Eating My Brain

So my third book, Zombie Tag, is officially released in 4 hours and 37 minutes. I have my last exam of the semester in about eighteen hours, and Hanukkah begins about four hours after that, let's say.

I'm thrilled and impatient and excited, but really I'm just sitting here crying a little and wishing I could disappear, and I figured I should blog about that a little, even if it's not the post I'm supposed to write. I should be writing a big BUY MY BOOK thing right now, but you guys know I want you to buy my book. You know how this works.

What I think you might not know is how hard this all gets.

The reason I don't like writing these posts isn't because I'm afraid of being honest with you guys; you guys know I'm pretty much the most open of books, and until someone is like WHOA HANNAH STOP I'm probably going to keep doing that forever and ever. But I don't write these sad damn posts because I'm worried about how they make me see, so, upfront, okay? I know how lucky I am. I really, truly do. I thank the universe every single damn day that I have this job.

And then stupid things swallow me whole.

You guys are so fucking NICE to me. That's what kills me. Do you ever look at people you love and just want to cry because you love them so much, and they love you, and you feel like there's this pocket of the universe that exists JUST to take care of you?

That's how I feel.

And it scares the shit out of me.

Because I don't want to let you guys down.

I don't want to fuck up and not sell and have to stop writing books.

I don't want the criticism to wear me down to the point that I can't write anymore.

I don't want to get eaten alive by my own brain and have to stop and work some office job.

I don't want to flame out before I'm thirty.

I just feel like I'm phoning it in lately, not with writing (because I haven't BEEN writing, and let's not talk about that tonight) but with publicity, talking to you guys, the sheer act of getting my shit together. And it's just this agonizing fear of failure weighing me down, and that's NOT me. I'm a lot of damn things, but, compared to a lot of writers and compared to a lot of the other things that are fucked in my head, I'm not much of a worrier. I don't overanalyze. I don't panic.

And yet here I am, crying on my bed because someone said something nice to me and my damn heart couldn't take it.

I keep writing things and deleting them because I don't know how to say it. I'm just scared. I'm scared no one will read the book and you guys will forget about me.

That's what it is. You guys loving me is scary because I'm afraid that one day you won't.

You don't have to reassure me and flatter me in the comments or something. I mean, I wouldn't HATE that, but that's not what I'm going for. Really I just want you to understand the crazy places a writer's head goes to, because I think release turns a lot of people into robots publicly, when really it tosses our brains like salads, and you know me and my problem with compulsive honesty so here I am.

So, uh, buy my book. I just hope you like it, if you do.

Really, I just hope that even if you don't like it, you don't give up on me.

What Are We Doing to YA?

This post is more of a question than most of mine are. I fully admit that this is all speculation. But it's something I've been wondering for a while.

Has the internet community changed YA?

Am I right in thinking that YA writers are the most active online? We tweet word counts and deadlines and what our main character would eat for breakfast. We friend each other on Facebook and leave each other rep points on AW. We have blogs just for posting excerpts and shit like this. We know each other's names, agents, and editors like we're all related. We're The Contemps, the Debs, the Tenners, the Elevensies, the Musers.

The word "blogosphere," ugly though it may be, is so appropriate. We're our own little biosphere. We have staked out our little corner of the internet, and we're loud and social and crazy and God knows I'm part of the problem.

And lately I've been worrying that it really is a problem.

To put it plainly, I'm starting to wonder if YA is turning into something written by/for the internet community under the guise of writing for everyday teenagers, and that who likes you on the internet is more important to your career--or, if not to your career, to your psyche and your perception of your success--than if teenagers are picking up your book.

Is the gap between "successful" author and "author teenagers want to read" getting wider and wider as our main audience to impress becomes bloggers and librarians instead of teenagers themselves?

(For the record, I realize and acknowledge that some of us are teenagers ourselves. But if you're reading this, you're not the average book-reading teenager. You know too much. We've relinquished our right to be considered the average YA reading teenager.)

Are we getting too self-referential to be relevant?

I don't know. But recently, YA has started to look very clubby to me, and I'm wondering if that's really fair for the readers. If we're writing to be social, are we doing our readers a disservice?

We give each other biased Goodreads reviews because we don't want to piss anyone off. We tell people we love books we haven't read just because we're friends with the author. We're so loud about the books we love--which should be a great thing!--that we might be fooling ourselves into thinking that our tastes reflect those of a teenager.

We hear so much about publishing trends. Vampires are in, vampires are out, zombies are in, zombies are out, angels are in, angels are out. But a teenager who loves vampires wants to read more about vampires. She doesn't give a shit whether it's out or not. So is our perception of a "saturated" market affecting her? I'm not saying, obviously, that we should all be out writing vampire books, but wouldn't it make more sense if we did stuff steadily instead of in trendy slews? And wouldn't that be possible if we weren't so intent on responding to and competing with the authors we follow on Twitter?

I think the reason I'm posing these questions is that lately I've felt very disillusioned and overwhelmed. I still love YA. But when I'm writing stuff like #magicgayfish, I start questioning my own relevance really, really easily. I love that you guys are all over it, and obviously I hope that teenagers would have the same reaction, if the thing gets published.

But how closely does our taste reflect that of an actual teenager?

Are the boys we swoon over the ones THEY find hot?

Okay, I'm asking a lot of questions. So here's what I think.

What was initially cool about YA, in my opinion, was that it had the least adult influence from the shelf to the hands of the reader. YAs pick out and buy and read their own books. Their parents don't screen them first. And obviously [adult] publishers still have to decide to publish them (and that's a HUGE thing, but we really can't change that) and the bookstore or the library still has to decide to stock them, but it was still more direct than other childrens' books. It's the kid's wallet, the kid's choice.

And now for some reason, it looks to me like we're letting it become books about teenagers and for adults rather than about teenagers for teenagers, and the way we're going, I don't think that's going to change.

WE'RE the ones counting down the days 'til the next big YA comes out.

WE'RE the ones fantasizing about ourself and the Next Hot Boy.

WE'RE the ones trend-chasing and trend-hating and jacking up the Goodreads reviews.

I think in the future, people are going to equate expecting YA to be only for young adults to expecting science fiction to be only for scientists.

I don't know. I've had very many emotional crisises lately where I'm like I DON'T KNOW WHAT TEENAGERS WANT. So maybe I'm just projecting. But I still think the market shift is noteworthy and worrisome.

Your thoughts?

The Agent Story--PART 1

Okay. So I've had a lot of people ask me how the hell I managed to be nineteen and on my third agent. This is actually a topic I've been fairly quiet about, but I think it's helpful for me to be honest because my story is actually, in my opinion, a very good example of the kinds of problems and decisions you might have to make with regards to agents.

So. Here's what happened. I will not be naming every name, because the purpose of this post isn't to call out anyone but to take you through the thought process in choosing an agent, leaving an agent, and dealing with losing an agent.

This is a very long story, so I'm going to divide it into three posts.

PART ONE

I queried four different manuscripts for a total of a year before I got my first offer, which turned into four by the end of that week. It felt as if something had fallen from the sky and landed on my head. Something awesome.

I was sixteen and still fairly new in the online writing community (though not new to writing)

I talked to three of the four agents on the phone. I asked the fourth (actually, the first to offer) if she'd like to talk, and she said she didn't think there was any reason to do a phone call. The first phone call went well. The second went VERY well, and I was pretty sure that unless something unprecedented happened, I would be going with her. The third phone call was fine, but we didn't click, so I confidently went with #2.

Factors in my decision:

--My friend was with her and loved her.
--We clicked on the phone. She was talkative, gregarious, and completely enthusiastic about my work.
--She offered on another manuscript, while all the others offered on BREAK. I liked the other one more and liked the possibility of going out with that one first. We ended up going out with BREAK anyway, and the one she offered on never sold, so there you go.

Things didn't work out.

I feel like an idiot now, thinking about the stuff I let happen before the split. But my logic was really clear: I thought it was normal.

I thought it was normal that my agent didn't do a lot of contract negotiations or ask me for my input.

I thought it was normal that I had to send five to ten emails on a subject, spread out over a period of months, before I would get a response. I thought being on sub meant months of silence followed by, after extensive nagging, an email with every rejection she'd collected but not mentioned.

I thought it was normal that she'd promise edits on my manuscript and never send them.

I want to make two things very clear:

1. This was a legitimate agent. She did not charge any fees or do anything unethical. She didn't steal anyone's work or money. She successfully sold my first novel. She came from a well-known agency. She had many sales before mine and some after. Many of her authors have gone on to be very successful.

I was not cheated, victimized, or taken advantage of.

I just made a mistake.

Which leads me to point two:

2. I was not an idiot. I was young and naive, yes, but I was not in a bubble. I was an active member on AW and knew a fair amount of writers. The Musers existed even before I signed with this agent, and they were with me through this whole process. So the reason I thought this was okay wasn't because of a lack of information.

Really, it was the opposite.

Because this happens to so many people.

I know so many people who have signed with agents--agents that other people I respect have and love--and the relationship did not work for them. Many of them had the same problems I did: lack of responsiveness. There's a reason that I mentioned to both agent 2 and agent 3 that I was paranoid about them dropping off the face of the earth. It happens.

It happens more often than you'd think.

And people don't leave because they are so grateful to have an agent, because getting an agent is hard. And because everyone around them seems so fucking chipper, that they think the problem might be them. They have a great agent. They have the same agent as a celebrity or a friend of theirs or they have the agent that everyone's talking about over on AW. They do not have a bad agent. They wouldn't be that stupid.

No one wants to be the guy who leaves his agent.

When I was applying to college, one of my favorite teachers said to my class, a group of stressed out, hyped up, first semester seniors, "You know, you don't have to get it right the first time. Plenty of people transfer. It's okay."

And we smiled and nodded and uh-hmmed and in our heads we're all going, "Not me, no way, transferring is for other people."

I was the fucking queen of transferring is for other people. I applied Early Decision to the school I knew, absolutely knew, I was going to go to.

I left after a semester.

I am so, so happy that I did.

I left my first agent after 15 months. And I so, so wish I had done it sooner.

Which is why I want to run around spreading the gospel now.

I know what it's like to be happy with my agent. (Hey Suzie!) At the time, I didn't. I didn't know if it could get better.

If you're asking yourself if it can, it can.

Do not stay in a relationship that makes you unhappy. If you have an issue that you have broached that cannot be solved, it might be time to leave. If you two cannot see eye-to-eye on something important, it might be time to leave.

If you think it might be time to leave, it is almost definitely time to leave.

Obviously I appreciate the value of agents. Scroll down a post if you don't believe me. But all those things that I mentioned down there? I only realized they were true when I got with an agent who worked for me.

You need and deserve an agent who works for you.

And just because an agent is great does NOT mean she works for you.

The next post will go over what happened after I left Agent 1 and how I connected with Agent 2. I'll take any questions in the comments, as always, and please feel free to email me if you have any questions you don't want all over the internet (she says as she sprays her problems all over the internet).

The Boy Problem

First, you need to know my position.

--I am a writer, not a publisher or a bookseller.
--I am primarily a YA writer, but I write MG as well.
--I am female, sex and gender alike.
--So far, all of my finished novels, and certainly all of my published ones, have had male protagonists.
--95% of what I read is contemporary. I don't generally like SF/F.
--I generally prefer to read books with male protagonists
--About 70% of my reading is in YA.


Now.

People have been talking about the issue of boys in YA for a long time, but these discussions seem to have reached a head recently--one that I think has been a long time coming.

I want to make it clear that there are going to be exceptions to every single thing I say. One of the big points I'm trying to make in this post, in fact, is that generalizing doesn't fucking work. So please understand that none of what I will say is true 100% of the time, and your knowledge that there are exceptions to what I'm about to lay out might not invalidate what I'm saying. This is literature. Nothing is universal.

So.

The problem we're talking about is fairly simple: boys don't read YA. This isn't an issue of "boys don't read"--we're not talking about these boys. We're talking about avid readers, boys who ate up middle grade but go to adult fiction and non-fiction instead of passing through YA, and nobody really knows why.

I'm not an expert on this. I'm just a chick who writes, at least from my point of view, the kind of YA that is the closest that we have right now to "boy books," which is really just to say that my books have male main characters, because right now that is all we offer boys.

And it isn't enough.

I've been thinking about this a lot, and I've come up with a lot of theories for why boys aren't reading YA. Some of these probably aren't true. Maybe most of them aren't. But whether or not these are the root of the problems, they are issues that I'm seeing swept under the rug, and I believe they're truths we don't want to look at.

It's not all the writer's fault. We've all heard that publishers don't buy boy books--and 1. they do, and 2. why should they if they aren't selling--and it pisses me the fuck off how many boys there are who won't pick up a book with a girl main character or, heaven forbid, a book with a chick's name in the cover.

It's not entirely our fault. But it does start with us.

Here's what we did:

--We've stereotyped boys. Most boys in YA fit into four very particular categories.

1) The gay best friend. The gay best friend is sassy. He's also deeply damaged and vulnerable from the trauma of being gay. The girl--our main character, always--might be his only friend. He desperately needs her. Maybe he has a drug problem due to his inner torment.

2) The best guy friend. Practically like the gay best friend except he's straight, and he doesn't have inner torment. In fact, he's sweet, attentive, and as reliable as death/taxes. He's also in love with the girl MC, who for some reason hasn't noticed him even though he was always there. Don't worry, by the end of the book, she'll realize he's The One.

3) The bad boy. This is the one we're all familiar with. He's pure motorcycle on the outside, but deep down, he's just a marshmallow of love for our main character. He doesn't open up to anyone else, but he loves this one girl. He needs her. Yeah, you're all thinking about that series I haven't read, I know it, you know it, we don't need to name it.

4) The nerdy boy. This is (usually, remember usually, we're talking about usually) the only boy you will ever find as a main character. If you find a male POV, it's usually him. He's geeky but never pimply, nerdy but always in a socially-proficient, sarcastic, endearing way. He talks about masturbation because it's funny, not because of something he really likes. He's a bookworm girl's wet dream.

Which leads me to the second thing writers have done:

--We've sanitized boys. What MG books do boys love? Captain Underpants, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, books that appeal to their light side. In our efforts to empower girls (oh, and trust me, there will be much more on this later) we've forgotten that it's irrelevant right now that it's hard to grow up as a girl in today's world full of fashion magazines and celebrity marriages and mirrors in every dressing room; it's hard to grow up a boy in a world where Dad wants you to play baseball and you want to draw pictures or you want to play baseball but your best friend didn't make the team.

I'm simplifying, obviously, and you can flip and flop the sexes here--boys don't always love the mirrors either, and maybe Dad would rather braid your hair then cheer you on in the stands--but we're not arguing about which sex has it harder, we're just acknowledging a fact that YA isn't right now--boys aren't skipping their way through high school, either.

So why do MG books remember this and not YA? Why are MG books looking at showing boys every aspect of themselves, like Greg's issues with his drippy friends and his little brother, and simultaneously giving them an escape with superheros and gross-out humor, when this seems to be something that YA can't grasp?

Well, I'll tell you why.

--We've stripped boys of substance and we did it to empower girls. Somehow, the message "girls can do it too" became "only a girl can do it," and men became the weaker sex in YA.

Where are the epic fantasy trilogies with male main characters? Harry Potter isn't YA, people, stop pretending. When, since Eragon, have boys gotten to save the world? Where is the Melissa Marr for boys? Where is--yeah--Twilight for boys? Where is the science fiction that boys loved in YA, and we just assumed, for some reason, they were fine with losing when they turned 14?

Oh yeah--they're over there in adult fiction, and that's where the teenage boys are going to be, too.

Boys in YA are rubber walls for our 3D female characters to bounce off of. They're props for girls to throw around to show that they're the stronger sex.

And I get that we need to empower girls, people. I get it. But how many books about girls do we need before we can consider that a job well done?

So here's how to fix it. And this is a call to writers, and it's a call to publishers, and it's a call to readers.

--Write, publish, and promote books with real boys. Stop talking and just fucking do it. Read Shaun Hutchinson's The Deathday Letter. Now read it again.

There will be no question in your mind about whether or not Oliver is written as fantasy fodder for a girl. Oliver is not written for a girl. Period. Oliver is written for Oliver, and he is real.

Now realize that he is just one boy, and that you can write any boy you want. Nothing pisses me off like a writer saying that boys have to strong, quiet about how they're feeling, but secretly weak underneath their hardened exterior.

NO! Your boy does not have to be ANYTHING. STOP MAKING BOYS THAT HAVE TO BE SOMETHING. We are no longer allowed to even hint that a girl has to have a specific quality for fear of someone calling sexism, so I am calling sexism on you.

Stop writing this boy you've imagined in your head and write a real boy. Make him gross or sweet or angry or well-adjusted or affectionate or uncomfortable or confused or ambitious or overwhelmed or smitten or anxious or depressed or desperate or happy. Write a boy the same way everyone has been telling everyone, forever, to write a girl; free of gender stereotypes, three-dimensional, and relatable.

Write books that lead logically from middle grade, that don't assume that boys wash their brains out when they hit puberty.

Put covers on books, no matter the gender of the main character, that boys will not be embarrassed to read on the subway. (My vlog tomorrow will have more on this). Teach boys that they don't need a man's name on the cover to know that they will like it.

Agents and publishers, either stop saying you're looking for boy books or start meaning it. Or figure out what a boy book is, because we need someone to explain it to us.

And I'm okay if it means, right now, "books with a male POV." Because I understand that that's a stepping stone boys need right now. I'm not okay with boys indefinitely refusing to read books with a girl's point of view. I'm completely okay with them only reading books that have real male characters in them. Let's make it easy for them to find them, first.

Write and publish fantasy and science fiction (FOR GOD'S SAKE WHERE IS THE SCIENCE FICTION) with strong male main characters. Boys need their blockbusters, too, and it doesn't matter how you feel about YA fantasy--you know just as well as I do what's selling, so let's expand that past the girl's point of view.

Boys. Shut up and read YA. The books are there. There aren't enough, we're absolutely sorry. But they're there. Stop insisting they're not. And I'm trying. And we're trying.

And we can't do this without you.

And the boy reader in your life isn't going to find this post on his own because he doesn't know me because he doesn't read YA, so you know what to do. This post has a link for a reason.

Humor Me Here

I know, I'm posting a lot lately. I have some things to say.

This is one I've been meaning to say for a while. And I apologize if this comes up as somewhat of a rant. And, actually, for probably the only time in the history of ever, I'm going to apologize if this offends anyone. Because, this time, it's actually not my intention.

Because ME ME ME this is about me. Yesterday I told you not to blog about yourself, today I'm blogging about myself. Welcome to Invincible Summer.

So.

Do you remember when Mary-Kate and Ashley made that big announcement about how they didn't want to be called The Olsen Twins anymore? I guess this is kind of like that.

I've thought a lot about this, and I've decided I don't want to be called a teenage writer anymore.

This is a weird declaration to make, because it implies some sort of deceit or, at the very least, shame, that isn't at all what I'm intending. I'm fine with being referred to as a writer who was first published as a teenager, or a nineteen-year-old writer, or a writer who is a teenager, or, hell, a teenager who is a writer. So it's not the actual meaning of the term "teenage writer" that I'm trying to break away from. It's the three connotations this term has come to have.

The first one is the predictable one, and the one that is less of a problem for me. "She's good for a teenager." Yeah, awesome. That was cool when I was turning in papers in high school. It's not going to cut it now.

I'm obviously not the first person to experience it, and I think even people who haven't had this firsthand can see and understand that this is frustrating. And it is, but it is not my biggest problem with being called a teenage writer. Not at all.

The second is bigger. Let's use a story to illustrate this one.

So let's say you have this woman. When she was 27, she decided she wanted to be a writer. She was horrible at first--who isn't?--and she was fine with that, and had fun dabbling around and playing with different things. She started researching the possibility of publication when she was 30, long before she had anything of publishable quality.

She finished her first piece of long fiction when she was 31. That was the same year she got her "great idea," which took her until just after her 34th birthday to finish. This was her first novel. It sucked, but it was hers. But she knew she had a long way to go, and she continued working and working without trying for publication until she turned 36. And then she sent her first query letter.

She kept writing, and she kept querying. She finished projects and queried them and got requests and rejections and no offers. She kept writing. After completing six previous novels, she finally wrote the one that got her an offer of representation right before her 37th birthday. The book sold that summer and came out when she was 38, the same month she got a contract for two more books. She is now 39 and waiting for the release of her 2nd book shortly after her 40th birthday.

Yeah, did you figure out the punchline? Subtract 20 years from all of those ages, and you have my journey.

There's this idea that, because I'm young, this all must have happened very quickly for me. I must have skipped steps, or gotten really lucky, or come out of the womb a perfect writer. I must have slept with someone, or done the twelve-year-old equivalent of sleeping with someone, to get to where I am.

It's bullshit, and it didn't feel fast to me, and I'm not a prodigy. The only reason I got published a lot younger than other people is I'm a stubborn little shit who decided that she had a career when she was eleven years old. The fact that my journey became public when I was a teenager shouldn't lock me into that age. Fuck, call me a child writer, if anything; it's more accurate, in the end. That's when I started.

And here's the third problem with the term. My third problem.

I have slightly less than eight months until I turn twenty.

I'm not planning to be come irrelevant overnight.

I don't want my twentieth birthday, exactly a week before the INVINCIBLE SUMMER release, to be the day in which I'm stripped of something that makes me 'edgy' or 'interesting' or 'catchy.' 'Cause guess the fuck what, bitches. Eight months from now, I'm still going to be edgy and interesting and catchy, and I don't want there to be any doubt about that.

I'm not a child actress. I'm a career bitch, and I have my feet firmly planted in the ground and no no no I'm not going anywhere. And hannah in 8 months is still hannah. She's not any less relevant than this chick right now, just because she doesn't have that edgy little 1 in front of her age.

So I would like to lose it now, because I would like to prove--to you, to the world, and most of all to me--that I don't need it.

When I was a kid, I said I had to be published before I was eighteen, because if I wasn't, no one would care about me. I wasn't good enough, interesting enough, brave enough to run with the big dogs.

I'm calling bullshit on old hannah tonight. In favor of new hannah.

I'm a teenager. I'm a writer. I'm not ashamed of either one. And yeah, I'm fucking proud of what I've accomplished at my age. And my age is staying in my blogger profile. But it'll be there when I'm twenty and when I'm thirty-two and when I'm forty-six, too. Because I'm not here to fucking play games.

The bottom line is, yeah, I'm young, but I'm planning to be around kicking ass for until I'm really, really wrinkly.

And I want you there with me. And I don't give a fuck how old you are.

A Special Thank You

Okay, so you know I love all of you, but today I want to direct all the gratitude I have in the whole world to a special few of you.

According to the poll from earlier this week, (last week? can't remember. too lazy) just under 1/6 of you are under the age of 18.

Thank you.

It's obvious that you and other people your age who read are the reason I have a career. But that's not entirely what this is about. I need you guys, definitely. I need you to pick up books and buy books and tell your friends about books and read more books by the authors you love. That's a given. That's how BREAK, a little paperback by a debut author that could have been lost in the shelves, is doing so much better than I could have imagined. It is thanks, hugely, to teenagers like you who have read it and told their friends about it, and I am so incredibly grateful.

But that's not really what this is about.

this is about--as much of my life is--the internet.

I started this blog *right* before I turned eighteen, and only because, rather stupidly, I thought it would help sell more books. I'm pretty sure that, all in all, this blog doesn't help sell that many copies of BREAK. It's not as if most of the teenagers in the world are reading this. The vast majority, like I said, of the teenagers who pick up BREAK are ones who hear about it from their friends or their teachers, or the ones who happen to stumble across it at the bookstore or while browsing for it online.

Most teenagers use the internet to a large degree. But the teenagers who read this blog--who comment, I've noticed, all the time, and who are very likely to have their own blogs--are a very very special breed.

You give a shit.

Teenagers who read are incredible. Teenagers who connect with authors and review books on their blogs and tweet and comment...God, do you guys know how much we love you? It's something authors discuss all the time, how incredibly grateful we are for the teenagers who come online and advocate for books they didn't write, or who take the time to talk to us, who understand that I am not just words on a page or on your computer screen, I am a girl in an armchair with a dirty laptop and a yellow tank top.

As a teenager, these are connections that are invaluable to me.

And it makes you so, so much braver and so much smarter than I ever was. Or than I am even now.

You are truly the future of publishing.

Rules

Thanks for the poll answers, guys! I'll post something analyzing the results in a little while, and by all means keep voting until then.

But here's something that's been on my mind lately.

Rules.

I bet you think I'm going to jump around and be like "FUCK THE RULES!" but my opinion on this is actually slightly--slightly--more complicated.

I think there are two kinds of rules in this business that you typically hear--those about writing and those about publishing. The latter usually come from agents. Don't send attachments with your query letter. Don't forget your page numbers. Don't query two agents at the agency at the same time. Format your manuscript in this precise way. Although these rules sometimes seem like unnecessary hoops to jump through, they actually do have, and fulfill, their purpose. These are the ones that you should follow (though there is a time and a place to break them. More on that later.)

The other type of rules, the ones you probably get more and more often, are the ones from writers.

Write every day. Write in Courier. No, Times New Roman. No, Courier. Use MS word count. No, use 250 x number of pages for word count. Don't write a book below 40,000 or over 80,000 words. Set your manuscript aside for three months before you start revising. If you write too fast, your book won't be good. If you write too slow, you'll never finish a book. Don't use adverbs. Ever. Don't use anything other than 'said' for dialogue tags. It's impossible to write with other people in the room. Don't watch TV while you write--are you kidding? Write by hand. Write on a typewriter. Write on an Alphasmart. Write on a laptop. Read all the classics. Read everything in your genre. Read outside of your genre. Write high concept. Write whatever the fuck you want. Write for an existing market. Try to expand the boundaries of the existing market. Write for the lowest common denominator. Write for your mom. Write for yourself. Write for the MFAs. Get a day job. Spend your advance on publicity. Don't expect to earn out. Use a pen name. Write in the mornings.

And here, guys, is where it gets to be bullshit.

The only right way to write is however the fuck you get it done. People decide something works for them, or they read what Stephen King does that works for them, and decide that that's the only 'real' way to write.

I'm going to go over how I write, now, too, but let's be very clear before I do--I am not advocating my method for everyone. For anyone. I'm doing this so you can see how fucked up and crazy my writing method is, so you can see how possible it is to get shit written without following the Butt-In-Chair-Allow-Yourself-To-Write-Crap methods you'll see so often quoted. If that's what works for you, fantastic. But it's not the only way, at all.

--I do not even come close to writing every day. About 80% of days, I'd estimate, I don't write at all. I spend some of these days working on edits or blogging or plotting a new idea, but most of them I spend playing video games or going to school or sleeping or watching Queer as Folk or cooking with the shiksa. Not writing. Am I thinking about it? Of course. But it's not something I do every day.

--When I do write, really write, new words on new pages, I call that initial part "fast-drafting." That's when I get a first draft down as fast as I possibly can. This isn't (just) for the bragging rights; it makes sure the idea stays fresh in my head and I don't lose interest along the way, as I'm apt to do if I stretch the story out. I've tried writing over longer periods of time, when I'm not feeling the story as much. I rarely finish, and when I do, the stories are never as good as the fast-drafted ones.

Fast-drafting so far has taken me 5 (The Animals Were Gone, Fishboy), 7 (Break) and 8 (Invincible Summer) days. I was in school during both Break and Animals, and studying for midterms during Animals as well, so I do this despite being busy. Which means I do nothing else during any moment of free time but write. Nothing. Nada. I park on the couch like a fatass and I write. Eight hours a day, nine hours a day, whatever it takes.

I write my first draft in single spaced, 10 pt font. I am not kidding. This is actually something I recommend. Don't do 10 pt if it's going to kill your eyes. Do triple-spaced 30 pt Comic Sans for all I care. Do anything to keep your manuscript from looking like a real manuscript. Make it something you can fuck up. Double spaced 12 pt looks way too fucking intimidating for a first draft, if you ask me.

I flip to the internet every 70-100 words and screw around. Because that's how I roll. It still gets done.

I watch TV while I write, or I chat with my roommate or my boyfriend, if they're around.

--My fast drafts come out very short. BREAK was 27,000 words. INVINCIBLE SUMMER was 23,000 words. The one I just finished was 25,000. This comes with angst, every single time, that the book isn't going to be long enough.

--I start editing that draft immediately, as in an hour after I finish the first draft. I do not let it sit. If I sit, I'm going to hate the story. I'll start hating it halfway through the second draft anyway, so I might as well get the thing over with. (This is where I am right now. Someone stop me before I set the thing on fire.)

--After the second draft, I've lived and breathed this story for about two weeks, breaks, cereal standing up, sleeping four hours a night kind of living, and I don't want to think about it ever again. Off it goes to Suzie and betas.

--We work from there.


This shit. It is not typical. But it's how I work, and it's what works for me.

You will hear a lot of contradictory advice about how to be a "real writer." But the only ticket to being a real writer is to write. I know you've heard that a million times, but let it give you some freedom this time. You're released. You write words, how you want them, when you want them. You don't have to prove shit to anyone.

Do whatever you do to get it done, and smile and nod when people tell you how their way is closer to the "real thing."

If I Owe You Something

I'M SORRY I'M SO BEHIND PLEASE DON'T HURT ME

ASK ME ANYTHING

I decided this is going to be a monthly feature, for when I get sick of listening to myself talk. SO. I'll keep the comments open over the weekend, and you can ask me ANYTHING ANYTHING AT ALL and I promise to answer honestly.

Writing-related, not writing-related, serious, funny, hard, easy, ANYTHING AT ALL AAHHHHH GO GO GO

You Humans Are Driving Me Insane

Guys

If you have a manuscript to query

QUERY THAT SHIT.

Do you think an agent's going to come down your chimney and offer you representation?

SEND THE GODDAMN LETTERS.

I'M ALIVE

And I am going to be a better blogger in 2010. I SWEAR.

I have nothing important to say to you today at all. Can this not count as 2010 blogging? It's 4 in the morning. I think I should be exempt from making sense at this hour.

If I'm smart, I'll delete this post right now. But I wanted you to all know I haven't abandoned you. (And if you sent me a query, I will read it. Really. At some point. I swear.)

Working up to a move on January 13th. Very excited. And I'm getting kittens on the 15th. There will be pictures.

BUT. First, a challenge.

NAME MY KITTENS.

They are nearly identical, two light gray tabbies, both boys.

I'll think of some reward if I end up using your names. It will probably be a fairly nice reward. Aaaaaaand go.

How to Contact Me

Do it!

You don't need a good reason or something. I'm not famous. Really. Right now I'm sitting on the couch in my jammies watching some a capella thing my mom TiVod for me (fuck yeah I'm on winter break.) Also, I'm watching the snowpacalypse outside my room (do you know what's going on in Washington D.C. right now? holy mother of...I mean come on now).


So basically, I'm doing exactly what any chick is doing in D.C. right now, I'm just telling you about it because I HAVE A BLOG.

Anyway.

The fact that I have a blog with which to rant about my exceedingly normal life and a few books in which I construct lives that are remarkably less normal than my own doesn't make me famous, and it definitely doesn't make me hard to contact. Here's how to get in touch with me!

Email's probably the easiest way to reach me. I'll get back to you uber-quick because I'm a loser like that. If you ask me to read a query letter, that might take a little longer (I have a few upstanding query letters in my inbox--I will get to you, guys!) because I need to set aside time to read and think about them, and clearly I'm too busy ranting about my life on the internet. My email address is until.hannah@gmail.com

If you something quick to say, Twitter is great. I always tweet back! @hannahmosk

Facebook is cool too. I have two pages on facebook--a fan page and a personal page. I obviously maintain both of them. You can totally friend my real page, just leave me a note mentioning you read the blog so I don't sit here wondering how the fuck I know you.

You may find me on myspace (I can't even remember) but I'm not really there. I don't even know the passwords. IT'S ALL LIES.

So you can can get in touch with me for any reason, seriously. If you have a suggestion for the blog, I'd love to hear it, or if you have any kind of question I can answer. I'd love to try to help. You can send me your query letters, but it does sometimes take me a little while.

Here are a few other guidelines:

--Right now, I can't read your manuscript for you, even a little bit, sorry, unless we have a previous arrangement. And synopses kill my brain, and it's distinctly possible I might ignore your email out of fear.

--If I don't answer you, try again. Sometimes I'm stupid and don't see shit.

--I have this complete inability to write long emails except in very strange circumstances. Please don't be offended if you write me a few paragraphs and I answer with a few sentences. Rest assured, I feel awkward enough.

--Call me hannah. Seriously. You can capitalize the first h if you want, that's chill. Don't call me Ms. Moskowitz. I'm like an infant.

Let's Answer These Puppies

You guys asked some truly excellent questions. HERE WE GO.

At the moment, would you prefer to write for adults or YAs?

YAs. I just finished my first adult novel, and I'd LOVE to have a career in both adult and YA books, but YA is my passion and probably always will be.

Are you sick of writing for YA?

Nope. But there are things about YA books as a whole that frustrate me. Namely, the hype of fantasy novels to the detriment of contemporary, Twi-hype--I haven't read Twilight, so I have no judgments to make on the quality of the books, but you guys already know I object to the notion that it's the be-all-end-all of modern YA--people's attitudes towards YA and YA writers as a whole...I don't have any complaints you guys haven't heard elsewhere from tons of other people. But, by and large, I love YA and I can't imagine ever getting sick of writing it. I worry that people are going to get sick of me, because a lot of times--big secret here--I do worry that I'm writing different versions of the same novel over and over again. I just hope people disagree.

And I always say I could write about 15 year old boys forever. God, they're so beautiful and angsty. Love them.

What do your parents think of the "content" (gahhh, what a horrible, prissy word) of "Break", i.e. swearing and stuff?

Oh, they're totally cool with it. I learned everything I know from then, y'know? ;)

Plus, my three best friends--all teenage boys--basically live at our house, so they have firsthand experience that some boys really do talk that way.

Do you worry about sharing your writing? I'm not sure what the hard and fast rules are on sharing your manuscript, but I've got a friend who molts whenever I suggest putting an excerpt out on the internet. She is sure people will snatch it up and whore it out and I will be left penniless AND bereft of manuscript rights or something. So, can you spill on the proper pimping protocol of an unpublished, unagented, completely naked of rights novel?

First off, nothing you write is EVER completely naked of rights. Your words are copyrighted (I typed that as "copywritten" the first time. What.) the second you put the down on paper. And, worst comes to worst, there are ways to prove that--your word processor will tell you when you started a document, or if you emailed it to yourself, that's proof, whatevs.

But honestly, I think the chances of someone stealing your novel are really, really slim. And maybe that's naive of me.

i wouldn't suggest putting a whole manuscript online (unless you're doing a serial on your blog or something, and that's a whole different sack of potatoes) but a snippet? Sure.

Yes, there is a chance that someone might steal your idea. But who's left out there who doesn't know that the idea is the easy part? God, I can think of seven ideas for a book a day, but that doesn't mean I have to discipline--or the time--to sit down and write the books for them. And even if I did, it would be a completely different book from someone's based off the exact same idea, just because things always evolve differently, and there is so much variability out there.

And ideas are recycled and reused all the time. And books are similar to other books all the time. And that's entirely okay.

I'll give you an example. A few months before INVINCIBLE SUMMER sold, when the manuscript was already edited, polished, and going out to agents for round of querying numero dos, I started stalking publishers. Because that's how I roll. On Knopf's website, I saw an ad for their new book just out by Brent Runyon, one of my FAVORITE authors. The book? SURFACE TENSION, a coming-of-age about a boy over four summers.

So I basically shot myself and slit my wrists and overdosed on painkillers and told myself my book was never going to sell. And guess what? It sold. We even submitted to Knopf. And they didn't even mention SURFACE TENSION in the rejection!

I didn't steal the idea from Brent Runyon--I swear!--but the two books do have a sort of eerie similarity. They're not by any means identical; INVINCIBLE SUMMER, like most of my stuff, is very very family focused, while SURFACE TENSION is more romantically-based. But if you read descriptions of the two, they definitely sound alike. And they both sold. And, fingers crossed, we'll both be fine.

(Also, you should buy SURFACE TENSION, because I did as soon as I recovered from my wrist-slitting, and it's really good. And also you should buy INVINCIBLE SUMMER, but not for another year, which is annoying.)

Why do you hate Brown? DETAILS PLZ. :)

Bwahahaha. I'm so hard on Brown. To be honest, it's not Brown's fault. Brown is a perfectly lovely school IF you are willing to work your ass off. Which I am not. I want to lie around and write books.

Also, just personal stuff. I don't like being far away from home, and I don't like living in a building full of teenagers. I need my space sometimes. I'm a SENSITIVE ARTIST or some shit.

What's your favorite color? (boring question, I know)

Indigo, due in no small part to my obsession with Hilary McKay's INDIGO'S STAR, which you should also buy. It's MG. I think MGs are some of the best books out there.

How do you feel about YA books today compared to YA books in the past?

I'm crazy about YAs from the 80s and 90s--Joyce Sweeney, in particular. There's this certain kind of angry sitcom feel to them. Everything is super angsty and dramatic and affectionate and...you're not really the same after you read one of them. Stuff now is more realistic, I think, which is cool, but it some ways less fun. I lurve the drama.

Do you think there needs to be more edgy, true-to teenage life, f-bomb dropping books or do you think writers should continue to sugarcoat things?

Ha, I'm sure anyone could predict how I'm going to answer this one--fuck sugarcoating.

What's you favorite song at the moment?

"When My Boy Walks Down the Street" by The Magnetic Fields.

Have you always been a fast writer?

Nope. BREAK was my first fast-draft, and INVINCIBLE SUMMER and the book I just finished (working title THE ANIMALS WERE GONE--more about that in a minute) are the only ones I've written very quickly. Of those, INVINCIBLE SUMMER took the longest--8 days, and was also the shortest, with a first draft of about 23K words--and THE ANIMALS WERE GONE was the fastest and the longest--5 days and 40K words.

I love the ones I write quickly. They feel the most passionate to me, and they're my favorites, and maybe it's not a coincidence that they keep being the ones to sell. But some of my slower drafts turn into good books, too, I think. The first drafts of those generally take me about two to three months.

If you could have one writer, dead or alive, read and critique your work, who would it be and why?

He's not a YA writer, sorry, but...John freaking Irving. I love him so much. And he knows how to pack a punch like no one's business.

I read THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE when I was staying in a hostel in Florence on a school trip. I was alone in my room, devouring a box of Special K, when I got to the big scary twist. I had to crawl out into the hallway and wait for my best friend to come hold me. I want to do that to someone someday. I want to totally fuck up their lives with words in the middle of a box of Special K.

ooh and how about if they made a movie about your journey/success, who would you want to play you? :)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, if he doesn't mind the gender-bending.

So I know that your novel-that-hasn't-sold-yet, THESE HUMANS ALL SUCK, is kind of quirky speculative fiction. What's the difference, for you, between writing this kind of YA and contemporary? And which do you like better? And why?

Ohhh, THESE HUMANS ALL SUCK. sniff. I hope someday to bring that shit out of the closet. We'll seeeeeeeeee.

I'm trying to figure out if it feels any different. I think it's scarier for me, trying to write spec; it's like I'm dipping my feet into very unfamiliar territory. I never go very deep into the spec elements, because I'm sure I'm going to screw something up, and intense worldbuilding absolutely scares me. (Pop Quiz: Where is BREAK set? Yeaaaaaaah I don't know either.)

So I probably prefer writing straight contemporary just because it's less scary for me. Btu when the ideas come to me with spec in them, sometimes it's hard to excise out. But I try. Sometimes.

I do love magical realism, so as long as I can tell myself that's what I'm writing, it gets a little easier.

Could you give us a kind of outline of your favourite books that-you-haven't-sold-yet, like THESE HUMANS ALL SUCK and a couple of others? Whenever I read about you mentioning them, I'm always curious :P.

Absolutely. Are you ready? HERE WE GO. Big explanation of ALL MY BOOKS OF ALL TIME.

Warning: This shit is long.

Crash, Burn, Etc. (2005)--a story about a kid named Jason whose mom hangs herself in the basement. His sister tries to keep the family together. Lots of angst. So bad it hurts, but, guys, this was my FIRST NOVEL EVER so it was really exciting. I finished it at the end of 8th grade. I queries FSG with it. I'm so silly.

Color us Blissful (2005)--a boy named Jamie discovers a government plot to eradicate unruly teenagers when his best friend becomes a target. Pretty dumb. I loved it.

Craving Private Ryan (2005)--This was about two half-brothers who met for the first time and fell in love. I was obviously a precocious little thing. No plot, lots of angst. My main character was 19, which was weird, since I was 14. I subbed this one to small presses and got a few partial requests. That was pretty sweet for me. I didn't really know about agents at the time, because I was too busy writing about gay incest to do any research, I guess.

The Sublime (2006)--Jack gets stuck on a mysterious island with some mysterious people, mysterious things ensue. This came out on ebook with a small press. It's out of print now. My agent and I might do something with it, but probably not. We'll see. I like it, but it's very quiet.

Birthday Cake (2006)--The first draft of this one took me 6 months. That's my longest ever. It's been through like a zillion different drafts, and it was the first book I used to query agents. Unsuccessful! Probably won't ever see the light of day. It's cute but quite flawed. It switches viewpoints between 4 best friends the week of their eighteenth birthdays, when they've promised to give up their bad habits.

These Humans All Suck (2007)--So this is the first book I wrote that I think has any hope of being really good. Ian follows his adopted brother to D.C. where he meets his brother's pregnant virgin cousin and wonders if Noel might have been conceived in the same way. I...really, really love this book. I queried my ass off with it, and it's actually the book that got me my first agent, though we subbed BREAK instead and, well, you know what happened after that. We subbed this one after and it didn't sell. I'm not really sad about it anymore. It happens. (Published authors out there--hate to say it, but one book deal, or two book deals, or twelve book deals does not guarantee another.)

Singleton (2007)--This book is randomly pretty awful, which is kind of a shame. It's about identical twins, but it's also about, like, every single thing you could possibly imagine. It tried to do way too much and it didn't work. I stole lots of bits from this and used it in later books, though, so there's that. I queried this one, too (basically I was querying four different books at once) and I got all of two full requests for it.

Break(2007)--yaaaaaay. Originally called If It Ain't Broke. Jonah wants to break all his bones. My first novel, Simon Pulse, 2009, you all know the story. Tons of requests through querying, no offers for months, then suddenly three offers in a week. Wrote the first draft in six days. It was less than 30K--basically a detailed outline. The 2nd draft was much different, added major characters and subplots and things.

Pumpkin Patch Kids (2007-2008) Co-wrote with a really good friend of mine, Andrew Carmichael. I'm really, really hoping things will happen with this one. It's about two teenagers at a boarding school who have a fake romance and a very real pregnancy. I wrote a girl's POV for this one!

A La Mode (2008)--a sequel to Birthday Cake, mainly written just for fun.

Invincible Summer (2008)--Written in eight days of not-sleeping. Like I said, it's a coming of age about a boy and his big family that takes place over four summers. I love it. Break sold a few weeks after I finished this one. It comes out in Spring 2011. It's my second novel--do you see now how ridiculous the terms "first novel" and "second novel" are?

The Beekeeper (2008)--my first NaNo! I like this book okay, but my betas basically trashed it. As did everyone in the publishing world who read it. Haha, okay, I get it, it's not going anywhere. It's a cute romance between two boys at boarding school. Super innocent. 3rd present, switches viewpoints. I stole all the good parts for it and harvested them into The Animals Were Gone.

The Support Group (2009) -- really weird and teeny and...weird. And pretty bad, to be honest.

All Together With Feeling (2009)--drama centered around a high school chorus, told from the points of view of a soprano, an alto, a tenor, and a bass. I have hope for this one. I like it a lot.

A.P.D. (2009)--my first adult book. It's about a leper colony of sorts for people with a blood-borne illness that makes them turn into machines. It's pretty sick. And it has PICTURES. Stay tuned (hopefully).

The Animals Were Gone (2009)--finished this last week. It's about two teenage boys falling in love and staying in love over the course of the D.C. Beltway sniper shootings in 2002. I'm...sort of crazy in love with this one.

So there you have it.

It takes a lot of books to get a book deal.

It takes a lot of really shitty books to get a book deal.

It takes a lot of good books to get a book deal.

And most of all, it just takes tiiiiiime.

When you are hammering out a story at the speed of lightening, I'd like to know what's going through your mind. Are you just putting down whatever comes to mind and riding the wave or are you writing carefully from a well-thought outline in your head (or on paper)?

I don't outline. Generally, I won't start writing until I know the beginning, the end, and a few things that happen along the way. I keep the next big plot point in mind while I'm writing, but I give myself a lot of leeway when I'm trying to get there, and I basically just fool around.

What is your energy is like? Urgent or mellow?

Ha, definitely urgent.

How much do you edit your rough draft and when do you abandon? Do you feel that you edit your work to it's satisfying optimum or do you get scrambled at some point and feel like you aren't sure anymore if it is better or worse for the pen lashes? Do you struggle with tuning in on some of your characters? If a character is giving you a hard time, how do you get them clearer?

I actually only like to edit my first draft once or twice before I had it over to my agent, because I like to get feedback early on in the process. I don't want to burn out before I've done the work that it needs. And...this isn't going to win me any fans, but here we go. I'm not an editor. I'll edit to the best of my ability, but I'll be completely honest and say I do NOT have the ability to see or fix what's wrong with my story as well as, like, an editor. So while I'll clean up the manuscript the best it can, I don't edit the thing to within an inch of its life before I actually get editorial feedback.

Are there any themes or subjects in particular you feel you cannot tackle or feel very uncomfortable in doing so?

I have a hard time with race-related issues; I tried to incorporate some into All Together With Feeling and I'm not sure I was entirely successful.

As your next question says, I do a lot with gay teens, and I feel, to be honest, a little weird about that too. I absolutely love writing gay teens and I don't think I'm going to stop anytime soon, and honestly I'd be fine with that being my brand, of sorts. But there are so many GREAT gay men out there writing GREAT YA fiction about gay boys--David Levithan (I LOVE YOU) and Alex Sanchez come immediately to mind--and I don't want to be, well, the fag hag of YA lit. I'm not going to stop what I'm doing, but it does make me wonder if I'm doing the genre a disservice by stepping all over it with my straight girly feet. I just hope I do a good enough job that nobody minds that, no matter what, I will always be an outsider to the issue.

I do a lot with Jewish or partly-Jewish teenagers feeling ever-so-slightly at odds with their surroundings, and that's really the only minority-related issue I feel like I do well.

You've written about gay males more than once. Any plans for a lesbian or bisexual female protagonist/major character?

No concrete plans, but I do definitely want to have one at some point. The only reason I haven't is that I have so much trouble writing girls. A girl who falls in love with a girl means I have to write TWO GIRLS.

statement of purpose, I guess

Sometimes this blog annoys me, y'know?

I love you guys, you guys out there reading this right now, and that's entirely the problem. I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY TO YOU. I don't want to just write a whole bunch of shit about myself, because wow that's boring, and if you honestly care about the mundane details of my life, I gotta say I might me judging you a bit right now. juuuuuudge

No but seriously. Obviously part of the point of this blog is publicity--selling books is good for the self-esteem and the bank account and all that, and if this inspires a few people to pick up a few copies of BREAK, yaaaay. But that's not the only reason I'm doing this.

Here's a secret about me that is probably not a secret at all: I really, really like unpublished writers. Almost 100% of the time, I like unpublished writers best of most people in the world.

Because I still feel like one of you all the time. I still feel like I need help and I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing. And that makes blogging even more awkward, because what the fuck, I don't have words of wisdom, I just happen to have a book deal, y'know? It's just luck and numbers.

But if I can help you, I want to.

So the purpose of this book is basically to ask--how can this blog be the most useful to you? In an ideal world, what kind of things would I blog about? What would I tell you?

If you want to know more about my personal stuff--publication or otherwise--that's totally cool, I can blog about that (but I think you're weird and/or are confusing me with a celebrity). I could talk about (to an extent) what I'm working on now, and what my general writing process is. If you want more query contests and stuff, I can do that to. If you want more ranty advice posts, or more publishing-news type stuff...if you want me to have more attitude, that's easy, or less attitude, which is a little less easy, but still possible...hit me up, guys, how can this blog be the best it can be for you?

If You Think BREAK's Language is Inappropriate for Teenagers

As 90% of my teenage reviewers haven't mentioned the language and 90% of adult reviewers have, I'm going to say that if anything, the language is inappropriate for adults.

There should maybe be a warning on the back? WARNING: This book may not be suitable for readers over 21.

(Like, are you kidding me? What the fuck do you think they hear in high school?)

An Open Letter To Writers Looking For An Agent

Dear Writers,

Please never, never make the mistake of thinking you're having a different experience from anyone who's sold their book.

I queried four different books before I got an agent. I got form rejections and personalized rejections and partial requests and partial rejections and full requests and full rejections. I went through it all. It sucked.

I haven't forgotten it. I'm never going to forget it.

We're only different because we've had luck you haven't had. You could get an agent tomorrow. You don't know. Hell, I didn't wake up the morning I got my agent with some feeling that something big was going to happen.

When you work hard, success falls on you no matter if it's an up day or a down day or a Saturday or a Tuesday. You have to believe it will come. You have to not think I'm some level you're not.

You're the reason I blog. Because, Jesus, can we lift the veil and show you that published authors don't sparkle like vampires? We're just you, but lucky. And you NEVER KNOW when you'll be one of us.

Believe, believe believe. DON'T LET THE BASTARDS GET YOU DOWN. Especially when those bastards are us.

Love you.

Fitting in/Standing Out

A NOTE: This post talks about writing as a craft and a business. It talks about the business of selling writing. If you're looking for praise of art for art's sake, look elsewhere. I'm a commercial writer, let's just put it out there--I have my literary moments, but I write for you and you and you, damn it, not for The Sake Of The Written Word--so advice from me (fuck what I'm giving advice??) is going to come from a commercial standpoint.

A lot of the problems new authors face, whether they're on their first manuscript or their tenth, base around the problem of fitting in vs. standing out.

Benefits to fitting in:
--Your audience is built right in. That's huge. You know where your book will go and who will pick it up.
--Easier to find an agent. Look at what they've sold until you find one that's sold a book like yours. Query them. Then query some more people. If you're good, you'll get lucky. And if your book fits into the current market easily, an agent shouldn't have much trouble placing you.
--You are instantly your own brand. Readers will know what to expect for your next book, and if your first was the type they liked, they'll be loyal.

Problems with fitting in:
--Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
--You're asleep
--Your readers are asleep


On the other hand...

Benefits to standing out:
--Bam pow zap! There's nothing like a shock to get people's interest.
--Books that stand out are the ones that become big deals. No one ever got famous overnight from a ho-hum book.
--This is how things get started, y'know?

But problems with standing out:
--Good luck selling. You're a risk, and that's going to make it a hard road.
--Unless you do something quirky really well, you risk looking like you're trying too hard.
--The WTF factor. Expect people to question your sanity.


So you want to do something innovative and original without doing something that can't blend into the current market.

My solution to this dichotomy is this--write to fill the holes.

Don't try to start a new genre your first time around. You do have time to be a revolutionary.

But don't write the same book everyone else is writing because you think it will sell. (No Wuthering Heights and Witches, in my friend's words)

Don't write what's already out there, but don't write something that doesn't have a place. Look at what books are in your genre (which you should be familiar with) and look what could easily fit in that isn't yet there.

BREAK (surprise!) is a pretty decent example of this. YA books about self-injury are not new. I knew there was an established market for them. What is new? Books about a self-injury from a male perspective. So I did it. And it made sense, but it still had a touch of that Bam Pow Zap, this is different.

In a larger sense, I write largely YA, and I use a lot of the genre conventions because I LOVE YA and I love the conventions and I love selling books, so I'm not going to write a book about, you know, a tadpole and try to say that's YA. (Someone is trying that now. Stop.) But while a lot of YA is friend/romantic relationship focused, I put a heavy emphasis on family life and the relationships my characters have with their parents and siblings.

Find your genre. Love your genre. Meet the expectations of your genre. And add something new.

Fill some holes.

Hey JOHN GREEN

In response to this video:

First of all, I'm in love with you.

Second of all:

Here is something I've learned about about writing.

Sometimes things take a lot of time.

Other times, things do not take a lot of time.

First draft of BREAK: 1 week
Subsequent revisions: 3 weeks
TOTAL TIME SPENT ON NOVEL BEFORE SALE: 1 month of work, 5 months of getting the agent/the editor/chewing my fingernails.

First draft of INVINCIBLE SUMMER: less than 1 week
Subsequent revisions: 8 months on and off.
TOTAL TIME SPENT ON NOVEL BEFORE SALE: about 8 months of work, 4 months of getting a different agent/the same editor/chewing the same fingernails.

First draft of ALL TOGETHER WITH FEELING: 4 months
Subsequent revisions: 2 months so far and a loooooong way to go.
TOTAL TIME SPENT ON NOVEL BEFORE SALE: bitch please no one wants this thing and no one will for a looooong time.

Sometimes, things take a lot of time.

Sometimes, other things take a lot of time.

Sometimes, things do not take a lot of time.

Also, there are no hard and fast rules.

EVERYTHING IS SUBJECTIVE. THIS IS AN IMPERFECT UNIVERSE.

p.s. John, if Sara ever leaves you, hit me up. Seriously had a period of mourning when you got engaged. You and Ned Vizzini. I'm still bitter about this, guys. My boyfriend barely knows how to read.

TO EVERY REVIEWER WHO SAYS (S)HE LIKED BREAK ENOUGH TO EXCUSE ITS WEAK ENDING

Thanks. Me too.

College and Writing

Still trying to figure out if the two coexist.

For those of you who don't know, I'm currently in my freshman year at certain University (6,000 undergrad, its name can also be an adjective used to describe cows, belts, and suspicious stains, it's right there on the sidebar if you need help <---) and It's been a little rough so far. One of the main sources of difficulty, I think, is I've been basically unable to write since I got here.

I've written some--maybe 2,000 words total? But there are a few things keeping me from being productive:

--other things I have to do. This one's pretty major. I'm in class a lot. When I'm not in class, I'm doing homework (something I didn't really do in high school, so there you go). When I'm not doing homework, I'm usually staring at my TV trying not to think about homework.

--lack of time to think about anything. Let's face it, if I could just daydream through my classes the way I did in high school, I'd have a million ideas of what to write about by now. But my classes here are hard, damn it! So I don't have that luxury anymore.

--the assumption that if you're just sitting in your room by yourself, you're doing something wrong.

That's the major one.

So this post is really an open letter to all the people in my life who think I'm unhappy when I'd rather be by myself. Maybe you can use it for people in your life, too.

Guys.

It's okay.

Sometimes I need to get shit done, and sometimes that shit is something you don't understand, and that's okay, but it means you shouldn't make me try to explain it to you.

It's not that I don't love you, it's that sometimes the people in my head really are more interesting. (They're also more likely to make me money than you are. Sorry. Go buy me a sandwich).

Sometimes I really don't care about my Human Development homework because I'm trying to care about something that isn't real.

Sometimes I can't read the beautiful literature you assign me because it makes me too goddamn intimidated to write anything down.

Sometimes I just want to go home and go back to my real writing spot--in my basement, under a blanket, cat on my lap, watching Project Runway reruns.

That's how I roll. So far, this really isn't.