From: "Closer to the Heart"

"The men who hold high places
must be the ones who start
to mold a new reality
closer to the heart."

Rush

My husband ruled the radio all weekend, so my head's spinning through classic rock lyrics this morning. Sometimes I get so used to the words, I don't hear them anymore. This one struck me as so apt for the times, I stopped in my tracks and jotted.

Access Denied, Stressballs

"Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Found: Time, glorious free time

"If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his [or her] vision wherever it takes him [or her]."

John F. Kennedy
(Equality added by me)

How to Kill a Genre with your Bare Hands

Question for today: Do we choose our genre or does it choose us?

Nathan Bransford polled his readers the other day, asking them to vote for the genre they work in. If you’re wondering what genre is under-represented, it’s middle grade and nonfiction.

Contemporary realistic YA, the genre I write, earned 6% of the vote, which got me wondering why we write what we write. Sure, I read a lot of contemporary YA, but lately I’ve been reading a lot of paranormal YA. Do I write contemporary YA because it’s what I do best, what I love best? I’ll be honest with you; I have no idea.

More importantly, do I have to stick with it? Should I ever publish my novel, am I condemning myself to a lifetime of single-genre writing? The commitment-phobe in me shudders at the thought.

There are genre-rebels, you know.

Take Elizabeth Scott. She goes around writing perfectly wonderful YA like Something, Maybe and Bloom, books where young girls deal with boys and sex and what have you. Then she sneaks Living Dead Girl under my nose, and I’m all whoa, Elizabeth Who?

Walt Whitman, my literary forefather said:
Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

In other words, break the rules. Screw the very elements that make us think we need rules. Change.

We write in the age of Tribes and niche marketing and specialization, and I’m praising variety and range.

Farmers switch up their crops every few years to keep the soil healthy. I'm thinking of tilling my mental soil. I’ve been toying with the paranormal. But here’s the thing—you can’t hold me there. I won’t stay. I write for adults and young people and freaks and geeks and even normal people. I am non-genre-girl, defender of the label-less.

As a reader I enjoy all sorts of genres. Reading different genres makes reading more fun. I don’t get so used to conventions that I lose the enjoyment and surprise of reading. Would this transfer to writing? Might we escape falling into ruts by writing a romance or a mystery, something completely different from what we are expected (even by ourselves) to write?

Why do we choose a genre and stay with it?

Happy Birthday Walt Whitman!

O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless--of cities fill'd with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light--of the objects mean--of the struggle ever renew'd;
Of the poor results of all--of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest--with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring--What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here--that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

Yawp!

Presidents Day

We're supposed to honor our two greatest presidents today, Washington and Lincoln.

I think we should honor Obama too, because he rocks.

Consider these words from his inaugural speech:

"To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."

To those of you who have off today, he also said this:

"In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less.

It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame.

Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom."

In other words, get off your ass and do something.

Oh Captain, My Captain!

Poets to Come

Poets to Come Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than
before known,
Arouse! for you must justify me.
I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.
I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a
casual look upon you and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you.

Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman