Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 233

Post-convention Brain

On the first day after a convention I'm usually all fired up to work, and then it never fails that I don't actually get anything done. Yesterday, my brain was just fried, and I somehow ended up falling into a Band of Brothers marathon on Spike. It seems their holiday programming is always either Band of Brothers or Star Wars, and I haven't figured out what makes something a Star Wars holiday as opposed to a Band of Brothers holiday. I guess Presidents Day counts as US history, so they go with Band of Brothers, but the presidents we celebrate on that holiday are pre-WWII, so you'd think the civil war/revolution themes in Star Wars would be more fitting.

Anyway, I think I needed a day to rest, and now today I hope I can really get my act together. I want to get this book done and ready for submission, then get The Book That Will Not Die ready for submission, and then I need to start looking for some freelance writing/editing/PR/marketing communications gigs to pay the bills while I wait for something to happen with the books and while I research a possible mystery novel.

I'm a bit sad that Downton Abbey is now over for another year. It's so totally a soap opera, and if the same kinds of stories were set in modern America, I would have zero interest, but the series set around WWI fascinates me, and it's not all the clothes and accents. I guess it was "over" for me a week ago when I got the DVDs and watched the whole thing, but it's now over on PBS. Whatever will I do with myself? I was rather startled by how many outfits reminiscent of the costumes on that show I can put together from pieces already in my wardrobe. I wore one of those outfits to the convention last weekend, and someone remarked about how it was something I could wear to work without looking like I was wearing a costume, and I had to admit that it was stuff I had worn to work, back when I had a regular job that didn't allow me to wear sweats and a bathrobe (today's lovely ensemble) to work. I wore a long, straight, high-waisted black skirt and a charcoal riding-style jacket with black velvet collar and a white shirt, with Mary Jane shoes and a black velvet hat with black satin rose trim. I didn't wear the hat to work, but otherwise that was one of my work stand-by outfits. I hadn't worn either skirt or jacket in a while because both have been somewhat out of style, but it seems like that look is coming back, possibly due to the Downton influence. I'll have to drag out my other high-waisted long, slim skirts. If this steampunk book sells, I'll have a real excuse to dress in Victorian/Edwardian style at conventions. It will be marketing!

Unexpected Panels

I survived my busy weekend and now am getting ready to get back to work. I had some good panels that I now vaguely remember doing (the weekend is something of a blur) and got to spend some time with friends. I didn't end up using my reading piece because the only people in the room were the three readers, one of my friends and then the friend of another reader who mostly just wanted to go get a drink. So I called it a walk. Now I can use that piece at FenCon, and maybe it will be to promote a book that by then I'll actually know will be published.

I didn't end up having to sing in the small group on Sunday. The person I was on stand-by for wasn't there at first, so I did one run-through with the group, but when we started the second run-through, she showed up, and I was never so glad to see someone because I was choking. I swear, my house must be magical because anything I sing here sounds wonderful, but I lose my ability to sing the same things when I'm somewhere else. I should rent out my house as a concert venue. Or maybe it's only magic for me. Anyway, I gladly surrendered my part and went off to deal with the kids, who were their usual adorable selves.

I may have done a convention first in my Sunday panel. I had a jar of jam I couldn't open. I'd tried all the usual jar-opening tricks, and none worked. It's times like that when I can see the usefulness of having a man around the house. And then I remembered that I was going to be at a convention, and surely someone there would be able to open my jar for me. Plus, I was going to be on a panel on writing humor, and you can pretty much guarantee that someone will mention that a lot of humor comes from the unexpected, so I figured that pulling a jar of jam out of my bag and asking for a volunteer to open it would count as "unexpected." And that's just what I did. How many panels involve a panelist asking for help opening a jar?

Incidentally, Paul Cornell, comics, Doctor Who and assorted other stuff writer (and a friend of mine) has generated a lot of Internet buzz about wanting gender parity on panels, so that if he's on a panel that's mostly men, he's going to step down and invite a woman to be on the panel. I don't know what conventions he's going to, but at most conventions I go to there's usually just a token man on the panel, and I'm not always just on the "girly" topics. For instance, this weekend there was one man on the panel about steampunk aviation. It was a bunch of women talking about the specifics of airships, both in terms of history and physics. I guess at bigger conventions like WorldCon that's more of an issue (I have been the token "girl" on a WorldCon panel), but at the smaller cons, the panelists seem to be mostly female. Maybe I should stalk Paul at WorldCon so he has to put me in his place on panels.

Wacky Weekend

This is going to be a busy weekend for me, and I'm already whimpering and planning to withdraw from the world starting Sunday evening. It's a convention weekend, and it's difficult for me to go into convention mode when I'm also in winter hibernation mode. It is possible that I'll perk up once I get there, though.

So, I'll be at ConDFW this weekend, and if you're going you'll get a schedule, and if you're not, you don't care, so I won't worry about posting a stalker's guide other than to say that in my Saturday evening reading I'll be doing another scene from the book I read from last year. It won't resolve that scene's cliffhanger (other than since it involves most of the same characters, you'll know they came out okay) and it contains its own cliffhanger. This is a yet-to-be-sold book that will be going out on submission in the coming months, so I guess if you like it and want the chance to read the whole thing, it wouldn't hurt to melt the Internet with buzz about this awesome book so that editors might be primed for it. I know I hear from a lot of people who've heard me read the opening that they want to read the book, but telling me doesn't accomplish much.

I don't have any programming today, so I'm just heading over in the evening to help with the FenCon room party. Saturday is my busy day, with two panels and my reading, plus a con suite happy hour. I'll probably make an appearance at some of the room parties, but will be bailing early because I have to be at the 8:30 service at church on Sunday morning, since the preschool choir is singing, and that means arriving at 8. Plus, I'm on stand-by as a substitute for the soprano part in a quintet singing at that service. A friend of mine is supposed to sing it, but she had laryngitis on Wednesday. Since I was going to be there anyway with the preschoolers, I said I'd be stand-by in case she wasn't better. And then I got a look at the music. It's a capella, and it starts with a soprano solo line. It goes as high as an A above the staff and ends with an F at the top of the staff held for something like 12 counts with a fermata and a huge crescendo. This was written as a choir piece, not a small ensemble piece, and in the choir you can stagger breathing. With one person singing the part, and with the part being that high and loud, it means all in one breath. And if I do it, I may get one run-through to rehearse it. So, please direct healing prayers and thoughts to my friend so she can sing on Sunday. I wouldn't want her to miss this blessing.

Since I don't have a panel until 1 on Sunday I may stay for the late service just long enough to sing with the choir because we're doing a totally awesome old-timey spiritual piece with our jazz pianist. I can't miss that. And then I'll have to rush back to the convention to do a panel. And then I will likely crawl deep into a cave for a while.

Book Report: Dancing!

One of my decluttering projects this week was to clean off the top of my dresser, which tends to become a repository for everything -- stuff from my pockets, orphaned socks, books, etc. Now every time I go into my bedroom I do a double-take because it looks so naked. It's like coming home and finding your house ransacked, but in reverse.

I haven't talked about books in a book report sense in ages because I've mostly been reading for work purposes and I'm pretty particular about the books I talk about. But I did read one recently that was really lovely, Entwined by Heather Dixon. It's a young adult book that I think is also adult-friendly. It's based on the fairy tale "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," which didn't occur to me when I was reading it, and it didn't even ring any bells. Then I looked up the Grimm version of that story and it all came back to me. I think putting it in a different setting and fleshing it out made it very much its own story, so I didn't make the fairy tale connection until I looked up some reviews. It still had a very fairy-tale feel, or even a dreamlike quality.

The story focuses on Princess Azalea, the eldest of twelve daughters of the king. Their mother has died in childbirth with princess #12, and the king orders that they go into mourning, wearing nothing but black, covering all the windows, staying indoors and, worst of all for the princesses who live to dance, no dancing. They get caught sneaking into the ballroom to dance a few times. But then they discover a secret passage leading from their bedroom to a magical pavilion, where the mysterious Keeper of the pavilion invites them to dance all they want, every night. Only when things have gone too far do they realize that the Keeper has an agenda, and they're all in danger that Azalea has to find a way out of. As someone who loves ballet and ballroom dancing, I loved all the dance descriptions. There's also something about this book that makes me think of a young adult, female-oriented Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. There is a nice romantic thread that for a while I thought would be the standard modern YA nice boy vs. dark and dangerous guy triangle, but it goes in a different (and very refreshing) direction.

I'm curious about the worldbuilding. It seems to be an alternate history, since although the kingdom names and histories are different from anything in our world, it still feels like Victorian England, and the horses in the royal stables are all named after British literary giants -- Dickens, Milton, Thackeray, etc. They celebrate Christmas and attend mass. There's a character from another kingdom who has to travel by boat to get there, and his speech patterns are very "upper class British twit." You can practically hear the pre-House Hugh Laurie speaking his lines. I kept trying to mentally map this world, and that just tied my brain up in knots. This isn't really a criticism, just my particular brand of geekery coming to the surface because I have to figure out how stuff like this works.

This is also a really lovely book cover that I find rather mesmerizing. A poster of that artwork would go perfectly on my bedroom wall. Anyway, for fans of fairy tales and dancing, it's a very nice read.

I'm also finding myself really wanting to write fleshed-out versions of fairy tales. Not necessarily giving them a twist, unless one occurs to me, but just making the characters into real characters, creating motivations where there aren't any, and doing some world building. Probably adding humor, because I can't help myself. That might be something I'd have to e-publish because I'm not sure publishers would be keen on it. But it would be a fun writing exercise to try, maybe something I could play with in between projects when a story strikes my fancy.

Dangerous Research

I spent yesterday rewriting a scene. For a mad moment, I considered starting from scratch, but then I decided I didn't need to do that. The main thing I needed to do was cut about two pages worth of an incident in the scene that really didn't add anything to it. I finally had to admit to myself that this scene was only there because I'd read a whole book to research it and I wanted something to show for all that work. Not that I read a whole book just to research a single scene. It was the first "reference" book I read when I started researching this project, back when I just had a vague sense of the setting and the concept but didn't know any details, didn't know who my characters would be and didn't know the plot. I was just reading things that seemed to sort of fit to provide enough input to figure out a plot, characters, etc. and to make the world come to life for me. I didn't end up using that information the way I thought I would, but this part of the scene was my way of shoehorning something from it in. I don't know how many drafts of the book I've gone through without once thinking, "Why is this here?" I did finally think that yesterday, and since I didn't want to cut it because I'd read a whole book to get that scene, I made a list of reasons why the book needed it -- and I couldn't think of one other than "it's kind of cool, I guess," and it's only really cool in my head because I know what I'm hinting at. I don't think anyone else would find it cool. Maybe it will live again in a "deleted scenes" page on my web site.

This book is sort of steampunk -- if you've been at conventions the past couple of years and have heard my readings, this is that book -- and the real danger of researching this is that the clothes, whether real Victorian or steampunked Victorian, are just so very pretty. I'll find myself looking up what outfit a character might be wearing so I can describe it, and I'll get sidetracked by all the things it would be cool to have. It also doesn't help that I'm currently in the throes of Downton Abbey mania and love the clothes for that, which are getting close enough to modern that they wouldn't be too costumey for everyday wear. In fact, I can put together several rather "Downton" ensembles from things already in my closet. I still can't quite figure out how they do the hair, though. I should be able to do those hairstyles because mine is even longer than what we've seen when these characters have their hair loose. I just need to find a good, illustrated guide to those hairstyles.

And, no, I don't know when/if this book will be published. I'm revising it to target a particular market. I get great responses when I do readings from it, but I don't know if that's because I do full-on dramatic interpretations, complete with singing, that are different from the typical author reading at a convention or if it's because the book is really that good. These days, though, I don't know if avid potential reader interest means editors will also like it. I get a sense of a huge gap between what people want to read and what publishers want to publish.

But, oh, if it sells and I have income again, there are a few things I so need to buy. They might even count as a business expense, since they'd be for promoting the book and about the only places I could wear them would be at conventions or booksignings.

Speaking of conventions, I'll be at ConDFW this weekend (possibly wearing something Downton-inspired, especially if I can figure out the hair). I don't have a lot of panels, but I may be reading the scene I revised yesterday in my Saturday-evening reading session.

Follow Ups

After looking back at yesterday's entry on Something Borrowed, I think I should probably clarify something. When I was talking about the toxic friendship, I wasn't implying that it excused cheating. I was mostly reacting to all the reader/audience reviews of the book and movie that went along the lines of "OMG! How dare she betray her BFF!" If that's what a "best friend" is, then I'll become a hermit (or even more of one). There's plenty of blame to go around, which was what made it a fairly complex book and a fairly despicable movie. I'm inclined to put most of the blame on the guy because I think if you can cheat while you're engaged or if you even think you're in love with someone else while you're engaged, you should call off the wedding, period. Even if the other person doesn't want to pursue a relationship, if you can fall in love with someone else then the person you're engaged to probably isn't the right one. So, if all they'd done was acknowledge that they'd always had feelings for each other, so that he realized he'd made some major decisions without knowing all the facts, and then he knew he was marrying the wrong person and called off the wedding, then I don't think the friendship was special enough that she should have avoided being with the guy once he was free just because he'd been engaged to her friend. Really, though, in the movie I think she'd have been better off ditching both the guy and the friend and realizing that her other friend, the one who cared about her and was there for her, was her real best friend, and he was also cute and in love with her, so he could have been her boyfriend, too. Let the others deserve each other.

Then again, the "best friend" was also a jerk in the first place because a real friend wouldn't make a play for the guy her best friend has a crush on. Perhaps I'm overly sensitive on that account because I briefly had a "friend" like that. If I ever mentioned any interest in a guy, the next thing I knew, she'd be all over him, even though she had a boyfriend. She kept all these guys strung along, I guess with the hint that if she ever broke up with her boyfriend, they'd be next in line, and in the meantime she had them available for giving her rides, carrying heavy things, etc. Once I noticed the pattern, I started testing it by naming random guys, and sure enough, the moment I indicated interest, she jumped in to intercept. But I didn't put up with it. I found other friends. And none of those guys ever ran after me when I got uncomfortable and left the two of them alone (like the guy in the movie did), so I have a feeling they wouldn't have been interested in me even if she hadn't made a play for them. Oddly enough, when she did break up with her boyfriend, she didn't end up with any of those guys. She went for the one guy I couldn't stand, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't just a coincidence that we had the same taste.

Now, for another follow-up. After that one school district made the silly decision to use federal funds to take only the fifth-grade boys to see the Red Tails movie, while the girls stayed in the classroom to watch a movie about a spelling bee, there were school districts who did it right. A couple of districts in the area did the movie outing as an extracurricular activity on a Saturday, involved eighth-graders and up (because they didn't want to take kids younger than 13 to a PG-13 movie), involved both boys and girls, paid for it through private donations, and included such educational components as a documentary about the Tuskegee Airmen, a talk from an actual Tuskegee Airman (on the news stories, that seemed to be the thing that had the most impact on the kids. They were in awe of getting to meet him after seeing the movie) plus presentations from people who worked in a variety of aspects of aviation, including air force veterans, aerospace engineers and airline employees. That's doing it right. I kind of wish I could have gone to that program.

Oh yeah, and it's Valentine's Day. I'm really not saying this out of bitter singleness, but I don't really get this holiday. I can see celebrating your anniversary, but I don't understand why some arbitrary day that may or may not have anything to do with your relationship has to be some kind of high-pressure demonstration of your love for each other. I'd be far more impressed by flowers on some random day than on a day when a massive advertising blitz has delivered the message that it's mandatory. Maybe I'm just enough of a diva to want any special day to be all about me and not a special day I'm sharing with everyone else in the world.

I made brownies yesterday, so I've got my chocolate taken care of for the day, and I'm making a pizza for dinner. That will be my celebration. And then if I've been really good in getting work done, I'll maybe watch a movie. Otherwise, I'll be working.

Movie Monday: Something Borrowed

Since I finished a round of revisions on Friday, I decided to give myself a weekend off. I got the second season DVD set for Downton Abbey and had myself a marathon on Saturday, so I've now seen the whole thing ahead of PBS and without all the PBS edits. I watched the PBS broadcast last night, and they went after it with a razor blade, not really cutting scenes but cutting individual lines or the beginnings and ends of scenes. Now, though, I have to wait a year for the next season. Boo.

Sunday afternoon was cold, so I made some popcorn and snuggled under the electric blanket to watch Something Borrowed on HBO. After all, it's the weekend before Valentine's Day, so it's the perfect time for a romantic comedy. I've read the book it was based on, but that was years ago, so I don't remember it well enough to be able to do a book-into-movie comparison. I kind of liked the book but didn't love it madly, but I'm not sure I can make myself read it again after seeing the movie (and I have an autographed copy!). I had some issues with the events in the book, but the book was well-written enough that I could still sympathize with the characters, even as they were doing things I found despicable -- I think that was the point of the book. It was like an exercise in "make the character do something she'd never do." But while the movie followed the book's plot, something about it just highlighted the issues without generating the sympathy, and I'm afraid I'd bring that back to the book if I re-read it.

Anyway, the story is about two young women on the cusp of 30 who have been best friends since childhood. There's Darcy, who is blond, rich, self-centered and shallow, and then there's Rachel, who's a mousy, brainy brunette. When Rachel's in law school, her study partner is Dex, The Perfect Man, who is gorgeous, wealthy and intelligent, and she has a mad crush on him. But then when she introduces her best friend to this guy she's been talking about non-stop, Darcy turns the flirt up to eleven and is all over him. Rachel figures she can't compete and gives up entirely. But that's all backstory. In the present, Darcy and Dex are engaged, with their wedding a few months away. After a birthday party for Rachel that somehow turns into an engagement party for Darcy, Rachel and Dex are talking and she lets slip that she used to have a crush on him. It turns out he felt the same way but thought he didn't have a chance when she set him up with her best friend. One thing leads to another, and soon they're having a guilt-inducing affair. Rachel has a dilemma -- she can either have the man she loves or her best friend. Not that she has much choice in the matter because Dex is still playing lovey-dovey with Darcy and hasn't done anything to call off the wedding. Fortunately, we're saved the trouble of having to yell at the screen because the filmmakers have taken care of that for us, in the form of Ethan, yet another friend from childhood, who says everything we've been thinking about how insane this situation is. He noticed how self-centered Darcy is when Rachel doesn't seem to have figured it out. He figures out the affair because he has eyes and a brain. And he gives good advice that no one takes. I don't recall this character playing that big a role in the book, although he's a major character in the follow-up. But since the movie can't get us into the heroine's head the way a book can, she needs a confidant character to talk to, and so they beefed up Ethan's role.

One of my issues with the premise may come from my background as an Army brat, since none of the reviews I saw on IMDB mentioned this. I don't have any friends from childhood who are still in my life. We moved around so much, and my friends moved around so much, that I was always moving on and making new friends. I'm now Facebook friends with one elementary school friend and some of my high school friends, but I don't have enough in common with any of them anymore to want them to play a bigger role in my life. So I may not understand the importance of someone who's known you since elementary school. I figure if you can break off a romance that's not working for you, you can break off a friendship that's not working for you. I'm not even sure why Darcy and Rachel ever were friends. They don't seem to have anything in common. The big bonding moment in the movie is when they do a dance routine they did for some junior high talent show. I don't know what they talk about other than Darcy. It strikes me as a very unhealthy relationship. If they were romantic partners instead of just friends we'd probably call it an emotionally abusive, co-dependent relationship. It seems more like a case of a Queen Bee and her sycophantic adorer, the only girl it's safe for the Queen Bee to be friends with because she's no competition. Darcy bosses Rachel around, tries to dictate her life, never even acknowledges that she might have needs, and then just when she goes too far with the selfishness she'll come out with the "oh, you're my best friend and I love you so much" talk. If Rachel had any self-respect, she'd ditch Darcy regardless of the guy. But most of the criticisms of the movie (and the book) have more to do with how awful it is to let a guy come between friends. I don't see them as really being friends.

Where the movie has problems is in the casting. Ginnifer Goodwin (Snow White in Once Upon a Time) plays Rachel, and she's supposedly the girl who can't believe that an attractive man would ever be interested in her. I think she's absolutely stunning, far more attractive than Darcy (Kate Hudson). If she's got that bad a self-image while looking like that, we're at pathological levels of self-loathing. Meanwhile, Dex is supposed to be deeper and more substantial, so that it seems that all he and Darcy have going for them is that they look pretty together, while he really has more in common with Rachel because they're both smart and have deep thoughts. I'm not familiar with the guy playing Dex, and he is hampered by a script that makes his character essentially a MacGuffin -- an object to be attained that isn't all that important in and of itself -- so he may have read the script and figured that "bland" was what they wanted. He's reasonably attractive in a young Tom Cruise way, where his features are all just right but there's something kind of plastic about him that makes him rather uninteresting. To make matters worse, Ethan, the best buddy, is played by John Krasinski, who may not be classically handsome but who I find very appealing. His character not only gets all the good lines and gets to be the comic relief in this so-called (but not very funny) romantic comedy, but he infuses the role with a lot of personality and makes good use of his full repertoire of reaction expressions honed on The Office. Even worse than that, Rachel and Ethan spend a lot more time together and interact more than Rachel and Darcy or Rachel and Dex do. For a mad moment (spoiler alert) I thought they were going to do something crazy and change the ending of the book, since they had the more famous actor in the "best friend" role and beefed up that role so significantly. I know that the girl realizing that her best buddy has been right there all along after she's wasted so much time chasing Mr. Wrong is a romantic comedy cliche, but the reason that the cliches become cliches is that they work. It's actually rather dissatisfying when they break with the trope, especially since Dex is such a useless waffler. I do know that if they do make the sequel, I'll have to avoid it. I actually liked the second book better, but I'm not sure I could stomach seeing that story with these actors in those roles after having seen this movie.

Now I need to find something good to watch on Valentine's night, or maybe something so bad it's good. I'll have to see what Lifetime Movie Network OnDemand has available. I could use a good "my husband's trying to kill me" movie.

Boy Stuff Strikes Again

I forced myself out of the house this morning to make a Target run, and now I can devote the rest of the day to work. I'm mad at the weatherman, though. He promised us a nice, rainy day and instead it's bright and sunny (the rain came and went overnight). How am I supposed to work under these conditions?

I may finish this pass of revisions today, but then I've already thought of some things I can do earlier in the book, so I'll probably do another pass, probably not linear this time, just hitting the particular spots, and then I'll do a good editing pass. The good thing is that I still like this book and these characters, so it's kind of nice to get to spend this much more time with them.

I don't normally get political or issue-oriented here, but something happened around here yesterday that just blew my mind. One of the big school districts in the area (not the one where I live, or I'd already have been expressing my dismay at the administration building) spent nearly $60,000, mostly supposedly coming from a federal grant (the administrators of the grant are denying they granted it, though) to take the fifth-grade boys to see Red Tails, the fictionalized movie about the Tuskegee Airmen. The girls stayed at school with substitute teachers, who had the option of showing them a DVD of Akeelah and the Bee, a totally fictional story about a girl in a spelling bee. According to the district officials, they didn't have room at the theater for all the kids, so they decided to just take the boys because they thought the movie would be of more interest to boys.

I just about exploded when I saw this story on my news feed. I know for a fact that I would far rather see a movie about fighter pilots than a movie about a spelling bee, and that's even disregarding the difference between going on a field trip to a movie theater and staying at school with substitute teachers. The very idea of spelling bees makes me twitch, but I'm a history buff and I know even my fifth-grade self would have chosen the fighter pilots over the spelling bee. How can they say boys, across the board, are going to be more interested than girls? And how can they even say it's more valuable for boys than girls to be inspired by this story? Women can be fighter pilots now, so who's to say some little girl might not see this story and develop a career ambition? And if it's about role models for economically disadvantaged kids (one of the justifications for this trip), girls need positive male role models as much as boys do.

This bizarre differentiation between "boy stuff" and "girl stuff" blows my mind. I'm about as far as you can get from a tomboy. I suck at sports, am not interested in camping (unless it's in a cabin with indoor plumbing), take ballet classes, like wearing dresses and have waist-length hair. But I love war movies. I love war documentaries. I've spent many an hour listening to veterans' war stories because I was interested and I could tell they needed to talk. My favorite color is blue and I'm not a huge fan of pink (though I am wearing a pink sweater today). You can't pigeonhole me. Or anyone, really. And telling kids that some things are for boys and some things are for girls isn't something alleged educators should be doing because it narrows their horizons.

Whew! Being on a soapbox is tiring. But since I work with little girls, this kind of thing worries me. It's okay to like both princess movies and fighter pilots, and they can be anything they want to be. It's the talent and the effort that are important, and those aren't gender-dependent.

Teenage Sensibility

First, an administrative note: I've been getting a ton of spam comments for older entries, and to help cut down on the amount of comments I have to delete, I've started locking comments for entries more than a month old that seem to be spam magnets (generally, if I have to delete spam comments more than three times for an entry, I'll lock comments). So, if you're reading through archives and find yourself wanting to leave comments to older entries (which does happen) and find you can't do so, this is the reason.

They may leave me constantly sick, but the preschoolers are great for the ego. After 45 minutes with them, I feel so loved. Last night I got a big hug from one, who then clung to me all night. Another didn't want to go in the room but agreed to do so if I held her hand as she entered, and The Artist Formerly Known as Mole Boy, who used to stay in the hall and cry while trying to refuse to go into the classroom, was coming down the hall with his dad and when he saw me standing in the doorway, he left his dad and ran down the hall into the room. I swear, that kid must be a changeling. Either the fairies or the aliens swapped him out during the holidays because he's a totally different child now. Then during class, I usually had two kids in my lap and one leaning against each side at most times, with two more whining about wanting their turn. Though I may be spending too much time with preschoolers. I saw out the window that someone was walking a dog down the sidewalk outside, and I thought "Puppy!" at the exact same time all the little girls cried out, "Puppy!" and ran to the window.

Moving to a slightly older age range, I've been reading some young adult books to try to get a sense of that mindset, and I've realized that my problem isn't just the roiling emotions. I also have to keep in mind that the "too stupid to live" bar is set at a different level for teenagers. Not that teens are automatically stupid, but the whole reason "maturity" is even a concept is that younger people who have less life experience will often make different -- and sometimes bad -- decisions that make perfect sense to them at the time but that adults would see as totally idiotic. That's where it's difficult to think back to your own youth and notice those bad decisions, unless there were serious consequences to them, because at the time those decisions were made, they seemed totally rational and just the thing to do. If you're in your own head, it's hard to spot those things. It may not even be something you did, but rather a thought process or the way you assessed a situation.

The trick is that I'm writing a very sensible character, and I want her to come across as a sensible person. I just need to think teenage sensible as opposed to adult sensible. I was a very sensible teenager, so I've been trying to think of silly things I did. I think a lot of my silliness came from my defense mechanisms. I was afraid to have people think I wanted something, so I acted like I didn't want it, and then of course no one gave it to me, and then I was hurt. Take homecoming mums. If you're from Texas, you'll understand what a big deal that is. In my day, they weren't quite the production they are now, where girls are essentially wearing Tournament of Roses parade floats on their shoulders (I hear there are even full-body mums that come with harnesses), but they still involved a huge flower with floor-length streamers and cowbells and other trinkets attached to the streamers. The really popular girls would be covered in them because they'd get one from their parents, sometimes one from other family members, one from their boyfriend (sometimes mums from multiple admirers), then the cheerleaders each got one from the football team, and the homecoming court members all got one. In my freshman year, I had a pretty good feeling I wouldn't be getting one (and I didn't realize what a big deal it was), so I remember making remarks about how I hoped I didn't get one because I had allergies and wearing a mum all day would make me sneeze. So, of course, no one got me one. I don't know if that was the only reason, though I do recall a guy saying something about it years later when I'd even forgotten what I'd said defensively as a freshman. I did finally get two mums my senior year, since my dad had been teaching at the school long enough to have realized what a big deal it was and got me one, and then the band gave all the senior girls one. And I was ridiculously excited about walking around school all day with those horrendous things attached to me. At the time, telling everyone I didn't want a mum seemed like the best way to avoid looking bad for not having one, even though now I can see that pretty much ensured that I'd never get one. Now that I think about it, I think the remark from the guy about me saying I didn't want one came my senior year when I was wearing two. I still don't know that he was someone who would have given me one, but it indicated that someone was listening.

I think most of my bad decisions as a teen, that led to me missing out on some things that might have been good, came from me being terrified of anyone thinking I cared too much about something that I actually cared deeply about. No, I don't really like that guy. We just do homework together. No, I don't want a homecoming mum. I don't really care about being at the top of my section in band because it's not like I'm a band geek. I don't really want to hang out with these people because it's not like I have anything in common with them (but, of course, if they asked me, I'd jump at the chance). Now I just need to find the story equivalent of "I don't want a mum (though really I do and I'm just covering in case I don't get one)" for my character.

Recommended Reading

There seem to be certain people who show up at just about every booksigning or author event. One is the person who's not interested in your book but who just wants to talk to an author about how to get a book published (and presumably how to find fame and fortune as an author). When you ask this person what they write, they usually say they haven't written anything yet. What they decide to write will depend on what they can get published. Then if you ask them what they like to read, they look at you like you've grown a second head and say they don't read. They just want to write.

This is probably not a person who will be very successful as an author, unless maybe they get on a reality show, become famous and then have a ghostwriter write a book that will have their name on it. Being a good writer involves a lot of reading. In fact, I probably spend more time reading than I do writing, and that's not just a procrastination mechanism. I know of authors who don't like to read how-to books on writing because if they think about their process, it doesn't work. Where they learn the process is actually from reading. You learn to tell stories by reading stories and getting a good sense of how they work. You learn to use language by reading language. One of the best ways to prepare yourself to start writing novels is to read a lot of novels, not to copy them but to absorb the sense of them.

Here are some kinds of books any aspiring author needs to read, aside from books that relate specifically to a certain project:
- The classics in your genre -- as I said last time, this is a good way to learn the origins of the cliches so you can avoid them or give them a fresh spin
- Recently published books in your genre -- so you'll know what's happening now
- Award winners in your genre -- so you'll know what's considered good
- Bestsellers in your genre -- so you'll know what's currently popular
- Bestsellers from other genres, fiction and non-fiction -- so you'll get a sense of current cultural trends
- Award winners across the board
- Anything getting a lot of buzz or hype
- Books about the business of writing -- even if you don't read how-to books, you need to educate yourself on things like how to find an agent, how to write a query letter, how the industry works, what's in a contract, etc. Then you're less likely to make bad decisions or fall prey to scams. My library has a whole shelf of books like this.

Optional but recommended reading:
- Non-fiction books that help you understand people -- characters are the core of fiction, so the better you are at understanding human motivations and their consequences, the richer your writing will be. This can include psychology books as well as memoirs, biography and history.
- Books from other genres that may have relevance to your work -- if there are romantic elements in what you're writing, it's a good idea to read some romance novels, for example
- the literary canon -- what we call "the classics," stuff like Dickens, Austen, Shakespeare, all those things that have become part of the culture. If you quote it or refer to it, you need to read it in context.
- Poetry -- a great way to look at the use of language and the art of choosing the perfect word

If you look at this list and shudder because it sounds like your idea of hell, then either you aren't really cut out to be a writer or you're trying to write the wrong things. Most writers start as readers, so before they even contemplate writing that first word, they've already read many of the genre classics and have been reading the new stuff all along. It's only when they have to dedicate some of their former reading time to writing that they may start being more deliberate about what they read.