The Book Lady

One of my favorite books to read when it snows: The Centaur, by John Updike (because of the big snowstorm at the end).

"This discovery is ever surprising, that Heaven can so prettily condescend. Snow puts us with Jupiter Pluvius among the clouds. What a crowd! What a crowd of tiny flakes sputters downward in the sallow realm of the light above the entrance door! Atoms and atoms and atoms and atoms. A furry inch already carpets the steps."

"The storm walks. The storm walks but does not move on."

"Peter had forgotten what snow is. It is an immense whispering whose throat seems to be now here, now there. He looks at the sky and it answers his eyes with a mauve, a lilac, a muffled yellow-pearl. ... Wherever he looks, now that his eyes are attuned to its frequency, there is this vibration. The town and all its houses are besieged by a murmuring multitude."

I'd forgotten how much repetition Updike uses. I like it, both for the emphasis and the prose rhythm. But these snippets are just tiny bits of from a novel that is one of my all-time favorites.

Beware of echoes and doppelgängers!

Maybe I am the only writer in the world who suffers from this bad habit. It makes me crazy. I do it in every blasted book, no matter how hard I try to be aware of it early in the process and avoid it.

I always create characters that are identical, both in their core characteristics and the purpose they serve in the book.

(I may have mentioned this earlier this month, but it is such a big pain in my writing butt, I must rant about it again.)

I spent all day yesterday and the wee hours of this morning extracting one of those characters from my book, and turning over many of his scenes to a different fellow who – I can now see with the blazing clarity of humiliating hindsight – should have been driving those scenes in the first place.

It was a bloodbath, I tell you.

How can you perform this radical surgery in your manuscript?

1. List all the characters.

2. Define – using only a few words – that character’s relationship to the main character.

Examples: comic foil, trusted friend, villain, complication, love interest.

3. If (like me) you have two or more characters that serve the same purpose, get out a magnifying glass and sharpen your scythe. Is it possible to have one of the characters take over scenes from the others?

Example: in the early draft of SPEAK, the character who is now called Heather was two separate girls. Each girl was a “sort of” friend of Melinda for a few months. Each friendship died. Their personalities were a bit different, but not in a strong enough way to affect Melinda’s interactions with them. By melding them together, the story was cleaner.

I am crossing my fingers that the work I am doing this weekend will have the same effect.

Some quotations I find compelling:

"Sometimes if there's a book you really want to read, you have to write it yourself."
--Ann Patchett, "Why Not Put Off Till Tomorrow the Novel You Could Begin Today?" Writers [on Writing] Volume II: More Collected Essays from the New York Times

"I think there’s an innate dangerous quality to the human psyche that makes us doubt ourselves if we feel like we are doing something 'different'. But seriously, we need to get over that instinct because we are ALL doing something different.
So that’s my resolution: no guilt over writing the way I need to write."
--Deva Fagan, in her blog post here

I successfully escaped the clutches of the evil flannel sheets this morning, but I may have to use earplugs or turn on a radio to drown out their seductive siren song calling me back to the warm bed. And it's not even that cold today.

I'm currently trying to psych myself up to go out and buy one more Christmas gift. The store is more or less within walking distance, but it would probably take me about half an hour to walk there, while it's a five-minute drive. So why does it seem like walking would be less hassle? Though walking wouldn't exactly be good for my long-term health and well-being, as it's an area not designed for pedestrian traffic. I don't know what it is about getting in the car that makes it seem like a much larger errand, even though it's quicker.

In other news, we've come to the mid-season television lull, so I suppose it's time for a report card. I guess I've become Grinchy about TV, as I'm less willing to give new shows a chance. My favorite new show of the season, by far, was White Collar on USA. It's fun, stylish and clever, and it has a slightly retro feel to it, like the theme music should have been written by Henry Mancini. I love shows about smart people. I'm a little irked that they're moving it to Tuesday nights, since that's ballet night and I'll never get to watch it "live," but this is USA, which repeats things often, and I get USA shows OnDemand. I'll probably be able to watch the late-night repeat after ballet class. And it does free up Friday nights, so maybe I can either pretend to have a social life or go back to doing Friday-night writing marathons.

Speaking of freeing up Friday nights, my least-favorite new show has to be Stargate: Universe, which I've dubbed As the Stargate Turns. How they can make a show about being stranded in another galaxy on a mysterious alien spaceship boring is beyond me, but it helps that apparently all the action and decision-making take place off-stage, while the parts they show us are the kinds of scenes I call "doing laundry" and delete from my books. I could write epic essays about what's wrong with this show. They could improve this show tremendously by getting rid of those consciousness-swapping communication stones. I won't even get into the science fiction issues associated with that, where they've invented these cool devices that they use as a plot crutch without, apparently, thinking through the social and emotional implications (like, maybe I'm shallow, but I do think the body counts in a relationship, and I'm not going to just jump in bed with an entirely unfamiliar body, even if it contains the consciousness of someone I love. Not to mention the ick factor of using another person's body that way). But the real problem with these stones for me is the fact that they mean that this show with the word "universe" in the title, that involves an interstellar spaceship with both a shuttle and a stargate, seems to take place mostly on earth, and with mundane activities on earth. If I wanted to watch people going clubbing or having angsty meetings with their significant others, I'd watch all those dramas on the CW. When I watch science fiction that's supposedly about space travel, I'd like to spend more time on alien worlds or really dealing with the fact that we're in space. I'd even take the Ye Olde Ren Faire worlds that became eye-rollingly silly on the previous Stargate shows. Oddly, Paul Cornell thinks this show is brilliant. Perhaps the UK gets a different version, but I sense a future convention debate in the making, which could be a lot of fun. See me flinging my dainty, ladylike glove at Paul's feet as I make my challenge.

Though that was my least favorite show, I still watched it, mostly because the snark was so much fun (though with the mid-season finale, it may have tipped over into just plain irritating). I just sort of tapered off with FlashForward. I didn't hate it and I didn't think it was bad, but mostly I just didn't care. I'm usually pretty much brain dead on Thursday nights (I never could get the hang of Thursdays), and it required way too much concentration to focus on that show. So I started taping it to watch when I had brain power. And then the next Thursday would have rolled around and I still hadn't watched the previous episode. I took that as a sign that I just wasn't that into it, in spite of the fact that I previously would have said I'd watch Joseph Fiennes and His Amazing Eyelashes read the phone book.

Glee was an appropriate post-choir practice show, so I don't know what I'll do in the spring when they move it to Tuesdays -- probably tape it and still watch after choir on Wednesdays. I didn't love it as much as I wanted to, but it still has its moments of brilliance. The weird thing is, some of the better elements of the show are the parts that make no sense whatsoever. For instance, the evil cheerleading coach is one of the best characters and offers the most laughs, but I really don't understand why she even cares enough to be the villain here. If it's about not wanting any group in the school to get any funding that could go to her cheerleaders, is she engaging in simultaneous vendettas we don't see against every other school organization? And what funding is this club getting, considering it's been a plot point that they have to come up with their own funding for everything? You'd think this little group would be beneath the notice of the rest of the school. What I have been impressed with is the way this show makes me truly sympathize with characters I want to hate and character types that usually bug me. Plus, the music is fun. The earlier post-pilot episodes seemed to focus on recent pop music I didn't know or care about, but they seem to have swung back to classic show tunes and 70s-80s oldies I know, and because I am old, I'm much happier with that.

V was okay, I guess, though it could easily slip into FlashForward territory for me. I like the resistance movement subplot with the FBI agent and the hot priest, but the rest of it, especially the rebellious teen and the junior alien scouts plot, bores me. And I'm very disappointed that there has been no rat eating in the episodes so far. The iconic moment of the original series was when the alien chick sucked down a rodent, and I think that's the element the new version is sadly lacking.

I almost completely forgot about NCIS: LA as a new series, until there was an article in the newspaper about it yesterday, and that sums it up. I don't hate it, but I don't love it. It's just there. It's something I catch OnDemand when I get a chance, but if I missed it entirely, I wouldn't feel like I was missing anything. I do like the buddy-cop vibe, and Linda Hunt is brilliant, but the situation and set-up make no sense whatsoever (like why LA? There's no Navy base in LA. Why not San Diego, which is crawling with Navy?).

And now I have to start psyching myself up not only to brave the stores for Christmas shopping, but also for my solo in choir Sunday morning. I'm going to be very sick of the first verse of "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" by Sunday.

fandoria ’s doing up these totally kewl Christmas memory posts.robinellen  did her up a Christmas memory post too.  It got me to thinking about how I’d like to do some Christmas memory posts.  Too bad I’m awful busy with other things these days, like playing Sims3 and tickling my sleeping husband’s nose with bitty bits of yarn.

But then yesterday something especially weird happened. I saved it for today so I can make a Christmas Memory post.  Get it?  It happened yesterday and so now, today, it’s a memory? 

Why am I the only one laughing here?  I thought it was funny.  :-/

Anyway, this all began with a Christmas present.  No, maybe it was the Christmas cookies?  The Christmas candy?  Whatever, there was a Christmas theme going on with the beginning.

We (Joe and I and Little M) were headed to Walmart to buy Christmas things the kids needed for school today.  We decided to stop by my mom’s to pick up a stored Christmas present for Teen M.

While there, I discovered the Fudge.  Y’all just don’t know about me and Fudge.  We’re, like, drawn to each other.  I know and Fudge knows that this is a destructive relationship.  Still, we persist. 

So, yeah, I had the present.  What I really needed was a napkin.  I found one near the sink, on the paper towel holder.  Whoa, who’d of thought?  Speedy-like, in case Fudge disappeared, I piled my napkin high, folded the edges over, then grabbed a couple root beers out of the fridge.

Back in the truck, Joe mentioned seeing the mail lady headed our way.  Since she likely had a little thing of mine I like to call “money” in the form of a check, we decided to wait.  

He pulled back in the driveway and we munched on and savored our Fudge.  True, he was very lucky I was in the sharing mood.  I’m sure that would’ve been short-lived.

Very Sweet Mail Lady pulled off from the mailboxes and Joe puttered his monster truck up to them.  My check wasn’t there.  Bummer.

We started to leave, had the intention of pulling off, but the mail lady, who had gotten out of her Jeep and was walking back to us kinda put a damper on that idea.

The bright spot in this so far is that she had my check in her hand.  So Joe powered down my window, ‘cause I think he sometimes thinks I can’t do things like this on my own, and she handed me my check.

She said, “This must’ve slipped between the seats, because that’s where I found it.”

I cheezed at her, happy to have my money.

At some section of my brain I think I noticed that things were moving oddly, but I have been sick so I’ve been trying to ignore the weirdness of the world.

But Joe?  Now he’s a smart one that man is.  He nodded at the mail lady and said, “Your truck’s moving.”

And it was!  At that very moment it was reversing right past Mail Lady and my side window.  I blinked.  I even shook my head.  Oh, yeah, it was real.

To you this might not seem so amazing.  But you probably have hills where you live.  We don’t.  Where we live, it’s flat, ugly and treeless.  Sometimes it’s swampy.  You don’t get caught in tornados because you can see them coming from miles away.

Super Sweet Mail Lady took off after her runaway Jeep.  She opened the door and tried to stop it.  The door knocked her flat on her back.

Joe threw his monster truck in reverse and  backed up.  I jumped from the truck to help Mail Lady to her feet.  Then we just stood there and watched the Jeep roll backward.  There wasn’t much we could do.  It was moving too fast for us to stop it.

Luckily my parents live on a dead end.  What’s not so good is they have a drainage ditch that runs beside their house.  Along the ditch bank there are lots of trees.

The Jeep rolled all the way to the end of the road and began to climb the bank.  It’s backend was headed straight for one of them there yummy pecan trees.

Up, up, up it went, until it stopped perhaps about a foot from the trunk of the tree.  Then it sat still for maybe a second…or two.  And it came rolling toward us.

I looked at the mail lady and she looked at me.  We split.  She went that way and I went this way.

The Jeep rolled forward a few more feet then finally, I guess, ran out of steam.

Once the mail lady had headed back on her way and I was in my seat in Joe’s monster truck I picked up a piece of my Fudge.  I looked at Joe and I said, “That was especially weird.” 

He nodded and I ate some more of my Fudge as we drove off into the bright afternoon sunshine.

Sometimes people forget that I wrote PROM because it is not exactly a depressing book. In fact, it's pretty funny, if I do say so myself. (If I had dread, depression and death in all of my books, I would not be a healthy person!)

So it is with great joy that I announce that PROM has been nominated to the 2010 Popular Paperbacks List, in the "Change Your World or Live to Regret It" category!!

School Library Journal has posted their annual collection of Christmas Memories written by children's authors and illustrators. This year's essays were written by me, my buddy Deb Heiligman, Barbara McClintock, Lauren Myracle, and our National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Jon Scieszka. Enjoy!

Revision Tip #18

Are you stuck?

Have you tried all my plotting tips and dialog wisdom and adverb scorn and still you are stuck?

Try this.

1. Make yourself some comfort food.

2. Put on music that relaxes you.

3. Snuggle up in a warm, cozy place with a pen and a pad of paper.

4. Write a letter to your main character. Tell her everything that is worrying you about the story in general.

5. Pause to eat a bit. Make some tea or hot chocolate.

6. Pick up pen and paper again. Tell your character why you are specifically worried about her. Ask her what is going on in her life, in her relationships that you don't understand. Ask her advice about how to help her move forward.

7. Write down what she tells you.

8. If you can't hear her voice, then it is time to put that manuscript away for a while and work on a different story. But I am pretty sure you will hear the voice, so be chill and write.

stepstomarrow
When granddaughter, Jada, was born with leukemia, a donor-match was located and Jada made a miraculous recovery. In honor of her grandaughter's health, Jeanna has decided to walk across the country (in the dead of winter) to raise awareness and build support for the bone marrow registry (all that's required is a cheek swab). Follow Jeanna's remarkable journey as she travels the United States by foot.

One of the reasons I write fiction (one of the reasons I read it as well) is to break down the wall of Otherness.

Otherness is the separation we feel between ourselves and others. It's more than just being different from someone. Otherness is the gap that opens up when we not only disagree with someone, but we can't even imagine what it's like to be that person or see the world the way s/he does. Otherness is the refusal to acknowledge the validity of another's experience. Otherness enables us to label other people as our enemies, or even as less than human.

One thing I love about books is the way they enable us to explore so many different points of view and ways of life. Through the pages, we can get a glimpse of what the world looks and tastes and smells like from inside another person's head--and not only that, to filter that information the same way that person does. At the same time, our original self crouches in the back of the character's borrowed brain, comparing his experience to our own, seeing where we have common points of reference, seeing what happens when the character makes a choice we might have made but didn't. When the character is confronted by choices we've never had to make, we can speculate about what we would have done.

When I'm writing, I try to see the novel's events through the eyes of every single character in turn. Each of those characters has a worldview that is reasonable and cohesive to him or her--whether or not it is reasonable to anyone else. Each character has desires and fears that I may or may not share; but someone in the world also has those desires and fears, and I want to understand. I don't want every character to be just like me--not the characters I read, and not the characters I write. But paradoxically enough, exploring a life different from mine also leads me to acknowledge just how much I have in common with other people.

One reason a character can come off as flat is Otherness. If I try to distance myself from a character, if I act more as judge than scribe, then I risk creating a chasm instead of a bridge.

In January I will be running another Make Meredith Read Again Contest.  These contests are always open to published and non-published writers.  It's all the same to me.  :-D  

How to play:
Send in the first 2 pages of one of your stories.  In the subject line of your email please put Make Meredith Read Again.  Inside your email tell me your name and whether you would like your entry posted on my blog if it places as 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in the contest.

Multiple entries are welcome.

I don't critique the entries--sorry.  I will comment on why an entry placed.

The judges are me and my oldest daughter. 

The winners get super-duper retarded icons made by yours truly.   Plus, they get bragging rights!

The last time I ran my contest one of the winners snagged them an agent not long after winning.  :-)  I regret I had nothing to do with this, but still...

If you want to play in this round then spiffy them first pages up and get ready.   I'll announce the starting date soon and give you the email address for your entries.

I think I now remember why I haven't put the flannel sheets on the bed in years. They're so very comfortable and warm that on a cool morning, they make it nearly impossible to get out of bed. While I normally think that live-in household help would be intrusive, on a morning like this, it would be lovely to ring for the maid and say, "Jennings, bring me my tea and a scone and the newspaper," and never have to leave the bed. As it was, I lounged around for far too long until I needed that tea and then felt guilty about throwing my schedule off for the day, until I reminded myself that I have no schedule for the day. I have things to do, but nothing that absolutely had to be done this morning.

I might even be really decadent and take the laptop down to the bed and spend the day in the flannel sheets. Seriously, those things are EVIL. Or maybe I just happened to get the set that's cursed so that they sap your will to do anything but stay in bed.

I had my final Christmas party of the season last night. It was the choir party, so it ended up involving a singalong around the piano. We managed to even sing in parts for the more common Christmas carols, but all of us completely blanked on the words to "Frosty the Snowman." We were all looking at each other for help while singing "la la la" on that, then jumping in with gusto at the "thumpity thump thump" part we remembered.

I found a new cookie recipe that was a little less labor intensive and that made fewer cookies (and still brought home a ton of leftovers). I made thumbprint cookies, and some of them I filled with the traditional jam (my homemade strawberry jam) and for the rest, I re-melted the chocolate I had left over from my last batch of meringue mushrooms and filled the cookies with that. I like this recipe because the dough isn't too sweet. It's almost like a shortbread. The ones with jam taste a bit like scones, so I think these would be good for a tea party. I may add these to the usual rotation. What's handy is that they use egg yolks -- the same number of yolks as I need of egg whites to make the mushrooms -- so these work well to use up other ingredients from the mushrooms.

Now I have enough sweets to keep me on a sugar high for months. I still have some Swedish spritz cookies, a few meringue mushrooms, the thumbprint cookies and some mint fudge, plus the fruitcake cookies and chocolate nut clusters Mom brought me. And that's not even getting into the sugar cookies that were packaged with the cookie jar I won as a door prize at an event. I am hereby forbidden to bake for a while. Well, until I need to come up with something for New Year's Eve. I might get wild and crazy and not do something sweet for that occasion. Maybe I'll dig through Joy of Cooking and look at appetizer recipes.

My daughter has been harassing me with text messages since I got up this morning. 

They go:
Teen Drama Queen: I wnt be able to eat 2day
Me: Ur daddy gave u money last night
Teen Drama Queen: And it gone stuck it my jacket pocket and it gone
Me: That's ur problem
Teen Drama Queen: No it not if one of the little brats stole it!
Me: Leave me alone
Teen Drama Queen: Well
Teen Drama Queen: whatever. yall get on my nerves anyway

*rolls eyes*  That's me rolling my eyes at her, btw.

So this morning my Little M is Santa in his class Christmas program.  :-D  I can't wait to take lots of pictures and ooo and ahh over him.  He'll be in 1st grade next year so he might not let me do it again.  This afternoon I have a meeting.  I hate meetings.  They are so boring and pointless.  Why can't we all just communicate via email?  I mean I actually read emails.  At meetings?  When they're all, "Blah, blah, blah,"  I don't pay attention.  Droning voices put me smack dab in the middle of my WIP.  *shrugs*  I think the tone is some kind of magic spell or something.

Have a wonderful Thursday, y'all.  :-D

P.S.  Yes, I do plan on taking some money to my starving child.  Not because I'm a good mom or anything, but because I think it might be against the law to starve your kids.

Wonderful news of positive change from GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network)! After one year of their hard-hitting "Think Before You Speak" campaign, teens attitudes about anti-gay language have significantly shifted.

From the GLSEN website: "For instance, findings from a recent survey conducted by the Ad Council in 2008 and 2009 of teens aged 13-16 suggest that a higher percentage of teens in 2009 think that people should not say "that's so gay" for any reason (38% in 2009 vs. 28% in 2008) and a higher percentage also report "never" saying "that's so gay" when something is stupid or uncool (28% in 2009 vs. 18% in 2008).


"In the Ad Council's nearly 70-year history of creating campaigns to raise awareness and change public opinion and attitudes, we don't often see shifts of this magnitude in just over a year," said Peggy Conlon, president and CEO of the Ad Council. "We're looking forward to building on this success with a new series of PSAs and online tools that will help to further raise awareness and engage teens online."


Here is one of the videos that made the huge impact:



I adore Wanda Sykes. Just saying.

GLSEN is now started their second-year of education and awareness about the devastating effects of anti-gay hatred and language. Their website has information for parents and educators, along with all kinds of stuff you can put on your blog or website, plus polls, videos and lots more. Please take the time to check it out nd pass the word. (Thanks to School Library Journal's Extra Helping for the heads-up!)

Revision Tip #17

I keep thinking about the slightly different approaches Barry Lyga and I have to writing dialog.

I forgot to mention one part of that.

Your audience might affect your decision about how you structure dialog.

Many people are not sure who their audience is when working on the early drafts of their novel. Nothing wrong with that. But as you revise, you need to know who your reader is. The way you tell a story to olders teens will be different than the way you tell it to middle grade students. At least, I hope it would be.

My theory is that teen readers (ninth grade and above) have enough reading and life experience under their belts that they do not need as much visual action details accompanying dialog as younger readers do.

(This could also account for part of the difference between the Lyga and the Halse Anderson Schools Of Proper Dialog; Barry only writes for teens.)

The danger, of course, is that your middle grade (or younger) reader will get bored if you layer on the descriptive action with a heavy trowel.

Try this: Pull out only the action words from your dialog scene. Here's an example from a page I am working on now:

Character A speaks.
Character B gives reader visual description of Character A.
B speaks.
A reaches into sack and speaks. Hands apple to B.
B grabs apple, bites and speaks (note: he hasn't eaten for more than a day). Apple juice runs down his chin.
A removes hat, nods and speaks (introducing self)
B swallows, wipes faces on sleeve, speaks
A speaks
B speaks
A speaks
B chews and thinks
A speaks

I know - it's kind of boring to look at it that way, but by putting it under the microscope, I can make sure that the action details are an integral part of the story. They reinforce the fact that Character B is hungry, that he needs help, and that Character A might be a person he can turn to. It also balances a debt, because B helped A out of a bind in an earlier scene.

Bonus tip: since action in dialog scenes needs to be minimal and precise, it is a great opportunity to hone in on that perfect tiny detail that says volumes about the characters, setting, or conflicts at hand.

Wow. Ask and you shall receive. I did a wistful post on twitter asking for a widget, and Dani at YA All the Way stepped up and made me one! I had no idea I was down to double digits. Much squeeing up in here. Feel very, very free to add this to your site as a Christmas gift to me. In return, I'll let you pinch my baby's cheeks when she gets here.

It's the end of an era: I'm featuring my last Book of 2009. Rhonda Stapleton's Stupid Cupid is the final offering from the Debut2009 community, my beloved Feast of Awesome.



It debuts December 22 from Simon Pulse. Synopsis: "A 17-year-old girl becomes a cupid for her high school, arranging matches with a tricked-out PDA." It's a funny story full of mix-ups and situations that seemed like a good idea at the time, but lead the narrator into all kinds of trouble. As matchmaking tends to do!

I've enjoyed featuring the Books of 2009, drawn from Debut2009 and the Class of 2k9. And there is a whole new crop of debut books coming in 2010. In fact, some of them are technically coming out in 2009--next week, in fact! Since there are many more debut books in the 2010 groups than there were in 2009, and since 2010 will be a busier year for me, I've decided not to feature each book individually as I did in 2009. Instead, I'll do a regular feature, maybe weekly, in which I cover several recent launches at once. Get ready for the Books of 2010!

And during my own launch week in early January, I'll have some features about my book, but I'll also cover other books releasing that week, and I'll have some additional content, plus giveaways. As always, the main focus of this blog in 2010 will be books and writing!

I used to be the SCBWI Critique Connections Online Coordinator for the Tri- Regions of Southern California. Wow, that is a loooong title. Due to my recent move to New England, I am no longer a southern CA girl. So I passed my crown (They gave me a crown. Okay, they didn't really, but sometimes I wore one just for fun), to my bud, Sheryl who, as you can see was perfect for the job because she looks great with things on her head.

Anyhow, as a person with a formerly large title, I am feeling important enough to step on my Go Green soap box. Because I have discovered something huge. HUGE. It is going to save the planet, people. (*Edited to add* Okay, okay so *I* didn't discover it. Almost all the smart things I know were told to me by my super awesome friend Jenn Bosworth.)

Anyway, if you have an iPhone or an iTouch (and possibly a Blackberry, though I'm not as familiar with those), you don't have to print critiques for your buds. EVER. (I meet in person with my critique group. If you meet online, then chances are, you're already doing things electronically & you don't need an iPhone for that, just a computer.)

If you meet in person & you're looking to go green, here's how it works. Take your bud's manuscript. Most likely, unless you live on Planet Mumu, it is in Word. Comment bubble the hell out of that baby using Word's comment feature. Go to "Insert" and then "Comment." If you've never used this feature in Word, welcome to 2009. You're late, but we still love you.

What I also often do is write a little paragraph summarizing my thoughts at the top of the person's manuscript. How? Just type it in. Dear Sheryl, You rock. Your characters are made of awesome. Yours, Edith

Okay, then, (and this is the cool part), you go to "Print" like you normally would to print out your bud's pages. BUT you do NOT print. There is a button (or at least on a Mac there is...see the trouble when you try to give technology advice...*sigh*)...anyway, there is a button in the bottom left labeled PDF. Click that and tell it to Save as PDF. It takes a picture of your bud's manuscript pages along with your comment bubbles and anything else you wrote. Then you email the PDF file as an attachment to your email.

Now take your iPhone or your iTouch (or before I got an iPhone, I dragged my laptop, although that's less fun), and be on your merry way to Critique Group. Once you're there, just whip out your phone (uh, hmmm...that sounded dirty somehow. chuckle, chuckle.) Anyway, take out your phone, find the file in your email (this literally takes two seconds), and wallah! You can read and discuss. Then right after discussing you can email the file to your bud so she has a copy. I've found it's best not to do this beforehand, because people sometimes get defensive if they've had time to read what you wrote and form an argument about what you've said. (Ahem, ahem, I myself have never become defensive when emailed comments in advance. Okay, so it was me! If you're meeting me in person, don't give me the freaking comments in advance people.)

Advantages:
1. You'll never lose critique pages with handwritten notes!
2. That giant pile of critique papers in your house, poof, no more!
3. Many editors and agents use the comment bubble feature in Word. Great thing to familiarize yourself with and get used to using.
4. No more straining your eyes trying to figure out your bud's handwriting. What is that scribbled in the margin? I should what?? Go eff myself?! (I seriously thought someone had written that once. Tears formed in my eyes, my heart rate went off the charts. It was all very dramatic. But no, it was just sloppy handwriting & I eventually figured out what it said--I can't remember, but it was *not* that I should eff myself.)
5. Those ink cartridges for your printer? You know, the ones that send that unpleasant spike to your credit card bill every few months? No more! And you don't have to buy paper either! (*Edited in after scififanatic reminded me of this glorious reason to go green!*)

So there you go, my first soap box. If you are a diehard paper lover, and this just doesn't work for you, by all means, paper away! Above all, you gotta do what works for you! Great writing comes first. In my universe, the planet: she doesn't turn without fantastic books.

PS: If you are looking to actually do the annotations (comment bubbling) on your phone, the PDF file will not allow this. It's like a photo. Only for looking. Oooh, pretty. Yeah, okay, you get the picture.

Get to know My Guests. Want to know who's checking you out? You can now view the 100 most recent, logged-in users who visited your journal during the past 30-day period with My Guests. For those who prefer to fly under the radar, you can update your My Guests privacy setting here.

Introducing My Stats. If you have a Paid or Permanent account, you can now see detailed reports on how many people are visiting your journal, friends pages, and entries (wherever they're posted on LiveJournal). You can also view data on comments and RSS requests. My Stats is only available to Paid and Permanent account holders, but you can upgrade anytime. (FYI, an annual subscription costs less than a large pizza with everything on it, PLUS it's rumored to make you lose weight in your sleep!) For additional details on this feature, read this article in paidmembers.

Get ready to check your vital statistics!. To begin, mouse over Journal in the upper nav bar and select My Stats from the dropdown menu (Horizon) or select My Stats under Journal in the side bar (Vertigo). If you're using another design scheme, you can visit My Stats directly. You'll find My Guests on the My Stats tool bar.

Happy holiday promotion!

We're delighted to tell you about our holiday coupons, which will help you share the love with your LiveJournal friends! If you have a Paid or Permanent account, you can send up to 10 LiveJournal Basic/Plus users a $10 coupon for an annual paid subscription now through January 15th, 2010. Recipients can upgrade for $9.95 (instead of $19.95) for one year by enrolling in our automatic payment plan or make a manual payment of $15 (instead of $25). Please note that these coupons are not transferable and cannot be used to renew existing paid accounts. If you're a Paid/Permanent user, you can send out your holiday coupons now!

Tweaks and Enhancements

1. The search is on: We've replaced our default search tool with one from Yandex, a leader in search engine technology. This means you'll get smarter, more granular results! To get started, enter your search terms and click the Go button to the left of the Find box on the upper right of the LiveJournal header. This will take you to the search landing page where you can further refine by Entries, Comments, People & communities, and FAQs. You can also access the search page directly.
2. Whitelisting: We've released a new option to help you moderate your busy communities more efficiently. If an entry contains a link to a whitelisted (i.e., trusted) site, it will be posted automatically without need for moderator approval. If a post contains a link that is not on the whitelist, you'll be prompted to approve. To access this option, please visit settings for any community you maintain and select the third option in the Community Moderation box (located in the lower left-hand corner). Click the enable link to custom-edit your community's whitelist, which has been prepopulated with trusted domains. You can manually add or delete URLs in the text box. Please note: If you're the maintainer of an unmoderated community, you may see the radio button for this setting checked, even though it's not active. This is a known issue. Please select whichever option you prefer and click Save Changes at the bottom of the page. If you're happy with your current settings, then no need to do anything!
3. TMI, dude: We've added some fun FREE sponsored vgifts! You can send up to 50 TMI vgifts to mutual friends (btw, you cannot send free vgifts to communities). If you're a Paid/Permanent user and you want to view sponsored gifts, click Show sponsored gifts on your homepage or visit the sponsored gift page. These vgifts will only be available through Wednesday, December 23rd.

You can view more awesome user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. Until next time, stay snug!

As per most things these days I keep forgetting to mention on my LJ those little important items about my life. My husband is off work for a very long time due to a knee injury. So far we're all still alive. I did yell at him yesterday to shut up because he insisted on having an in-depth conversation with our dog right behind where I sat staring hard at my WIP.

He did all the laundry in one day and night last week. All of it. I'm shocked and very impressed. I think he thought it would magically stay clean though. I started a load of jeans this morning and I guess he decided to do laundry again.

So there I was on my tummy on my bed, notebooks spread out around me, my pen stuck between my front teeth. I wrote out one line. It read:

Somewhere near 3:30 that afternoon, we landed in Memphis.

Joe came limping into my room. He picked up the hamper where I keep the dirty towels and he asked, "Is all this dirty?"

I said, "Yeah." I thought, "Hello? Like I keep the clean towels with the wet ones? Der, dude!"

He picked the hamper up then dumped the towels into the hamper on the other side of the room, which is where I keep our dirty clothes. He slammed the wet towel hamper back in its place and snapped, "We need ONE hamper. I'm sick and tired of picking up eight different hampers and carrying them around."

I rolled to my back and burst out laughing. "Seriously? You're complaining about laundry after doing it for one day?"

;-) The following weeks are going to be so much fun.

Oh, man, this is the kind of day when I just want to burrow under a blanket with a book and spend the day alternating between reading and napping. I was up very late last night because the grown-ups in my ballet class went out to eat after class, and the service at the restaurant was v e r y s l o w w w w (to the point of non-existent). And today it's cold and a weird kind of hazy, not quite sunny, but not really cloudy. But, I have lots of work to do, plus I need to do some baking for one last party tonight. I'm at the state where I almost have enough cookies, but not quite, so I need at least one new batch, but then I'm sure I'll have tons of leftovers.

After this one party, the crazy portion of my holiday season will be over. I just have to sing a solo Sunday morning, buy one more gift, wrap my gifts and get to my parents' house. I have work to get done for something due in January, but I don't think that's yet at the all-consuming state, so I may allow myself some reading and relaxing time. I have my decorations up, though the tree is rather minimalist this year. It's nice to just hang out and look at the pretty lights.

Although last weekend was insane, after the crazy part was over, I didn't feel like doing much other than lying on the sofa, so there was some movie viewing. TCM indulged me by showing The Philadelphia Story, which is one of my all-time favorite movies. I seem to focus on something different every time I see it. This time around, I found myself really impressed with Jimmy Stewart's performance. Now, I'm already the ultimate Jimmy Stewart fangirl. He's pretty much my ideal man. He had a distinctive voice and speech pattern that was easily mocked or imitated, but when you really watch his performances, the acting behind that speech pattern was truly different for each character. In this movie, I'm impressed by how natural he sounds. It's a really speechy movie, in part because it was adapted from a stage play and in part because that was the style of the time. Most of the other actors sounded like they were giving speeches, which was very much in line with the style of acting of the time, but there was something about the way Stewart gave those speeches that made them sound spontaneous and natural, like his character was someone given to speechifying at times when he got excited, but his non-speechy lines were very casual. If you moved him in time to the present or cloned him or whatever, I think he could have been successful as an actor now, which isn't something you can say about a lot of the actors from that era, even some of the ones who were great for that time, just because what was great acting then would be considered hammy, stilted emoting now.

And I still swoon at that "hearth fires and holocausts" line. Plus, that movie is the rare case of someone misinterpreting a situation and taking action based on that misinterpretation, then changing his mind and "forgiving" after learning the truth without the other person immediately accepting him back. That drives me nuts in books and movies when the "oh, that was your sister/brother!" realization happens and the other person isn't peeved that this person was willing to believe the worst, so the relationship is back on. In this one, he assumes she's been with another man on the night before the wedding and calls off the engagement, then when he finds out nothing happened and is ready to make nice she tells him not to bother.

Then I think on the Cartoon Network (which makes no sense, but I'm pretty sure that's what it was), there was Disney's mid-90s live-action version of The Jungle Book. I'm a huge fan of the animated version, mostly because of the awesome music. I had that album as a kid, and there are so many fun songs. The live-action version tells a very different story, starting with a prologue of how Mowgli ended up in the jungle, and then skipping ahead to the part where he comes back to human civilization and has to learn to be human again, which he mostly does because he's fallen in love with a young Sarah Connor (TV version). There's a pretty lame conflict with almost no logical character motivation behind it, but it does give us Cary Elwes in full-on mustache-twirling mode (he even gets in a big "mwa ha ha ha!"), and nobody does snidely superior better. Mowgli is a lot older and more fully grown than in the cartoon version, so the scenery is far more interesting (and I'm not talking about the jungle). There are a few little nods to the cartoon -- we even get John Cleese saying the phrase "the bare necessities of life" -- and those are fun to watch for. I think I would have been disappointed if I'd seen it in the theater, but on a Sunday evening when I was too tired to think straight and went to bed immediately afterward, it was a pleasant amusement. Great cast, weak script.

Yesterday was.... let's not go into it.

Today is here and that is all that matters.

If you are still shopping for a winter holiday, read "Cheese and Crackers Never Changed Anyone's Life" and then finish your shopping at Indiebound.

There now - wasn't that simple?

Congratulations to Melissa on this WINTERGIRLS video - the project earned her a 100 in her class.

Revision Tip #16 (yes, I know it should be 15, but yesterday really was something of a mess and it's easier this way. Do you remember the "Bruce" sketch of Monty Python? Remember how there was no Rule #6? This is the same thing.)

Where was I?

Right, Revision Tip #16

Revision is the perfect time to brainstorm.

Really.

Brainstorming is not a one-and-done part of the writing process. Not the way I see it. After that messy first draft, I usually have chapters that feel empty or out-of-place. I mentioned the way I use huge sheets of paper to organize my chapters. Here is another technique.

1. Identify the critical chapters in your novel. Which are the ones that contain The Really Big Stuff?

The Really Big Stuff chapters will usually be separated by chapters in which the action unfolds in a slightly less intense way. Think of your novel as a wide river that your reader needs to cross. The RBS (Really Big Stuff) chapters are small islands in the river. The other chapters are either stepping stones or bridges that get the reader from one island to the next.

2. List the Stones & Bridges chapters, then prioritize them by how alive they feel. What is the chapter that feels the most flat - the chapter (or chapters!) you are secretly wondering if you should cut?

3. Don't cut them yet.

4. There is no Four.

5. Brainstorm as if you were starting from scratch. For each of the flat chapters, dream up ten different ways the action could unfold. Go ahead - be outrageous. I dare you. Sometimes thinking way outside the box is what you need to jolt your writer brain into clearer storytelling.

6. (Please note; there IS a Rule Six, Bruce!) Pick one of the ten and just freewrite the chapter over again. How does it help the reader understand the characters better? How does it move the story forward?

7. Rinse. Repeat. Send me questions.

Texas is so much fun at this time of year. Yesterday, I walked to the movie theater and got a bit warm while wearing a loosely knitted sweater and a light denim jacket. Today, it's been below freezing most of the morning. These drastic temperature swings make it impossible to adjust to any particular kind of weather.

But it was lovely to walk to the theater. I haven't done that in ages, and it was a gorgeous day, so it was a pleasant walk. I went to see The Princess and the Frog, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was pretty much expecting to, as you might guess, since I've played with that story a lot, myself. I also like a lot of the cast.

I ended up enjoying it more than I was expecting to, though. The New Orleans and Louisiana setting was a fun twist for a fairy tale story, and my family is mostly from Louisiana, so it was a fairy tale close to home (I nearly fell out of my seat laughing at a Shreveport reference -- since Shreveport is one of the last places I expect to have mentioned in a Disney fairy tale movie). I've spent a lot of time in New Orleans over the years (it used to be a very popular location for telecommunications industry trade shows, so I was there several times a year for a while), and it's a place I feel like I know pretty well on some levels, which made the movie more real for me. The music even fit the locale, and I can't resist the idea of jazz in a fairy tale movie.

There's been a lot of hype about this being the first African-American Disney princess, but I probably found myself relating more to Tiana than I have to any other Disney princess, even though I'm about as white as you can get without glowing in the dark. A big reason for that is that she's one of the few Disney girls whose big dream had nothing to do with a man/wanting a man/wanting romance. She wasn't dreaming and wishing for her prince to come. She wasn't pining for the man she met once upon a dream. She wasn't wishing to go to the ball so she could meet a prince. She wasn't willing to give up her entire life so she could be with a prince she didn't even know. There was a lot of talk about how Belle in Beauty and the Beast was a new-generation Disney princess because she actually read books and was known for being intelligent, but even her dreams were about a nebulous life beyond the provinces with adventure like in her books -- and they included having someone who understood her dreams, while the books she read were about meeting Prince Charming. I saw Mulan and Pocahontas, but I have to confess that I don't remember anything about those movies, their heroines or what their dreams were (that was in the last-gasp phase when Disney wasn't even trying).

Tiana, however, has a very specific dream that has nothing to do with a man or romance. She wishes on a star to be able to open her own business, and she's totally focused on that. Finding a prince is a byproduct of what she's willing to do to achieve her goal, not the goal itself. She's not sitting around waiting for anything to happen. She's not looking for a fairy godmother. She's putting in the work instead of being magically rescued. She also gets to have real adventures along the way instead of being locked up somewhere.

The other cool thing that I think is groundbreaking for Disney in this film is that the women aren't evil or absent. Tiana's mother is still alive and is supportive of her. The villain isn't a woman. Tiana has an actual female friend who is not a funny little woodland creature or enchanted object. This is such a switch from the usual Disney pattern of female villains, or else no women in the story other than the heroine and maybe a wacky secondary sidekick.

Anika Noni Rose does a wonderful job with the voice of Tiana, which didn't surprise me. I loved her as the unsung Dreamgirl (who I thought was a better actress and singer than the one who was famous before the movie or the one who got all the acclaim) and she totally stole the show in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. I just wish they'd given her more songs, but that's a longstanding Disney pattern. They always seem to give the heroine just one big ballad and then maybe one or two lines in other songs, with most of the songs going to the wacky sidekick characters or villains. Even when she isn't singing, though, her speaking voice has this lovely warmth to it.

The rest of the voice cast was also wonderful. I've been known to watch History Channel documentaries on subjects I don't care about just to listen to Keith David's narration, so it was fun to hear him getting to cut loose as the villain. It's easy to forget in all the Oprah hype that before she was Her Oprahness, she got an Oscar nomination as an actor, so I was pleasantly surprised that for her role in this, she actually acted instead of merely being Her Oprahness. In fact, I wasn't sure at first which role she was doing.

However, this movie did hit one of my pet peeves for musical movies: the insipid pop song over the closing credits. With all the great music in the movie and all the wonderful singers in the cast, why did they need a lame pop song that wasn't in the movie, sung by someone not in the cast, to play over the closing credits? I guess they worry that The Young Folks won't buy the soundtrack album just for those show tunes type songs, so they need a hit by a pop star, but that's what's keeping me from buying the soundtrack. If they'd instead done a nice big ballad sung by Anika Noni Rose, I'd have walked to the Wal-Mart next to the theater right after seeing the movie to buy the soundtrack. As it is, there was enough music to make the movie enjoyable, but not enough that I want to listen to out of context.

I won't be at all surprised if the stage version of this hits Broadway in a year or so. Then maybe they'll do their usual thing of adding some new songs, and since Anika Noni Rose is primarily a Broadway actress, maybe they'll let her reprise the role, and then I'll buy the cast album with the extra music.

Meanwhile, the trailers mostly had me cringing about what passes for family or children's entertainment these days, with Pixar to finally save the day after a string of trailers for cynically insipid films. Their trailer for Toy Story 3 made me cry. Those people are good if they can make a trailer that brings wistful tears to your eyes.