mentor and whatnot, so I was slightly thrilled she too found the movie horrific and disturbing. Maybe there is hope for the future after all. Watching children murder other children should always be horrible and disturbing.

Writing Soundtrack

There seem to be two camps of writers when it comes to music accompaniment. Just as there are plotters and pantsers, there are also people who write in silence and writers who make special writing playlists. Oddly, I do both. I've found I prefer silence when I'm actually writing. I can also write to classical music, but lyrics tend to detract me to much. 

Even though I type in silence, I do immerse myself in my characters world as much as possible when I'm not writing, which means listening to their favorite music. In my last book, one of the characters was kind of emo, so I downloaded a whole bunch of obscure emo music and listened to it constantly. When I then sat down to write, I knew what songs were in my characters head and it was easier to channel the proper emotions of the scene.

The characters in my current book aren't emo, so I need a new soundtrack. Right now I'm listening to a blend of current pop songs that most teens listen to along with a few choice alternative artists. One of my more minor characters is in a indie band and these characters are definitely aware of the indie music scene. So I'm listening to indie music. It isn't always as polished as top 40 music, but somehow that makes it better. My characters are all a bit rough around the edges too, and listening to their music helps keep them that way.

What about you? Do you write to a soundtrack? And if you do put together WIP playlists, are your songs selected based on feel, lyrics, or character taste?

What's In A Name?

When I first introduce a new character, I usually just give them the first name is that pops into my head. Then once I really get to know them, I go back and give them a more suitable name. I went on a bit of a re-naming bender last week and renamed more than half of the characters in my WIP.


My renaming started when I noticed that I had four characters in my book with names that started with the letter M. There are a lot of great names that start with that letter, but they don't all need to be crammed into the same story. When I'm reading, I tend to skim over names very quickly and thus as a writer want to make sure my character names are easily skim-able. That means giving characters names of varying length that begin with different letters. Avoiding lots of rhyming names is also important.

Beyond making names suitably unique, it's also important to give characters names with the right feel. Character ethnicity can easily be portrayed with a name, but even among white Americans, names say a lot about not only a character but also their family.

During my big renaming kick, one of my characters was given the name August. August is a shy unassuming guy who could easily pass as a John or a Mathew, but he has eccentric parents that would never name their kid something that traditional. By naming him August, I'm revealing a clue into his home life the very first time he appears on the page.

The character who gave me the most trouble was actually one with the opposite problem as August. He is a total hipster who wears plaid pants and hot pink glasses. Clearly this guys name should make a statement. Except his parents are very conservative and his alternative behavior is in some ways a rebellion against his upbringing. After much hemming and hawing, I decided to name him Blake. It's not as common as Michael or Christopher but still something traditional conservative parents could name their son.

The last thing I look at when naming characters is the age of a name. The social security baby name webpage is a great resource for hunting for popular names during a given year. I can come up with a good name for a YA character by for searching names used in the mid 90's. This tool is especially useful for writers of historical fiction who need to know what names were common in the late 1800's or the 1940's.

One thing I've found while naming characters is that names are become a lot less traditional. The top 10 names are still primarily biblical, I don't think that will ever completely go away. But when looking at names in the 50-150 most common range there has been a major shift in recent years towards newer invented names. One perfect example of this is the boys name Jayden. In 2011 it was the 4th most common boys name - fourth. 10 years ago, it didn't make the top 1000.

Trying to come up with unusual names for characters often results in giving characters newer names, like Jayden, that aren't very uncommon today but were unheard of at the time the character was actually born. The trick is to find names that were mildly unusual during the time a character was born and have become less common since then. That's one of the things I like about the name Blake. It's never been a super common name, but it had it's peak in the 1980. My character was born in the early 1990's just as the name was starting to loose fashion. Today it's far less common than many "non-traditional" names.

One great resource for tracking the popularity of names over time is baby name wizard. On that sight is jam packed with naming resources. My favorite is the ability to graph a name over time and see when it had it's peak. With names like Jennifer that skyrocketed in the 1970's but is now relatively uncommon the visual representation is very drastic. There are also a lot of new names, like Jayden, with very steep lines leading them from total oblivion to super common. Other names, like Olivia, dipped sharply in the middle of the 20th century but were almost as common 100 years ago as they are today.

Naming characters can be a lot of fun. I hope you enjoy the process as much as I do. Do you have any naming strategies you like to follow that I missed?

The Celebrity Crush

For this week’s weekend update, I’m going to go off on a bit of a side tangent. I mentor a couple of tweens, and this weekend I got to spend multiple hours in the car listening to One Directions latest CD played on repeat while I shuttled my young friends to and from Mt Hood for a fun outdoor adventure.


If you’re not familiar with One Direction, they are a British boy band. Their music isn’t bad, but I would know anything about them if it weren’t for my weekly encounters with a few of their biggest fans. All three of the girls that I mentor are HUGE One Direction fans. These girls, ages 11, 13, and 14, all follow all five of the band members on facebook and twitter. They have watched every interview they’ve ever done on You Tube about a million times and scream like maniacs whenever a 1D song comes on the radio.

Their obsession with this band moved way past music appreciation a long time ago. One of the girls has an entire wall of her bedroom dedicated to pictures of the band members that she cut out of magazines. I’m not a child psychologist or anything, but my casual observation of normal tween and teen behavior makes me think my little friend’s obsession is perfectly healthy and normal. The celebrity crush is nothing more than a normal part of puberty.

These girls are at the age where they notice boys, but they don’t yet have the maturity to handle a real relationship. So they focus all their hormonal instincts on pop-stars that live on another continent. The boy band also has the benefit of multiple members. So one of the girls can have a crush on Niles, another on Harry, and the third on Louie. They can spend hours talking about One Direction together without having to deal with internal friendship rivalries, because they’re all crushing on different guys. Zane and Liam are a little neglected by my threesome of young fans, but I’m sure there are plenty of other tweens in the world giving them a proper level of obsession.

I would never want to read a book that involved fan-girl conversations at the level I overhear on a weekly basis. But as a YA writer, I still find the concept of the celebrity crush interesting. Everyone’s different and teens all develop at different rates and via different paths. Becoming uber-obsessed with celebrities is only one way to channel complicated hormones and emotions. But until my mentees move onto a new stage in their development, I think I’m going to be listening to a LOT more One Direction.

Mental Note

I know a lot of writers who are constantly taking notes. They carry notepads around with them and jot down all the idea gems that pop into there heads. Many writers also keep notepads next to their beds so they can make a note of the ideas that wake them in the night.

A few years ago, I met with a writer friend and had to wait an extra fifteen minutes for him to get there. When he arrived he said, "I got a scene idea and had to pull over to the side of the road and write it down." The guy's published multiple best sellers, so I'm not going to question his methods but I still don't really get it.

If authors stop to write down every thought that pops into their heads, how do they ever get anything done? I've never made a writing related note to myself. I'm not even sure how I'd go about doing it. The whole concept really just baffles me.

Here's why. When I'm drafting, I think about my characters ALL the time. I get most of my best ideas when I'm lying in bed, driving my car, or standing in line at the grocery store. Whole scenes play out in my mind and new plot lines develop. I think about these scenes, and then I think about them some more, and then eventually I find the time to sit down at my computer and type like crazy.

Some ideas are forgotten and never make it onto the actual page, but I just assume they weren't very good ideas. When I'm actively typing, I write very fast. Because there is no thinking about what comes next involved. I'm just dictating my past daydreams to myself.

Maybe I'm blessed with a good memory, and other writers need notes on actual paper to remind them of their brilliant ideas. But for me, a mental note is good enough. And I'm sure if I had a notepad next to my bed, the notes I jotted down wouldn't be a few simple words to remind me about my idea in the morning. I'd end up staying up all night and drafting three new chapters. Sleep is important, and when I'm in hard core writing mode I almost always dream about my characters. So there's no notepads allowed in my bedroom.

What about you? Are you a mental note taker, or a notepad carrying kind of writer?

RTW: Best May Read

For today's Road Trip Wednesday, the good people over at YA Highway are asking the question

What's the best book you read in May?

Last month I read ten wonderful books. I read

Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Bestest Ramadan Ever by Medeia Sharif

Crossed by Ally Condie

Goth Girl Rising by Barry Lyga

Out of Sight, Out of Time by Ally Carter

Heartless by Gail Carrieger

Timeless by Gail Carriger

 

The Earth, My Butt and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler

and The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong

but my decision is still a total no brainer. The best book I read in May was definately

Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore

What about you? What's the best book you read in May?

Writing Free Weekend

I went camping again last weekend. It was a very fun trip, even if I did get eaten by lots of mosquitoes. Since I'm currently in drafting overdrive, I'll tell you what I didn't do this weekend instead of what I did do. I didn't write. I left my laptop at home so I couldn't write. I am a firm believer in the idea that life experience is required for the creation of fiction, so not writing can be a very good thing.

I had a lot of fun camping and would have missed out if I'd spent the entire time hiding in a tent draining the battery on my laptop. Still not writing was a challenge. I spent a LOT of time thinking about my characters, even if I didn't have any means to write down my musings. This highly productive daydreaming means that I have the story's climax completely written in my mind. All I need to do now is find the time to type it all. 

One of my critique partners recently asked me how I manage to write so darn fast, and I think this constant daydreaming about my characters is a big part of the answer. It is very rare for me to ever sit down and write a scene that I haven't already written in my head. Most of the time, I've thought through the scene two or three times before I get around to typing it. This means my "rough draft" is often more like a second or third draft, and the changes I make to my earlier musings are more like revisions.

So maybe my initial claim that I didn't do any writing this weekend was false. I didn't do any typing this weekend. But between stuffing my face with smores, I did a lot of musing.