"The problem, of course, is that there's no way of knowing that your last good day is your Last Good Day. At the time, it is just another good day." (p. 253)-John Green
I love that quote for so many reasons. Among existentialists, it's common to say, "What if you died tomorrow? What would you do differently today?"
Well, if I knew that I was going to die tomorrow, I probably wouldn't do much of anything. I'd kiss my pets, eat some really fattening food, cry, and wait. Because I only have a day. What can you do in a day?
Thinking about today being my Last Good Day, however, puts a new spin on things. I ask myself, "What can I do today that would make today a good day?" Maybe I'll do a random act of kindness, or take time to really relish my morning cup of coffee, or let the cat snuggle for fifteen more minutes even if he makes me late. Maybe I'll try to relax and enjoy and not get so wound up. Maybe I'll be mindful.
What would you do if today was your "Last Good Day?"
Monday, January 23, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Book Review: The Fault In Our Stars by John Green
Twitter has been buzzing with enthusiasm for The Fault In Our Stars by John Green. When I read the book description, however, I saw the "C" word--cancer. Generally, I can't stand books about cancer. Let me explain why.
Life in general is pretty depressing. It has its good moments, but death and pain and depression are par for the course. As a result, I don't like to be reminded that life is suffering when I read fiction. I want to read stories with the happy ending that life so often does not provide. If I wanted to be depressed, I could read a newspaper for free.
All that being said, when I visited a brick and mortar bookstore last night and saw a "signed copy" of TFIOS sitting right at the front, curiosity got the better of me. I told myself that I would only read five pages, just to see what all the buzz was about. Needless to say, I was hooked. I left the store with it in my hands and stayed up until late reading it. At the end, I cried. I checked my body for suspicious lumps. And I marveled at the main character's ability to face adversity with grace.
Hazel Grace was diagnosed at 13 with Stage IV thyroid cancer that had spread to her lungs. Thanks to an experimental drug, she's living on borrowed time. She has to carry around an oxygen machine and lives with the constant pain of underoxygenation. Her entire world revolves around television, books and her two parents. She's an only child so when she dies, her parents will be left alone. She tries to stay isolated, to minimize the damage that her death will cause to the people who love her, but a chance meeting with a fellow cancer survivor named Augustus will change the way she thinks about herself, her life, and her illness.
Hazel is incredibly brave. She talks about how death from cancer isn't noble. It's painful and messy and the kids who are dying from it are neither particularly good nor particularly bad. They're just people. Hazel herself is special, however. She's not afraid to love, even though it hurts. She's not afraid to face her own mortality, even though she feels pretty insignificant in the scheme of things. When her illness beats her body into submission, she longs for death, but she keeps on living anyway.
At its heart, TFIOS is a love story--sweet, realistic and tragic. Hazel and Gus are like the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet, but their relationship is more tender and realistic. The book will stick with me for a very long time. In some ways, I wish it wouldn't. It reminds me of my own mortality--a fact I try to avoid thinking about on a daily basis. Great art changes you, though. It makes you think about the world and life itself differently. TFIOS did that for me.
Life in general is pretty depressing. It has its good moments, but death and pain and depression are par for the course. As a result, I don't like to be reminded that life is suffering when I read fiction. I want to read stories with the happy ending that life so often does not provide. If I wanted to be depressed, I could read a newspaper for free.
All that being said, when I visited a brick and mortar bookstore last night and saw a "signed copy" of TFIOS sitting right at the front, curiosity got the better of me. I told myself that I would only read five pages, just to see what all the buzz was about. Needless to say, I was hooked. I left the store with it in my hands and stayed up until late reading it. At the end, I cried. I checked my body for suspicious lumps. And I marveled at the main character's ability to face adversity with grace.
Hazel Grace was diagnosed at 13 with Stage IV thyroid cancer that had spread to her lungs. Thanks to an experimental drug, she's living on borrowed time. She has to carry around an oxygen machine and lives with the constant pain of underoxygenation. Her entire world revolves around television, books and her two parents. She's an only child so when she dies, her parents will be left alone. She tries to stay isolated, to minimize the damage that her death will cause to the people who love her, but a chance meeting with a fellow cancer survivor named Augustus will change the way she thinks about herself, her life, and her illness.
Hazel is incredibly brave. She talks about how death from cancer isn't noble. It's painful and messy and the kids who are dying from it are neither particularly good nor particularly bad. They're just people. Hazel herself is special, however. She's not afraid to love, even though it hurts. She's not afraid to face her own mortality, even though she feels pretty insignificant in the scheme of things. When her illness beats her body into submission, she longs for death, but she keeps on living anyway.
At its heart, TFIOS is a love story--sweet, realistic and tragic. Hazel and Gus are like the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet, but their relationship is more tender and realistic. The book will stick with me for a very long time. In some ways, I wish it wouldn't. It reminds me of my own mortality--a fact I try to avoid thinking about on a daily basis. Great art changes you, though. It makes you think about the world and life itself differently. TFIOS did that for me.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Responsibility to Characters
Sometimes I have a hard time finishing stories. In the beginning, I'm all jazzed up about a new idea, but then the idea begins to drag, everything goes wrong, and my novel ends up in a dusty computer file labeled "Grave Condition."
But what if I owed my characters the chance to tell their story--even if I tell it poorly, even if everything goes wrong? Maybe I owe them a beginning, middle, and end. Maybe I owe them some resolution.
Whenever I re-read a story I didn't finish, I usually get a sick feeling in my stomach because I want to know what happens. The story just stops, and I'm the only one who can finish it because it was my brain child in the first place. It's so frustraating!
Last year, I wrote a novel for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. It made it to the quarterfinals. It wasn't a bad novel, but it had issues. For example, it had two protagonists. Sisters. I couldn't decide which one I loved more so I kept them both, and it ended up hurting my story, I think.
After a great experience at a writer's conference, I gave one of the sisters--Cacey--a novel of her own. Cacey got her beginning and midddle and end. She got her happy ending. Ironically, Cacey's story had nothing to do with her sister Ivey's story. One was contemporary, the other paranormal. One was set in the South, the other set in the North. The only connection between the Cacey in the first novel and the Cacey in the second novel was that she was the same young woman in my mind--she looked the same and acted the same and had the same hopes and dreams.
Now that I've given Cacey a novel of her own, I recently realized that I can go back and tell the first novel from Ivey's viewpoint solely. It's really her world, her life, her story. I can't tell you how relieved I am to give her the attention she deserves.
But what if I owed my characters the chance to tell their story--even if I tell it poorly, even if everything goes wrong? Maybe I owe them a beginning, middle, and end. Maybe I owe them some resolution.
Whenever I re-read a story I didn't finish, I usually get a sick feeling in my stomach because I want to know what happens. The story just stops, and I'm the only one who can finish it because it was my brain child in the first place. It's so frustraating!
Last year, I wrote a novel for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. It made it to the quarterfinals. It wasn't a bad novel, but it had issues. For example, it had two protagonists. Sisters. I couldn't decide which one I loved more so I kept them both, and it ended up hurting my story, I think.
After a great experience at a writer's conference, I gave one of the sisters--Cacey--a novel of her own. Cacey got her beginning and midddle and end. She got her happy ending. Ironically, Cacey's story had nothing to do with her sister Ivey's story. One was contemporary, the other paranormal. One was set in the South, the other set in the North. The only connection between the Cacey in the first novel and the Cacey in the second novel was that she was the same young woman in my mind--she looked the same and acted the same and had the same hopes and dreams.
Now that I've given Cacey a novel of her own, I recently realized that I can go back and tell the first novel from Ivey's viewpoint solely. It's really her world, her life, her story. I can't tell you how relieved I am to give her the attention she deserves.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Only Five Days and Eight Hours Left!
I've been working on NaNoWriMo since the beginning of November, but I've only managed to accrue about 30,000 words of false starts. That doesn't mean that I don't have time, though. I still have five days!
I've decided to try again to write a Harlequin Romance novel, and I have an idea that got some attention from an editor a few years ago. I'm going to have another go at it. I can do it, right? Only ten thousand words a day.
Inspirational Quote to Spur Me On: "It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."
– Ursula K. Le Guin
I've decided to try again to write a Harlequin Romance novel, and I have an idea that got some attention from an editor a few years ago. I'm going to have another go at it. I can do it, right? Only ten thousand words a day.
Inspirational Quote to Spur Me On: "It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."
– Ursula K. Le Guin
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Thought for the Day
“To acquire true self power you have to feel beneath no one, be immune to criticism and be fearless.”
― Deepak Chopra
― Deepak Chopra
Thursday, August 11, 2011
A Quick Update
It's been a crazy couple of months.
After the SCBWI FL conference, I wrote another YA novel called Moneymaker that I really enjoyed writing and researching and can't wait to edit.
Then I decided that I needed some more income sources, so I've been writing freelance articles and blog posts. Some of them are fun. Some not so much. Let's just say I now know way too much about whole house water filtration systems. When my posts to the new blog I'm writing for go live, I'll definitely include the link in my bio. I'm super-excited about it because they're super-fun posts to write (Did I successfully convey my enthusiasm with my repeated use of "super"?).
I'm also gearing up for the farmer's market to start again in September so that I can start selling my homemade pet treats. I've had to get all my business things in order. They're actually amazingly friendly at the tax office--go figure.
For fun, I've been reviewing books for Kensington. I'll post the reviews to the blog once I figure out a seamless way to do so. I want them to be formatted nicely and not seem random.
Finally, I hope to get back to updating this blog more regularly, using some of the skills that I've learned. I have some ideas and hope to implement them soon! Stay posted.
After the SCBWI FL conference, I wrote another YA novel called Moneymaker that I really enjoyed writing and researching and can't wait to edit.
Then I decided that I needed some more income sources, so I've been writing freelance articles and blog posts. Some of them are fun. Some not so much. Let's just say I now know way too much about whole house water filtration systems. When my posts to the new blog I'm writing for go live, I'll definitely include the link in my bio. I'm super-excited about it because they're super-fun posts to write (Did I successfully convey my enthusiasm with my repeated use of "super"?).
I'm also gearing up for the farmer's market to start again in September so that I can start selling my homemade pet treats. I've had to get all my business things in order. They're actually amazingly friendly at the tax office--go figure.
For fun, I've been reviewing books for Kensington. I'll post the reviews to the blog once I figure out a seamless way to do so. I want them to be formatted nicely and not seem random.
Finally, I hope to get back to updating this blog more regularly, using some of the skills that I've learned. I have some ideas and hope to implement them soon! Stay posted.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Conference Round-Up
After spending two days listening to two published authors and an editor for Knopf speak at the SCBWI Florida Mid-Year Writer's Conference, the most important point that I took away was the necessity for a strong narrative voice in young adult fiction.
The consensus seemed to be that, in middle grade fiction, some authorial presence was acceptable. In young adult fiction, however, the reader has to feel intimate with the main character, as if he or she was looking at the world through the main character's eyes.
Anything that destroys, or calls into question, the reader's closeness with the main character is BAD!
What can destroy closeness?
-Making observations that the main character wouldn't make.
For example, if it's hot, and a character wants to put her hair into her ponytail, she wouldn't say, "I swept my curly chestnut locks up into my purple velvet hairband." When you think about "curly" and "chestnut" and "purple velvet," you realize only some of those descriptors would be important to her. For example, when I pull my hair back, I might think about how it's dark and I wish it was blonde. Or how it's curly and might look frizzy pulled up. Or how the purple hairband looks really stupid with my lime green top. I would not be thinking about all those things simultaneously, however.
-Working in backstory that the characters wouldn't be thinking about.
For example, if a character's best friend is going through a difficult break-up, it's the break-up that matters more than how the friends met or what the friends look like or how the main character feels about her friend--unless those details pertain directly to the crisis! Basically, any backstory must arise spontaneously from the conflict, or it seems forced and feels like authorial intrusion to the reader.
-Using dialogue as a means to end.
Dialogue should arise spontaneously from the interactions between the characters. It should be exciting--no hemming or hawing or circling around the main issue (unless that says something about the characters). It should not be a tool that the author uses to provide backstory, and it should not be so similar to speech that it's boring (real speech, when tape-recorded, is fractured and disjointed and not a pleasure to read).
One of the authors on the panel also discussed the issues of character lenses. A lens could be anything from a character's religion to her socioeconomic class to her favorite hobby. For example, a Catholic schoolgirl from the Deep South who wants to be an actress will have three obvious lenses that will influence her interactions with the world--religion, environment, and career aspirations. Giving your main character two to three lenses (while most real people have seven or more) will add to his or her depth.
In the end, I learned that the tightest narrative voices have almost a cinematic quality, moving from scene to scene in a purposeful, character-driven way. We have to get ourselves out of the equation and find a way to let our characters guide us--which is easier said than done.
The consensus seemed to be that, in middle grade fiction, some authorial presence was acceptable. In young adult fiction, however, the reader has to feel intimate with the main character, as if he or she was looking at the world through the main character's eyes.
Anything that destroys, or calls into question, the reader's closeness with the main character is BAD!
What can destroy closeness?
-Making observations that the main character wouldn't make.
For example, if it's hot, and a character wants to put her hair into her ponytail, she wouldn't say, "I swept my curly chestnut locks up into my purple velvet hairband." When you think about "curly" and "chestnut" and "purple velvet," you realize only some of those descriptors would be important to her. For example, when I pull my hair back, I might think about how it's dark and I wish it was blonde. Or how it's curly and might look frizzy pulled up. Or how the purple hairband looks really stupid with my lime green top. I would not be thinking about all those things simultaneously, however.
-Working in backstory that the characters wouldn't be thinking about.
For example, if a character's best friend is going through a difficult break-up, it's the break-up that matters more than how the friends met or what the friends look like or how the main character feels about her friend--unless those details pertain directly to the crisis! Basically, any backstory must arise spontaneously from the conflict, or it seems forced and feels like authorial intrusion to the reader.
-Using dialogue as a means to end.
Dialogue should arise spontaneously from the interactions between the characters. It should be exciting--no hemming or hawing or circling around the main issue (unless that says something about the characters). It should not be a tool that the author uses to provide backstory, and it should not be so similar to speech that it's boring (real speech, when tape-recorded, is fractured and disjointed and not a pleasure to read).
One of the authors on the panel also discussed the issues of character lenses. A lens could be anything from a character's religion to her socioeconomic class to her favorite hobby. For example, a Catholic schoolgirl from the Deep South who wants to be an actress will have three obvious lenses that will influence her interactions with the world--religion, environment, and career aspirations. Giving your main character two to three lenses (while most real people have seven or more) will add to his or her depth.
In the end, I learned that the tightest narrative voices have almost a cinematic quality, moving from scene to scene in a purposeful, character-driven way. We have to get ourselves out of the equation and find a way to let our characters guide us--which is easier said than done.
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