How Do I Know What I Think Until I See What I Say?

Recently,* the Intern did a post about transformation in characters. Her point (and you should read the rest of her post, because it's awesome) is that too often, writers have their characters transform for no reason whatsoever. All of sudden they just look into the sky and decide that their lives are going to be different, and that's a crap way to handle transformation in a story.** She's right. It's not interesting, and, furthermore, it's cliched. It's every bad teenage movie/book in the world. Characters have to change over time, and even after they've changed they shouldn't be unrecognizable from their former selves. For example, in a project I'm thinking about now, a girl goes from being an ordinary good girl to being a more rebellious and outspoken girl.*** She doesn't do this by staring up at the stars and thinking to herself "as God is my witness, I'll never be shy again!" but at the result of several situations and ...

1. I named my new car "Elmo" because my mechanic called the color "Ticket Me, Elmo" Red.* 2. Elmo is the result of a long and protracted process that included four (FOUR!) trips to Canton (which is, like, an hour away), and then me buying a car from a dealer that was five (FIVE!) minutes from where I work. 3. Here's a photo, not of my car in particular, but this is what it looks like: Hi, Elmo! (The official name of the color is Velocity Red.) 4. In case you care (you know you do), the RX-8 is the only commercially available vehicle with a rotary engine.** Because of the mounting of the engine, the car has an almost perfect 50-50 weight distribution, which means that it handles like a dream. The torque is on the low side -- 159 lbs/feet -- but since I drive a manual transmission, that can be overcome by keeping the RPMs high.*** It's also got a really short throw. 5. All right, I'm sorry. I'm done now. 6. ELMO! eeee! ~~~ * My mechanic is...

So, I quit Nanowrimo last week, after I'd reached 42,000 words. That's crazy, right? I mean, I had eight thousand words to go (have, I guess, since it's not midnight, yet), and I could certainly have made. I still could, in the nine hours I have left. But I'm not going to. It just hit me a few days ago, right before Thanksgiving, that I wasn't going to finish. The thing is, I started Nanowrimo to knock out a draft of the Next Book and I did that. In 42,000 words. HAHAHAHAHA! you may be saying. "Jay, there's no way that you have a viable YA book in 42,000 words." You're right. But I wasn't writing a final draft, I was writing a first draft. And I'm a reviser, not a planner, so that means that what I actually got was 42,000 words of a possible path that the book might take. The actual draft of the book that's fit to show anyone (think two to three drafts from now) will be considerably longer, and will actually make sense.* The ...

Earlier this month, Steph Bowe wrote a list of things that make her stop reading a YA book. If I'm being honest, I'll say that very little will stop me from reading a YA book, mostly because YA books are generally so short that by the time I realize that I should have stopped reading one, I'm done with it. But here are the things that would make me stop reading one, and will keep me from reading the next book in the series, should there be one: 1. "hip" teen slang. Do authors really think that they're being authentic when they do this? Because without fail, "hip" slang sounds corny and cheesy in, at most, a year. Also, if you are not actually a teenager, you have no idea what they think is hip. Adult writers for YA should focus on story and worry about slang later. 2. too many pop culture references. These references, like the slang, grow stale way too quickly and only serve to date the story. And, again, adult writers have no idea what po...

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Recently on the Upstart Crow blog , Chris asked about inspiration, and how writers keep track of their ideas. Chris seems to have a series of making notes where ever he is, which would drive me crazy. I'm a bit of an organizational nerd, so I have to have a system, and I experiment from time to time with changing up my system for keeping track of my ideas. At the moment, this is how I keep track of my ideas. 1. The Daily Notebook. I have a notebook on my person virtually all the time. Not a variety of notebooks, one notebook. I keep it it my purse* and I write down everything in that notebook. Grocery lists, to do lists, story ideas, daily journaling, everything. Once it's full, it goes on a shelf in my office organized in chronological order and a new one goes in my purse.** Then, from time to time, I look through the notebooks to see if anything captures my fancy. 2. If an idea really sticks with me, I start making notes on it. These notes start in the Daily Noteb...

1. I've been watching old episodes of The West Wing on Bravo lately, and have come to the conclusion that I love the character of Sam Seaborn. He's smart, he's earnest, he's a good writer, and he's played by Rob Lowe. What's not to love?* 2. I just bought the cutest jacket at Ann Taylor Loft. I know you care, but it's not every day that one can find a white denim jacket with styling reminiscent of Michael Jackson and a tailored waist. I'm just saying. 3. NaNoWriMo proceeds apace. There is no way that I'm going to be able to keep writing at this pace after this month is over, but I'm on track to finish. It's an interesting project...in some ways the speed is freeing and in other ways it's extremely limited, as to make the word count I have no time to go back and revise. 4. Alien and Aliens are amazing movies. Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection ? Not so much. 5. This week's Glee characterization inconsistency watch: Rache...