The Librarian Writer

I know, I know. Last post I'm so cocky that I'll finish NaNoWriMo this year, even if it means I have to write 20,000 words in four days. But as I was working on my NaNo manuscript, I realized something important. I wasn't having fun. Yeah, there are times when NaNoWriMo is as much fun as pulling a scab off, but it's still its own kind of masochistic fun. The reason I'm not having fun is because my heart isn't into it. Last year, NaNoWriMo was exactly the kick in the pants I needed to write the YA novel kicking around in my brain. Trouble is, I'm still revising last year's manuscript. It's close to being done. Real close. So now's not the time to leave it at the party while I go off with the new manuscript. Not cool, man. Not cool at all. And all I did with the new manuscript was tell it how great the old manuscript was. The new MC wasn't happy with that. She wants to speak with her voice, not some other MC's. She wants her story, not some...

Maybe the end of October was a bad time to start screwing around with Twitter (I'm @YAWriterNews). Because now in November I find myself fiddling around with Twitter and tweets and whatnot instead cranking out those words. But this is why I'm not worried (yet!): 1. I can write fast. Last year I cranked out around 5,000 words a day for the last 4 days of NaNoWriMo. While I don't recommend this for everyone, and I don't particularly want to repeat that feat, I can thank years of working in television production for the ability to write fast. Good is another thing. Good will come later. 2. I'm not afraid to rewrite (remember, good comes later). So I let myself go. "Dare to be stupid" was a great piece of writing advice I once read from Sue Grafton. And if there's any place to get stupid it's NaNoWriMo. This is not the time for self-editing. Good will come later. 3. I recognize that what I'm writing for NaNoWriMo is unpublishable. There's been ...

Writers' Digest is hosting another "Dear Lucky Agent" contest for YA novels and tomorrow's the last day to enter! Guest judge Tamar Rydzinski at the Laura Dail Literary Agency will choose three winners who get a 10-page critique and a free one-year subscription to WritersMarket.com. Sweet! Since I've gotten feedback on my YA novel, I've changed the title, the opening scene, and the tense that the novel's written in. I'm curious to know how the rewrite flies, so I'm going to submit and see how well it fares. The rest of the novel still needs some tweaks, but it's pretty solid. This contest gives me the opportunity to give my novel (at least the first 150-200 words) a test drive before I do the serious agent querying. The query is another thing I worked on during my hiatus. I've completely rewritten it at least a dozen times. Getting feedback on my YA novel really helped me articulate what the novel is about and now I'm pretty happy wi...

So I took a hiatus there for awhile. Spent some time rewriting a screenplay. Got some fabulous feedback on the YA novel. And now it's November again. Which means ... NaNoWriMo! I'm working on the fifth rewrite of the YA novel from last year's NaNo-extravaganza (which will be referred to from now on as YA1), but I decided to plow ahead and start on a new YA novel (which will referred to as YA2). It's an idea that I've been kicking around for awhile and I'm pretty excited about it. Although I have no idea what's going to happen. That's part of the excitement. There are some cons to working on YA2 while revising YA1. Mixing voice and tone is the biggie. My character in YA2 is younger, but more jaded. I also was going to write YA2 in third person, but it came out as first person. Probably because YA1 is first person and that's what I've gotten used to. This will probably mean a huge tense rewrite in the future. (Has Word developed an Tense Change fun...

I've finished up the fourth draft of the NaNoWriMo novel. Well, pretty much. I make revisions on a hard copy and then I type them in, futzing a bit with it along the way. This should take me a week. At most. But I'm almost 2 weeks in and still plugging along. I blame summer. I could blame lots of things, but let's stick with summer, with its sunshine and beaches and frozen lemonades. Since I'm not working as diligently as I should, I thought I'd share some of my favorite time wasting websites with you. 1. Hot Guys Reading Books I recently found this one through NPR's website. Way to go NPR! You're not as high-brow as I thought you were! The website offers exactly what it promises and makes for a nice diversion. 2. Double-Tongued Dictionary Grant Barrett is co-host of A Way with Words , a great podcast about words and how people use them, and everyone should listen to it. They should also check out Grant's website on the latest words and phrases...

Actually, you don't have to sign up. Or register. Or do anything but download free Young Adult audiobooks from Sync. Sync is offering two free audiobooks this summer on their website from July 1 - September 1, 2010. Their selections are a matched pair, a reading list title with one fun read. A week later the next pair goes live. The 1st pair is James Patterson's The Angel Experiment with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein , which sounds pretty freaking awesome to me. Librarians, educators, and bloggers are encouraged to spread the word. There's a PR tool kit with banners and posters and other goodies to help. There is also an audiobook community that you can join (if you really must sign up for something) to share ideas and social network with other audiobookphiles. Or whatever you call people who love audiobooks. Happy listening!

I'm on draft 4 of the NaNoWriMo novel. Still some big stuff to go, but I've been looking at some of little things, too. Like the words that totally creep into my writing without me even noticing. But actually not the first couple of times I've revised. Draft 4, yeah, they're pretty much popping up a lot and now I just really want to get rid of them. Did you notice the stop words in the above paragraph? There are at least half of dozen sprinkled in. Stop words are one of concepts I learned in library school. These are words so common they don't rate on a search (such as "the" or "a"). And as a writer, they're the words I don't even realize I've written. But stop words in fiction are like bits of gravel that choke the flow of the story. Since I'm writing YA, there is a fair amount of "I totally couldn't understand" or "I just want to be left alone" because many of these stop words are specific to a t...