Jennifer R. Hubbard's Blog, page 136

Re-reading

I've always been a big re-reader. Originally I did it for fun, for enjoyment. But I've found it invaluable as a writer. Re-reading allows me to deconstruct a text, to detect the seeds of foreshadowing, to watch how a character was built. Sometimes I don't recognize symbolism or the repetition of an image until the fourth or fifth reading. Some things fly over my head through several reads and finally land inside my brain during the umpteenth time.

The best works stand up to multiple re-re...

Bad boys and good reads

After a brief dry spell in which I read a few things that didn't thrill me (and thus shall remain nameless, including a library book I couldn't finish because of exceedingly expository dialogue), I've been delighted by several pieces recently. Here's a sampling:

The Ellen Wittlinger novel Parrotfish, about a transgender teen with an awesome sense of humor. Includes minor characters that rise above stereotypes.

Tanya Lee Stone's A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl. This verse novel charts the hig...

Outlining as a revision tool

I'm doing an outline of my current project. I just finished the second draft, and it's now time for me to corral the free, wandering, rambling manuscript. To look at the plot threads and pacing, to watch where each character appears. This is a macro edit. Once the scenes and the plot threads are all in the right place, I can return to micro-editing, the scene-by-scene and line-by-line wordsmithing. Right now, it's all about the big picture.

Happy Thanksgiving

More than just romance

In The Secret Year news:

There's a giveaway on Goodreads for a signed ARC of The Secret Year. Although the book's main page shows 0 entries, the giveaways page shows 108 entries so far, so don't be fooled by that glitch. The giveaway runs through December 14.

I signed galleys at NCTE over the weekend. I didn't have a camera with me, but the pictures taken by Jenny Moss, author of Winnie's War and the upcoming Shadow, capture the NCTE experience pretty well. It was great to meet so many teache...

The future is coming!

You can't go anywhere these days (including my agent Nathan Bransford's blog, the comment thread on Editorial Anonymous, and the latest issue of the SCBWI Bulletin) without hearing about e-books and electronic publishing and how reading and publishing will continue to change.

I don't know how things will go, but I've made some guesses, based on the technological changes I've already observed in my lifetime. Frankly, I've tried to keep myself informed but not fret too much, because the world...

Haven

We're coming to the end of the Books of 2009. As you may recall, the Books of 2009 are drawn from the two 2009 debut author groups I've been involved with: the Class of 2k9 and Debut2009 (the Feast of Awesome). I have two more launches to discuss from the debut2009 group, which I will do in future posts. But first up is the final Class of 2k9 book to launch this year:



Beverly Patt's Haven, a middle-grade novel from Blooming Tree Press. Synopsis: Soon after meeting orphan Latonya Dennis, fo...

Cooling off

Earlier today, I read a manuscript that I haven't looked at in a couple of months.

I liked it a lot better today than I did when I last put it down. When I last touched it, I'd worked on it steadily for so long that I could hardly see straight. I had given the story everything I could, but I wasn't sure it was enough. Today I knew: Yes, I like that manuscript. I've done my best with it.

I've also had the opposite experience: reading a story that felt great while I wrote it, a story that I ...

Synopses Part 3

Once upon a time, I did some posts about synopses. I said there were three basic types I'd encountered: the one-line, the one-paragraph, and the one-page. I proceeded to blog about the first two, and even did a postscript, but then I shamelessly left you hanging on the third one.

As I may have confessed in those earlier posts, I'm not a big fan of the one-page (sometimes it's two-page) synopsis. I can see the value in a one-liner: writers get asked all the time, in casual conversation, "So ...

News you can use

I have some news to share today:

I'll be signing galleys at NCTE this coming Saturday, Nov. 21, at the Penguin booth (#318), from 1:00 to 1:30. If you're going to be there, please stop by and say hello!

On Sunday, Nov. 22, Children's Book World (Haverford, PA) is having an amazing YA author event and a benefit for Philadelphia libraries called "A Novel Idea." Authors scheduled to appear include Laurie Halse Anderson, Jay Asher, T.A. Barron, Sarah Dessen, Steven Kluger, Justine Larbalestier, D...