The Deconstruction of our Youth

I love teenagers—as should anyone who writes about them and for them. However, yesterday a few teenagers left me feeling something very different than love. I have two best friends. I love them both like sisters and yesterday both of them were violated by teenagers.

One of my friends had her back door kicked in my three teens (not one of them over 17). As my friend said, they would’ve been sadly disappointed when they saw she had nothing to steal, but it doesn’t make it any less violating. Idle minds resort to destructive—sometimes dangerous—behavior. Fortunately, nothing was taken from my friend’s house. Thanks to alert neighbors and the fact that these would-be thieves broke in to the basement and couldn’t get into the main part of the house, she came home to find only a damaged door. Still, it’s scary.

My other friend was violently attacked yesterday by a 17yr old girl. My friend has been a social worker for 15yrs and has never had anything like that happen to her. Unfortunately, her job takes her to terrible neighborhoods, into sketchy homes and around unstable people. But she has dedicated her life to helping teens who need shelter, food and education.

I don’t get this behavior, but maybe I’m not meant to understand what would provoke teenagers to kick in a door or physically attack a person who is there to help you. Mental instability speaks for a lot of it, but I think there is also a lack of structure, a lack of morals and a lack of hope. When you feel like you have no chance, why try?

I think about that when I’m writing. While every story doesn’t have to end happily, I think we owe it to our teenage readers to show them another alternative to violently acting out. Does that mean we don’t write about drugs, sex and violence? That’s certainly not what I’m saying, nor am I saying we have to have moral of the story either. We have to tell the truth because kids are smart and will know when the there is bullsh*t on the pages.

The problem is these teens kicking in doors and attacking people aren’t reading our books. If they were, I can almost guarantee they wouldn’t want to engage in such destructive activities. When you know there is a world out there bigger and better than what you know, you begin to hope. Maybe I’m corny or misguided, but I believe hope changes everything.

My question is how do we reach these violent, door-kicking teens? Because I honestly don’t know.

Should I Give Up Writing?

Last week a guy asked what my plan B was, concerning writing. I didn’t understand what he’d meant at first so he clarified.

“What will you do if you don’t sell this book? Will you go back to school to learn something new, more marketable? Will you try to get a promotion at your current job?”

His questions left me silent for a long while. I’ve never been asked that before so when I finally had an answer it seemed anticlimactic.

“I write another book,” I said.

I don’t think that was a good enough answer. Writing another book probably didn’t seem like a plan B to him, more like throwing good after bad. No one who really knows me would ever ask me such a question because they know that giving up on writing is not an option. Most writers do it because they love it. You really have to because it’s such a solitary thing that I’ve been accused of being a recluse, an old maid, you name it. That’s just the way writing is. I’ve never met a writer who could do it with a room full of people talking, with the television on and babies crying. It requires concentration, so yeah, I kinda have to be alone—at least in the room alone. It’s often thankless. You have to wait months, years, or decades—if ever—to see any type of profit or accolades. So if you’re in the business for the glory then get out.

Yes I want to be published and yes I want to make enough money from my writing that it’s my single source of income, but if I don’t sell this novel, I HAVE to write another one. In this guy’s mind, not getting a book published would probably be the ultimate failure, but that’s the view of a non-writer. Actually, there are quite a few people in my family who think this way. They ask, “Are you still trying to get that book published?” It’s easier to say, yes, than it is to explain “that book” is now on the back burner and I’m querying a new one.

Writing for publication is filled with a million little successes so I don’t feel at all like a failure.

The first time you complete a novel = Success!
The first time you take hard criticism and make yourself a better writer = Success!
The first time you write a well-crafted query letter = Success!
The first time an agent requests a partial = Success!
The first time an agent requests a full = Success!
The first time an agent offers representation = Success!
The first time an editor wants to buy your novel = Success!
The first time you see your novel on a shelf in a book store = Success!
The SECOND time you complete a novel = Success!

Tell me, why would I want to give up on that? I’ve only gone through half that list! So if any of you out there are thinking of quitting, if there’s anything on that list you want to stick a pin in or mark off your list, hang in there. It happens every day so why wouldn’t it happen for us?

Jane Austen Has Done it to Me Again

I was nearly halfway through Emma when I thought, “Nope, not really liking this one.”
Emma is snooty, meddlesome and a know-it-all. I did not like her through most of the novel. As with Pride and Prejudice, I felt it was drawn out with lots of telling vs. showing and everyone was so terribly fussy-lol.

And then Mr. Knightley told off Emma. Told her off good enough to have her hiding tears and I fell in love with Mr. Knightley a little bit. That was the start of Emma looking at her behavior and how she treats people and let me just say, thank God for character growth.

All the same, Emma has not replaced my love for Pride and Prejudice. P & P is just so much more romantic.

Now I’m off to watch the BBC mini series. I think I saw the one with Gwyneth Paltrow and while I have nothing against her as an actress, I have something against Americans being put in a British roll. I mean, is there a shortage of British actresses that I didn’t know about? Me thinks not.

Up next...Sense and Sensibility.

Have any of you read Emma? If so, how did you like it? Better that Pride and Prejudice or no?

Backspace: The Writer’s Place

One of my blog posts is featured on the fantastic site Backspace: The Writer’s Place. If you haven’t heard of it, go right over and check them out. I’ll wait….

Okay, so now that you see all the fabulous and informative articles, posts and events they have, you can be in the know like me! Actually, I just learned about them when I was contacted to feature two of my posts about rejection.

I’m very interested in the upcoming agent/author conference. Really, I’m just excited to have a new place to gather information and network. How did I not know about this site?
Anywho, if you want to check out my post go here and be sure to leave a comment!

I’m Not Writing

My laziness during the past week has been astounding. I can barely pull myself off the sofa least of all sit at my computer and string together two sentences. Wait, I just did that, didn’t I? Nevertheless, I’ve been struck by a paralyzing bug and it’s called Laziness. Perhaps I suffer from seasonal depression. Perhaps I just don’t feel like writing.

But I’m starting to feel guilty. As I walk past my laptop and don’t even bother to boot it up, I hear it mocking me, calling me a good for nuthin’ hack, but I just ignore it. It’s not like I don’t have things to write. I have at least five wips I can dive right into. I have a massive rewrite of Light Bringers that I’m actually excited about, but something keeps my butt on the sofa.

If I want to be a fulltime writer I can’t just sit around and waste valuable writing time, can I? Absolutely, not! Deadlines and editors won’t care if I want to watch all the season premieres of the new fall shows. They won’t care if I have miserable menstrual cramps, well, they might care, but they won’t want to hear it as a reason for missing a deadline. And even though I don’t have a deadline, editor or even an agent, it’s not at all prudent to wait until I have those things to start writing like it’s my sole source of income. So with that said I’m going to give my laziness another week and then I’m going to put a boot up my own @ss and get to work.

What do you guys do when you just don’t feel like writing? Do you worry about leaving work undone? Do you feel guilty when you don’t write?


Note: I’ve taken down the link on the sidebar to Zellie’s novel, Lightning Spliced, because it was taken off Zulu and edited for the second printing.

I Have Stepped Into Query Hell…

…AND IT BURNS!!!!

A few days ago I started trickling out queries. Fifteen! I know for most people fifteen is not a trickle, but when you consider on my last novel I sent out close to one hundred, fifteen is modest.

I’ve received 6 rejections thus far—Ouchie! But the way I’m looking at it is each rejection will clear the way for the right agent to step in. So, from now on, I’ll be sending out one query—to a well researched agent—for every rejection I receive. This is keeping my attitude positive. I realized, I thrive on that hope of hearing that ding on my Blackberry, hitting the button, seeing it’s indicating an email to my gmail account and then opening that to find a request from Mr. or Ms. Dream Agent.

Giving up is not an option. I mean, what else would I do if I gave up writing? Sit and drool in a corner? No, that’ll never do.

Tell me, how do you keep yourself motivated? Are you in Query Hell right now and is there anything I can do to help you?

Go Ahead, Say I Told You So

Months back, when J.D. Salinger passed, I was moved to conquer some classics. As a writer, I felt kind of bad when people would talk about certain classics that I’d never read.

On my short list was:
The Great Gatsby
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Catcher in the Rye
Pride and Prejudice

I’ve conquered two on that list so far—The Catcher in the Rye and Pride and Prejudice. Lets just say, I’m not such a fan of The Catcher in the Rye.

Pride and Prejudice. First, lets not talk about how I’m probably the last person to read this book, because I know that I am! As I started reading I thought, “WTH is going on? Why do so many people love this book?” I just didn’t get it. It was drawn out, full of telling over showing and—as I put it to my sister—terribly fussy. Some parts of it actually exhausted me. I think I caught the vapors.

And then Mr. Darcy proposed…and was turned down flat. All of his pride and arrogance tossed back on him by lovely and head-strong Elizabeth Bennett.

I was hooked from that moment on. Whoda’ thunk it…me, a romantic. But I wanted MORE when I was done. I wanted it so much that I went on Netflix and looked up Pride and Prejudice. There are about half a dozen versions so I scaled it down between the one with Kiera Knightley or the miniseries with Colin Firth…Colin won and boy was I happy I chose that one.

I don’t have a big problem with Kiera Knightley, but the in the A&E miniseries seemed so much like Elizabeth. I thought I’d always be conscious that it was Kiera Knightley if I’d chosen the other one. Plus the reviews said the man playing Darcy wasn’t at all like book Darcy. I wasn’t disappointed in Colin Firth.

A lovely time was had by all. So I can now be counted as one of those people who love Pride and Prejudice.

Go ahead, say I told you so…