Crap! … Nano

So it’s October… yeah… am I the only one who just came to that realization; or just now began to comprehend the fact that November comes after October? Does that happen every year? I’m pretty sure it didn’t last year.

My point:

HOLY CRAP NANO IS NEXT MONTH!

It’s rather pathetic that I just thought of this yesterday, you know, considering it’s the 15th of October and there is only 2 1/2 weeks until November begins.

I’m not entirely sure If I can accomplish Nano this year… Why? Because a writing blogger not doing Nano is disgraceful, but I’m very busy on other types of writing.

You see,  It’s my Jr. year of high-school, and that means scholarships, scholarships, scholarships! (what fun!) Anyway, I’m applying for two HUGE  MASSIVE GARGANTUAN  scholarships (like the ‘if you win me you get into any college in your state for FREE’ kind of huge scholarships) The first is called GSP (Governor’s Scholarship Program) and it consists of a 30 page resume and 2 essays that have to BLOW PEOPLES MINDS, and 3 letters of recommendation that basically outline how awesome you are. The second is GSA (Governor’s Scholarship of the Arts) and this one is really exciting! Its a scholarship for any of the arts (hint: writing, photography, dance, etc.) I must have a portfolio of my chosen media. I can’t decide if I should send in my writing, or my photography… If I do writing I have to submit two pieces that also have to blow people’s minds to pieces with their awesomeness! (I just think I might die trying to decide.)

Either way I have a TON of writing to do, as both applications are due by December. DECEMBER!

Which means working on an entirely new novel is basically impossible. I will probably just lay down and die if I attempt Nano this year.  But then again I’m kind of desperately wanting to start a new novel that I have this great idea for… ugh! My life.

I’ll probably end up making January my own Nano (or… um… Jano?) That way I’ll have a week of winter break in January and all this scholarship craziness will be over!

*stress*

Anyway, who has more gumption than me and is actually doing Nano this year? What do you plan on writing?

 

They were the Hipsters before Hipsters.

Friend: “… and thats what a hipster is.”

Me:, “I’m sorry but you just described every writer I’ve ever known.”

The soap box is coming out folks because this whole ‘hipster’ business, it’s ridiculous. These people were totally are  just copying writers! They just made up a new name for writer and decided to be ‘deep’ out from behind a desk. Think about it.

People say hipsters are (for one) apathetic/lazy. That’s every stereotypical writers ever mentioned! All writers do is complain and laze about until they absolutely force themselves to write something down. They work in their pajamas for heaven sakes! It doesn’t get much worse than that.

Second of all hipsters read and then apply what they read to sound ‘deep’ and ‘philosophical’. W.R. I.T.E.R. Writer. All writers do is read and then pretend they have any clue at all about what they are read. Then they write it down slap a stamp on it and send it out to other people to absorb their genius!  Actually I can’t think of a group more apt to sit down with a stack of books, meditate on it, and then philosophically or ironically (another characteristic of hipsters) discuss them than writers.

Then you have the denial aspect of ‘hipster culture’. Anyone who is a hipster supposedly denies their hipsterness. HELLO!!! Writers have been doing that for eons before the word hipster swung around the block. You ask someone if they are a writer they will usually say “no, not really, I write but I’m definitely not a writer.” I rest my case.

Of course hipsters hang out in cafes and drink herbal tea and no one does that right? Uh no, not except writers! Writers have been lining Starbucks and every other teashop and coffee house in the nations pockets since cafes existed! In fact writers will sit there for hours and work in mysterious silence sipping their drinks till they go cold. Or even better letting them go cold next to them because they are just being so philosophical that they can’t pull themselves away from their screens. Top that hipsters!

And so, my dear readers let us give a round of applause to those who were hipsters before hipsters:

Lois Lowry (The Giver) Not only is she sporting an edgy non-mainstream hair cut ,but she’s also wearing over-sized glasses, a turtle neck, and she has a shelter dog with her. She is so much better than any hipster that It’s just unspeakable!

Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter) Flaunting his mustache. Wait people had facial hair before hipsters!? No way. O.o

Jane Austen… Sporting a vintage hat. That’s right hipsters she wore a hat before you!

I hope I have brought to everyone’s attention that hipsters a totally just copying writers! Any Hipster want to take that up with me? Or am I too philosophical for you?

 

*I really hope everyone took this as a joke about hipsters haha

 

Stalkers: They’re Everywhere!

In an earlier post I tackled YA heroines,  and since I’m in a ranting mood today I’ve decided to talk about their hunky, boring, and clichéd counter parts. The average YA male.

To begin I’d like to start with a profile of said YA Male:

Height: 6’2″

Eyes: sparkling deep pools (usually of a color that doesn’t exist in the real world like gold or turquoise) with lashes like a girl (why? who knows apparently that’s normal)

Build: muscular but lean (whatever that looks like, I think it’s just a cop-out so the writer doesn’t need to decided)

Occupation(s): stalker, body-guard, and/or best friend of the female in question (but most usually stalker).

Weaknesses: over protectiveness????? (does that count?)

Every time I read a YA romance I just want to cry. I want to lay my head down and cry, because these guys/men/boys/werewolf what have you, have no personality. Some how they all boil down to slightly obsessed stalker types for no reason other than the fact that as a werewolf/vampire/radioactive super something they have a freakish fascination with pale, plain Jane girls who have nothing better to do than sit around and be sullen. Or complain occasionally about not having anything interesting to do.

I’m not sure why a guy being a stalker is attractive, because  having a stalker in real life (no matter how long his eyelashes are) would creep me out. And they aren’t even GOOD stalkers. They suck at stalking, and eventually get caught. Which, is pretty sad if you really think about it, because  Jane isn’t the brightest bulb in the bunch to begin with. I guess that’s used as their character flaw since they don’t really have any others.

The YA males of today are rather vapid, attractive, and completely and utterly obsessed with keeping their Jane Doe’s tucked under their protective wing and little else matters. They don’t ever break down, they don’t stumble, or fail, or fart or get stuff stuck in their teeth, or do anything that would cause them to be little strange, or abnormal. Or, you know, Relate-able! Why teenagers continue to insist on reading this stuff absolutely amazes me!

I’m not sure why these YA guys are so attractive. (other than the fact that they are attractive in the aesthetic sense)  Where is the substance? Remove the stalkery obsession, and you have a mannequin with less personality than the cut outs from those Old Navy commercials and little else. All I’m asking is that these ‘guardians’ (if that’s what you want to call them) also be PEOPLE.

I think that’s really easy to forget when you are writing. Every character you write needs to be a PERSON, and PEOPLE care about more than just their significant other. Even if that is a big part of their life it isn’t the ONLY part. That gets lost a lot of times in YA romance because writers become so focused on the plot (which is about the characters relationship) that they forget about everything else their characters need to care about. Especially the male love interest, because the book isn’t told through their eyes  it’s easy to just let them fall by the wayside and pretend that they can live off their lovers presence alone.

That is not the case.

An excellent example of finding this balance in a YA male lies in Suzanne Collins’ book THE HUNGER GAMES. Even though I am team Peeta all the way I think Collins’ did an excellent job of writing Gale. Sure, Gale loves Katniss, but that is only one part of  him. He takes care of his family, he loves to hunt, he is a soldier in later parts of the book, and he is outspoken about resisting the oppression of the government. His world doesn’t revolve around Katniss, even if she is a large part of it!  If one of the cookie cutter guys from another YA romance had been put in his place things would have been a lot different. For instance, instead of staying behind to look after his family and Katnisses during the hunger games, in a blind fit of protectiveness he would have flung himself onto the stage to go into the games with his dearly beloved. Dumb move. Gale just proves that you don’t need to be a stalker to be a successful YA guy!

Please, if you are writing a YA novel, or ANY novel just PLEASE don’t put a stalker in your book unless it’s a mystery. No more creepers! Anyone have a theory about why young women like them so much?

 

 

I Feel Faint! (YA Hereoines: the Possums of Literature)

This is the moment before fainting occurs.

Ahh the beautiful young ladies of YA fiction. Who find themselves dull, and plain, but in reality they must all be devastatingly beautiful and witty, because every male with in a thirty foot radius finds them irresistible. Day after day we flip through the pages of their incredible lives. And yet we still wish to smack them smartly upside the head.

These are the problems with Young people – uh-ahm I mean Young People’s book’s- these days.

I’m not sure why a good 60% of YA heroines end up with the same personality, but they do. In order for us to avoid these  pitfalls (and also allow myself to rant) I’ve decided to begin at the beginning of a terrible Heroines personality, and lay out why they so rightly deserve to be called possums of literature.

First off all they generally find themselves unattractive, calling themselves ‘plain’ and ‘average’. Why! Why!? Oh, how this drives me insane. I’m not sure if authors these days just want their characters to sound hypocritical or what, but it’s annoying. As soon as you have a self-proclaimed plain Jane you are nearly guaranteed a love triangle. Or a love hexagon (with the number of guys going after her ‘hideous‘ face you just don’t know). I’m not saying there is anything wrong with having an average looking gal, just don’t have men throwing themselves at her. unrealistic.

Then, they all seem to have fainting issues. Maybe it’s because they are all skinny and don’t eat enough, maybe they are all diabetic and don’t know it, or perhaps they are all cyborgs and when their batteries run low they just konk out. Whatever the reason YA heroines are always fainting. Melodramatic. Every-time a chick faints in a novel I just want to throw something at someone.  Sometimes its passable if, you know, she’s been hit on the head with a large rock, or is bleeding to death, but as that is really the case it’s inexcusable. I’ve managed to go my entire life without fainting! But these girls, they faint five, six times a week. That can’t be healthy. The swoon should be saved for soap operas, and  people who have lost several pints of blood.

Fainting, is always untimely too. For some reason it always occurs when adrenaline should be kicking in to fight off bad guys. But, they faint instead, and that leads to our next issue. Waiting for their man to come save them. *bangs head on keyboard*. The classic faint scene is usually followed by a scene where she awakens to see her lover cradling her in his arms, asking if she is okay, if she’s hurt. And, of course, she’s okay because he got their just in time to see her faint and to kick some bad guy butt (while she’s knocked out cold in fear).

In short, today’s YA Heroines are the possums of literature. Skittering about, afraid of their own shadows, fainting on a consistent basis, and generally avoiding mirrors so that they won’t have to face their hideousness!

Anyone else tired of the fainting?

 

Que the PANIC

Holy crud I have NOTHING DONE! NOTHING… and now I am a mess of panic, and am madly scrambling around my room trying to figure out where I went wrong! I have had to email my chapter of ABLAZE to Carolyn for THREE DAYS NOW! THREE! And have I written it yet? NO! Why? I’m not sure, because I suck at life probably. UGH!

Also, I have less than a week to complete edits on the manuscript I’ve agreed to look over (and that is WITH an extension)!

All I have to say for myself right now is OMG why am I on WordPress writing a post? WHY!

Because I can’t deal with the total sludge that is coming out of my brain when I try to write, that is why. I mean it’s bad, I don’t like to say I have WB (don’t even want to use the word), but I hate staring at the crap that comes off the keyboard. It’s bad, and I have to SHOW IT TO SOMEONE. I have to show this first draft crap to Carolyn, and act like that is okay? What! It’s not okay, folks. Not. OKAY!

I think I need to go take some Advil, and a nap, because Thanksgiving break is over, and that means I had school today. 6AM wake up calls, and no sleep do not equal a peppy wonderful glittery person/first draft.

I guess I have no choice but to go write some terrible blubbery junk, and email it… And Cally, if your reading this, please ignore any terribly grumpy comments your manuscript has on it. Blame sleep deprivation and my utter crappiness as a writer.

Okay, end rant. I feel better now… sort of.

(Sorry caps button I think I broke you…O.o)

Living In A Snow-Globe

Lately the school has been pushing my class to discover what they want to go into as a career. I’ve known what I’ve wanted to be since fourth grade. Only recently have I come to understand what a ridiculous notion being a writer right out of school is, especially the kind of writer I want to be. A novelist. Parents and professionals around the world may now gasp in horror!

I love writing, always have, always will. But, I’m realizing that i can’t just do that. My dream has always been this:

Own my own bookstore. Write novels. Done. Clean perfect and sealed with a kiss! It has always seemed that simple to me. All I had to do was buy a store fill it with books,and people would come right? Then I could rake in a decent salary and work on my sure to be published YA novel.

It is not that simple. I guess I was just naive about the whole thing, and yeah I feel kind of stupid saying it, but I was. Now i’m kind of freaking out because I understand that I can’t do this right out of college or highschool or whatever level of education I had planned to complete in this fantasy.

So practically, what is a girl to do? I mean, I want a decent living… who doesn’t? And I also want to pursue my dream, which will limit the amount of jobs I can get that will allow me plenty of writing time. That list is even further narrowed by jobs that give you a decent salary.

When I first discovered this I had thought “Oh I’ll be a creative writing teacher!” Simple right? I get to teach and practice what I teacher with summers and weekends off. Then my dream was brutally crushed by my worst enemy. Numbers. Teacher salaries are horrible. Especially fresh out of college, which is when you need money! How am I suppose to open a freaking bookshop only making 20-30,000 dollars a year huh? Even with seniority a lot of teachers only make 40,000 a year and that’s if you stay in the same place your whole life. Working 9-5.

I can’t do that. I hate doing the same thing everyday. It would drive me crazy!

So that lead me, to my parents and grandparents delight, to their option:

Engineer/chemist

Need I say more? Feel free to gasp in sheer terror. A creative soul forever chained to a desk, crunching numbers in a lab. I shudder to think of it. I can’t imagine this. Me working in a cubical, with million of other cubicles typing away on a calculator, and mixing foul-smelling chemicals behind a pair of goggles. Ugh. I refuse to be condemned to this fate. While a great money-maker (50-80,000 out of college) I can’t do it. It makes me sick to my stomach to even think about it.

So that left me with my back up career. Nursing. Don’t get me wrong. I actually think I’d like being a nurse. You get to help others, and according to most nurses I’ve talked to there is a super high demand for them. Along with that their out of college salary is pretty awesome at 40-60,000 a year with only a two-year associates degree. Their hours aren’t awesome, but they are super flexible, and part-time work has a ton of potential in this area. I could easily work 4 days a week and still make good money.

This should make me happy right? Making good money with a good amount of writing time, but I’m not happy. Mostly i’m freaked out. My whole life is changing. It’s crazy scary to realize that the way you’ve envisioned yourself living your life isn’t really practical (and thus, for a sensible girl like me, not possible).

I’m desperately afraid of the fact that I’ll somehow lose my writing if I don’t become a book store owner or a teacher. It’s so stupid and childish to believe it, but I do. It’s as if I lived in a snow-globe my whole life and suddenly somebody has shattered the sphere, and now I see the world as it really is. It’s good that I see it, but it’s scary. Now I’m kind of wishing the snow-globe had been the whole world.

I understand that plenty of people write with a full-time job, but that just wasn’t how I saw myself. I guess I’m just now “re-seeing” myself, if you know what I mean. Maybe that is what is freaking me out. The fact that I’m having to redefine what I’ll be, and in that, I’ll have to change who I am.  And writing, writing is who I am.

That is all I have to say about that. I know I won’t lose my writing, but I just can’t shake this feeling that it won’t be the same. Weird. I know.

In  other less, serious news, I purchased WITHER today. This cool little Indie store by my house got a close out lot of 20 copies and I purchased a perfect hardback for only 3.99. A crime against humanity, I know! I also obtained Sabotage by Margaret Peterson Haddix for the same price. So I suppose I’m off to read those and forget about my writing worries.

Anyone else ever have this freaky experience?

EXCITEMENT~The Last Airbender & NaNo

I know it is too early to be excited about these two things, but I have to share my “Writers Excitement”  with you! What are the two things i’m

Snap shot from Legend of Korra looks epic!

super syked about?

Lets start with this:

Obviously This is Awesome! Just look at it!

THE LAST AIRBENDER: THE LEGEND OF KORRA

*spazzes like a freaky fan girl* Okay, so if you guys have been living under a rock for the past three years then you don’t know about the AMAZING series called AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER.  If you don’t know about said series click over to Wiki. Anyway, Avatar, in my opinion, was one of the most well written cartoon series – Okay correction “one of the most well written SERIES of all time”. I was in love from episode one.

The weird thing is I don’t really like manga shows. I don’t watch them, or even have a mild interest in them,but man o man how I love AVATAR. It had everything an adventures corky MC, I sweet love interest, I comical and food obsessed brother, I blind kick ass friend, and of course ZUKO the antagonist turned friend! (Ugh…. Zuko *pathetic how much I love him!*

How can you NOT love Zuko? *melts* LOL XD

Anyway I was torn up and down when the series ended, what was I to do on Thursday nights? Would I mindlessly wait for reruns for the rest of my life? No.

Thankfully Nick has decided to do a spin off of AVATAR called “THE LEGEND OF KORRA” who supposedly is the next avatar after Aagn. Best of all, it has Aang and Katra’s son in it *eeeppp*! Anyway that is scheduled to come out in 2012! Only 4 1/2 months people!

Anyway now that I’m done being a freaky fan girl on to the next thing I have early excitement about:

NaNoWriMo

I am looking forward to it a lot this year. I don’t even know what project I’ll be working on, but I really love doing NaNo, and forums on CritqueCircle.com are already a buzz with getting writing buddies and what not. So… If you need more writing buddies hit me up on the NaNo site my user ID is nkeda14

Are any of you AVATAR junkies like me? Anybody going to do NaNo this year? Or just generally excited about something that is too early to get excited about?

PS: I know it’s not a post day, but I had to express the excitement! Haha

Current Music: SWEET DISPOSITION by The Temper Trap

Embracing The Suck

Hey all I’m sticking to my schedule! See I told you I would! Sadly today’s post is going into the  “Ally can’t think straight so she’s writing this post” category. You knew all these well structured informative posts would not last didn’t you? SIGH

So here is the deal, BTE is at a stand still a complete “deer in the headlights” kind of stop. I’m really not “stuck” per say… more like frozen with”THE SUCK”. Yeah…. THE SUCK. For those of you who have never embraced THE SUCK, then let me explain. THE SUCK, is the condition when you are utterly frozen by the complete grandeur of a project that you know you can not possibly bring to its full potential. Basically you realize your suckishness.

BTE had evolved into this huge giant scale (past weaving into future) thing! It’s totally intimidating just to open up a word document and try to start. I am, as I said, paralyzed by the fear of THE SUCK. My characters are becoming too much all their traits and details are getting too jumbled up in the space between my ears.

This is really a sign that I need to write, but the longer I wait, the more THE SUCK takes over, and the more I put it off. So friends I’m off to embrace the suck at some point this night, and just get this draft started in the semi-right direction.

Good news? School started this week. Okay that’s not that great of news… but the fact that it is Friday is amazing news! So TGIF everyone! Have you guys ever embraced the suck?

CURRENT MUSIC: The Funeral by Band of Horses ( Look it up guys!)

A BUTT KICKING: Knowing Where You Stand

Hello fellow writers, I’m here to give you a healthy butt kicking! Today’s topic:

Knowing where you stand.

You know, the problem with a lot of writers is that they are totally lost. They even admit it. You see it all the time, ” I don’t know what to write” “I don’t know how to fix XYZ”.

They’re lost, not inexplicably so either.

Being lost comes with inexperience. Granted I don’t claim to be an advanced writer of any kind, so this is just my two cents, but from the writers i’ve spoken with (there’s pretty many) i’ve found that the majority can’t (for one) complete a novel, and (for two) can’t deal with the crap they end up with afterwards (if they do complete the novel). First drafts are always crap, as you know.

The reason being that they don’t understand the position they’re in. They have so much excitement and “go getterness” swimming around in their brains that there’s not much room for order and thinking things out. Granted, that’s half the fun of writing a novel, but it also hinders those who can’t control it.

So i’m here to tell you that you need to know where you stand at all times. What do I mean?

I mean you need to know, realistically where your weak and strong points are,  and you need to  know your novel.

So  lets take our first point: Knowing your skill level.

Personally, I think that honest self assessment is one of the greatest skills writers can have. Knowing that you suck at description or character building for instance, allows you to look for those things in your writing and search and decease. Being able to look at yourself critically will allow you to grow. Becoming defensive and refusing to see weak points in your work helps no one. (except your ego) Ergo your novel will continue to spiral  into the slush pile. Something, I don’t think anyone wants.

What i’m saying is that honesty, even if it makes you rewrite the first 260 pages, is the best policy.

And if you can’t be honest with yourself (because at times we can all turn a blind eye to certain aspects) you need to find someone who will be. AKA a crit partner.

Second, You need to know your novel.

When I say this I don’t mean knowing your plot or characters (which is important yes, but not the point). I mean knowing your direction, your point, your REASON FOR WRITING THIS BOOK.

If you don’t understand why your story needs to be told, it will be extremely hard for you to stay motivated to write, and continue on when things get tough (which they inevitably will).

Behind every story there is purpose, and a drive. Find what ever it is that made you want to write it in the first place, and carry it through to the last page. This will give the piece a pull and help to keep you on track. It eliminates the need for excess (because if a scene doesn’t drive home your purpose then it isn’t needed).

I’m not talking moral or anything here, just for clarity’s sake i’d thought i’d say that. Though that could be your purpose.

For instance the original thought for BTE was:

What happens after an unrightous dystopia falls. We’ve all seen that played out a million times after all. And that got me thinking about how the “heroes” of that story could potentially morph into villains. So the purpose evolved into its current state of:

The Line between right and wrong in not always clear.

So, I suppose you could call that “theme” too. Knowing where your novel stands based upon that one point allows you to focus.

That focus makes knowing where you stand and where your novel stands much easier, and knowing that  is possibly one of the most important things you can find out as a writer. Agree? Disagree? What are you all thinking?

CURRENT MUSIC: If You Could Only See (Acoustic version) by Tonic

There is a Little ‘Bad Boy’ In All of Us

'nuff said

You know what I’m talking about,  the sultry hunk of your dreams wearing that leather jacket, and flipping his dark hair across his deep tortured eyes… Oh YEEEAAAH.

No… No, Not Really.

The Bad Boy of YA fiction haunts everyone’s deepest  nightmares… or dreams, depending on who you ask. Granted, A bad boy is undeniably mysterious, which of corse adds a new element of conflict to a book. After all if the girl picked her perky BFF every time where would the story be?

For example:

Clary Fray meets Jace Wayland

Meghan Chase meets Ash The Ice Prince (No seriously that is his title… can it get anymore Bad boy?)

Bella meets… (Do I even have to say it?) Edward

Without these lovely mentally upset boys where would these YA tales of love and adventure be? No where. But there is also along with the wonder and mystery that comes with the bad boy persona a cliché that transcends the ages. I deep ingrained piece of culture that has not been weathered or worn by time.

Seriously, do you image an 16th century princess going “Oh I want to marry him he’s so… nice.” or something like “Did you hear about the scandle he had with So and so I wonder what he’s hiding. I have to find out.”

That’s what I’m saying people. The Bad boy, though, at times cringe worthy is a fundamental part of our society, and we see him coming immediately, don’t we? As SOON as we meet Prince Ash we all knew there was no way Puck had a chance with Meghan anymore, even if it wasn’t fair or right. We knew.

So that brings us right around to my delima. To bad boy or not to bad boy.

You see, BTE is being completely re-thought at the moment, and in editing I realized that my main love interest has absolutely NO PERSONALITY he is not good. He is not bad. HE IS BLAH! So… I began musing on whether or not to bad boy him up, and am dangerously teetering on the fence.

After all… can’t he be interesting and not a bad boy… No… no i suppose he can’t. I mean, not going to lie,his life as a child was kind of wack-o. Being raised inside a cult doesn’t really support the “I’ll bring him home to mom” type. especially in a cult where you battle with swords at the age of 7…”So yeah…

*ehem* *cough*

Oh, who am I kidding?

I love a good bad boy!

I hope you enjoyed this lovely rant about ‘bad boys’. I was inspired by this awesome post on WOVEN STRANDS. What do you all think? To bad boy or not to bad boy?