A Return to Bookishness

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All it takes for me to fall into my favorite pastimes of reading and writing is one good book. And by 'good,' I mean emotional, romantic, universal, painful, cathartic. Just one good book, and I'm hooked until the next major life event unhooks me. :)

Granted, with three kids five and under now, I have less time to write and indulge in reading. But time can be managed. And I'm learning to do that out of necessity.

So right now, my bookish to-do list:

• Co-writing a YA time travel thriller with my baby sister
• Revising an MG and YA project of my own, intermittently
• Reading the Lux series by Jennifer L. Armentrout
• Getting ready email-wise for the New Year's Revisions Conference we're putting on at Operation Awesome. Totally free, totally online writer's conference for your NaNoWriMo hangover. Hope to see you there!
• Unpack some of the book boxes from the move because I've got some serious reviewing to catch up on. 
• Start critiquing again. I so miss this. It's a duty, yes, but it's also a privilege. And I've missed doing it.

Squee! I get so excited when the future holds fabulous stories.

What's on your bookish to-do list?

Learning from Literature

There are two ways to learn a trade:

1) SCHOOL
2) ON THE JOB

Me, I prefer the apprenticeship model. :) Of course getting a degree is difficult and wonderful if you can afford it, but I've always admired people who took the initiative to learn a trade from an expert, like my friend in college who went into the carpeting business (complicated trade, that one) or the radio DJ who never majored in broadcast journalism but worked his way up from the coffee-getter position all the same. There's value in learning from real life, just as I believe there's value in learning from real books (vs. text books). My kids will use text books only for math; that's how strongly I believe in the power of learning through life and literature.

As a writer, this perspective has helped me to grow and improve. I read obsessively, taking both the reader's catharsis and the writer's insight. I'm like a plant, soaking up every drop of goodness I recognize. And the more I read, the more I understand what it is that elevates my favorite stories above the rest. In fact, I'm musing about Devastating Your Reader over on Operation Awesome this morning after a night-long read of GRACELING by Kristin Cashore.

Meanwhile, I keep on writing, hoping to write enough bad fiction that there'll be nothing left in me but phenomenal fiction by the time I'm fifty. My writing grows by practice. But it grows even more by observation. We humans are a naturally critical bunch. We spot typos (even if we're not English majors). We see plot holes and non sequitur. We see beauty and ingenuity and talent. And we're generally very good apes. Copy cats. It's how a child grows into an adult, and it's how an amateur grows into a professional writer.

So my question for you today is, what have you read lately? And are you reading enough?

Four-year-olds, coffee cake, and awesome middle grade books

My three-year-old just turned four years old. We let him pick his own cake at Costco and he chose...

*drumroll*

Cinnamon coffee cake!

Random, right? It had this pretty drizzled frosting on top, which I think is why he chose it. But it just goes to show that you can't predict what kids will like.

If you are a parent of tweens or young teens, then you know the challenge of finding age-appropriate books that your kids actually want to read. Some kids, like the nine-year-old girl who seriously asked Robert Pattinson to please bite her, seem to jump straight from Fancy Nancy to Twilight, missing middle grade altogether. And when I hear about my twelve-year-old niece reading The Hunger Games, it makes me wonder:

What happened to Harry Potter?

What happened to Percy Jackson?

The Mysterious Benedict Society?

The Name of This Book is Secret?

The Fairy Tale Detectives (The Sisters Grimm)?

I'm sure you can name several other middle grade gems from this decade. If not, I highly recommend you check out From the Mixed-up Files of Middle-Grade Authors!! They have links for parents on how to get your kids to read, awesome book lists nicely categorized for easy searching, and the latest middle grade news and book releases.

It's an amazing gift to be able to share the joy of reading with our kids. There isn't a single age-group that literature misses from picture books to early readers to middle grade to young adult. And there is something your kids will love. It's just a matter of knowing where to look, letting them choose from age-appropriate options (your discretion, of course), and, yep, trial and error.

My four-year-old son might like the cinnamon coffee cake he picked. He might not. But once we cut that cake today, we'll find out. And if he hates it? There's always ice cream.

Have you read any amazing middle grade lately? (We're loving some Mysterious Benedict Society.) Any of my writer friends working on a middle grade idea? (I've always wanted to write a fairy tale adaptation of Snow White or Beauty and the Beast.)

p.s. We're giving away a pre-order of BETWEEN SHADES OF GRAY over at Operation Awesome today! Not middle grade. It's historical YA, and the video trailer on Amazon.com made me cry.

Read Your Bookshelves in 2011? That's 420 Books!

Four hundred and twenty books! I counted. And listed all the titles on a Word document which is stapled and lying in front of me as I type this. If I follow through with my goal to read all the books in my collection (minus technical text books for hubz's degrees and the whole shelf of children's books), I'll have to read more than one book per day in 2011!

Hmm... might not be able to achieve this New Year's Resolution in one year.

BUT...

I think it's worth a try. Even if it takes a couple years to achieve this goal, how cool would it be to point at my massive library and say, "Yes, I've read every book!"

So cool.

Plus, imagine the wealth of writing styles and random information I'll be able to draw from when writing my own fiction!

Thus, my insane goal of 2011 (and 2012 and 2013 and maybe 2014) is to read my bookshelves.

Your turn to count. How many books would you have to read per week if you chose to read your bookshelves in 2011? (Hint: subtract the books you've read in the last year. You don't need to read those again so soon.)

My purpose with this goal is to

a) learn more about all the subjects and genres I've been drawn to throughout the years,

b) complete the gaps in my public school education, particularly in math, economics, and history,

c) dissuade myself from spending oodles and oodles of my husband's hard-earned cash on shiny new books (oh, I'll still buy a few, but probably not nearly as many as in 2010).

First up: TWENTY books on motherhood, childcare, and developmental psychology. Yeah, I've got three shelves to go before I get to the middle grade fiction shelf, but that will be a compelling carrot for this crazy horse.

How many books on your shelf have you read? How many do you actually want to read? Take inventory and let me know in the comments below.

Drowning in a Sea of Words

Aivazovsky, Ivan - The Ninth Wave

Oh, but what a way to go!

I've been uber-busy. Hence the lack of daily posts. So to my dear readers (there are 33 of you now! I'm so honored!) I must apologize. I promise I've been doing good things with my time and now I will share them with you:

• Writing for other people (generally causing a ruckus). I recently joined a collaborative blog you simply must check out. It's The Best Damn Creative Writing Blog...Period. I try to write fun, thoughtful pieces for them, but my latest ended up spurring quite the discussion in the comments. No matter how busy you are, you should always take time for a ruckus! Also, I recently wrote my first reader's report (summing up the strengths and weaknesses of someone else's MS in a page and a half), definitely an educational experience!
• Reading other people's pre-published work. I've mentioned this before and it is a fabulous use of anyone's time! You learn from others' beautiful prose as well as from their mistakes--or things that just don't jive with you as a reader. It's something like watching other people's kids. It teaches you what you DON'T want your kids to be like, if you can help it. (Unless you're watching your perfect neighbor's kids, in which case you are taking notes like mad!)
• Reading  published novels. Oh the joy of it. These are the words in which I could blissfully drown, relishing every moment of their suffocating....Okay, that metaphor isn't working for me anymore. But if you're a bibliophile like me, then reading is the way you relax. For my hubz, it's curling up on the couch or in bed and flipping on old seasons of Scrubs. He could quote JD and Turk all day long. ("Do you see what you get when you mess with the warrior?!") For me, it's the next book in The Immortals series, or Pride and Prejudice for the hundredth time. I can open that book up to the middle and get trapped in Austen's world. Same with any of the Twilight books. Riveting social conflicts! 
• Writing my own stuff: I'm working on an urban fantasy for YA that is definitely fresh, though I can't vouch for the writing yet. I'm 25% through the first draft. I'm sure it will take a few drafts before I can justifiably call it a masterpiece (maybe not even then).
• Raising a family. This is one thing that cannot drop from my priorities, no matter what happens, because childhood only happens once per person. And babyhood is as fleeting as Spring flowers, as every poet knows. My 3yo is now 3 and a HALF! My baby is almost a year old, and walking all over the place. Between reading/writing lessons for the former and care and feeding of the latter, I'm very lucky to have any time at all for my favorite self-indulgences (see above).   

As you can see, I've been drowning in a sea of words, and loving every minute of it. Even though I've been busy, I've still thoroughly enjoyed reading other people's blogs. I learn so much from you guys--and am extremely entertained in the process. 

Thank you for reading, but thank you even more for writing! Keep it up! The world needs your unique view!

WIP it good: share your reading and writing adventures

WIP it good! Or not.

What are you all working on? What's your WIP (Work-in-progress, for the uninitiated)?

Our brand-spanking-new critique group, aptly named Operation Awesome, just kicked off yesterday. I'm really enjoying reading the work of some fabulous upcoming writers. It's a breath of fresh air to read somebody else's imagination! I think it's something that benefits all writers, no matter our career stage. Reading somebody else's stuff does three things for me:

• Cleanses my palate from my own stuff, which is all starting to sound like peanut-butter-mouth.
• Teaches me skills others have mastered, like twisty, layered plotting or vivid characterization.
• Allows me to join society, whether it's the community of aspiring authors or the collective voice of the reading world. This is one of the biggest things for me. In a critique group, I have a chance to give back. If I'm reading a published novel, I have a chance to participate in the discussion, both in spontaneous book chats with friends, and on the blogosphere. 

So what are you working on? If the answer is "umm, I'm sort of working on [ ] but I've been busy," I suggest you take a break from writing (as you might already be doing) and do some fun reading instead. 

Read that manuscript you promised to beta but never got around to. 

Read the sequels to WINGS and EVERMORE, if you haven't. 

Read LITTLE WOMEN or ANNE OF GREEN GABLES for the umpteenth time.  

Read OF HUMAN BONDAGE just to make your 11th-grade self honest at last (getting an A doesn't justify not reading a classic, I'm told).

And then, get back to work-in-progress.

Please post your WIPs and TBRs in the comments. I'll start:

WIP:

I'm writing a young adult paranormal romance about a boy whose personality changes after his first heartbreak, and the girl who's tasked with saving him. 

I'm also re-reading and playing with an old science fiction manuscript of mine (see Movies That One-Up Me: Inception).

Critiquing for three other truly gifted authors.

To-Be-Read or Currently Reading: 

SOULLESS by Gail Carriger

SPELLS (sequel to WINGS) by Aprilynne Pike

BLUE MOON (sequel to EVERMORE) by Alyson Noel

LITTLE WOMEN by Louisa May Alcott

THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain

PARANORMALCY (okay, so it's not out yet, but I'm dreaming about it) by Kiersten White