A Road Trip Wednesday! A return! A (Whitman) reference!

This! Week's! RTW! Topic!

What movie have you seen that actually (gasp!) improved on the book?

I am on tenterhooks, here, waiting to see what everyone else comes up with. Because, while the drive behind this question SHOULD be inherently positive—let's congratulate Hollywood on something awesome, people!—the answer that popped immediately into my head had less to do with Hollywood's rare good work than it did with source material that I found so abysmally abysmal that I basically threw it into the dusty corner of a rarely attended study abroad office in Moscow and never looked back.

The hilarity, folks, of following up on my "haters gonna hate" call to kindness after SEVEN MONTHS of radio silence with an RTW post on a book I couldn't run fast enough away from, I hated it so much…well, it's not lost on me. Not one bit. Especially given the pedigree of the book in question.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then: I contradict myself. Blah blah large, blah blah multitudes. And a big round of applause for good ol' Walt.

Anyhow, the book/film pair I'm talking about here is Neil Gaiman's STARDUST.

Hated:

[via Goodreads]

Loved:

[via Tumblr, of course]

And the fact that anyone could see through the dull dull dullness that was the entire story in the book to any kind of golden kernel that might even be turned into a passable film, well. To say I was "impressed" would be putting it mildly.

And here's the thing: I love almost EVERYTHING Neil Gaiman writes! Really, really love it. He's all clever and chatty and thorough and odd. But his STARDUST was just so FLAT, with characters that seemed hardly to speak to one another at all, let alone enough to constitute a burgeoning affection and eternal love—I just could NOT get into it. Rather, I did the opposite of get into it, whatever that might be.

Look: I'm absolutely willing to entertain the idea that I was somehow standing in my own way with this one. I'd seen the film first, at a random outdoor mall on the highway LITERALLY on my way from my home in Wyoming to the airport in Denver, where I was getting on the plane to go to Russia for half a year.

Obviously I didn't just walk out of the theater loving it, but also having formed an abnormal attachment to it as the nucleus of the final home-y experience I'd have for months. And then I bought the paperback at a bigboxbookstore to have on the plane, hoping, I guess, for a way to продолжать, to draw out the original experience. And we all know how THOSE plans typically go.

But look, too: I'm a good reader. I know what I like and what I don't and I can usually pinpoint exactly why. And I did NOT like the book.

But I love love love the film. So, Hollywood? Thanks a million. And, you know what, thanks Neil Gaiman, for writing a book that better people than me could see the cinematic promise in.

As for all you Gaiman-fans, don't hate me.

No accounting for taste, right?

RTW: Best of the Best of the Best of 2011 (aka, Look! A Post!)

No preamble here, let's just jump in: YA Highway's Road Trip Wednesday, number 111 AND the last of '11. Coincidence? Well, yes. But let's revel anyhow.

This week's topic is the top five books of 2011. But "of" is so vague, and I read so very much throughout the year, that I am going to go ahead with two lists: one of books released in 2011, and one of books I read this year, but were published earlier.

So in no order, with my Goodreads reviews (if I wrote one):

Published in 2011:
° The Scorpio Races, by Maggie Stifevater—specifically, the audiobook version.

This amp should go to 11; five stars is, really truly, not enough. What a story. What characters! Oh Dove, my Dove. Stifevater's outdone herself. If you can get the audio, even if you have already read the printed copy, I urge urge urge it. These readers are TOPS.

° Anna Dressed in Blood, by Kendare Blake.

So, first, the cover. When I first saw this cover reveal earlier this year, I was impressed and thoroughly spooked out. When I finally got it in my hot little hands, I was even happier with it. When I turned the last page of the book, all I could think was, I wish there was more blood. So book two? Please bring me more blood front and center. Thank you. 

I loved this book. I loved this book to bits and pieces and shreds. I loved Anna; I loved Thunder Bay; I loved the improbable addition of Queen Bee Carmel to the ghostfighting squad. I loved the freshness of the writing, which was clear and honest, and filled with enough unexpected turns of phrase and thought that I burst out laughing repeatedly (in the best way). The violence and gore, too, was pitch perfect—not gratuitous, always interesting, always moving the story forward in the best, most gruesome, way. 

And Cas. I adored Cas. That he rationalizes his interest in Anna as being kind of perfect, even if it is more than a bit wrong, is realistic (well, as far as ghosts go); that he can't think about how the relationship would play out after five or ten years is even more so. He was just mature and pragmatic enough to make the effects of his job seem real, while at the same time jussssst enough self-focused and shortsighted to be a believable teenager. 

The story, too, was strong and well-paced, and ended up feeling like a very satisfying television miniseries rather than a fleshed out single episode. It was comfortable territory, coming in as a rabid fan of Supernatural, but the similarities served as a framework, a safety blanket, rather than as a reminder of a different mythology rehashed. The sequel can't come soon enough. But please: more blood!

° Don't Stop Now, by Julie Halpern.

  

Julie Halpern, GET OUT OF MY HEAD. Somehow, between this and WILD NERD YONDER, almost my entire high school + college experience has been thrown in a cocktail shaker, mixed up, and served over ice. I love this story, and the characters, and how the delicate structures of who each is is obvious without being heavy-handed. Lil and Josh's friendship is rock solid and leaf-thin at once, and the giddy excitement of a road trip is made clear, with the palpable sense of things being just off enough beneath it to feel absolutely true. Oh, and what a voice on Lil. Loved her.

° Entwined, by Heather Dixon.

A sweet, charming thing of a story, with a HUGE cast of equally charming, fully-fleshed out, dear characters. And such a great, tense series of action scenes at the end! Love those sisters; so much spunk. This is the kind of book that belongs on a self, to be read and reread and reread.

° The FitzOsbornes in Exile, by Michelle Cooper.

I just love these books. Sophie is so gosh-darn fantastic and kind and clever; Toby's just so funny…the whole clan is great. I am endlessly impressed by the amount of research and though that had to have gone into the writing, and how effortless and breezy it comes off. Recommend recommend recommend.

Published earlier, read in 2011:
° How to Say Goodbye in Robot, by Nat Standiford.

°  Birthmarked, by Caragh M. O'Brien.

Shelves are inundated with dystopian/bleak future stories lately, but Birth Marked stands out for the solid and believable world Caragh O'Brien has built. It is clear she has all the details established, but she doesn't belabor them in the narrative, and lets the characters live their stories, in their world, in a completely organic (and non-patronizing) way. The problems that arise are reasonable, and the reactions/solutions to them valid against the internal logic; the complexity of what "right" decisions are in a society plagued with more issues than simple struggles for power and glory is great, and the characters on either side of the wall, from all sectors of the Enclave/Wharfton society, rise to it with complexity of their own. Gaia is a fantastic heroine, and Leon's coldness and flaws are welcome in his role as romantic foil and heroic other. I am definitely anxious for November's release of Prized.

° Before I Fall, by Lauren Oliver.

° The True Meaning of Smekday, by Adam Rex.

° Twenty Boy Summer, by Sarah Ockler.

What a tight, lovely, sad, funny, sweet, cathartic book. Anna Abby from New Yawk is one of my favorite narrators in a long time, all stubbornness, insecurity, and wry humor. Definitely a book to keep on the shelf for re-reading every summer.

Honorable mentions for series finished in 2011:
° Mastiff, and the end of Tamora Pierce's Beka Cooper series.

° Goliath, and the end of Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan series—again, particularly the fantastic audio version.

And one many years old, but that I read this year and adored and have taken to carrying around in my purse everywhere:
° The Morgan Rawlinson series by Maryrose Wood (Why I Let My Hair Grow Out; How I Found the Perfect Dress; and What I Wore to Save the World)

I loved this book. Morgan's voice just screams out from page one, and she is so SURLY you can feel it in your bones. This is the kind of series I wish I'd had for shelves in my formative years.

Good grief that was hard. I read more this year even than I realized. I feel terrible leaving off some other titles (Shade and Shine, for pete's sake! Girl of Fire and Thorns!) but these really were my absolute favorites.

Okay, 2012. I'm ready for you.

RTW: Changing the Bloodlight

Too punny? Let's pretend it isn't.

Over at YAHighway, this week's Road Trip Wednesday prompt is What supporting character from a YA book would you most like to see star in their own novel?

And since I am devoting October to scary reads, my first thought was resident Queen Bee Carmel Jones, from ANNA DRESSED IN BLOOD.


What I liked most about Carmel was exactly what Cas does: she's smart. She's smart and put-together and fiercely determined to do the right thing, even if the right thing means confronting, with absolutely none of the requisite skills, a murderous ghost in order to give some peace to the memory of her jackass ex-boyfriend.

Carmel's status as Queen Bee is one that's obviously been earned, one she deserves, not one she tricked her way into. And watching her doggedly follow Cas through his hunt, and come out swinging when she shouldn't have a snowman's chance of surviving, is impressive.

Seeing the story from her point of view—or another, different, ghost hunting story, since [SPOILER] she makes it through book one—would be fascinating.

* that image being as artsy a bee as I could get the internet to give me. I don't abide sexy animal costumes, but I think Carmel would know just how to rock this to maintain her position.

RTW: Writer's Block as Decision Fatigue, or How to Build a Better Bulldozer

This week's Road Trip Wednesday prompt is the very open-ended 
How do you get past writer's block?

and I wasn't sure if I was going to participate because

a) I am, at the moment, in the middle of the ice-fragile stage right AFTER writer's block wherein any iota of attention paid to the prospect of not being able to move forward might paralyze me, and

b) I don't really know how I got there, except for just saying to my brain, "welp, time to move on."

But then I was reading that fascinating article in the NYT about decision fatigue, and it occurred to me, that is EXACTLY what writer's block is. Because what is writing, if not a series of decision after decision after decision?

The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts, usually in either of two very different ways. One shortcut is to become reckless: to act impulsively instead of expending the energy to first think through the consequences. (Sure, tweet that photo! What could go wrong?) The other shortcut is the ultimate energy saver: do nothing. Instead of agonizing over decisions, avoid any choice.

So yes. We're not real-life judges choosing which prisoners get paroled or don't, but we are doing the same things for our characters, our worlds, our words. I mean, last night it took me a good five minutes to get from this:

Did she believe her now that this hungover Brandi had been forced out by the petite blonde?

to this:

Did she believe her now, now that this hungover Brandi had been forced out by the petite blonde?

to this:

Did she believe her now, now that this hungover Brandi had evidently been forced out by the petite blonde?

Tiny changes, and ones that today I'm not even sure I approve of. Which makes sense, since they were the last things I managed to accomplish before I had to give in to exhaustion and sleep, or risk feeling too overwhelmed by minutiae to go on (the second, full-stop, side-effect of decision fatigue). And that's not even considering the larger, major structural changes I was trying to work through before nit-picking that last page.

So if writing is all decision making, and writer's block is decision fatigue, then according to the article, the best way to solve it is by…

(wait for it)

…EATING! 

Glucose, specifically, and while I could make a joke about all that Bonnaroo Buzz I've been into lately, or about the average writer's penchant for chocolate anything*, the real advice being given by the scientists is to Just. Eat. Better. All the time. More proteins, more whole foods with natural glucose (thank goodness for peach season). 

Glucose, however, isn't everything.

So how else do you build yourself a better bulldozer? 

You learn not to trust yourself. Or rather, WHEN not to trust yourself: 

“Good decision making is not a trait of the person, in the sense that it’s always there,” Baumeister says. “It’s a state that fluctuates.” His studies show that people with the best self-control are the ones who structure their lives so as to conserve willpower. They don’t schedule endless back-to-back meetings. They avoid temptations like all-you-can-eat buffets, and they establish habits that eliminate the mental effort of making choices. Instead of deciding every morning whether or not to force themselves to exercise, they set up regular appointments to work out with a friend. Instead of counting on willpower to remain robust all day, they conserve it so that it’s available for emergencies and important decisions.

“Even the wisest people won’t make good choices when they’re not rested and their glucose is low,” Baumeister points out. That’s why the truly wise don’t restructure the company at 4 p.m. They don’t make major commitments during the cocktail hour. And if a decision must be made late in the day, they know not to do it on an empty stomach. “The best decision makers,” Baumeister says, “are the ones who know when not to trust themselves.”

So how do we apply this to writer's block? Because writers don't want to just avoid bad decision making (that surly troll can always be cut out of—or added back INTO—the scene later), but that other wall hit by the mentally fatigued, the one where it's easier to make NO decision than risk a bad one. I'd imagine something reasonable and familiar-sounding, like

• establishing a writing schedule, and sticking to it no matter what (even better if you have a motivation buddy/crit partner to commit to something similar with you).

• writing as early in the day as possible, and making sure not to write on an empty stomach if you can't get to it until later in the day.

• make a habit/schedule of as many other things in your life as possible, to avoid having to add those decisions to your plate on a daily basis. Make a grocery list you will STICK to before shopping; make a meal plan for the week, so you don't stress about it three times a day; embrace the romanticism of chance by just reading the first book on your TBR pile instead of digging through each day and mulling, by just letting Netflix send you whatever's next instead of obsessing over what you might feel like watching in two days, even by ordering library books for hold instead of wandering the aisles aimlessly for an hour (although the joy of finding a gem in the stacks shouldn't be avoided always—maybe just when a deadline is looming). I am sure there are plenty of other things that can be turned into habit to free up mental decision-making energy, but that's at least a start.

As with anything simple, this won't be easy. Not for me, anyway. But I think thinking about writer's block in terms of decision fatigue, and trying to solve it with approaches used FOR decision fatigue, is something that I can embrace.

Now fingers crossed it works…

*my own ambivalence towards chocolate, I realize—along with the fact I couldn't feel the earthquake in MD yesterday, and watched a driveways full of shaking cars thinking, "huh, wonder why that huge gust of wind missed me"—makes me seem something other than human. I'm just going to go with Superhuman, call myself that. That sounds better (than crazy, I mean).

RTW: Inspired Spaces

Let's not even talk about the month+ I've been away. Let's not even talk about it.

Road Trip Wednesday! Let's talk about that. In an effort to be THE MOST BROAD EVER, this week's prompt is What is the most inspiring setting you've ever visited in real life?


Broad is good. I can do broad.

However. I am from Wyoming. I mean, talk about inspiring settings:

I'm EXUDING inspired here, just EXUDING.

I mean, we only boarded our horses here because it was convenient…nevermind the view.

Yeah, we have a mountain, too.

And horizons for days.

That's Devil's Gate. I live near it. No biggie.

So I do feel a bit biased. And to be honest, it is THAT setting—open spaces, big sky, epic wild epicness—that really has inspired the majority of my writing.

That said, Swiss Day in the Alps was a thing of legend:

Sunset hike up the opposite side of the valley…

TIIIIINY bonfires burning on distant ridges. JUST LIKE THE BEACON FIRES IN ROHAN.

Because the moon didn't think things were dramatic enough…

This.

THIS.

…and if THAT doesn't show up sometime, in SOMETHING I write, I'll probably have to wear a big old FAIL sign around my neck. Because, I mean. Look at that.

COME ON—THIS. Right?

What do you know? I'm feeling inspired ALREADY.

Alright, WIP. Let's get cracking.

RTW: Guess This Dystopian Pitch

(updated: the link is also at the end, but the answers can be found here)

Love a puzzle. Love slapstick. Love reversal-filled, ambiguous conversations. So getting you guys to guess some of my favorite books by my own abstruse elevator pitches? On. It.

This week's topic: You're re-reading one of your faves when someone asks the dreaded question: "What's that book about?" Give us your best off-the-cuff blurb of any book, any genre, and have your readers try to guess the title in the comments!

Okay, okay. So this isn't quite about puzzles and slapstick, but I saw "blurb" and thought "pitch," and from "pitch" went straight to Abbott and Costello:

Costello: Look, You gotta pitcher on this team?

Abbott: Sure.

Costello: The pitcher's name?

Abbott: Tomorrow.

Costello: You don't want to tell me today?

Abbott: I'm telling you now.

Costello: Then go ahead.

Abbott: Tomorrow!

Costello: What time?

Abbott: What time what?

Costello: What time tomorrow are you gonna tell me who's pitching?

Abbott: Now listen. Who is not pitching.

Costello: I'll break your arm, you say who's on first! I want to know what's the pitcher's name?

Abbott: What's on second.

Costello: I don't know.

Abbott & Costello Together: Third base!

This pretty much informs half the dialogue between my MC and The Boy. Those scenes just fly.

But that isn't this week's topic. So. On to the pitches! I am going to give you two, one from my current YA pile, and one from my Russian exam pile. You'll see why in a moment.

Pitch The First
Okay, so there's this Society – and this is some unknown time in the future – where human social interaction has been turned into a science and all activity is measured and prescribed based on scientific calculations, including what once would have been called romantic pairings. The Society's solution to love is a mandatory operation that leaves people patient and unexcitable. The main character narrates a several month period in this Society after a new romantic interest comes into the picture, one who has not been assigned by the Society and who introduces to the very scientific, rule-abiding protagonist an unfettered, freer way of living life – a way that includes passion, love and an anarchic underground group that is out to antagonize the Society. 

Pitch the Second
Okay, so there's this Society – and this is some unknown time in the future – where human social interaction has been turned into a science and all activity is measured and prescribed based on scientific calculations, including what once would have been called romantic pairings. The Society's solution to love is a mandatory operation that leaves people patient and unexcitable. The main character narrates the changes that occur after the idea of love is made less abhorrent by a new romantic interest, whose presence in the story forces the main character to question the very basis of the "science" that Society uses to keep love at bay. The romantic interest also has connections to an anarchic underground group that is out to antagonize the Society.


Yes, I made those pretty dang ambiguous.

Intentionally.

But to help you guys figured this out, here are two SPECIFIC details, one that matches to each, that make these books more distinct in an elevator pitch: one of them involves a planned spaceship project, a glass wall between the Society and the wild, and all the characters are named not with names, but with a combination of a letter and three numbers; the other one involves a rewriting of history and mythology to support the idea of love as the root disease of all human ills, cities bounded by guarded walls to keep the wild out, and characters named after prostitute "saints."

So. Guesses?

Answers – and videos! including a dance interpretation! – are in this backdated post.

Happy Wednesday, all!

RTW: Guess This Pitch REVEALED

Oh, dystopians. How we humans love you.

So! The first book Tomorrow* off-the-cuff pitched was...

WE, by Evgeny Zamyatin

The official blurb from the Mirra Ginsburg translation (trust her):

In the One State of the Great Benefactor, individuals have been replaced by numbers and passions subdued. But when the chief architect of the spaceship "Integral," known as D-503, has a chance meeting with the beautiful I-330, he stumbles upon an unexpected discovery that threatens all he believes about himself and the One State.

And, as promised, a modern dance interpretation (which is very cool):

And the second book was...

DELIRIUM, by Lauren Oliver.

And that official blurb:

Before scientists found the cure, people thought love was a good thing. They didn’t understand that once love -- the deliria -- blooms in your blood, there is no escaping its hold. Things are different now. Scientists are able to eradicate love, and the governments demands that all citizens receive the cure upon turning eighteen. Lena Holoway has always looked forward to the day when she’ll be cured. A life without love is a life without pain: safe, measured, predictable, and happy. 
But with ninety-five days left until her treatment, Lena does the unthinkable: She falls in love.

No modern dance interpretations that I could find for that one on quick review. But I am sure they will come with time.

So the takeaway from all this?

1) Russian literature is on its sh*t.

2) Dystopians are forever.

Now all you YA folk: go read WE!

On Inspiration

RTW! Someday I will write posts outside of the blog carnival. Someday.

This week: Who in your life has most inspired your writing?  

Writing is equal parts words and story, and with no hesitation, I can say that the reason I write has to do with words. I mean, I love a story, am fascinated by clever plotting and complex characterization, but at the end of the day, I write (and have spent my life learning other languages) because I love words.

And I love words because of my family.

My parents started me on vocab lessons early on. I feel like I learned to talk at a surprisingly young age, but memories are warped little things, so who knows. I do know that I was an early reader, and a voracious one. But my voracity really stemmed from a desire to feel new words rattle around my brain and roll their way over my tongue, which is pretty much what I love most about writing now.

By the time I had started school, I had also begun what has become a lifelong tradition of sitting with my dad and racing to solve the newspaper's Jumble puzzle in our heads. By the time I was ten, I was a regular player of Upwords with him and his mother whenever we would visit (the only game ever played in that household). By the time I was twelve, I was forbidden the use of the dictionary. They never held back on me, and trouncing happened equally on all fronts.

Upwords battle ca. 2009. My (then) 92yo grandmother still wipes the floor with us.

My mother's family plays pretty much any game but Upwords, with an equal lack of going-easy on younger players, and we all tell stories throughout. Between the two of sides of the family, my brain has pretty much adopted words as the be all and end all of creative production.

To be honest, this has turned me into a difficult word-gamer to play against casually. Sort of ruined my college hopes with that background.

But it bolstered my writing. As did my parent's high expectations for my written schoolwork, and my mother's constant badgering not to be lazy, which is turn led to my love for a harsh critique, and a keen, dauntless eye in editing anything (my critique partners know well what I mean with that). Add to that my uncle's MFA, my mother's and my aunt's and my father's arts careers, and my brother's ability to spin anything into a story (okay, THAT is where the storytelling talent in our family fell – he once seriously convinced me five times with five different stories in one conversation that he had bought a new car. Which he hadn't.), I'm surprised I didn't get serious about my writing sooner.

So inspiration? Love Brian Jacques, love Vladimir Nabokov, love Michael Chabon and Kelly Link.

But I adore my family.

Thanks, guys.

Audio-bibliophile (RTW + Scott Pilgrim FTW)

Oh, hey there, people. I just printed off my thesis draft for my committee. Yes, it is a day late. Yes, it is only the *first* draft. Yes, that makes me nervous. 

Also, how do you people deal with screwy Scrivener formatting after it's compiled and exported? My brain was too mushy to deal with the knobs and buttons inside Scrivener, so I ended up hand deleting all the dumb 3in tab indent arrows. Yes, dumb. I said it.

I'll sleep soon. But after RTW! 

This week: If you could choose a celebrity narrator for your WIP, who would you choose?

If I didn't love have a love affair with audiobooks, I might have skipped this week's topic. But, I just came off a really nice experience with the The True Meaning of Smekday narration (Bahni Turpin is my hero, for reals), and am continuing to feel inspired by this brand new contemporary WIP, so here I am. But quickly. Don't blink or you'll miss it.

So, if I were going to choose an audiobook narrator for my WIP, I'd probably try to cheat my way out of thinking too hard, and ask this lovely lady:

Mary is my cousin's best friend (which, PS, hot damn you're real pharmacist, Erin! Congratulations!), and I am just so pleased that the girl who was so excited to play Juliet in a second grade play grew up to live her dream. We aren't close or anything, but when I do see her every couple years, she is a sweetheart. AND, she has the perfect voice for Bennie, my Secret WIP heroine. Not just her Ramona Flowers voice, but her real voice, I mean. 

So yeah, I'd ask Mary Elizabeth Winstead to do it. And if she weren't available, I'd ask my mom.

My mom is awesome.

I like this exercise, so maybe I will come up with dream narrators for my other projects sometime in the next week, to help me ease back into the blog schedule. In the meantime, check out this lovely interview of Mary with Jimmy Kimmel, in which she tells a completely plausible story about my grandma falling asleep at a cruise ship slot machine: I'm serious. 

My grandma is also totally awesome.

Hanging on a chord

**#*#*#Dusts off blog**#*##**

I'm back! It's been too long, both from RTW and blogging in general. I have it in my head that I am not allowed to write ANYTHING except my thesis, but then that just turns into me watching marathons of BBC shows. So nuts to you, writing embargo: I'm playing again.


This week: If your WIP were music, what song(s) would it be?


And what a good week to do so! Scars and first kisses... eh. My stories are not so great. My memory is dismal – embarrassingly so, for a writer. But songs to inspire/embody/accompany writing? I can DO that.


Even better, my writing moratorium introduced two brand new book ideas to my brain, the most recent of which came directly from a fantastically joyous song from a fantastically joyous band that I found on NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts series last week, which I immediately bought the album of. The joyous song in question? Right here:

I now have a very promising, rollicking, heart-string-tugging contemporary bildungsroman WIP on my hands, with a cheeky narrator and an achingly dear best friend. Also, a growing playlist to support it (See: Local Natives' Airplanes; Ra Ra Riot's Can You Tell and Too Dramatic, both).


The other song that immediately sprang to mind is tied to my oldest WIP, the fantasy/adventure/time-travel YA that is now undergoing a major revision. My attempts at making a more substantial playlist for this project continue to come to naught, as it has spanned the longest period of time, from pre-grad school to now, and my tastes and interests in music keep changing. OKGo's WTF, however, has stuck like glue to my conception of Temerity's world since I first saw it, and seems only to grow more pertinent as time passes. Chicken and egg, probably.

My latest tweaking, especially, has turned Temerity's story into something that this video even embodies (to a degree), beyond just the aural elements. Yes, by that I mean TOTES TRIPPY. Other songs that might flesh that playlist out are Bat for Lashes' Horse and I, the whole tone of this Black Dub Tiny Desk Concert, The Head and the Heart's Down in the Valley, at least at the moment, but the OKGo is here to stay.


What I have found, with this WIP, is that songs for individual character playlists come to me much more readily than story-based ones (the first two in my list are for my MC, Black Dub is for the warrior girl's relationship, Down in the Valley is for the male protag/romantic lead). I'm not sure what that says about the story, or me as a writer – it isn't like I have much experience building book-based playlists, after all – but I do find it interesting.


What about you guys: character-associated or story-associated? Or something else entirely? I never did like a binary.

Purple supernova prose

Ah, publishing in 2111. I didn't think I'd be up for this Road Trip Wednesday topic, not really being wise at this stage in my career to the intricacies of publishing as an industry, but then I read this article by Zsuzsi Gartner on the cult of the sentence, and was reminded of a thought I've been having for the past couple weeks – namely, that expansive, sweeping, purple prose is due for a comeback.

You see everywhere the advice not to overwrite, not to maunder on past a reader's attention. Gone are the days that a two-page description of a field can hold a reader's interest! we are told. And yes, this much is true. Atmospheric, exquisitely described, adjectived-out-of-its-brain prose is not a contemporary market-buster, especially in YA.

But Gartner – even if he later channels Martin Amis, at whose dismissal of our discipline (and I really do think of it as a discipline) we all in the YA world have rightfully cringed in recent memory – makes a point worth thinking about:

You would think all writers write because they are head-over-heels in love with sentences, no? American author and editor Ben Marcus writes that in the literary world a false dichotomy has emerged: successful writers who can make readers feel by making them care about their characters, and writers who care more about language – the storytellers and the users of the language, and never the twain shall meet.

This is, of course, not true at all, even if the stereotype begs it. I just read Robert Paul Weston's Dust City, for example – a gritty, whimsical noir that features thaumaturgist-on-wolf torture, interspecies juvie hall brawls, and jam-packed magical action sequences – and on almost every page found myself re-reading beautiful, tight, masterfully composed sentences. And this is just the most recent example.

But that still isn't War and Peace or Gone with the Wind or Wuthering Heights or Doctor Faustus. So what I am thinking, is that on the 2111 publishing scene, these sweeping, lyrical, VERBOSE works will be back in style. Terseness will be out. Teens the world over will be clamoring for page-long sentences and purple, indigo prose.

On paper-thin, foldable pocket Kindles, of course.

RTW: Obsessive obsessive reading

Well! Books of childhood obsession? One would think YAHighway KNEW I was coming off of my gigantic degree exams and would be more than happy to get to rejoin Road Trip Wednesdays with this question. NICE.

I'm going to read "childhood" as "pre-junior high," which is probably good, since seventh grade is when I made the then-precocious, now I imagine also kind of snobby, decision to tear through banned books, and banned books only, for a year. Yeah, I was that kid... sorry, everyone I went to school with. Sorry.

This was my first-grade obsession. It wasn't the story so much, as the fact that we were paired up as a class with sixth-grade "reading buddies," and after mine brought in magazines for the first couple weeks, I came back with this, and read to HIM.

I saw it then as a badge of honor. My precocious snobbery started early. I probably should have been more concerned (if not then, at least in later years, looking back on it) at my sixth-grader's low level of interest in reading, if not in reading itself. But at least it gave me confidence.

(And I did have plenty of friends. I think I am usually okay at keeping my ego to myself.)







Ah, Fog Magic. My school librarian MAILED this to me as a gift when I switched to a fancy-pants, no-grading, alternative elementary school on the other side of town in the middle of second grade. The story is nice, from what I remember, but it was the fact that the sweet old librarian at Southridge thought of me and wanted to give me a book as a personal gift that really made an impact. Because DANG, even at age eight I relished the friendship of adults over peers.

Now things get muddled, in terms of chronology. I only spent a year and half at the hippie school before being mooned by high schoolers and returning to Southridge. I'm pretty sure those two things aren't related, but all the same. My reading habits at Woods are kind of murky – a lot of Nancy Drew, I'm sure, as I read like 150 of those, and had to find the time sometime. There was also some book with stone in the title, alternating POV chapters, that I was briefly obsessed with, but only because my mother read a few chapters and forbade me from reading it. So I hid it in my room. But I don't think it was very good.

In any case, at some point mid-childhood, my dad gave me Podkayne of Mars, an old, battered, cover-falling-off copy that I fell in love with. I had completely forgotten about it until this RTW topic, so now I am SO EXCITED to go and re-read it. I didn't hit my Hitchhiker's obsession until about age fourteen, but I have no doubt that this sowed the seeds for love of absurd sci-fi to come.

Fifth grade was a watershed year, obsession-wise. I found Jane Yolen's Here There Be Unicorns, and there was no turning back. I was serious about writing (insofar as a fifth-grader can be so) at that point, and I wrote a lovely unicorn short story that, the moment I finished it, I realized was tantamount to plagiarism. I was MORTIFIED.

But I still loved unicorns.

Also that year, I fell into the gaping, warm maw that is the Redwall series.

Now this was obsession. I ate those books like honeyed scones with meadowcream. And then I went onto the treacle-slow monster that was the internet at the time, found a REDWALL RECIPE SITE, printed off more than I could handle, and actually tried my hand at recreating the gorgeous foods from the books. This is my first solo-kitchen memory, and also the one that made my mom despair over my future cooking capabilities, as I tried to bake some kind of honey oat cake that was literally:

Flour + Oats + Honey --> spooned directly onto a cookie sheet and baked.

I would like to note that since then, I have (kind of) apprenticed under a real patissiere IN FRANCE, and can make my own damn mille feuille and choux from scratch. So. YEAH.

(mmm, looking at those recipes is making me ridiculously nostalgic…)

On the serious side, I did also develop a real thing for Blitzcat, about a little black cat in WWII-era Britain, surviving against all odds. I can't name what exactly was so compelling, but I really loved this, and its core images have stuck with me – so much so that I bought this Russian novel, Путь Мури, when I was studying abroad, just because it sounded sort of similar. I haven't gotten past chapter one. My Russian isn't that fancy, and they just keep yammering on about philosophers. SO, maybe not like Blitzcat after all.

Sixth grade: I finally hit my stride, balancing Breezy and Fun with Important and Literary.



I borrowed Mythology 101 from my uncle's shelves, and kind of maybe kept it forever. I haven't read it in many, many years, but I felt SO COOL reading about a college kid having fantastic adventures. I don't know what the deal is about "New Adult" or whatever, but it should be more popular than it is. I mean, if QUESTAR FANTASY can find a winner...

In what was probably leading up to my Banned Books Decree of Seventh Grade, I read some real heavy hitters that year, too (The Jungle, The Yearling, etc.), with the standout being A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Another one I haven't read in years, but now am anxious to return to.




But the two books that really stand out in the tail end of my childhood reading experience, in terms of obsession, are The Mists of Avalon, and The Princess Bride.

The former, man alive, was I not old enough to be reading. That is the kind of book a twelve-year old reads to feel hardcore, but can't ever appreciate or understand fully. It's like reading Gone With the Wind that early – sure, fine, you are an AMAZING READER. But that doesn't make it appropriate, or you the right or most receptive audience (I'm glaring at you, haughty ivy-league girls from my Russia program…). All the same, the mere experience was important.

The Princess Bride, though… oh dear. That was it. That made me want to write. That made me want to BE. No, that sounds maudlin. I quit the hippie school long enough before that to think things like that. But I do see TPB as a turning point in my reading/writing/thinking career. I saw the importance of story, and composition, and execution, and humor. Oh, it was just EVERYTHING. And I adored it. And have read it enough times since then that my copy is falling apart, much like my dad's old Podkayne of Mars. So here's to you, William Goldman. And you, Buttercup, and you, Wesley, and you, Fezzick. AND YOU, INIGO MONTOYA.

I wouldn't be the same without you.

So I'm sure that many of these are not uncommon in everyone else's pasts, but I am interested to see if ANYONE else read Fog Magic or Mythology 101, or even Cricket and the Crackerbox Kid. Or if anyone else had disastrous Redwall-recipe kitchen experiences. 

Thanks, YAHighway, for another fun week!

I doubt my readers will believe me when I say…

I am going to – for the first time ever! – get on board (rimshot) with this whole YA Highway Roadtrip Wednesday business. Finding a community – that's what growing up is about, right?

Well. Today's prompt was broad, about questions relating to writing and publishing, and so I suppose what I have been thinking about most in these last few weeks is, what kind of role is there for unreliable narrators in YA fiction these days? 

I don't think it's any secret that I breathe and bleed Russian lit, when I am not writing my YA/MG stuff, and that is a canon replete with unreliable narrators.

Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, one of my favorite examples of unreliable narrator.

The POVs are inconsistent and impossible (to quote one reviewer, they are "less who-dunits as they are who-wrote-its"), and all the more so when the narrator breaks the fourth wall and speaks to his readers: that's when you know that nothing is going to be predictable, that the story is not just fictional but unreal, that you can't jump into it and pretend it is real life, because it just CAN'T be. Russian lit is escapism for a society that has to prove they're not doing any escaping at all.

So what about today's (especially American) YA? I love an unreliable narrator, and I would love to write my Russian farce redux with one – I already have the intro laid out:

Noble’s – ah, Noble’s. I myself have spent no little time there, and can personally vouch for the excellence of the service, the quality of the appointment, and the delicacy of the food: in all respects, Noble’s is, indeed, a fine establishment. But you, my dear readers, will perhaps not believe me – you will perhaps not recognize my opinion as authority. And little you should.

But I just don't feel like this kind of unreliable narrator lands in today's market – not even from a publishing standpoint, but just from one of readers' interest: I feel like why YA works is that it offers worlds that ARE just about real enough to escape into. We don't want a narrator that proves to us we can't.

Or do we? I am sure there are examples out there of unreliable YAs that just aren't springing to mind.

Thoughts?