Growing Up without YA

I know that this being Sunday means this post technically isn't within the past week, but I'm still gonna post it, 'cause I haven't posted anything all week. :)

So I read a blog post by Natalie Whipple over on her blog (click here) about why she's glad YA is girl-centric and the types of books she read when she was growing up, and it got me thinking about my own experience with YA fiction growing up. I've only been out of high school for six years (though sometimes it seems a lot longer), so I had a few more options when it came to YA than some other, more experienced writers and bloggers. And yet, there wasn't a lot of strong writing in the genre, even then.

Harry Potter was published when I was in middle school, but I didn't read it until I was almost finished with college. Twilight was published in my second year in college, though I avoided it until I had graduated. When I was younger, in early middle school and into high school, there just wasn't a lot of good YA writing out there. I stumbled across Tamora Pierce's writing in middle school and ate it up. It was exactly the type of writing I'd been looking for since I read The Chronicles of Narnia. She gave me a strong fantasy with a strong female protagonist. After I read all of her books, I went searching for more; I was a voracious reader after all, and I had to feed my habit.

The problem was that, growing up, there just wasn't much good writing for teenagers then. It wasn't until I got into college that YA really began to take off. Then, there was this explosion and now, there's more YA than I know what to do with. Which is a lovely problem to have for a person who reads as much as I do. There is an abundance of strong girls in great books. There are a few middle school girls that I talk with at my church and I'm always so happy when I can recommend some good YA books to them, because when I was their age, there weren't really any. And I love giving book recommendations, so having books to recommend is wonderful.

So yeah, that's my thoughts on the whole YA thing. I love that there are strong females in abundance now, and I hope that one day my own leading ladies will be counted among them.

The Book List

So at the end of 2010 I decided I was going to keep track of all the books I read during 2011. I bought a nifty book journal to write down all the titles and authors and when I read the books and even my thoughts about them. I managed to do that for about seven books. After that, I lost track of how long it took me to finish some books because it took me over a month to finish a few of them. But I still managed to keep track of which books I read and I decided I'm going to list them here. I'll even tell you my favorites so you can read them too, or tell me whether you liked them if you've already read them.

The list isn't in any particular order. Basically just how they were stacked on my shelves and floor as I finished them. And the books listed are the books I actually finished. I started a few others during the year that I just couldn't get through for one reason or another. I'm something of a picky reader when it comes to published books. I like good writing, and the more good writing I read, the harder it is for me to read writing that bugs me for some reason. So this list is only of the books I've finished in 2011. Also, this is only lists fiction. I've read a few non-fiction titles this year, but I'm not going to list them here. I may put them in another list later, though.

I will put an asterisk (*) by the books I really, really liked. I will put an ® by the books the I reread this year (books that I've already previously read but decided to read again for whatever reason).

*Poison Study - Maria V. Snyder
®Terrier - Tamora Pierce
Behemoth - Scott Westerfeld
Leviathan - Scott Westerfeld
Lemonade Mouth - Mark Peter Hughes
Fire - Kristin Cashore
The Read Pyramid - Rick Riordan
*The Lost Hero - Rick Riordan
*Hex Hall - Rachel Hawkins
*Demonglass - Rachel Hawkins
*Cast in Shadow - Michelle Sagara
Incarceron - Catherine Fisher
******Legend - Mary Lu
*Anna and the French Kiss - Stephanie Perkins
Delierium - Lauren Oliver
Prophecy of the Sisters - Michelle Zink
®Beastly - Alex Flinn
The Iron King - Julie Kagawa
*Lola and the Boy Next Door - Stephanie Perkins
The Demon King - Cinda Williams Chima
*The Son of Neptune - Rick Riordan
******Divergent - Veronica Roth
*Heist Society - Ally Carter
Entwined - Heather Dixon
Eon - Alison Goodman
The Throne of Fire - Rick Riordan
Across the Great Barrier - Patricia C. Wrede
Blood Red Road - Moira Young (I haven't quite finished this one yet, but I think I may get it finished before midnight tomorrow. And I started it in 2011, so I'm counting it).

Until I actually sat down and counted the books, I didn't think I'd read that many this year. The total is 28, which means I averaged 1.8 books read per week.

I think you can guess my favorites based on the list above, but just in case, they were Divergent and Legend. I really liked most of the books I read. But those two were absolutely the best of the best. And Divergent was by far my favorite of the year. I seriously considered rereading it multiple times.

Tell me what books you read this year. Have you read any (or all) of the books on my list? Which did you like the best?

The Center Didn't Hold

Okay, so the title is kind of lame, but I heard a Ferengi quote that line of that poem on Star Trek and I just couldn't resist. (Of course, it left me wondering how on DS:9 Quark could possibly know that line from that poem by Yeats, seeing as he despises all things hu-man, but now I'm just thinking too far into it.) (Bonus points for everyone who got both of those references before I explained.)

Anyway, the last time I posted was four months ago when I was attempting the BIAM a second time for a second story. Y'all might have guessed from my sudden silence that it did not go well. Actually, it all kind of fell apart. I think it was a combo of the story not being ready and the timing of the attempt. I realized halfway through that I had no idea where the story was going. I thought I did, but it took trying to write the story to completion to realize I had no idea where it was supposed to end or even what the characters were doing in the story. I didn't know why they were there or what they wanted or anything.Add to that the fact that my FT job got super crazy busy and you have a recipe for disaster. I just didn't have the time that I'd had with the other project. Things were just too busy and I couldn't dedicate the time I needed to to finish on time.

I also realized that I needed to reexamine the story and characters and figure out just what everything was about. Why did my antagonist do what he did? Why did my protagonists do what they did? Why did they feel about each other they way they did. So I took a month or so and just thought and did rough character sketches.

Finally, I found another system that seemed like it might work better with this story and started with it. And the good news, it worked pretty well. I'm still struggling here and there. But overall, I'm much happier with where this story is going than I was back in September. I currently drafting scenes and I'm really hoping with my vacation coming up I'll be able to finish the scene drafts by the end of the year.

I also feel kind of bad because I've been ignoring the whole online world for about four months now. I haven't been blogging, I haven't been on LWC, I've been on Facebook but not really posting. I just haven't been present, at all.

I really want to try and fix my terribly blogging habits, well really my terrible internet habits. Because let's face it, I'm really bad at having an online presence. But I want to try and be better. I even have a few ideas for some blog posts. And I'm officially asking for ideas. Anything y'all want me to post on, talk about, rant about, or comment on? I'll give it a try. I'm also going to try and post a few book reviews, though, I'm really bad at writing those. Still, I've been reading, so I might as well talk about what I'm reading.

So tell me what you want me to talk about. I'm going to try and post at least once a week. I can't guarantee what day or what time, but I'm gonna try.

Now, I'm gonna go, cause this is long enough as it is. :)

Book in a Month Redux: Days 5 through 8

So you might have noticed that I'm not posting as many blogs as I did the first time around. And you might be wondering why. I will explain.

Like most people, I'm crazy busy. Not that I have kids or anything so super life-consuming like that (though that would be nice). No. My business comes from everything else going on in my normal life. See I have a day job that I must work full time so that my hubby and I can actually make money and, you know, subsist. I also am incredibly active in my church, which means I have youth group on Wednesday (which I love), church on Sunday (which I also love), small group on Thursday (yup, love that too) and other random church events scattered throughout the month. Then there's the whole family/friends thing, which means making time to actually see them. Oh and I have to sleep and eat and write and exercise and, because of my joint issues, spend a lot of time resting my joints between all these activities because if I don't I can't do any of them. All that is to say, that as much as I love posting on my blog (now that I actually do, and kind of have something to write about), it is often the casualty of my hectic life. I will, of course, still post, but, at least for the foreseeable future,  it will only be every couple of days. :)

So, now that my guilt-fueled over-sharing has been taken care of, I bet you want to know how the writing's going, especially after the trouble I was having last week. The answer: it's going really well. I realized at some point last week that I was trying too hard to write something totally different from my original draft and it was making me lose my connection with the story. The original (unfinished) draft of the story was, for the most part, pretty decent, if rough. But I thought that I needed to write the same situations in a completely different way. Thus, the writers block.

Once I realized that I could incorporate the original ideas and dialogue and whatnot, tweaked to match-up with the new POV and changed to make a little more sense, the writing started flowing again. And that makes me super happy.

Sometimes I get so caught up in changing what I think are problems with my stories that I forget that sometimes I had some pretty decent ideas to begin with. And when I let myself get back to those ideas, under controlled circumstances, the story comes so much easier. :)

So here are the numbers for the past few days.

Pages Written for Days 5 through 8:  24

Total Pages thus Far: 48

Words: 6,179

Total Words thus Far: 12,579

Book in a Month Redux: Days 3 and 4

Life is busy so I couldn't post yesterday. Wednesdays are just generally crazy for me. I didn't even get all my pages written yesterday because of work and youth group. But I'm all caught up again now.

So I've discovered (or really rediscovered) something in this first writing week. Writing a whole new story is hard. Really hard. I keep finding myself feeling like this story isn't coming together at all. When I was writing the original version of it, it was pretty easy. But now, it feels all stilted and weird. It's not flowing like my last WIP did. I can't seem to get into the mode of wanting to write it like I was before.

I still like the story idea, but the actual story writing is really hard this time around for some reason. And I can't really figure out why.

But I'm pushing through it, writing even though it feels off somehow. I'll keep going and hopefully it will get smoother the further into the story that I get.

Do y'all ever have that happen with your writing? Where you start a story and think it's great, but then suddenly everything feels stiff and hard to write, like you're not connecting to it anymore? If so, what do you do?

So here are the numbers for the pas two days.

Pages: 12 

Total Pages thus Far: 24

Words: 3,364

Total Words thus Far: 6.612

Book in a Month Redux: Day 2

It's finally starting to feel like fall here. Whether it stays feeling that way is anybody's guess, but today it was pleasantly chilly. Days like today make me wish I could simply take a good book and go sit in the sun all day, enjoying the lovely weather before things get cold and nasty again.

But enough of my musings on weather. How goes the writing, you ask. It goes well. Of course, it's only the second day, so it better be going well. :)

Today I introduced my male lead character. His name is Keller Brydon, and can I just say that he's amazing. At least I think so. I think you will too, but hey, that's just me.

So I guess i could actually tell you a little about this story, couldn't I? Okay, I will.

My new story takes place in world rather different from my last WIP. In this world, magic is pretty commonplace. About half the county's population has some kind of magic, including my two main characters. The magic in this world differs from my previous story as well, because it's not elemental magic. This magic is all mental. Those with magic have visions, can see when some one is lying, can find someone using their mind, can sense things about people, and more. Every bit of the magic is mental. So no manipulating the natural forces, unless you have telekinesis or something like that.

So what kind of magic do Raelin and Keller have? Well, Raelin is a Seer. Keller, he's a Truth-Sayer, or Truth-Seer.

And that's all you get for now. I'll be posting a brief discription of the story on my Projects page sometime later this week. I just have to actually write it first. :)

Now for the numbers.

Pages: 6 

Total Pages thus Far:12

Words: 1,517

Total Words thus Far: 3,263

Book in a Month Redux: Day 1

Yup, I'm doing it again. And I'm blogging about it, again.

So, doing the book in a month for my other WIP worked so well, and left me feeling so great about getting it accomplished that I have decided to write another BIAM.

This time, I'm using BIAM to write another story that I've been stuck on for a couple of years. I got the idea a few years ago from, of all things, a dream I had. Since then, I've been fiddling with it here and there, but I've never actually written out the whole story.

That's what I'm going to do with BIAM this time. In the next four weeks, I will finally get the story down on paper and give it an ending.

This actually makes me kind of nervous. See, I've never written a story like this one. It has a bit of a crime solving element to it, and I'm not sure how that's going to work out. But I really want to try it, so that's what I'm going to do. The other worry I have is that I've only had this idea for a couple of years, not the decade that I had with my other story, so I haven't worked out the characters and plot quite as much as I did for my other story. That makes me nervous. But I think that's where the BIAM is going to help me out a bit. All the work sheets will help me figure out this idea better. And that's what I'm excited about.

So for day one, I'm supposed to write out a one sentence summary and complete a worksheet about my plot, characters, and setting for Act I. I haven't actually done this yet because I had to order another copy of the BIAM book and haven't gotten it yet. But don't worry, when the book gets here, I'll do all the worksheets.

So I bet you might be wondering what this other story is going to be about. Well, I don't want to give too much away, just because I'm weird like that. But I will tell you a little bit about it as I work on it through the month.

Today, I introduced my female lead. Her name is Raelin Tabra, and she is 16. That's all you get for now. :)

Now for the numbers (I'm only writing 6 pages per day, this time. I know that means the story will likely be shorter, but I feel like this first full draft is going to be shorter than the final product anyway. I'm focusing on getting the major points down, then I'll go back and add things like descriptions and smoother transitions and things like that).

Pages: 6 

Total Pages thus Far: 6

Words: 1,744

Total Words thus Far: 1,744