Posted in Uncategorized | January 4th, 2008| Comments Off
I have been loving the Bubbles Yablonsky series. Until I read the final book.
If you want an example of a complete perversion of the author-reader trust relationship, read it. I say this as a brokenhearted and yes, mad, fan. I really didn’t like Secret Lives of Fortunate Wives and hated The Sleeping Beauty Proposal. I am just so angry.
When you read someone’s book, you put effort and time into it and you expect a product. If a book is mediocre but delivers, you have fond but small memories. If a book exceeds your expectations, you rejoice.
But when a book ruins everything– I read 5 books, people, and I’m not even bothering to read the first now– you are downright pissed. I said so as much in my Amazon.com review.
Posted in Uncategorized | January 3rd, 2008| No Comments »
I’ve been sparing in my posts lately, and I apologize for this! There will be much more happening in the next month, as I finish Charming and begin the agent hunt. I’ve also planned out about 7 freelance projects, which hopefully will get results.
Teens Cook by the Carle family is a book my mother gave me for Christmas. Today I made Ratatouille with Couscous and Chickpeas (sucker for the movie) and Creme Brulee. They were both fantastic and my family loved them. I am not an especially gifted cook, so I say “Brava!” to the Carle sisters and mom, and if you want to do an interview with Innovative, please comment.
Posted in Uncategorized | December 30th, 2007| No Comments »
I finished Part II of Charming on Monday/Tuesday, and am sending it off to Ashley today before my Christmas vacation really begins. I’m still sticking to my January 21st deadline for the book. Life around here has been unbelievably crazy and hectic, and January promises more craziness but hopefully with better results. More on that, and a new blog coming up, later.
Otherwise? I got an amazing pair of red peep-toe high heel slingbacks at Payless for $15.99.
Posted in Uncategorized | December 19th, 2007| No Comments »
The Cinderella Pact by Sarah Strohmeyer. You may recall I did not like The Sleeping Beauty Proposal. I didn’t. But Cinderella was fabulous both times I read it, even though it had a lot of similarities to Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner. Nola was so believable and sharp and hilarious, and can I say I just love fat narrators?
Posted in Uncategorized | December 14th, 2007| No Comments »
Maria Schneider, editor of Writer’s Digest, has chosen Innovative (www.innovativeteen.blogspot.com) as the 17th add to her blogroll, in her Project 20/20 to build up her blogroll. I was shocked and amazed and lots of others super-words. WOW! www.writersdigest.com/writersperspective/. I told my mom that this is proof that I am not a fluke. She said, “Honey, you’re not a fluke.” Well, yeah.
To celebrate: I have two big new clips a-coming, an article in the award-winning and fabulous Cobblestone and another in the lovely Library Sparks. I must say, LS has been probably my favorite magazine to write for ever. The editor has always been speedy in reply and wonderful to work with.
It’s also bizarre to think we’ll be in Cobblestone. We used to read that when we lived in Asia… I was also extremely impressed with C’s editor as well. She had extremely detailed comments that improved the article immensely.
Posted in Uncategorized | December 10th, 2007| No Comments »
I just wrote for about 3.5 hours, culminating in a 62,500 word count and a solid 154 pages that won’t need to be plot-edited. My goodness.
Of course, I have finals tomorrow and should probably have spent some of that time studying, but… Charming is longer! and the outline is working so well!
I really challenge any Cinderella reteller to come up with a better, more complex or more interesting fairy godmother than Chay. She is brilliant. She is amazing. She is so complicated and twisted up inside, I love her incredibly.
Posted in Uncategorized | December 9th, 2007| No Comments »
Contrary to appearances, I have not been in a foul or angry mood, but the latest copy of The Writer magazine came in and I am not happy. I have not been happy with this magazine for about six months and am not planning on continuing my subscription. I dislike that there is continual reprints from books (freelancers, hello?), that the writing (about writing!) is boring and badly done. The success stories in particular are rarely well written. Perhaps this is just designed for the much, much older fuddy-duddy writer and this hip, happenin’ babe is too “in it” to be out of it. Yeah right.
A letter in Letter-to-the-Editor section also ticked my creative anger, about not harming readers’ sensitivities and creating noble characters etc etc. While there is definitely a place for having saintly people, they will never be interesting or fully developed if they are not tried and if they do not fall at least in some point. I hate gratuitous violence, sex, bad language, gratuitous anything: it is disposable and therefore harms a book. But if there is a violent scene of abuse in a book (such as This is What I Did:) that forms the character and pushes the story forward, then it is not gratuitous and therefore necessary.
Even the Christian writer, as I am one, does not need to write about saintly people who always make the right decisions. Who does? How do you learn except by a lot of mistakes and few examples? Even unredeemed, hopeless characters can show the merits of certain choices or attitudes. The best example of this is Les Miserables. The play (and novel) contains vivid scenes of prostitution, convicts and escaped convicts, abuse of the law, child abuse, corruption in the government and many tragic and unnecessary deaths.
There are scenes in Les Mis– such as the Thernardiers’ Waltz and Master of the House and Lovely Ladies– that are extremely offensive. But they serve their purpose in a story that is one of the most hopeful, most redeeming, most Christian-themed stories I have ever seen portrayed anywhere. The very fact that there is plenty of sinful people in this play makes it much more real, and gritty. The very fact that the heroes of this play– Jean Valjean, Eponine– choose to rise above their offensive, angry, awful circumstances makes it unbelievably beautiful.
Posted in Uncategorized | December 6th, 2007| 1 Comment »
I loved The Devil Wears Prada. It was witty, well-written, glamorous and had a not-what-you’d-think great ending. So naturally I picked up Everyone Worth Knowing, the next book by Lauren Weisberger, and found it witty, well-written, glamorous… wait. No, it’s just like The Devil Wears Prada with different names and a worser plot, set in PR and not in fashion.
I’m sad because I thought Weisberger was going to be the Weiner of the socialite scene– critical yet intriguing, able to create multiple sorts of characters. But no, she’s looking like a one-hit wonder unless she writes a fabulous book about a Midwestern vegan living in Charleston. I would have bought the book, too, if it had been any good.
Female pop songs fall into three categories: (1) Demonstration of female attractiveness (shake my booty, you know you love me variants) (2) Depression because male boyfriend has dumped her and (3) a rare unique form of music. Number one is depressing enough. After all these years, are women still solely recognized as sex objects? You bet. Number two is worse. At least there is some feministic power in attractiveness, like, maybe she has an infinitesimal amount of solid confidence. But no.
I mean, there is nothing wrong with writing songs about heartbreak and loss. Poetry has been made from such. But what the singers are screaming is that we are worthless without men (even if men were worthless to begin with!), life is meaningless without men (forget the music, work, friends, family) and she will just have to hold on (by doing drugs or rebound-dating) until somehow he becomes less painful to dream about.
Come ON! This is not fair to the men nor to the women. This is disgustingly unfair. This is disgusting. Can I repeat myself? Disgusting.
Philip Weston disgusts me in Everyone Worth Knowing. He’s just Christian Collinsworth British-ized. I hate that.
Rant semi-complete.
Posted in Uncategorized | December 5th, 2007| No Comments »
Did anyone ever tell you that writing a book is hard?
Remind yourself to believe them.
I’m equating it with surviving a marathon, playing an NFL playoff game in a bikini, surviving a marriage with Adrian Monk… it’s long. And difficult. And the light of the tunnel seems to hover over the “Delete Forever and Ever” button. No wonder nobody finishes a book anymore!
I could use a mega-sized fix of faith at this point. It’s so difficult, not knowing whether your stuff is any good or not. I have to finish it– I’ll hate myself if I don’t– but it’s haaard. And all my freelancing has been paused until I can finish the dern book. I’ve outlined until about p. 250, which is good, in ten page increments. I found out about Chay’s even more complicated past. I’ve edited till about p. 125, but I’ve promised Ashley part II (~ p. 200) by Christmas break. (Read: December 18th.) Impossible deadlines motivate me.
I suppose my biggest problem is worrying whether I will finish the book in time, and thinking I will have to spend more time revising and editing to make it perfect. But yet, my anti-perfectionist side comes up and wails that there is *no* such thing as perfection, and the book will probably be as good as I can get it on January 21st. I can’t wait to get to querying, I’m excited about the whole experience. It’s just ch-chug, ch-chug, ch-chug until then.
It’s so easy to lose sight of what you love in a book. The magic, the romance, the sexiness, the intrigue. I’m scared I fall too much into literary hogwash and not enough into a story to keep me and my audience captivated. Yet I will be sticking to my deadline because, honestly, I am growing tired of this book. And if I postpone the ”The End” date much longer, it will never be finished. Remind me of that. A lot.
Posted in Uncategorized | December 3rd, 2007| No Comments »