Teen Writers Bloc

You can probably already tell that there’s a bit of a consensus among us at TWB about the value of the New School MFA. (In a nutshell, we all had an incredible time and loved our professors but generally credit our overwhelmingly positive experience to our smart, helpful, talented classmates rather than the “curriculum” of the school.)

So instead of being a copycat, I’ll take a different approach to my graduation month TWB post. I call it: Negative Dollars.

Negative Dollars

Dear Sallie Mae,
Wells Fargo,
Student Assistance Foundation,
And Nelnet.
You’re so kind.
You don’t know me,
But you lent me your money anyway,
So I could hang some diplomas on my wall.
I probably should look at those diplomas more, huh?
With the kind of money they cost
I could have gone to see The Book of Mormon
(in the good seats)
Four hundred times.
But it’s alright,
Because now I am educated.
A “master.”
And
(Somehow)
I have a book deal,
An agent,
An editor,
A career,
A community.
So thanks, banks.
I owe you one.

*Disclaimer: As you can probably tell, I didn’t take a single poetry class during my two years at the New School.

Image credit: fewings.ca

Popularity: 3%

Alas … the dreaded day-job — well, really, afternoon, early evening, and weekend job — is cutting severely into my productivity. There aren’t enough hours in the day for me to make a dent into my on-going, never-ending to-do list. I try and try to get up earlier, take a shorter lunch, sit in Starbucks, but I can’t seem to get it all done. I always have to create a worksheet for a kid or I’m running to make photocopies of test prep material or scooting up to the Upper East Side at rush hour, fighting through the crowds to get to Madison or Park or Fifth Avenue.

It’s a never-ending loop. You could say, “Dhonielle, you have your whole day all to yourself.” YES! I do have that. I can get up leisurely and write. But I’m always preparing or behind, so I need to get caught up so I can use my day-time hours more efficiently. That, and going to bed at a decent hour. I get home from tutoring and decompress with a little TV, and then try to do more work. By the time I’m finished it’s 3 a.m.

And at the end of each day, even if I’ve checked something off the to-do list, I still feel like there’s a mountain on top of me and I’m spinning my wheels.

My list of bad habits that need to be kicked this spring are:

• Staying up past midnight
• Eating past midnight and thus fueling myself to continue working
• Staying in bed past 10 a.m.
• Taking on new tutoring clients
• Ignoring my thesis!

But here’s a sample of what’s on my plate to justify my whining:

• Editing and cleaning up my thesis!
• Completing the last 50-75 pages my current w-i-p MG novel — smoothing it, editing it, giving it to Amy Ewing to read — to turn a full into the agent
• Finishing a massive edit of a collaborative project
• Launching a website with Jess Verdi — details to come soon
• Slowly working on another collaborative project with Lisa Amowitz
• Reading and critiquing

Photo Credit: Secretary of Innovation

Popularity: 13%

I’m crazy. Or… maybe it’s my life that’s crazy. Or maybe it’s a little bit from column A, a lot bit from column B.

Now that we’ve hit April and we only have one month left of our MFA program (eeps!), we at TWB are looking at the idea of “spring cleaning.” And boy, do I need some of that. Actually, it’s more like I need a full-time professional organizer, like one of those people on Hoarders.

Here are just a few of the things I’m currently juggling:

- Near full-time job as a writer for a pop culture website.

- Edits (and behind-the-scenes stuff like back cover copy and character and scene descriptions for the cover artists) on my first novel, which will be published by Sourcebooks Fire next year.

- Writing my current work-in-progress, which is a tricky endeavor indeed.

- Working on edits for my thesis with my thesis advisor Sarah Ketchersid.

- Contributing to my various blogging projects, including TWB!

-Working with my awesome critique group (holla Amy, Caela, Mary, & Riddhi!) each week.

- Starting a new manuscript-critiquing business with the fabulous Dhonielle Clayton.

- Other. (In this case, “other” includes such things as finding time to see my husband, friends, and family, cleaning my apartment, paying attention to my dog, and sleeping.)

The good news is that, though my schedule is filled to the brim, it’s filled with good stuff. I was able to quit several of my part-time and freelance jobs so that I don’t really have to do much bull**** work anymore. That was the first step in my spring (life?) cleaning process. Step two is getting organized. Writing lists, setting iPhone reminders, banishing the word “procrastination” from my life. I think I can, I think I can…

In a perfect world, I would be able to work on my own books full time. And hopefully someday that will happen. But until then, it’s going to have to be “spring cleaning” – all year round!

Futurama photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox

Popularity: 9%

Back in January, I got my hands on an advanced copy of Starters, the new dystopian YA novel by debut author Lissa Price. And I was intrigued from the very first line: “Enders gave me the creeps.”

The story, in a nutshell, is about Callie, a teenager, or as they’re called in this story, “Starter,” who lives on the streets of Los Angeles with her sickly younger brother. It’s the future, and America has been hit by a biological war which left everyone between the ages of 19 and 80-ish dead. Children who don’t have living grandparents or elderly relatives are considered “unclaimed minors” and are being rounded up by the government to live in unsavory institutions. Callie and her brother have been on the run for about a year, and now that Tyler is getting sicker, she knows she has to do something to get money. But the only “job” available to her is to rent her body out to old people, aka “Enders,” who want the experience of being young again, via some fancy-yet-highly-illegal new technology. The donor is supposed to remain in a coma-like sleep while the renter is out gallivanting with the rental body, but a week into her month-long rental period, Callie wakes up. She hears a voice in her head — the voice of the Ender who has rented her — telling her that her life is in danger. Thus begins a complicated story of many twists and turns, having to do with political corruption and greed and the murder of children.

In the beginning of the galley, there is a note from the editor, Wendy Loggia, Executive Editor at Delacorte Press. In her note to the reader, Ms. Loggia says, “Starters is one of the best first drafts I’ve ever read, and Lissa Price is a tremendous bestselling author in the making.”

Okay, with an endorsement like that, a reader is going to expect a LOT from a book. Doesn’t Loggia know that going into something (a book, a movie, a play, etc.) with low expectations or no expectations at all is far better than going into it with crazy high expectations? If you start out expecting greatness, you will inevitably be let down. She’s setting her readers up for certain disappointment with this letter. And that’s exactly what happened when I read it.

Things I enjoyed about this book: It was definitely a page-turner. I kept thinking about it during the times when I wasn’t reading, wondering what was going to happen next. I also quite enjoyed Price’s writing style. In contrast to other dystopian-type books like Matched and Delirium, the language in Starters is very bare-bones. Not that I don’t have the greatest respect for Ally Condie and Lauren Oliver — I do — but Price’s simple, unflowery, scant-on-metaphor language was absolutely appropriate for the fast-paced, never-a-dull-moment plot of Starters. I also loved that the story takes place in a city that we all know and recognize, one that doesn’t look that much different after a major war than it does today. Most dystopian stories take place in made-up futuristic societies, and Starters turns that dystopian setting blueprint on its ear.

However, there are certain things about Starters that I wish had been different. Without giving too much of the plot away, let’s just say it follows the unassuming-teenage-girl-takes-down-the-establishment-and-saves-the-world formula made famous by The Hunger Games. Suzanne Collins pulled it off beautifully, but I don’t quite understand why so many authors today are following her lead. It’s just not all that believable.

There are many other similarities to The Hunger Games as well, such as Callie’s almost super-human accuracy with a deadly weapon and the childhood guy friend versus sexy new boy dilemma.

But my biggest problems with the book are things that I can’t go too far into without giving away the story. Let’s just say that there is at least one major plot hole that I really wish Price’s editor would have caught (hint: it has to do with a will), and the big “twist” at the end was less surprising than completely disturbing and unsettling.

I do think Loggia is right about one thing, though — Starters is destined to be a bestseller. Look for it in bookstores March.

Photo Courtesy Delacorte Press

Popularity: 19%

Hurray for women! And especially hurray for women authors!

In honor of March being Women’s History Month, we at TWB are taking a look at our favorite groundbreaking female authors from history and today. My favorite female author from the past came to me immediately, but choosing just one from the present was a hard one for me. But after weighing all the wonderful merits of today’s female authorial world, I finally reached a decision.

Jess’s Favorite Female Author from History:

Jane Austen! Duh. Not only was the woman a total genius, she managed to write six amazing novels (and publish four while she was still alive) while living in a less-than-ideal time for women who wanted to work outside of the home. And on top of that, she managed to use her stories to somehow get away with making thinly-veiled and oftentimes scathing observations of the society in which she lived.

Jane figured out something long ago that many of us writers are just only starting to realize – in fiction, anything can happen. Though she desperately wanted to fall in love and get married, it never happened for her. So she made certain that her characters would get to live the life she always wanted for herself but could never have. Elizabeth, Emma, Elinor and Marianne, Fanny, Catherine, and Anne all live get their “happily ever after” – even if they do face some obstacles along the way.

Jess’s Favorite Female YA Author Today:

Laurie Halse Anderson! The woman is a genius, ‘nough said. One of the main reasons I love Laurie is that she isn’t afraid of the scary issues. Speak, her first young adult novel, is about a 13-year-old girl who becomes mute after being raped. Wintergirls is about eating disorders and self-mutilation. Catalyst is about incest and death. Twisted is about depression and suicide. Yeah, not exactly light reading, but these stories are so, so important and I commend Laurie for tackling them so beautifully and astutely.

Happy Women’s History Month, everyone!

Popularity: 15%

As writers, we are lovers of words. Learning new words, rediscovering old words, choosing the perfect words to come out of our characters’ mouths. But I now know five words that, when put in a very specific sequence, are better than any other words in the whole wide world: I GOT A BOOK DEAL!

Anyone who knows me can tell you that I don’t like celebrating myself. I’ve never been one for birthday parties and I didn’t even have a wedding – I talked my husband into getting married at City Hall. (It costs 25 bucks and takes about 30 seconds. Plus, you can wear jeans!) But selling my book, getting this deal… well, I kinda want to shout it from the rooftops.

My debut novel, On the Plus Side, a contemporary YA about a suburban teenage girl who tests positive for HIV, will be published by Sourcebooks Fire in Spring 2013. And it’s part of a 2-book deal (!!!), so my currently-untitled follow-up contemporary YA novel will be hitting bookstores the following October!

It’s a very weird thing, going from being a writing student with an abstract dream of selling a book to suddenly working with a real live editor and coming up with cover ideas and back cover synopses and author bios and all that stuff that will be part of an actual, physical book. A book that I wrote. I mean, holy crap, right? Crazy.

So crazy, in fact, that I’m almost afraid it will all go away. Like there was some big mistake made or the publishing company will change their minds or it’s all part of some elaborate joke. You see that picture? That’s the letter from Larry Kramer, the playwright of The Normal Heart, that was given out to all audience members at the Broadway production of the play last year. I taped it to my wall above my computer so whenever I needed inspiration while writing On the Plus Side, Larry’s amazing words were there to give me an encouraging nudge.

I put the “Happy Thoughts” note up on the day my awesome agent Kate McKean sent the book out to editors. (Feb. 28 was the close date – yeah, this whole thing happened really quickly.) Whenever I managed to convince myself that no one would want to buy the book and that I am a talentless, wannabe hack (which was often), I would look up at that note and think happy thoughts and it would make me feel better. The thing is, I’m now afraid to take them off my wall. What if by doing so, I displace some tiny, teetering part of the universe and the whole thing comes crashing down around me?

Those notes will probably stay taped to that wall until I move out of this apartment and am forced to take them down. But that’s okay. They’re a welcome reminder that this whole business might be totally crazy, but it’s also totally wonderful.

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Here’s some food for thought: Why are all book characters automatically white, unless specifically specified otherwise? It’s something I never really thought about until we discussed it in our writing workshop. When a character is described as having “dark hair and dark eyes,” most readers will envision a white person with dark hair and dark eyes. It’s only when the character’s skin color is described that the picture in our head changes.

Here’s another question: What is “white?” I’ve always thought about race somewhat differently than most people, because I don’t know where I fit in. According to the United States Census forms, I’m white. Or “Caucasian.” Whatever. But I’m half-Italian, half-Armenian. Armenia is technically in the Middle East, but “Middle Eastern” is not a box on most forms. And from the way I look, most people assume I am Hispanic/Latina. I get spoken to in Spanish on the subway and NYC streets nearly every day. I only wish I knew enough Spanish to respond!

My point is, even though I’m “white,” I don’t look it. So if I were a character in a book, how would I be described? Dark hair and dark eyes, but with caramel-ish/olive-ish skin? Maybe. But I guarantee you that upon reading that description, the reader wouldn’t picture a “white” person. It’s a weird, weird, weird thing.

Because I have such confused feelings on the whole race thing, I like to write characters of all different ethnicities – especially mixed ethnicities. Racial ambiguity is something I can relate to, so I feel I have something to say there. Last week, film critic and awesomesauce Tweeter Roger Ebert tweeted: “In auditioning for TV commercials, it’s a seller’s market for the ‘ethnically ambiguous’” and included a link to a commercial casting call where they specifically stated that all actors must be ethnically ambiguous. If you think about it, it makes sense. Rather than alienating entire groups of people who look at a person in a commercial and think, “Oh, they’re not like me, so this product isn’t for me,” it’s a lot smarter to cast people who look a little bit like everyone, and therefore you reach everyone.

Last March, Upfront, the the New York Times magazine for teens, printed a story called “The New Face of America,” which discusses the very issue of mixed-race and ethnically-ambiguous teens. The article reads: “The crop of students moving through college right now includes the largest group of mixed-race people ever to come of age in the United States, and they are only the vanguard: The country is in the midst of a demographic shift driven by both immigration and intermarriage.”

And way back in 1993, Time Magazine featured a cover with a computer-generated face of a woman — a face that was created using images of people of several different races (see photo). Like the Upfront article, the Time piece was also titled, “The New Face of America,” and talked about how the blurring of races is the future of America.

Well, people, the future is now. And I truly hope that more authors and publishers and whoever-it-is-who-decides-on-book-cover-images will start getting on board. Because just like advertising, if you include all sorts of people in your books, you will reach all sorts of readers.

Image credit: Time Magazine

Popularity: 23%

I recently finished reading Lauren Myracle’s novel Shine. The book, which was the subject of all that National Book Award hullabaloo (yes, I totally just said hullabaloo) has many, many amazing qualities, including its absolutely remarkable use of setting. However, this book really got me thinking about a different writing device, one that I have mixed feelings about.

Shine is set in a small Southern town, where a gay teenager is the victim of a brutal hate crime. The local law enforcement isn’t doing much to find the perpetrator, so while Patrick lies in a coma on the verge of death, his former best friend Cat takes it upon herself to find out who did it.

Myracle is an incredibly gifted author and I greatly admire her bravery in writing about sensitive and controversial topics. But I wonder why she chose to tell Patrick’s story from the point of view of a character who is so far removed from not only the incident itself but Patrick’s entire life as well.

This story is supposedly about a hate crime and yet, because it’s told entirely from Cat’s point of view, a girl who wasn’t there and hasn’t even spoken to Patrick in three years, it’s not really a story about a hate crime. It’s not even about what it’s like to be openly gay in a close-minded place. What it is, is an intriguing look at life in a backwoods town, an interesting character study, and an at-times suspenseful mystery. It’s about being poor and uneducated and a victim of (physical, sexual, verbal) abuse. It’s about church and faith in God and fear and the blurry line between right and wrong. But it’s not about what the book jacket says it’s about. It’s not about a hate crime.

Reading Shine brought me back to reading Luna, the groundbreaking 2006 novel by Julie Anne Peters. Luna is about a transgendered teenager, a biological boy named Liam whom, on the inside, is really a girl named Luna. It’s an incredible story. But, like Shine, it’s told in a roundabout way — Luna is actually narrated not by Luna herself but by her sister Regan.

Why do authors sometimes choose to tell their stories in such an indirect way? Is it to make it more accessible to readers? Did Peters and Myracle think to themselves, most people reading this are not hate crime victims or transgender, so my narrator shouldn’t be either? Admittedly, a straight, white, teenage girl (as Cat and Regan both are) is a much more identifiable narrator for most readers. Or did the authors choose to tell their stories this way to make it easier on themselves? It’s certainly easier to tell a story from the point of view of someone you can identify with on a more personal level. (Not to say that Myracle and Peters are exactly like their narrators — they’re not. But I think one can assume they have more in common with their narrators than they do with Patrick or Luna, characters who are in very specific, fairly uncommon situations.)

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not judging. I’ve made that exact choice myself, in my own writing. I just think it’s a question worth pondering: why do we choose to tell our stories in the ways that we do? Is there a right way and a wrong way to tell certain stories? Should we take the easy road when it means possibly not telling the exact story we set out to tell? Should we think about our audience and how the book will be received while writing or should we just let the story go where it wants to without worrying about all that outside stuff? And, when dealing with edgy, groundbreaking subject matter, is it better to spoon feed it to readers, rather than dumping it over their heads, in the hopes that you’ll reach more people?

As you can probably tell, I have no answers. Just questions. But I think the questions themselves are enough to make us step back and look at the way we write, and maybe, just maybe, give us the courage to try something new.

Book cover image courtesy of Amulet Books.

Popularity: 21%

1. It’s 2012 now, and the Mayans say we’re going to die. So we might as well live it up while we still can. For me, “living it up” includes watching lots of Vampire Diaries, reading lots of YA books (next up on the reading queue: Lauren Myracle’s Shine), and making lots of soup in my slow cooker.
2. Writing (fiction in particular) is awesome. In what other career do you get to be creative, use your brain, and live in a total fantasy world all at once, all while sitting at home in your pajamas?
3. Just thinking about your story isn’t enough — you actually have to sit down and put the words on the page. This holiday season was a major reminder of this for me. I justified all the slacking, eating, procrastinating, and vegging to myself by saying I was thinking about my story and spending all those days/weeks letting the story build in my head. Which was true. But it’s still no substitution for actually putting in the writing hours. Brains make up stories, but fingers-on-keyboards write books.
4. Time flies. We’ve blasted through three semesters in the blink of an eye, and now we’re down to one: our class-free thesis semester. Crazy. Also proof that time flies: I just turned 30 at the end of December. How the frak did that happen? For suggestions on how to use your fleeting time wisely, see #1 above: “living it up.”
5. Biggest writing-related lesson I learned this year: people’s tastes in literature are as different as the people themselves. So write what you love, tell the story you want to tell, and there will be someone out there who loves it as much as you do. Even if you get a lot of thumbs-downs along the way.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Popularity: 15%

Hang on — we only have one semester of school left? How the hell did that happen? Does that mean I’m going to have to re-enter the real world soon and get a full-time job and start paying back my exorbitant student loans? Nooooooooo!!!!

Okay, now that I’m done with my little freak-out, let’s take a look at what I’ve got going on for my thesis semester. I know what I’m going to be working on — a contemporary realism YA story that I’ve already started. The tricky thing about this story is that it takes place entirely at a rather unusual/interesting/scary summer camp, so even though I’m writing about things that absolutely happen in real life, the world-creation that is required for this story is almost like fantasy in a way.

I’ve already made a plan with my thesis advisor — the incomparable Sarah Ketchersid, Executive Editor at Candlewick — and have decided that my goal for the thesis semester is to get a solid complete draft finished. It’s going to be a lot of work, but I’m excited. I’m also super-excited to be working with my awesome peer group — TWB’s Mary, Amy, Riddhi, and Caela. These ladies are not only awesome writers, they give great feedback.

The other thing that will be happening at the same time that I’m writing my thesis is that my most recent contemporary realism novel will be sent out into the publishing world by my agent. This is, as several of my classmates can attest to, both very exciting and extremely nerve-wracking. You never know what will happen when editors are given the chance to read your book. It could work out exactly the way you’ve always dreamed, or the results could be, shall we say, less-than-desirable.

It’s that thing that everyone always says but that you never really truly understand until you’re in the thick of it yourself — this is a very subjective business, and there’s a LOT of worthy competition out there, and your success relies pretty much entirely not on whether your book is the best book ever written, but whether an agent/editor/reader connects with it. Being at the mercy of other people’s whims and personal opinions is scary business indeed.

Photo credit: nenyaki.blogspot.com

Popularity: 15%