Warning: This Post May Leave You Humming For Days

It's been kind of a stressful week so I felt a lighthearted blog post was in order.

On Monday, which oddly enough was the best day of my week, a friend from high school posted on facebook that she had this song stuck in her head:

Take The Skinheads Bowling - MyVideo

Even though she said that it had been in her head for a week and was getting rather annoying, I got super excited because I'd completely forgotten about Camper Van Beethoven and this song, which has always made me happy.

But um, now it is has been in my head for a week. It probably didn't help that I picked up a shift at the bar on Monday night and it was super slow, so one of my three friends/customers who was there decided beer bottle bowling was in order... utilizing an exercise ball (I don't even want to explain how we got an exercise ball at the bar) as a bowling ball. I tried to take pictures but it was too dark for my phone, so you'll just have to trust that it was a seriously hilarious experience. However, my friend Mark who was there has recently shaved his head...

*Hums "Take the skinheads bowling, take them bowling!"*

So I went to bed that night with the song in my head. Fortunately I was able to sleep. That's the worst when you can't sleep or your sick or something and you have a song in your head. Pure torture. At least for me. (And now for one of the characters in my bartender book as I stole from myself for her. She hears Morrissey singing both times she's in labor.)

The song has remained in my head all week and like my friend said, it's definitely getting annoying. At one point I tried to tell myself that at least it wasn't that Proclaimers song from Benny and Joon.



Did you click on that? I'm sorry. If it makes you feel any better just *thinking* about that song caused it to take over from Camper Van Beethoven for a few maddening hours. That song was in my head for like 2 weeks once and it was a very miserable time. So I tried to think of another catchy tune to get it out and I settled on this:



Oh, Punk Rock Girl. I kind of wanted to name I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE after that song, but since MTV Books already had a book called, GRAFFITI GIRL (a really freakin' awesome book by the way), my editor told me that unfortunately it was out, but we still bonded over a mutual love for the Dead Milkmen.

Anyway "Punk Rock Girl" is another one that will stick in your brain... Though in my case, I'm back to those bowling skinheads because last night at the bar it was slow at the very end and we broke out the exercise ball to bowl down some empty beer bottles again. Even though my shaved-head friend was not present, the mere mention of bowling brought it back.

So let's see if you can get a different song to infiltrate whatever part of the brain that music gets stuck in for the weekend. Preferably one with an awesome 80s/early 90s music video because that makes the torture worth it. (Except in the case of that Proclaimers song. Even seeing adorable Johnny Depp as Benny does NOT make it worth it. I'm really sorry about that one.) What song or songs have taken up a long residence in your head?

Women Who Rock Wednesday: Jessica Brody!

Hello my lovely blog readers... hopefully there are still some of you out there after I posted in fits and starts for the past nine months and mostly about writerly angst. (Though also about some rather important, writerly things too. If you missed my post in response to The Wall Street Journal's awful article about YA Fiction over the weekend, please do check it out here.) But I promised I would bring the Women Who Rock Wednesday interview series and I wasn't lying. I've got stuff lined up at least every other week for a while and we are kicking it off with a bang with the fabulous Jessica Brody, who is here to tell us all about her new YA novel MY LIFE UNDECIDED.

This is Jessica:


And this is MY LIFE UNDECIDED:

And finally my friends, the first Women Who Rock Wednesday interview since November. Yes, there will be a quiz contest at the end.


Q: Please tell us what your new book is about and what inspired you to write it.

Jessica: MY LIFE UNDECIDED is about a fifteen-year-old girl, infamous for making terrible decisions, who enlists the help of her blog readers to decide how she should live her life. The idea came to me while my husband and I were watching TV. An ad for a reality show came on and I said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a reality show where you could vote on what the characters did. As in, “who they went out with?” or “Whether or not they forgave their backstabbing best friend.” Like American Idol meets The Hills. We both agreed although it would be cool, it wouldn’t be practical from a production standpoint since they shoot those reality shows months before they air. I was not deterred though. I said, “Fine, I’ll write it as a book,” and then marched up the stairs and in ten short minutes, wrote a page-long synopsis for what would become MY LIFE UNDECIDED and sent it to my editor. She wrote back right away saying that she loved it and the book was born!

Q: If there was a soundtrack for your book what are five songs that would be on it and how do they relate the story?

Jessica: Although there’s no official soundtrack for this book (yet!), all of the music that’s featured in the book trailer I specifically chose because of how well it represented the character and the story.

There are two songs in particular in the trailer that I think are just perfect for this book. The first is “Be Original” by Savannah Outen. It’s a great song. This book has an important message about self acceptance and I think this song really captures it. The other song plays at the end of the trailer. It’s called “Here We Go” by Josh Golden and I think it really represents the leap of faith that my character has to make at the end of the book in order to take back control of her life.

Q: Who were some of your inspirations to become a writer or the inspirations that keep you writing? Feel free to include other authors, teachers, parents, or people in other creative fields, whoever is an inspiration to you!

Jessica: I guess I would say my second grade teacher inspired me to become a writer. I’ve always loved writing but she was so supportive of me and always encouraged me. I remember how other teachers used to tell me that my handwriting was too sloppy because I wrote too fast and that I needed to slow down and take the time to form the letters correctly. But she was exactly the opposite. She told me to just write and let it all come out and worry about the handwriting later. To this day, it’s still great advice. When I’m in a writing flow, I never stop to correct spelling or grammar, I just keep going and remind myself that I can always fix it later.

Q: Even though music plays in so heavily into my storytelling, I rarely can actually listen to it while I'm writing. Can you? How does music fit into your writing process?

Jessica: I discovered rather quickly that I can’t listen to music while I write because the lyrics distract me. Actually anything that doesn’t have a constant sound distracts me because every time the music changes or the beat changes, I get pulled out of my “zone.” About two years ago, however, I discovered that I could listen to something called “white noise” tracks. I found one that’s just the constant sound of a waterfall and I started listening to it while I write. Now I can’t write without it!

Q: What is next for you? What are you working on now?

Jessica: Ooh, I have TONS of fun stuff in the works! Some I can talk about and some I can’t…YET! My next book is called 52 REASONS TO HATE MY FATHER. It will be released in Summer 2012. I just finished all the edits. I’m so excited about this one! It’s about a spoiled teen heiress, famous for her partygirl antics and tabloid headlines, who’s forced by her ever-absent mogul father to take on a different low-wage job every week for a year, if she wants any hope of receiving her trust fund. I had SO much fun writing that one. And it was recently optioned for film! So fingers crossed it actually gets made! How cool would that be?

And right now I’m working on the first book in a new sci-fi trilogy I just sold called UNREMEMBERED. It’s about a sixteen year old girl who wakes up amongst the wreckage of a devastating plane crash with no memories. She's forced to piece together her forgotten past with only one clue to her identity-- a mysterious boy who claims she's not from this time.

Q: I have two questions that I always ask my Women Who Rock, the first is a two-parter. What was the first album you bought and the first concert you attended? Be honest, we don't judge, we like to see the roots of our women who rock!

Jessica: The first album I bought was Paula Abdul’s Forever Your Girl. I bought it on my tenth birthday after my parents gave me my very first CD player. I was so excited because “Straight Up” was my favorite song on the radio. And the first concert I attended was actually Debbie Gibson! My best friend in elementary school got us tickets and backstage passes. We never got to meet Debbie herself but I remember going backstage and seeing all these teen celebrities (like Winnie Cooper from the Wonder Years!) and thinking how cool it was.

Q: Tell us about your biggest rock star moment, perhaps it's a moment of real success in your career, a time when you met someone super cool and had that Wayne's World "I'm not worthy" moment, or just a time where you felt like you got the rock star treatment. I get a huge variety of answers for the questions, so it's pretty much whatever "rock star moment" means to you!

Jessica: Well, I’m still waiting for the one rock star moment that I’ve been hoping to happen since my first book was published. And that is for someone to recognize my name and go, “Hey, didn’t you write The Karma Club?” Or something like that. It’s yet to happen! But I’d have to say my biggest “rock-star” moment so far was when my name and picture was published in Variety a few months ago. It was an article about a film option for my upcoming sci-fi series called UNREMEMBERED. I used to work at MGM Studios and Variety would be delivered every day to my desk. It’s like the film world bible. So to see my name (and picture!) in there was totally surreal! I have the article hanging on my wall.

Today's Contest:

After hearing more about it, I'm guessing you want MY LIFE UNDECIDED and you are in luck! Jessica is offering up a copy!

Please note that due to postage costs, this contest is for US/Canada residents/mailing addresses only.

To enter all you have to do is leave a comment. However you can gain additional entries:

+1 for tweeting or posting on facebook about this interview
+1 for tweeting or posting about MY LIFE UNDECIDED
+5 for blogging about MY LIFE UNDECIDED

Note your additional entries in your comment as well as giving me an email address or some way to contact you if you win. I will be drawing the winner on June 22nd when I bring you another lovely gal who rocks, Elana Johnson!

Why I write about damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds

I use a quote from the TV show My So-Called Life to open up my second YA novel, BALLADS OF SUBURBIA:

"If you made a book of what really happened, it'd be a really upsetting book."

Fifteen year-old Angela Chase played by Claire Danes says this in (I believe) the very first episode of the show when asked to justify why she quit yearbook.

I was fifteen and a sophomore like Angela when My So-Called Life originally aired in 1994. It was my favorite TV show. I'd never seen anything so real. The way my life mirrored Angela's (and as I got a bit older, her best friend Rayanne's) was uncanny. That was the year I first dyed my hair. Not Crimson Glow like Angela's, but I put a blond streak down the middle (yeah, like I said, maybe I was a bit more Rayanne...) I had a best friend that I was growing apart from and starting to spend more time with a crowd that was perceived as bad or troubled. My parents marriage wasn't perfect and I could see and worried about the fissures. I longed for a better relationship with my father and judged him for his flaws. And oh my god, the Jordan Catalanos in my life during 1994/1995....

But I digress. My point is that I loved My So-Called Life because it was real. And when it was canceled, I was pretty damn convinced that it was taken away from me because it was too real.

I'd scrawled that quote, "If you made a book of what really happened, it'd be a really upsetting book," in my diary because to me it explained why I couldn't find answers to my teenage struggles in books, a fact that troubled me greatly. As a child I read avidly. Books were the places I found answers, understanding, friends. Somewhere around 8th grade I couldn't find characters that I related to anymore--not characters that were my age, at least. YA wasn't what it is now. It wasn't as real.... or as the Wall Street Journal put it in this despicable article yesterday, full of "damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds."

This article, which I think it is essential to point out DOES NOT QUOTE A SINGLE TEENAGE READER is basically a call for censorship. It asserts that teenagers are children who need to be protected from the dark and ugly things that go on in the world. We should not talk about self-injury or drugs because it might encourage otherwise innocent teenagers to start doing them. We shouldn't talk about rape, abuse, incest, gay teens being battered, etc, etc because it is depraved. Damn fucking right rape, abuse, etc. is depraved and vile and disgusting and wrong. (Oh, pardon me, I suppose that should be D#%n f&%#ing right...) But unfortunately it exists. And horrible as it is, it happens to teenagers. It happens to children. Do I wish I could wave a magical wand and make it go away? Hell yes, I do. But I can't. So I write about it, I read about it, and I share those books about it with others. Why? Because not talking is not protection, not talking can be lethal. In the dark, you are blind.

I grew up white and middle class in a suburb of Chicago. If you are blind or ignorant, you would probably like to believe this means my life was sheltered and untouched by the dark, demented forces that according to the Wall Street Journal is too prominent in YA fiction now.

Not. At. All.

For the regular readers of my blog, I'm going to keep this short and sweet because they already know a lot of these stories. Not to mention it would take me all day to get in depth about it.

As I mentioned before I was an avid reader as a child. Part of this was an escape from loneliness. My family moved to suburban Chicago from inner city St. Louis between second and third grade. I did not fit in. I tried during grade school. I gave up in junior high. I was bullied. It made me depressed. I started cutting myself when I was twelve or thirteen. I discovered it quite by accident. I was very upset one day while working on stage crew and snagged my arm on a nail. For some reason the sensation released the tension. I would continue cutting until my early twenties. It worsened in high school. I was in an emotionally and sexually abusive relationship during my sophomore year. I already had low self-esteem so it was easy to fail prey to this guy and convince myself that what he was doing to me was love. I had a brief bout with anorexia following that relationship. I used and abused various substances from alcohol and pot to coke and heroin in my teens and early twenties. I was in love with a heroin addict. I was in love with an alcoholic. More than one of my best friends were molested as children. Some multiple times. Some by family members. I have friends who were raped. I can't bring myself to use the word rape about that sexually abusive relationship because I didn't say no, but when someone is crying through sex I'm not sure exactly what you call that. I have friends who dealt with severe mental illness in their families. I have friends who feared for their lives on a daily basis in their pretty suburban homes. I have friends whose parents neglected them. I have friends who became parents way too young. I have friends who are dead. I have friends who have been to rehab multiple times and failed. I have friends who still refuse to get the help they need. I have friends who survived, who lead shockingly normal lives, who I am insanely proud of and grateful for every day.

Fortunately there is a large number of those friends who survived. There is one common factor among us: WE TALKED ABOUT IT.

That's the thing about "damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds" if you keep quiet about it, it festers, it bleeds, it gets infected, it never ever heals. In my seemingly perfect suburban town, the rape, the abuse, the neglect, the violence was ignored, not confronted. So the people dealing with it found ugly destructive ways to cope.

Books were the way I was raised to understand things. When dark things started happening in the world around me, when I was struggling with depression, with self-injury, with addiction, and the aftermath of abuse, I wanted a book that would shine a light for me, that would tell me I wasn't alone. Knowing that there are other survivors would give me faith that I could survive. But during my teenage years, I didn't have books written for teens. I had books that were slightly older like THE BELL JAR and GIRL, INTERRUPTED. However towards the end of high school and into my early twenties I started to find books like THE HANGED MAN by Francesca Lia Block, SPEAK by Laurie Halse Anderson, and SMACK by Melvin Burgess.

The more I read, the more I talked to my friends and my family, the less I cut, the less I drank. Writing had also always been a release for me. Poetry, 'zines, the occasional short story. When I finally found my way to college for creative writing at twenty-one, I started writing about punk rock kids struggling to find their place, about girls and women who were hurt but trying to survive. At first, it was therapy. Eventually it became a mission.

Sometime around then, I got My So-Called Life on DVD. When that scene came up where Angela says, "If you made a book of what really happened, it'd be a really upsetting book," I went running for a scrap of paper. I wrote those words down. I taped them to my computer monitor. That was what I needed to do. I needed to write that really upsetting book, not because it was really upsetting but because it was about what really happened.

No, neither of my books are autobiographical, but yes, my second one, BALLADS OF SUBURBIA is set in the town where I grew up and it does deal with a lot of the issues (and resulting coping mechanisms like cutting and heroin addiction) that I faced as a teenager.

And I will continue to write those upsetting, real books partially because it helps heal the wounded teenager in me who needed those books so desperately but could not find them, but mainly because I know teenagers still need those books so desperately now. My name is not a big one, my books have not had a vast audience (though maybe if I put suicidal vampires in the next one, they might), but I am happy to know that they get to the teenagers (and adults) who do need them.

I want to send the Wall Street Journal copies of the emails from teenagers who tell me that BALLADS or I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE helped them seek the help the need, for drugs, for depression, for self-injury, for surviving abuse, for surviving rape. But I would not dare violate those people's confidence, especially not by giving them to someone who does not understand how sacred it is to find your voice, your experience, your fucking key to survival in a story like I have, and apparently, I've been fortunate to help others do through my books. That's why I write YA. That's why I write about "damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds." These stories are not just stories of darkness, they are about hope, survival, and the human experience. Sharing them makes me feel like my existence has a purpose.

Please feel free to share your comments about YA fiction and how it has helped you. Also if you are on twitter, I highly encourage you to check out the #YAsaves thread. You will smile, you will cry, and you will rejoice in the strength of the human spirit.

I'm Done (I Hope!) Now What?

A week ago today I collapsed in total exhaustion... I mean I handed in revisions on The Bartender Book (and yes, it has a real title but I am superstitious about these things so only a few people know it). I almost collapsed in total exhaustion too. I had to go to work at my real life bartending job right after and it was not pretty. I was dazed. I could barely figure out how feed myself, comb my hair and put my makeup on. I paced back and forth behind the bar, swilling Diet Coke to stay awake, I kept sort of expecting Bender and Eli and Ivy and Zoe to come in. Those are the characters. For the last week of revisions, I spent more time with them than anyone else, even my husband. They became completely real to me, my best friends. And I miss them.

I've been focusing solely on this book (as my only novel project at least, I've had other freelancing and essay projects) for over a year and those characters are what kept me going. If you are regular blog readers, you'll know that writing this book has been HELL for the most part. If you aren't familiar with the saga, I will quickly bring you up to speed. This book idea was born from a YA idea that I knew wasn't quite right and that got turned down as my option book by my publisher, MTV Books. I had a discussion with my editor about refocusing the story and writing it as an adult book and that got me really excited about it... for a few months. The early enthusiasm and the final push of revisions are the most fun parts of writing for me. The middle part is always a challenge, but this time it was worse because I was worn down. By the endless promotion of my first two books. By my perceptions that those two books had failed. By the most intense period of depression and self-doubt that I've had since my junior year of high school when I was recovering (surviving?) from an emotionally abusive relationship. I was drained and desperate. I'm not by nature a fast writer, the ideas take a while to stew and then it takes me a year or more to write a solid draft. But I felt like I had to write and sell another book as fast as I could because the other two I'd written were completely forgotten. I pushed myself so hard that I broke and my book broke. I wrote so fast and desperately that I lost control of the story. (This is why word count goals, especially big ones, are not the best method for me.) It took six months to rein it in. I lost faith and almost quit--this book *and* writing in general-- on several occasions.

But those characters--Ivy, Zoe, Bender, Eli, Dylan, Rex, Troy, Reed, John B, Adam The Grouch, and the setting where the story takes place--a small Midwestern neighborhood bar that feels like home (probably because the description and vibe of the place are based on the bar where I work, my home away from home)--they wouldn't let go. I had to tell that story. I had to prove that I could finish, that it wasn't just a fluke.

On March 18, I completed a draft I was proud of. I knew it wasn't perfect, but it was solid, it told a full story without major holes or flaws and I could give it to my agent and critique partners without cringing. So I sent it off. Then I went on vacation, I caught up with friends, I did major spring cleaning, I toyed with a couple of ideas, but I knew there would be revisions so I was mainly biding my time.

On April 11, notes from my agent arrived. I was terrified to open the email at first. I'm still with the same agency, but working with a different agent there now. This was a major change while I was feeling really fragile about my writing, so I was extra uncertain. But of course, Elana my new agent is super cool and I did not need to be afraid. Also as it turned out, my hard work had paid off so the notes werent devastating, they were smart and insightful and for the the most part, stuff I knew I needed to do.

The book was long and had lots of back story, I knew and my agent reinforced that I needed to trim the fat and make sure the back story wasn't taking over, especially at the beginning. I'd also spent so much time making sure I'd nailed the motivation and growth of one main character that I'd neglected the other. Those were the main issues.

So I got to work. It was slow at first, but it's always slow getting back into the writing zone. Admittedly, I also thought this would be the easy part. I hate first drafts. I love revisions. But I conveniently forgot that revisions are hard too. They might not push me as close to the edge as first drafts, but revisions are when my perfectionist side kicks into high gear. Each phrase, each word must be perfect. This means I might analyze a page or a paragraph for a day or two. That is the frustrating part. No matter how much leeway I give myself I always seem to be behind on the deadlines I set for myself. (Only for myself, when a publisher/agent gives me a deadline, I'm much better about it.) Things always take longer than I think they will.

In this case it was the first chapter that really slowed me down. I spent like two or three weeks agonizing over the changes I need to make to it. I cut it up into pieces and spread it out on the floor trying to make sense of it. I thought I totally fucking nailed it and sent it to my critique partners. When I got notes back about work that still needed to be done, I wanted to cry. In fact, I might have cried a little. I know I lost a night's sleep. But after I rested, I tackled it again. What she said made sense and I used it to make the beginning better.

My technique of shrinking the manuscript pages down four to a page and revising on paper that I mentioned in my last update worked really well. It took twice as long (actually, maybe longer than that) to go through them as I thought it would, partially because I found myself reading the manuscript aloud at this stage. I resisted at first, thinking that was supposed to be the last stage, but realizing it came naturally, I went with it. Why do a light revision on paper if it was working for me to do a deep edit? Of course then I thought because I'd done such a deep revision, typing in my edits would be a snap. That also took twice as long as I thought because I found myself making more changes as I went. That was a good thing, though, a built-in extra round of edits.

The only thing I didn't do was a full read aloud. Note to self a proper full read aloud will take at least 3, maybe 4 days. I should also allow a full day for searching and replacing of overused words and phrases. Instead I crammed all of this into a day and a half, partially because I'd been revising almost 7 weeks and I was determined to finish by the weekend, but more importantly because the book *felt* done. Since I'd been reading aloud throughout the revision I knew the manuscript almost too well. I thought I was using certain words or phrases too many times, but as it turned out I'd cut them. As I was doing my type-ins, I did keep a list of words/phrases that I felt like I was using a lot and employed Word's handy search feature to check on them. Then I consulted my handy Synonym Finder to change out the overused stuff--being careful not to go overboard. With IWBYJR, I went a little too wild with the Search for overused words/Synonym Finder thing and as a result my editor noted a lot of places where my writing had gotten "too purple." I think (hope!) I've learned my lesson about that.

Sometimes the hardest part about revising is knowing when to stop. For me, it's when I am reading through and realizing I know the manuscript too well and I'm starting to toy with phrases that shouldn't be toyed with and over-perfecting things. Then I have to say goodbye to my lovely characters, hope the person I am sending them too (in this case my agent) will be as pleased with them as I am.

So my last day and a half was spent doing some search and replace and reading aloud of the scenes that were particularly hard for me. I think if I were going to do a full read aloud, I would have needed to take a couple of days off first. But at this stage in the game, I feel pretty good.

It was bittersweet to hit send, though. Like I said, I was very deeply involved with my characters at the end and I was also so in the zone. The zone is kind of a masochistic place for me. I spent the last week of revisions getting roughly four to five hours of sleep, waking up somewhere between 7 am and 9 am (early for me), sitting down at the computer and working until 1 or 2 am. My average day was 14 or 15 hours of writing time, breaks only to eat and use the bathroom. It sounds kind of awful and the whole aching arms and shoulders, twitchy eyelids, and ignoring my friends and family thing definitely sucked, but at the same time I loved it. That is being a writer to me. Total immersion in my story = total bliss. This is when I'm at my happiest as a writer. Things may be going slowly, but they are going and I am happy with what I'm writing/the changes I'm making. I'm confident that I can reach my goal (and confidence is not something that comes easy to me.) I also don't want to do anything, but write. For example on my second to last day, I woke up the a clap of thunder and found the power was out. On a regular day I might have used that as an excuse to sleep in until the power came back, but I needed to write, so I rushed to get up and write by candlelight while my laptop battery still had juice and made plans to go to my mom's if the power stayed out a long time. (Fortunately, it didn't because it was kind of throwing off my groove.)

So in short, over the past 6 and a half weeks, I worked my ass off and I emerged victorious. Yes, there are a few phrases here and there that I probably could have tweaked, maybe even a bit here or there that I need to add. But I feel really accomplished. I cut over 8,000 words from the manuscript which was my primary challenge and I handled my massive back story better. That was a win to me.

Now I just have to hope that my agent is just as pleased. That's the next step. Waiting.

I suck at waiting, but it's a huge part of the writing/publishing process.

There is waiting while you figure out your story (though at least you can do that actively which is better for me). Then, you wait for your agent to say, yes, this is good enough to go out. Then you wait to get responses from editors. Then if one of them accepts it, there is a whole ton of waiting for the manuscript to turn into an actual book.

I can't even think that far ahead yet. I'm too busy biting my nails about whether my agent will like it. I hope she does because I feel so very done with it, but of course if she has an amazing insight about something I overlooked or need to tweak, I will revisit it. I want this book to have a good chance of getting published.... Thought at the same time, I don't even want to think about it going on submission. That scares me shitless.

I decided to forget about it over the weekend and celebrate. How so?

With this.

Yep, my first free night I went to see Johnny Depp eyecandy the latest Pirates movie. It was very pleasing and a good kick off to relaxing mode.

I continued the relaxing by finishing my re-read of the fourth Harry Potter book and then proceeding to devour SHIFT by Jeri Smith-Ready and THE DARK AND HOLLOW PLACES by Carrie Ryan. Both of which were sooooooooo good! And it was so nice to read again. I also did some Very Important things like upload over 100 more CDs to my iPod to round out my old music collection's presence on it (and I'm sure this will trigger a nostalgic blog post soon) and caught up on a week's worth of One Life to Live. I did some essential things like cleaning my house and office and catching up on email. Then I did fun things like gabbing away with old friends I haven't talked to in way too long, lunches with my parents, and FINALLY some spring gardening with my mom.

I could continue to do these things for a lot longer. Not gonna lie, part of me wants to. But I have to keep writing.

Part of the reason I was losing so much sleep during the last couple weeks of revisions was that a Shiny New Idea for another YA contemp (goddess help me, I know these things never sell well, but it's what I do) was taunting me to. So far that idea that seemed so easy when I was lying awake thinking about it, has been difficult to wrangle and translate on the page. But I'm going to keep wrestling with it. I have two other ideas and am not sure which will be the Next Main Project (because I have learned that I must work on one thing at a time). Maybe I need closure on the Bartender Book (is it going on submission? do I have to revise more?) to fully invest myself in something new. I also admittedly still have a lot of self-doubt leftover from last year. I'm afraid of picking the wrong project to pursue. I'm also not entirely sure how to choose. I've never had so many choices, with my first two books I just knew those were the ones to write. I never thought about market or the publishing industry. Now I kind of do, but I try to put that out of my mind.

It's also frustrating that until one of these ideas takes off, I don't get to sit in front of the computer writing for hours on end like I've become a junkie for accustomed to. Balance is still a major part of the writing career that I haven't figured out. I like to be massively organized, have a daily schedule and to-do list and when things don't go according to plan, I tend to feel at loose ends. Also I'm best when I'm binging, doing nothing but writing, and then crashing and catching up. However, I know that approach isn't very sane and then I have a hard time getting back into the writing when I stop for a week or so. Also with a new book, the binge phase won't come for a while. So my goal is to carve out a nice daily routine that incorporates writing as well as the stuff I feel I've been lacking so far this year while I binged: like regular reading, blogging, keeping up on email and other tasks. We'll see how it goes. If anyone has tips for the writing balancing act, let me know!

GCC Presents: Elizabeth Scott!

So guys, I finished my revisions. Woo Hoo! I will tell you about them.... after I take a long weekend and recover from a week of sleep deprivation. In the meantime one of my girlfriends from the Girlfriends Cyber Circuit has a new book out, so I bring you Elizabeth Scott to entertain and enlighten you. She's totally one of my favorite authors so I am really excited about her new book BETWEEN HERE AND FOREVER.

Let's hear about it, shall we!

Q: Please tell us what your new book is about and what inspired you to write it.



Elizabeth: The very start of the idea actually happened back in 2007, when I was writing discussion questions for my first novel, Bloom--I was writing a question about what readers felt the future held for all the characters--and accidentally paired up two characters who weren't supposed to be! At the time, I laughed and changed it, glad I'd caught my mistake--but for some reason the idea of those two characters stayed in my mind and I actually wrote the first scene where they meet and connect on an entirely new level. But at the time, I had a bunch of other stuff going on, and I wasn't sure if anyone would even want to read a sequel to Bloom that wasn't about Lauren and Evan. So, I kept the idea of those two characters together, floating around, and when I got the idea for Abby and her story--well, let's just say
those two characters from Bloom were perfect for an important role in the book. I was thrilled to be able to revisit them as I dove into Abby's world, and everything combined together to create a story that I'm truly proud of.

Q: If there was a soundtrack for your book what are five songs that would be on it and how do they relate the story?

Elizabeth: I don't have five songs, but there is one that makes me think of Between Here and Forever when I hear it: The Only Exception by Paramore

Q: Who were some of your inspirations to become a writer or the inspirations that keep you writing?

Elizabeth: I started writing fiction by accident and what keeps me going is that I love it--and I love hearing from readers!

Q: Even though music plays in so heavily into my storytelling, I rarely can actually listen to it while I'm writing. Can you? How does music fit into your writing process?

Elizabeth: I could listen to music when I write, but I don't. I did, when I first started, but I soon realized I would sink so deeply into what I was working on that I didn't notice anything, and after one Saturday where the same song accidentally played about a billion times in a row, my husband came over to me, waved his hand in front of my face until I noticed him, and then asked if we had to listen to the song again.

I said, "What song?" and since then, haven't listened to music while I write :-)

Q: What is next for you? What are you working on now?

Elizabeth: My next book, As I Wake, will be out on September 15th and it's about Ava, who is welcomed home from the hospital by a doting mother, lively friends, and a crush finally beginning to show interest. There's only one problem: Ava can't remember any of them--and can't shake the eerie feeling that she's not who they say she is. Ava struggles to break through her amnesiac haze as she goes through the motions of high-school life, but the memories that surface take place in a very different world, where Ava and familiar-faced friends are under constant scrutiny and no one can be trusted. Ava doesn't know what to make of these visions, or of the boy who is at the center of them all, until he reappears in her life and offers answers . . . but only in exchange for her trust.

In which Stephanie has an amusing mental breakdown... Err... Attempts to give updates on Revisions, Events & Such

So I'm falling down on this whole blogging thing again. Sorry! As it turns out I'm not as good at multi-tasking as I want to be. The good thing is this means I'm in the writing zone and ignoring everything (including email, twitter and facebook responses a lot of the time, so I'm sorry if you haven't heard back from me. I'm not trying to be rude!). The bad thing is that revisions are going a lot more slowly than I thought they would. I had a three stage plan:

1. Revise on paper, printing out four pages to a page so I can really see things.

2. Get notes from critique partners and my notes together and type them in, possibly making more changes as I go.

3. Do a final read aloud of the manuscript and send to agent.

I planned to be at Stage 3 by now. In fact, I really wanted to be at Stage 3 on Friday because I have a whole lucky Friday the 13th thing. (I discussed that, other things I consider lucky and trying to make my own luck over at YA Outside The Lines in case you missed it.) But guess what, I'm still not finished with Stage 1, which I absolutely felt I had to be today because now I have a Stage 1.5 where I have to go back and look at several scenes where I know I need to heighten a certain characters emotional response and I need to fix Chapter 1. Again. Stage 1.5 needs it's own full day, which was supposed to be today, but instead I'm still rushing to finish Stage 1 and maybe start Stage 1.5 because I don't have a full day tomorrow (which I'll get to in a minute.) Then on to Stage 2. I really only intend to do the type up the notes part of Stage 2 and not make further changes. At least I hope not. I'd like to think that Stage 1 has taking so long because I have been thorough. Stage 1 went from "revise" to "stare at every word on the page, ponder it and tear every phrase a part until it is perfect meaning you may spend hours on one paragraph." I think (HOPE!) this will basically render Stage 2 pointless except for the typing part which is very necessary as I do not think my agent would appreciate reading a bunch of crossed out purple scrawls on miniaturized pages.

Holy crap, Stage 1 has gone on for so long that I officially ran out of ink in my purple editing pen. I freaked. I found another purple pen but it's not quite the same. Also this must mean the original manuscript that I sent to my agent and CPs really sucked. Okay not *really,* the story and the characters are there (mostly besides my emotional difficult character. Why do I always have an emotionally difficult character. Emily, Kara and now Zoe. Maybe it's because I am emotionally difficult) but there was a lot of overwriting and awkward phrasing. Like to the point where I wonder why I or anyone else ever thought I was any good at this whole writing thing. I mean seriously look at that sentence. I or anyone else? That reads so terribly. Is it even grammatically correct? Did I ever understand grammar? And seriously how many times can my characters squeeze each other's hands and blush or flush or have their cheeks/faces pinken/redden. That makes the book sound a lot dirtier than it is. There is a shit-ton of crying and tearing up as well.

Yes, so that is my progress report. I'm still stuck in Stage 1. It may be a permanent state but I hope not because at a certain point Stage 1 drives you insane and makes you feel that you have lost all grasp on language. I will be pointing and grunting soon. And possibly doing that tearing up, pinkening, jaw clenching (let's not forget that either!) shit my characters do so much until someone comes by and squeezes or pats my hand.

*headdesk*

*whispers* But I still love the fuck out of this characters and their story. I fall asleep thinking about them. I want to make them so good that my agent will send them directly to editors who will fight over them and get this book out to you as fast as humanly possible.

*self doubt enters the room* I mean, mostly I love them, except when I think I'll never be able to correctly convey their emotions or effortlessly weave their back story or describe their facial tics and social awkwardness in a unique fashion. *sobs* I am not good enough for them!

*headdesk again*

*lifts head off desk and searches for purple pen*

That, my friends, is the revisions process in the land of Stephanie.

*bows*

Yes, thank you, do you think I'm insane yet? Don't worry too much, I wrote this blog post on Sunday night after only 3 hours of sleep and a lot of time with the purple pen.

My point, because I did have one at some point (OMG two uses of the word "point" in the same sentence. WHERE IS THE PURPLE PEN????)... My point, because I did have one.... when I set out to write this (ooh, good change!) is that until I finish these revisions, I am giving up on blogging (err except for my Thursday post that I am scheduled to do on Teen Fiction Cafe), reading other blogs, reading/replying to non-urgent email and doing anything other than tweeting about my goals, random shit my cats do to distract me from my goals, the return of Roger Howarth to One Life To Live (can I get a fuck yeah?), and bartending (because bartending and One Life To Live actually have to do with my book). So I apologize for that. Hopefully I will be out of the cave on the 23rd (because that's a good number, my husband was born on a 23rd day, and also he is going to get tattooed on the 24th and I want to go watch) or the 27th at the latest (also a good number and goddammit, I will not let this madness go on beyond that).

But I will be coming out of the cave tomorrow night (remember how I said I didn't have a full writing day tomorrow. Now I explain that) to teach a class at Story Studio about character. (I'm good at that. Revising not so much). I think there are still spaces if you are tempted. Info here.

And speaking of future emergings from the cave. There will be events in two different states that start with W coming up! One is rather soon, June 17th, I will be in Waukesha, Wisconsin on a panel with a signing to follow. Deets are here. Then, I don't have full details yet and this one is a long way off, but I'm going to be doing an event with some of my favorite people in the world in my favorite city in the world. That would be Seattle, Washington! I really need to stop visiting there so I can afford to move there, but this event was "put it on the credit card and hope you get a book deal soon" worthy. October 2. That's all I can say right now. October 2, I will see you, Seattle, in a professional capacity. I will see you in a personal capacity sooner than that. (Ohhhh vacation, you cannot come fast enough.)

Okay so that is almost everything, except DUDES, this contest doesn't have entries!!!! WTF! It was a really fun interview. Daniel Kraus and his books are awesome and you can win ROTTERS for free. It's not hard to enter, just go there and comment. If you are ambitious, tweet about it. I do not understand why this contest has no entries and I am trying not to take it personally. I'm guessing I lost a lot of blog readers in my absence and am going to have to rebuild. Is that it? Do you not like contest anymore? Do you not like interviews? Am I not allowed to interview guys who rock, only women? (Cause that is not gonna fly. I will always feature women, but guys rock too.) I'm trying to get a handle on what people want from me for when I start up blogging again because I've got a super secret exciting project coming up soon as well as needing to start a new book (*if* my agent likes the revisions on the bartender book enough to send it out, otherwise, I will be back to the drawing board with it again), so I want to spend my blogging time wisely or else I'm going to stop doing it.... Okay, so I probably won't stop doing it because I blog for me just as much as I blog for you. I mean, right now I so wish I had the time to tell you about the AWESOME new teen room at my public library (but I wrote a newspaper article about it, which I will tweet later this week) and I wish I had time to vent about this bullshit going down at the high school I went to (AKA the high school from BALLADS). Seriously there is a rant in me about that (including the lovely, typical Oak Park OMG he doesn't go to our high school anymore response), but it will have to wait.

But tell me, what kind of blogs do you like? Me ranting about that kind of stuff? Me writing about memories and personal experiences that no doubt a rant about my high school and hometown would turn into? Me writing about my often crazy writing process? Me writing about bands and books I like? Me writing about weird quirky shit I like/do ie. my bartending experiences and soap opera obsessions? Sharing photos? Interviews and contests?

Because I like doing all of this stuff and will probably continue doing all of it, but if a lot of people have a certain preference I will do more of whatever that is. So please, give me input, people!

And now into the writing cave because as usual that blog turned out a lot longer than I meant. Ooops, sorry, that will definitely a goal, shorter blog posts. But now I have a book to shorten. See you in a week or two (hopefully a week and a half!)

Guys Rock Too Thursday!: Daniel Kraus

So I started doing a feature on my blog called Women Who Rock Wednesday back in August of 2008. I've been slacking on it for the past several months because I've been too focused on writing my book (that's a good thing, though, right?) but I promise it will be coming back soon with a really awesome guest, Karen Mahoney author of The Iron Witch!

I started Women Who Rock Wednesday because I wrote a book about a girl who rocks and since I was a teenager, I've been all about female empowerment and help my fellow girls spread the word about their amazing projects. But the thing is, I know some pretty rockin' guys too who also do amazing work and I want to spread the word about them, too.

Much like Venus Zine eventually decided that Jack White was so awesome it was time to put a guy on their cover, I've decided that Daniel Kraus is so awesome that it's time for a new blog feature where I spotlight the guys like him that I admire. It'll probably be sporadic like WWRW has become because that is just the state of my life right now, but I'll do my best.

Now without further adieu let's met my blog's version of Jack White... Daniel Kraus, author of THE MONSTER VARIATIONS and most recently, ROTTERS!

I met Daniel at a local event with a bunch of Chicago area authors. We shared a signing table because Kraus and Kuehnert are pretty close alphabetically. Because of this I got my hands on an ARC of THE MONSTER VARIATIONS, which sucked me in and kept me up late in much the same way Stephen King novels did when I was in high school. I've been eagerly awaiting ROTTERS, especially because of its unique subject matter and it is at the top of my TBR pile for when I finish my revisions. This interview will tell you why....

Q: Tell us what ROTTERS is about and how you got the idea for it?

DANIEL: Roughly 10 years ago I worked for NBC in North Carolina, and I was driving a news van away from a hurricane when I passed a flooded cemetery. I had this sudden vision of two people battling through the muck to obtain something of value. It took me a decade to figure out who they were and what they were after. What solved the puzzle was the idea of a kid becoming an apprentice to one of these grave robbers. That kid became Joey Crouch, and the master grave robber became Ken Harnett (aka The Resurrectionist), and their epic adventure became ROTTERS.

Q: If you had a soundtrack for ROTTERS what are five songs that would be on it and how do they relate to the story or characters?

DANIEL: Before I wrote a word, I decided I was going to write the entire book while listening to black metal -- a subgenre I knew almost nothing about. Eventually black metal became part of the plot, and a fictional band in the book became a real-life musical project. You can read all about it, and hear my playlist, over at Largehearted Boy.

Q: How did you get into writing? What/who were some of your early influences?

DANIEL: I grew up on Stephen King. By the time I was out of middle school I'd read his entire collection and, maybe just as important, had this special bookshelf on my wall where I kept all of his books. I strayed from King as I got older, but never in my life have I loved a writer as much as I loved Stephen King in middle school. He got me through those years. So although our styles are different, I think some of his plotting instincts are worked into my DNA.

I started writing stories in first or second grade and by the time I hit my King streak, I was writing notebook-length manuscripts, and then novel-length in high school. Despite all of this, I took a detour into filmmaking that lasted throughout my 20s.

(Note from Stephanie: And I found Daniel's books as impossible to put down as King's when I was reading them in middle school! Crazy!)

Q: You're a filmmaker, too, which is awesome. Can you tell us a bit about that side of your career and maybe how it links to or feeds your writing? You did some horror shorts, didn't you? Did those influence ROTTERS at all?

DANIEL: The horror shorts you refer to are the spectacularly terrible movies I made as a teen living in Iowa. Most of them were remakes of movies like Night of the Living Dead and The Blob. I can only hope that they had no influence whatsoever on ROTTERS. In truth, though, I don't think my real films feed much into the novels, either. They exercise entirely different parts of the brain. In fact, I've edited the past two films between novel drafts. It clears the head.

Q: What's next up for you?

DANIEL: I can't talk about specifics. But more books. More deeply unsettling books.

Q: I have two standard questions that I ask my women who rock and I think it is only fair to ask my very first dude who rocks interviewee as well. The first is a two-parter: what was the first album you bought and the first concert you attended? Be honest, we don't judge.

DANIEL: I'm not really sure which album was my first purchase. If I had to guess, I'd say Dokken's "Tooth and Nail," because it was something I wouldn't have wanted my parents to buy for me. I do recall getting my grandma to buy me the Beastie Boys' "Licensed to Ill," which I was pretty proud of.

We didn't have live shows anywhere near where I grew up, so my first concert -- although the word "concert" seems a little grand -- was in Iowa City right before I started college. It was for a local jam band called Dagobah. You're going to have to trust me when I say that this is an embarrassing admission.

Q: Tell us about your biggest rock star moment, perhaps it's a moment of real success in your career, a time when you met someone super cool and had that Wayne's World "I'm not worthy" moment, or just a time where you felt like you got the rock star treatment. I get a huge variety of answers for the questions, so it's pretty much whatever "rock star moment" means to you!

DANIEL: Great question. Getting the email from Guillermo del Toro that he was blurbing my book was pretty cool. Also, Random House hosted a big fancy dinner for ROTTERS a few weeks ago. I never thought my disgusting book about grave robbing would ever be celebrated with hot smoked grain mustard seed glazed king salmon and rich chocolate bombe. It boggles the mind.

Thanks, Daniel!

Yes, now you can see why I think Daniel Kraus is made of awesome and ROTTERS sounds crazy good! So crazy good that I bet you want a copy, don't you? Well, guess what.....

Ladies & Gentlemen, we have a contest!

Daniel Kraus is kindly putting a signed copy of ROTTERS up for grabs to one lucky winner. (US Addresses only please due to postage costs.) We're going to do this the same way we do WWRW contests, soooooo

To enter all you have to do is leave a comment. However you can gain additional entries:

+1 for tweeting or posting on facebook about this interview (it's the first Guys Rock, Too Interview, so c'mon, spread the word/links!)
+1 for tweeting or posting about ROTTERS.
+5 for blogging about ROTTERS.

Note your additional entries in your comment as well as giving me an email address or some way to contact you if you win.

I plan to draw the winner on May 18, which if all works out with her schedule and mine is when I hope to have Karen Mahoney for Women Who Rock Wednesday.

Enter away and good luck!