Progress

Sex, Drugs, and Children's Literature

First of all, thanks to everyone who was thrilled to know that Hank is okay. Text messages, and emails, and comments, oh my: you peeps really care. Now, today I offer you something lighter and (warning!) dirtier.

Y’all know I love the Twitter, right?

I'm following the #failedchildrensbooktitles tag* on twitter and it is hilarious. I recommend you go search this tag yourself, but here’s some of my fave Failed Children’s Book Titles from the past few days:

@DAndrewRiley The Hardy Boys and the Mystery of the Hidden Salami
@hollygabrielson Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret Cho
@CalebHowe "The Mile High Babysitters Club"
@seantroversy Are You My Babymama?
@Panger2009 The Red Badge of Puberty
@MrWordsWorth The Little Prince & The Revolution
@andrewpfister Oh, The Places You'll Never Be Able to Afford to Go!
@heywriterboy One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Mercury Poisoning
@ahock76 Mother F#@ckin' Goose and Other Best-Loved Verses

*When you follow a tag, you enter a enter group of words into twitter preceded by a tag (like #failedchildrensbooktitles). Doing this makes it easy for a site like TweetDeck to stream the tag for you. Anyway, when someone wants to jump in on the conversation, they tweet their contribution and the secret tag. Got it?

Or you can just read some by clicking #failedchildrensbooktitles

Sidetracked

Half-way through writing a spellbinding post, I got up to put out the trash. That's when I noticed my dog Hank was being awfully quiet. Usually at 6:40 in the morning, he's chasing squirrels and waking up the neighbors. So I checked on him.

Horror: empty yard, broken hook dangling eerily from the dog run.

The yard had been quiet for about 10 minutes, or was it 20? So enthralled by my wonderful blog post, I wasn't sure. Bad dog parent, I scolded myself. Then I ran up and down the block, through the yard, and to the train tracks where he could get easy access to other dogs' backyards.

Silence everywhere. I called his name. Silence. I jumped in the car and would not let myself drive to the main drag where too many half-asleep souls were driving to work too fast. No way he'd go there, right? Right?

After 25 minutes of frantic searching, I spotted an SUV stopped in the middle of the road, door flung open and left that way. The driver stood outside the open door, talking on a cell, and looking down at something on the side of the road.

I raced down the road and halted next to her SUV. She was looking down at the old man who was crouched on the ground, rubbing the ears of my Hank. Our reunion was joyous.

But after our short ride home, there was no way I could finish my post. I was too anxious. My heart beat at a techno bassline pace. So I started typing this true story for you, and I tried to think of a way to tie it in to reading or writing so I wouldn't just be the crazy blogging dog lady.

Here's what I came up with:

Life and writing is filled with surprises, both horrible and kind. Do not be so rigid in your ways or your writing schedule or your outline that you see something like your dog running away as a total screw-up of your entire day. Embrace what you have, not what you want. Write what comes easily. I could have forced myself to sit down and finish that post, but it would have sucked. What came easily today was this love song to my dog.

As I write this, Hank is asleep at my feet, weary from his adventure. Today's blog post is almost done. And the other one--the greatest half-finished blog post in the world? I'll finish it later. Last night, I went to bed wondering what I could write for Nathan Bransford's guest blog challenge; now I know.

It's 7:35: one crisis solved; one blog post written; one contest entry halfway done. And I even managed to get the trash out on time.

When life hands you lemons, grab some sugar and make a lemon drop shooter.

And yes, that is Hank at the top of this post. Isn't it obvious why I love him? He's made of awesome. Ever had a sidetrack lead you in the right direction? Tell me about it.

When the Going Gets Tough

After a week of struggling for each word, the writing came smoothly last night. I'd love to share how it happened, but this creation thing is so mysterious. I think it had to do with kind words, self-forgiveness, and releasing my grip instead of tightening it.

In the interest of not stopping the flow, I offer just a quote today:

"...Work--how we make things of and do things to the external world--is nearly as basic, and primeval, a factor in human happiness as family relations. The inability to write reflects the sufferer's feeling that he or she cannot contribute to the world, cannot communicate with others in any meaningful way."

from The Midnight Disease
by Alice Flaherty

Movies based on books rule.

This weekend, I watched Speak, a movie based on my favorite Laurie Halse Anderson book. I enjoyed every minute the way I used to enjoy Saturday morning cartoons. As I get older, enrapture is harder to come by, so when it happens, I dwell, trying to figure out the mysterious formula that makes movies/books/songs un-look-away-able.

One of the best parts of Anderson’s books is her craft with language, pushing words together, changing words to reveal a teen’s pronunciation and thereby exposing some hidden meaning. There’s no way to translate that to film, but Speak seemed sort of poetic. Other book-based films I'd describe as poetic: Ghost World, Jesus' Son, Into the Wild, and The Sweet Hereafter.

First thing I noticed about the DVD case was that DB Sweeney was in the movie. Immediately I started guessing who he could be. I cast him as Mr. Neck, but the guy who played Mr. Neck was someone else who was PERFECT as Mr. Neck. When DB showed up as Melinda’s dad, I smiled. And that’s when I decided that watching a movie based on a book you love is a little like watching a movie about your life.

People who read the book know so much more about the story than the average movie watcher, so they can’t help but want to explain everything, to wish for more depth, to feel every part of the story, even the ones not shown.

Movies based on books are a literary conversation. With every choice, the director says: this is my take on the story. Each actor says: this is my take on the character. Sometimes they nail it and sometimes they don’t. Either way, I relish their attempts.

My favorite part of book-based movies are the little surprises they leave for readers. I love how all of the billboards in the background of Romeo + Juliet are commercialized lines from Shakespeare's plays. I love author cameos and scripts that incorporate actual dialogue from the book.

Speak did a great job with this awesome line from the book:

CONJUGATE THIS:
I cut class, you cut class, he, she, it cuts class.

I grinned as if hearing/reading it for the first time.

Movie movies are great, but book movies are always better. Case in point: I really want to see I Love You, Beth Cooper. Seriously.

Any book-based movies you love or hate? Any insight into why I love literary movies so much?

From: Strange Angels

Today, I leave you in the capable hands of writer Lili St. Crow. Her new paranormal YA novel Strange Angels is not my usual cup of tea, but I'm riveted. Main character Dru is my kind of main character: dark humor/survival instinct/heart of gold.

Here's Dru's thoughts on a particularly stressful evening in the novel:

I felt a million miles away from them. Normal goddamn teenagers, acting like idiots in front of a fast-food place. The dark jock put his arms around one of the girls and picked her up. She shrieked with laughter, the sound as bright as new spilled pennies. Her shirt rode up, showing the supple curve of her back. It was snowing outside and there was a zombie dead in my living room, and here this girl was, dressed like a hooker and laughing.

By the way, that's not Dru on the cover. Dru has messy, curly hair like me, so that can't be her.

Due Dates and other Monsters

I owe 50 pages to a good friend I've never even met.

My beta reader and I trade our novels in 50-page increments every other Wednesday. I don't have a nifty name for this process, but it helps my novel like you wouldn't believe.

I'm sure some people write beautiful, balanced novels on their first draft, but my first draft resembled Frankenstein's monster. Large sections were bulbous and ugly, but stitched together none-the-less. Other sections were as skinny as if they were mere bones. I hadn't hung any meat on them yet.

For months, when I looked at my manuscript, I had a hard time editing. It was a giant uneven monster that knew my innermost feelings and could topple and crush me at any time.

Scary.

Now, I put on my white coat and examine one limb at a time. 50 pages / 2 weeks = time to slow down and really figure out what's going on.

I've read a lot of drafts that seem like a collection of scenes with sections throughout that read like this: and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this--don't worry we're getting to a good part soon.

And I so don't want that. I want every part of my novel to be extraordinary, and significant, and essential. I want to transform this monster into a real live drop-dead gorgeous dude so I can be proud to stroll around New York with him.

Do you have some innovative way to revise? Some trick of the trade that is helping you like no other method has?