Jennifer R. Hubbard's Blog, page 116

Going old school for a week

I do enjoy my online social media, but a couple of times a year, I just have to unplug. From email, Twitter, blog, everything. I even go back to writing in longhand--or give myself permission not to write at all. This coming week is such a week. When I come back, I won't be able to catch up on all the blog posts that I will miss, so if you have any big news this week, please share it in the comments below.

I won't leave you without some recommended reading (aside from the blogs already linked...

Fast and slow passes

Part of my revision process involves different kinds of passes through the manuscript. One way to divide these is by "fast" and slow."

Fast pass: A read through the manuscript that's as fast as my regular reading speed, maybe a little faster. On this kind of pass, I'm looking for issues such as:
Does the whole book hang together?
How's the pacing?
Are there inconsistencies, transition failures, contradictions?
How's the rhythm? Am I hitting any snags, or does it flow smoothly?

Slow pass: A read thr...

Connecting with the inner YA

Special announcement: For the writers out there: agent Michelle Humphrey of ICM has put a 10-page critique up for grabs in a contest that celebrates the release of Denise Jaden's YA novel Losing Faith! All you have to do is enter your logline (a one- or two-sentence "hooky" description of your book) on the Class of 2k10 blog post here by September 14.

This week, a local radio station is playing the top songs of several bygone decades, including the two decades of my childhood and young adultho...

The Writing Space

I've seen many pictures of authors' "writing caves" on the internet, and my main reaction is: Holy cow, either everyone else writes in a much neater space than mine, or they clean up big time before taking the picture.

And I understand the impulse to clean up; I really do. But I've often thought that if I ever take a picture of my own writing space, I will leave it just as cluttered as it normally is, because this is the reality. This is how I work: surrounded by debris. However, I hesitate t...

Passion

If you're a writer, I recommend this post by R.L. LaFevers on annastan  's blog. An excerpt: "You are writing to feed your soul. ... Own that dream, and be willing to feed and nurture it for the rest of your life. There is no shame in that. Honoring your dream does not diminish your love for others." Print it out and post it in the writing room for those days when things look bleak and you wonder why you ever touched fingers to keyboard in the first place.

It's an interesting post coming...

Sunday stew

More brilliance showered upon the blogosphere this week. I fell in love with this blog post by Jeannine Atkins on revising:  "As I trim, I watch to make sure that not too much meaning disappears, but leave just enough to hint or provoke. I’m trying to be as careful as a jeweler chipping a precious stone, knowing the right angle can let in more light, but a wrong stroke will just make it a smaller rock. Or dust." She's talking about poetry, but this applies to every form of writing, I think.

I ...

August Debuts

Here is August's crop of debut novels:



The Life and Opinions of Amy Finawitz, by Laura Toffler-Corrie. Middle grade. Amy Finawitz deals with a best friend who has just moved away, a mysterious old diary, and a set of unlikely friendships.



The Freak Observer, by Blythe Woolston. Young adult. Loa has just suffered several traumatic losses, and the arrival of mysterious postcards tests her already-shaky sense of reality as she searches for a reliable way to connect with the world.



Livvie Owen...

Foreshadowing

I'm rereading Sense and Sensibility, and I think Jane Austen nicely illustrates a certain lesson about deus ex machina vs. foreshadowing in this book. (Therefore, today's post contains spoilers, but I think that's permitted for a 200-year-old book. It's not like I'm revealing the ending of Mockingjay here.)

In S&S, Elinor loves Edward Ferrars, but he is already secretly engaged to a young lady named Lucy--an engagement made, we are told, when both were too immature and impulsive to understand ...

What the people want

With election season underway,* I was thinking how politicians often succeed by telling people what they want to hear.

And that kind of audience-pleasing can be tempting for a writer, especially once one has an audience. (A very nice upside to the pre-pub days is that you can write whatever the heck you want, because there are no expectations on you.)

But one thing to remember about audience-pleasing is that it's really just guesswork. "People will want more romance here." "The readers will e...

Smorgasbord

Some links for your perusal:

One of the first blogs I ever read was Cynsations, Cynthia Leitich Smith's must-read combo of interviews, publishing news, and book talk. The interviews go in depth, and as an aspiring novelist I read them all with interest, learning a great deal. So it's rather special to me to have my own interview appearing there now. I talked about why I like realistic contemporary fiction, tools I use in writing and revision, and some backstage details about The Secret Year. E...