It happened!

I wrote something!

You know that writer's block I was under? Well, it was mighty heavy. I sort of got in a fight with writing. Like, you know when you're with someone and one day you're like, why the hell am I trying to make this work? I don't even like this person. Well that's how I was starting to feel about writing, and we've been married since I could hold a pen so it was super-hard.

Last night, I got drunk and went to writing's apartment at 2 AM. Well, not really. "I'm trying to be metaphoric," as Vee says in Hush Hush.

Anyway, I didn't edit novel pages or write a new scene or anything productive. Instead, I wrote 2500 words of stuff no reader will ever see. I wrote out my most important characters' names, and I wrote the novel from their points of view. Not the whole ginormous novel, more like a synopsis. And it was fun! It was painless! I did not even stop to change Calibri to Times New Roman or switch off that infernal default formatting in Word 2007. Nope, I just typed my little heart out and smiled and I realized that it wasn't over for me.

"It still ain't over!" as Noah says in The Notebook.

And when I woke up this morning, I didn't feel dirty, so writing and me, I guess we're meant to be like Noah and Allie and peaches and cream.

From: Handcuffs

"I should probably explain about my ex.

'Take your shoes off Parker.'

I probably should explain, but I don't have the energy.

His TV is on, his laptop is defragging, there is a CD playing over speakers angled throughout the narrow bedroom. He's wearing headphones, but the cord is dangling, not plugged into anything. Kind of like me."

Bethany Griffin

My Name is Marie, and I am a Dork

A Kindleis upon us!

I've complained that audiobooks, although I love them, don't allow for convenient booknapping. e-books, however, allow readers to highlight, make notes, bookmark, and search the entire text for a phrase--a booknapper's dream.

Perhaps we are moving one step closer toward my ultimate wish: a Find function for life. Do you use the secret codes in Microsoft Word? Like control S is save, and control X is cut, and control Z is undo, and control Y is redo, and so on and so on and so on.

Control F is my favorite. Yes, I am aware how dorky that makes me sound, but I've embraced my dorkdom--I mean, I have a blog, for Pete's sake. Control F brings up the "find" function, as in Find where Character Zero said "I wrote her off for the tenth time today," and boom, the 'puter locates it.

My point: I often wish I had control F in life. When I can't find my keys and I'm late for work, when I know there was peanut butter in the kitchen but now there's not, when I put the cell phone in the fridge: I scream "Control F!" Husband thinks this is my dorky way of saying the F-word, but really I am just wishing I lived in the Matrix.

So do you, and YES, I realize how dorky I am being, have a favorite computer function? Tell me. Tell me. Tell me.

Poetry Isn't Dead, or Quiet

Despite what the Debbie Downers would have you believe, people still write kick-ass poetry.

Want proof?

You can listen to Kim Addonizio read one of her best poems, "You Were," at poems out loud, which features poets reading poetry and other poem-related frackery.

From: "Tones of Home"

"I always thought this would be
the land of milk and honey.
Oh, but I come to find out
that it's all hate and money,
and there's a canopy of greed
holding me down."

Blind Melon

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?

About: If I Stay

So I just finished an awesome YA novel called If I Stay.

Here's some context: I started it yesterday at 5:17 PM. It's now 7:45 AM. In other words: great writing, cool high-concept hook, emotional core like all get out.

Oh, and one more thing. The writer listens to Mark Twain. I nominate Gayle Forman as The Writer Most Likely to Use The Right Word, Not it's Second Cousin. Some perfectly chosen words in If I Stay: eviscerated, cauliflower (Thanks to Karen Amanda Hooper for pointing out the beauty of that one), implodes, and see inconvenient below.

"'You and Adam never struck me as a 'high-school' relationship,' Mom said making quote marks with her hands. 'It was nothing like the drunken roll in the back of some guy's Chevy that passed for a relationship when I was in high school. You guys seemed, still seem, in love, truly, deeply.' She sighed. 'But seventeen is an inconvenient time to be in love.'"

Gayle Forman