Annie Cardi's Blog, page 103

You're Gonna Make It After All

Love this post by  Justine Larbalestier about when you know you've made it as a writer. Lots of hilarious items included like:

". . . I get my very first fan letter. Someone read and enjoyed my book enough to write to me! Best. Day. Ever.

. . . the fan letters I get make me cry because they are so moving.

. . . the fan letters I get make me cry because they are so illiterate."

Make sure to read through the whole list, because it's awesome and a good reminder that being a writer isn't about being on tour or having an agent or getting a Nobel Prize. It's about writing.

(Couldn't resist including Mary Tyler Moore in this one.)

The Latest YA/Adult Lit Debate

It happens whenever there's a YA/children's book bestseller or movie adaptation: someone writes an article about whether or not YA/children's books are worth reading if you're over the age of 17. The New York Times features just such a discussion over at their Room for Debate.

YA Patricia McCormick holds down the fort for YA. She argues:

"…adults are discovering one of publishing's best-kept secrets: that young adult authors are doing some of the most daring work out there. Authors who write for young adults are taking creative risks — with narrative structure, voice and social commentary — that you just don't see as often in the more rarefied world of adult fiction."

Obviously I very much agree. It's a wonderful time for YA, when authors are allowed to push boundaries, and readers are enthusiastic about these risks. Teens already seek out innovation in technology, music, and other fields. Why should it surprise anyone that this happens for literature?

Columnist Joel Stein argues that adults should be embarrassed for enjoying anything that a young person might appreciate. But I find it hard to listen to an argument by anyone who claims that he can't appreciate Pixar films–has he seen the heartbreaking depiction of love and married life in Up?–and hasn't even read a YA novel. I'm sure he doesn't appreciate or understand these novels, but I also think he wrote the article to be controversial and get hits. As such, I'm even more inclined to ignore him.

Lots of other articles included as well, most of them in favor of adults expanding their bookshelves with YA novels. In short: just as with adult literature, there is a lot of good and a lot of bad and a lot in the middle. But you shouldn't cancel out a whole genre simply because you assume it's beneath you.

(HT: Chronicles of a Mountain Librarian)

Links Galore

A few more links to get you through Wednesday:

A response to critics who claim Jennifer Lawrence is somehow not skinny enough to play Katniss (while ignoring how her male costars aren't underfed either).
A questionnaire for your characters (or you!), inspired by Proust.
A sneak peak at the SCBWI summer conference schedule. Wish LA weren't so far away!
A book awards program where the winners are selected by young readers.

Howl Meets the Hunger Games

The Horn Book's review of The Hunger Games movie alerted me to the fact that Josh Hutcherson (aka Peeta) was Markl in the English version of Howl's Moving Castle. Check him out in this behind-the-scenes video from the DVD. (Embedding has been disabled, but he comes in around 2:14.) What a cutie!

Even though it's really different from the book, I love Miyazaki's adaption. So cool that Josh is in two great adaptions of children's/YA novels. (Apparently he was also in Bridge to Terabithia and Zathura, but I haven't seen those.)

This also got me thinking about how intense a Miyazaki Hunger Games adaptation would be. But then again, I want Studio Ghibli to adapt pretty much everything.

Storytelling and Reporting

Gene Weingarten is one of my favorite feature writers ever. He knows how to craft a story and isn't afraid to look at complicated characters. A couple of pieces he's written are "The Peekaboo Paradox," about children's performer the Great Zucchini, and "Fatal Distraction," about parents who accidentally leave their children behind in a car on a hot summer day. Both are heartbreaking and wonderfully written, and I highly recommend checking them out.

Writer's Digest has an interview with Weingarten about the writing process. About storytelling and reporting:

One of the things I admire about your work is that you consistently prove that great writing begins with great reporting. Talk about the importance of reporting.

Well, let's start with the maxim that the best writing is understated, meaning it's not full of flourishes and semaphores and tap dancing and vocabulary dumps that get in the way of the story you are telling. Once you accept that, what are you left with? You are left with the story you are telling.

The story you are telling is only as good as the information in it: things you elicit, or things you observe, that make a narrative come alive; things that support your point not just through assertion, but through example; quotes that don't just convey information, but also personality. That's all reporting.

What distinguishes a well-told story from a poorly told one?

All of the above. Good reporting, though, requires a lot of thinking; I always counsel writers working on features to keep in mind that they are going to have to deliver a cinematic feel to their anecdotes. When you are interviewing someone, don't just write down what he says. Ask yourself: Does this guy remind you of someone? What does the room feel like? Notice smells, voice inflection, neighborhoods you pass through. Be a cinematographer.

Very much like Weingarten's focus on the story itself, not extraneous flourishes, and creating a cinematic feel in a piece. Even though this is about nonfiction, I think both of these tips are extremely useful to fiction writers as well.

Best of the Best Reading Challenge

It's easy to get stuck in a rut, even if you really enjoy a particular activity. Goals and personal challenges can help broaden your experiences and introduce you to new, exciting work. I've been in a bit of a reading rut recently (mostly out of laziness) so I think YALSA's 2012 Best of the Best Challenge might be perfect for my spring reading. The details (in short):

"The 2012 Best of the Best Reading Challenge will begin at 12:01AM EST on Sunday, April 1. Once the challenge starts, you'll have three months (until 11:59pm on Saturday, June 30) to read as many of the 80 titles counted among YALSA's 2012 Best of the Best as you can….The Best of the Best are the winners and honor books for the Alex, Edwards, Morris, Nonfiction, Odyssey, and Printz Awards as well as the Top Ten Amazing Audiobooks, Best Fiction for Young Adults, Great Graphic Novels, Popular Paperbacks, and Quick Picks."

If you read at least 25 titles, you will have "completed" the challenge and can submit a reader response about your fav/least fav/middle fav title to be published on the Hub. Reading also earns you blog badges, including a super exclusive badge for reading 80.

Obviously there are lots of great titles to choose from, and several are books I might not pick up otherwise. (I'm looking at you, nonfiction.)

Check out the Hub post for more info on taking part in the challenge.

Creativity and the Power of Frustration

Art and innovation doesn't just come from someone working happily away on their project. Part of creative work involves frustration and failure. This video by Flash Rosenberg examines the agony of art and how that can lead us to imagining and creating the impossible:

Definitely something to bookmark and watch again when you feel like an artistic failure.

(via Brain Pickings)

Urban Legends, Loss, and Facebook

Last weekend, Walt and I went to see Company One's production of Hookman by Lauren Yee. The synopsis, from Company One's page:

"Being a freshman in college is hard when your roommate is weird, home is far away, and Hookman is everywhere! What's Lexi to do when her old high school friend, Jess, gets killed…I mean – has an accident, a car accident, I think? Not even Facebook stalking the dead can calm the creepy feelings spilling out of the shadows in this existential comic horror slasher – a new play by Lauren Yee."

I never watch scary movies, so I wasn't sure how I'd like this play. It ended up being fantastic–a nice blend of comic and horror, matched with moving themes of loss, guilt, and growing up. The cast did a great job, especially since most of the dialogue was very grounded in the experience of being eighteen and just starting college. My favorite exchanges came from Lexi and Jess; they really felt like they were old friends who were trying to maneuver the fact that they were now in college on different coasts. Although this wasn't a play for young adults, it managed to hit an almost YA vibe–it played with genre, wasn't afraid to be funny, and focused on growing up. (Or maybe I can just connect anything with YA.) If you're in the Boston area and are an adult/very mature teen, I'd check out Hookman.

Part of the play also dealt with how we find out about death via networks like Facebook. Like other life events, you can find out personal information about people even if you haven't seen them for years. And if someone dies suddenly, you might find out that they're gone (via lots of "we miss you, so sad you're gone, etc." wall posts) but find no information about what actually happened to that person. I think this is going to become increasing more common, especially for young people who don't tend to experience the loss of friends very often.

At the Atlantic, there's an interview with Patrick Stokes about death and Facebook. One part I found interesting was this mention of Facebook walls becoming online memorials:

"What's interesting about it is that offline we physically create places, specially demarcated places, where we put dead people, but on Facebook these aren't demarcated—they exist side by side with living profiles. So in that sense, what we have now is not so much like an online graveyard or cemetery; instead we just have these dead people among us."

This reminded me of Hookman's look at what it means to survive someone and how we connect. I'm curious to see how teens now and in future generations will deal with having these kinds of memorials among us. It can be a huge help in the grieving process, but I wonder if it would also make it harder to let that person go. Whenever you go online, there's a reminder that you've lost someone. And not necessarily someone you were very close with, either. Are teens going to grow up in a world of virtual ghosts?

Tracking Waldo

I would call it cheating, but it's just too awesome: a computer programmer wrote an algorithm to find the elusive Waldo:

"Heike's algorithm narrows down the places Waldo could be hiding by searching for the colors of his signature shirt.

First, it filters out all colors but red. Next, it identifies parts of the image with alternating lines of red and white. Finally, it puts a white circle around the part of the image that most closely matches the famous sweater."

Very clever, Heike! Your next challenge: find Carmen Sandiego.

(image: Indiebound)

Katniss Everbean

Probably the best Hunger Games parody I've seen so far:

This one might have the better fire-dress version. Well done, beanies*!

*And looking at the production list, I'm convinced that I might actually know a couple of the people involved. The internet is a small, strange world.