From: A Room With a View

"Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them."

E.M. Forster

Why Being Told You Suck is a Good Thing

Let me tell you something true about me:

I HATE disappointing people. Yet, sometimes at work, I screw up. People come down hard on me, but no one comes down on me harder than I do. Because I hate to hear people point out things I did wrong--especially when they are choices I stopped and questioned, and then did anyway.

Maybe that's why this section of The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch is loitering in my mind:

"Coach Graham rode you pretty hard, didn't he?" he said.

I could barely muster a "yeah."

"That's a good thing," the assistant told me.

"When you're screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they've given up on you."

...

You may not want to hear it, but your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you and want to make you better.

Remember, bloggees. People tell you your writing sucks because they believe you have the potential to do better. Prove 'em right.

And Now You May Commence

"Pinocchio went out into the world filled with good intentions, with vision, he went ready to do all the things he dreamed, but Pinocchio was pulled this way and that, he was distracted, he faltered, he made mistakes, but he kept on.... Pinocchio, in the end, became himself, because the little flame inside him, no matter what crap he went through, would not be extinguished."

Patti Smith by way of UnBeige

iBooknapped

Somebody knows how to market their blog!

Someone was linking to these 10 Golden Lessons from Steve Jobs all over Linked In yesterday, so of course I had to stop in and check them out. My fave:

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma--which is living the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Think about WHAT YOU WANT FOR YOURSELF today.

From: Letters to a Young Artist

"As an artist you are a student of the human condition. There is no syllabus. You can go to school and seek some structures, some techniques, some advice. Ultimately you must make your own course description, you must discover your own book list, you must make your own regimen, your own discipline. You can work as hard as you like. Or not. You can use the time or not. You can use the world--as much or as little as you like."

Anna Deavere Smith

Dueling Ideas

Somebody, I don't remember who (booknapper's hazard), once said, "I never run out of ideas, just time to write."

Currently, I'm knee-deep in writing a YA novel. Yesterday morning, a random image got me thinking about something that happened when I was 13. It doesn't matter what it was. What matters is that I started thinking, "I wonder if kids still do that these days?" Then I started thinking...yadda, yadda, yadda...MG fiction idea--the kind that won't quit flicking little ideas across the brain. You know the kind of ideas: This could happen. Then this could happen. The whole story would show young readers that...

The details don't matter. What matters is that I am knee-deep in a YA novel. And when you're knee-deep, that's when it's hardest to keep going. I am not waist-deep, which would imply half-way. I am further from the end than from the beginning, and when I glance back at the shore where I started, what do I see?

This shiny, new idea that requires half the word count of a YA novel. Possibilities reflecting off of it in every direction. But is it a mirage (aka, procrastination)?

Bloggees, I can't be the only novelist with a short attention span. What do you do when your ideas duel? Do you take time off of your current project and give the other a chance? Or is the only way to finish to ignore those shiny, new ideas and stay faithful to one project at a time? Help a blogger out.

From: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train

So, Howard Zinn died a few weeks ago, and I realized I never gave him a proper booknapping. Today, I am making amends. Howard Zinn was an incredible teacher, writer, and historian. If you haven't read his seminal book People's History of the United States, you might be a little under-informed.

Here is a booknapping from his autobiography:

"The events of my life, growing up poor, working in a shipyard, being in a war, had nurtured an indignation against the bullies of the world, those who used wealth or military might or social status to keep others down. And now I was in the midst of a situation where human beings, by accident of birth, because of their skin color, were being treated as inferior beings. I knew it was wrong for me, a white teacher, to lead the way. But I was open to anything my students wanted to do, refusing to accept the idea that a teacher should confine his teaching to the classroom when so much was at stake outside it."

People who stand up or speak up for the little guys and girls are my my favorite kind of people. What qualities do you look for in a hero?

A Rare Saturday Post

I loved the Daily Literary Quote so much, I had to immediately Web-nap it:

"You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."

Mary Oliver

Enjoy your weekends, bloggees!

From: Music for Chameleons

"I started writing when I was eight... not knowing that I had chained myself for life to a noble but merciless master. When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended solely for self-flagellation."

Truman Capote

From: The Paper

A motivational article by Dani Shapiro appeared in the LA Times a week or so ago. In the article, Shapiro ponders what makes great writers. My favorite quote of the article:

"Every single piece of writing I have ever completed -- whether a novel, a memoir, an essay, short story or review -- has begun as a wrestling match between hopelessness and something else, some other quality that all writers, if they are to keep going, must possess.

Call it stubbornness, stamina, a take-no-prisoners determination, but a writer at work reminds me of nothing so much as a terrier with a bone: gnawing, biting, chewing, until finally there is nothing left to do but fall away."

I also love that she calls the publishing industry "the nerdy distant cousin of the rest of media."

Read this article if you've ever wondered if your continuing to write in the face of all the doom and gloom of the industry is yet another manifestation of your subconscious need to harm yourself.

You Say It's My Birthday?

Over the weekend, Booknapped turned 1 year old!

I reminisced by looking over my first few posts. It's sort of like scanning a first draft when you're a few hundred pages into your manuscript. I had an idea of what I wanted to do here at Booknapped, but I really wasn't sure. You can sense that I'm blogging blindly, screaming into a megaphone and hoping somebody hears, and more importantly, listens.

So reader peeps, thanks so, so much for listening. I hope you find a book, a poem, a song you never heard before and that you LOVE. I hope it latches onto your brain like an ear worm and hypnotizes you until you forge to your independent book store for an inspired purchase.

Also, if you've been thinking about blogging, but telling yourself you don't have time, creativity, or a host of other qualities you think you need, stop bitching and start a revolution.

Let's Confer.

I went to an SCBWI conference last year, which resulted in the following:

• I made a writer friend
• I made a few more writer friends
• I decided to never pay for a 15-minute critique again
• I rewrote my first chapter based on a 15-minute critique
• I embarrassed myself in front of an entire table of children's book editors and agents
• I decided I probably wouldn't be going to any more writers' conferences.

So anyway, I'm going to the SCBWI conference in NYC this month. For the first time in the history of ever, I'll be meeting my beta girls in person. If I stop posting around the end of January, you can assume that one of them has been lying about her identity for more than a year and that she has killed me and stolen my writings.

Anyone else going to the SCBWI Conference in NYC? Got any conference plans this year? Experienced attendees, tell me which is better: the down home SCBWI conference in Middle-of-Nowhere, PA, or the big fancy SCWBI conference in NYC?

You Must Be This Tall to Understand the Ending

So I've wanted to be a writer since ever, but I haven't always wanted to be a writer of young adult fiction. Not until I started heavily reading YA books as an adult did I experience the attraction one feels when she meets her soulmate--in art form.

These days most of the books I read are YA fiction, but occasionally grown-up fiction (Adult fiction sounds creepy.) slips into my reading list. Reading an adult book always makes me meditate on the difference between adult and YA fiction. Last night I pondered endings.

See, YA novels sort of have to end positively. It's kind of a rule. In her Wall Street Journal article on YA fiction, Katie Roiphe explained that writers of the dreariest YA fiction "are careful to infuse the final scenes of these bleak explorations with an element of hope."

I love that hope. I wondered how Ellen Hopkins would create it in Tricks, if Laurie Halse Anderson would be able to do it in Wintergirls. They did, and with a style that seemed to my outside eyes effortless (which means it took TONS of effort).

After I read most novels intended for adults, I dwell on the endings for days. I ask myself: What really happened? Anything? The character changed, so I suppose that's something, but I just can't say exactly...

So, are endings of adult books supposed to be more complex than endings of YA books? Not so easily understood? More thought-provoking for our gigantic, well-aged brains?

Sometimes I read an ending a second time and I still don't get it. Sometimes I think a book is remarkable despite its ending. And it's not because adult fiction depresses whereas YA fiction brightens. Endings in most YA novels are just clearer in my opinion.

Let me be unmistakable about what I love about most YA fiction endings: The main character's catharsis happens in such a way that I can explain it to someone else without sounding like a dumbass. I believe there is something in the average YA reader that will not accept ambiguous finales, and that YA fiction writers respect that.

Here's one of my all-time favorite quotes about YA fiction:

"Teen books are like adult books, without all the bullshit."

New York City librarian Jack Martin said that during a panel that explored where exactly YA belongs in my mind, in bookstores, on library shelves, etc. But are cloudy endings bullshit? Or something beyond my ability to comprehend? Or just not my taste?

My meditation on endings breeds new questions:

Do YA novels need to end hopefully, positively? What are the requisites for endings in general?

I'd love to hear how the rest of you approach your endings, be they YA or adult or anything else. And am I the only one who doesn't "get" some endings?

What makes a great ending?

Found: Insight

I could blog or I could write.

Really, how many words can I write in the 40 minutes I have before I must leave for work? Wouldn't this time be better spent, I don't know, doing something? I'll write when I have copious amounts of silent, unhindered time.

Then I open my quote journal, and find this:

"You will turn over a many a futile new leaf 'til you learn we must all write on scratched-out pages."

Mignon McLaughlin

So I'm writing and wishing you happy travels down your own imperfect road.

Writer in the Front; Biz Dev in the Back

Occasionally, I get burnt out. I lose interest in reading, writing, and talking about reading and writing. This used to scare me, as I thought I'd lost "it" (it being my muse, my talent, my ambition), but it doesn't anymore. I know "it" will return, so I focus on something tangentially related to writing so I get a break while not actually taking a break.

Lately, I've been attending free online business classes. I am working on a writing career, not a writing hobby, so I have to train the marketing department of Marie, Inc.

Right now I'm learning about strategic planning and execution--or envisioning my ideal future writing career and building a plan that will lead to realizing that vision. I even found a quote worth online course-napping:

"You are either writing the story of the future or you are living inside the story of another. There can be no other possibilities."

Apt for us writers, no?

If you're feeling the burn or fretting the loss of your "it," I recommend visiting SmallBizU, which I found by searching the University of Scranton Small Business Development Center site. As someone who's considered pursuing an MBA, I can say that the classes I found there saved me a few tens of thousands of dollars.

Are you writing the story of your future? Do you train your inner marketing dept.? How? Where? Why?