my coworker refused to come to lunch with me today

Sep 18, 2012 by

so i retaliated by going out for what is both of our favorite food (quesadillas from a local joint in town.)

me: i saw another quesadilla in there
it looked sad and lonely
it was asking for you
they told me it was being taken to the quesadilla-shelter
to be euthanized
and then i heard sarah mclachlan start singing sad songs
you’re a murderer, dude
murderer 

him: I don’t even feel bad
I’m a stone cold killer

me: your time in the big house has made you cold.1234

1 my coworker has never actually been to the big house.
2 that i know of.
3 though his residential dwelling is, reportedly, bigger than my own.
4 this is, perhaps, why nobody comes to lunch with me anymore.

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A Glorious Return!

Sep 11, 2012 by

1. As you may have noticed, I am posting over here (again!) (for now?) (who knows!) rather than on my website. I’ve kind of missed the Blogger platform, which is a bit more intuitive than WordPress – or maybe I’ve just used it for longer.

This wasn’t really relevant because, well, I’ve been eerily silent on the blogging front. But I’m back now, and thinking about blogging more, and so I figured I would just bite the bullet and say OH HAI GUYS DID YOU MISS ME I MISSED YOU.

2. Per the above, I’ve futzed around with the blog layout. (Again.) (I know, I know.)

3. It’s pretty! I mean, I think it’s pretty. Do you think it’s pretty? Please consider your next words carefully because my born-again baby blog is very sensitive. Also it may want to talk to you about Jesus.

4. When I was in Utah a few months ago, I encountered a wild honey badger and almost lost an arm to it. Naturally, I took a picture:

This honey badger was in no way stuffed and in an exhibit in the Museum of Natural History. I was in no way perfectly safe the entire time.

The things I do for you, internet.

5. Why was there a stuffed honey badger in the Salt Lake City Museum of Natural History?

6. The reason you have not seen much of me is because I have been WRITING BOOKS. (And tweeting. Always tweeting.) I am halfway through my next project, which is a high fantasy with gods and lesbians and angsty warriors! And I also might have accidentally started writing a contemporary, but if you hold me for questioning I will deny everything.

7. It is autumn in DC, at least temporarily, and I celebrated by wearing my pumpkin-colored shirt to work yesterday. AND I baked cookies the day before. They did not exactly bring all the boys to my yard but they sure did bring all of my coworkers to the office when I brought them in on Monday.

8. If you haven’t already seen, Cupid’s Come And Get It (#CAGI) Auction is up and running until the 14th! There are many cool things up for grabs including a phone call with my agent! (You want this. I’d bid on it, but I get those for free.)

9. As per item #7, the impending seasonal transition means that pumpkin-flavored everything is coming. I’m not too keen on pumpkin coffee, though, so I am holding out for pumpkin pie. If you have any to spare, just send it my way. I will buy it from you, even! Like a book review! (Oh, ouch, tough crowd. Too soon?)

10. Emma Stone thinks you’re pretty fabulous.

(She and I talked about this, and we both agree.)

That’s all for now!

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On Fighting the Writer Crazy

Sep 6, 2012 by

The ever-Sharktastic Janet Reid has a post up today that is beautiful and should be every writer’s mantra:

You can spend a lot of time fretting about things you have zero control over. You can do this so much that it blocks you creatively and disturbs your inner peace. OR you can understand to the core of your being that you are a writer, and every minute you spend fretting is a minute you’re not thinking about your work, reading the work of great writers you want to emulate, or visiting art museums to see the work of artists in different media, or going to the movies to see great directors and screenwriters ply their craft, or just doing the damn laundry so you can write in clean underpants.

You can – and should – read the whole post here.

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I have an…

Apr 16, 2012 by

agent!

I am so thrilled to announce that I am now represented by Pam Van Hylckama Vlieg of Larsen Pomada Literary. You may know her as BookaliciousPam, of Bookalicio.us and Bookalicious.org fame.

Pam was Assistant Agent to the fabulous Laurie McLean for many months before her recent promotion to Associate Agent. I’ve known Pam for quite a while now, and she has been an incredible friend and one of the preeminent champions of my story since the day I sent my very first query.

She championed it to other agents, through contests, through her constant, unwavering support to me during the querying process (which was NOT THAT LONG in reality but felt like for. frakking. ever.)

And she wasn’t even my agent then.

I am Pam’s first official client, and I could not be more excited (!!!!!!!!!!!) to work with someone so fabulous. I know we’re going to be very happy together. (I plan on wearing white for the ceremony. Oscar de la Renta.)

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The Stories That Stay With Us

Apr 5, 2012 by

I was getting all nostalgic with a coworker today about TV shows we grew up on and loved, back in the long-ago and spectacularly cheesy era that is known by anthropologists as the 90s. We talked about a lot of shows, some of which were classics and some more obscure – everything from Family Matters to Step by Step, and also everything that ever aired on Snick-at-Nights at all, ever.

I got to gush a little about my unironic love for All That, which I actually kind of hated when it was on the air? But in retrospect, that show is brilliant.

I’m always struck by the ability of some stories to stay with us all these years. That are timeless, at least for us. They can be books, television shows, or movies (oh hai there Titanic 3-D).

I’ve written before about the middle grade series Animorphs (currently being reissued from Scholastic! go, buy them! read!) which is one such story that did that for me.

But today I remembered another one, an old TV show called Out of this World. Besides my mother, fellow writer Jeff Sampson is literally the only other person I have met who remembers this show’s existence, and were it not for him and Wikipedia to back me up, I’d think I was totally insane and invented the entire thing.

See, I loved this show. LOVED. And I was watching it in syndication (I had to have been), so I was maybe 6 when the network I watched it on redid their scheduling and dropped Out of This World from their programming.

You guys. I was so mad. So mad. I distinctly remember threatening to sue the TV channel. Please keep in mind this isn’t the kind of story where I say “oh I must’ve been six” in order to sound cute, I was literally six years old threatening to get out the phone book and call a lawyer, because I loved this show that much and I knew you sued dumb people when they did dumb things. And depriving me of that story? Was a dumb thing.

I still remind my mother about this every so often. I think she is somewhere between impressed at my recollection of trivial childhood entertainment, awed by how adorably precocious I was, and afraid of how much I clearly hold grudges.

My point, awkward and tangential though it may be, is that some stories stay with us for a very, very long time. (Lots of stories don’t, and that’s fine! Entertaining for the sake of entertainment is A-OK!) Some of those stories become part of us; weaved into our consciousness and our understanding of the world around us and the tapestry of our lives.

That’s the sort of thing I hope to write, someday. When people ask me why I put so much time and energy into writing I don’t know how to answer. Because all I can think to do is show them my heart, and show them the stories that are a part of it, and say Because of this.

How can you possibly express that to someone?

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Distorting Your Worldview

Jan 28, 2012 by

We talk a lot, as writers, about “turning off your inner editor”. Understandably, conversations circling around this theme tend to be discussing the first-draft phase of writing, and not subsequent passes. You need your internal editor when you’re actually editing, right?

Well, sort of.

There’s another pearl of wisdom – and a good one – about not submitting too soon. About how we need to take our time to craft our manuscripts and our stories into the things we want them to be; to reflect on the page how it plays out in our heads. It’s also about the need to have some distance: sending out your draft the day after you finish it? Generally not smart. Writing is less like nuking a Hot Pocket in the microwave than it is cooking a turkey. Stories need to marinate.

But.

There’s a but. Even during the editing process, if you let your inner editor run too wild, without the temperance of patience and balancing the suggestions of your readers versus your gut instinct and knowing your limitations and and and… you will drown.

Editing can distort your worldview like nothing else. I know this because I am currently in it, right in the thick of it. There are still a few changes I need to make to my manuscript, but even after I’ve made all those changes, taken every piece of feedback from my (substantially high) number of beta readers that I felt was valuable, incorporated suggestions and line edits and clarified some logic and made sure my character’s outfits didn’t accidentally change from page-to-page (and in one case, I accidentally changed a character’s car – details, people! they matter.)

Even after I do all those things? I could probably frak around with this novel for another year, tinkering with sentence structure and commas and challenging logic that works just fine and finding plot holes that aren’t there and agonizing over how to fix them.

Because editing distorts your worldview. Your inner editor will jump over the counter and ransack the bar, if you let it. It will drink all your best liquor, puke all over your parent’s Persian rug, order dozens of pizzas and charge them to your credit card. It will even make ragingly bizarre metaphors like these and plunk them into your blog posts when you’re not looking. (See what I did there?)

So my advice today is: Balance. Turn off your inner editor during first drafts. Let him out for your revisions – but keep him on a leash. Don’t think you’re too good for feedback, and don’t submit too soon. Don’t do any of the stupid things a zillion other people before me have already told you not to do. They’re smart people; you should listen to them.

But don’t let the process warp your mind, either. Your story is never going to be perfect, your job as a writer is to make it the best you can. Know when enough is enough – not submitting at all is just as bad as submitting too soon.

It’s important to recognize when the editing demons are twisting your mind. So if any of you are in the editing trenches alongside me right now, let’s take a breath and a step back together, and tell those demons to shut up.

Happy writing!

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Transitions (and: A Partial Soundtrack)

Dec 4, 2011 by

I finished up the third draft of my novel-in-progress late last night. Say it with me now: Thank God. It’s about damn time.

The downside of this, of course, is that I don’t really know what to do with all my spare time. I’m lost and confused.

But I never could have gotten this far without music. I don’t always listen to music while I’m writing. I often can’t; I didn’t used to find it distracting but now I frequently do. But I listen to music when I’m plotting, or thinking about writing, or going for long works or working out – activities during which my brain plots almost constantly.

And I thought I’d share with you all a few songs that became the de facto anthems for T.A.R.A. along the way. I hope you enjoy!

Karl Wolf – Africa (Radio Edit)

The sun is rising on the east side and every form of life is waking up
the feeling of seclusion makes you wanna dream away and fall in love
she drags you in, not afraid
everything feels like fate
what’s wrong with you, don’t let her go
hurry boy, it’s waiting
it’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
there’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do…

Matthew David (f. Levi Kreis) – Revolution

It’s the battle of a thousand years
forever buried inside these trenches
there’s a cry beneath a trail of tears
it’s the payment of a heavy price
and I want to find my feet
finally come into view
I’m willing to risk it all
for the world to know my truth…

Yale Women’s Slavic Chorus – Kaval Sviri

(Bulgarian folk song)

Jordin Sparks – Battlefield

I never meant to start a war
you know I’d never want to hurt you
don’t even know what we’re fighting for
why does love always feel like a battlefield?
can’t swallow our pride, neither of us wanna raise that flag
if we can’t surrender then we’re both gonna lose what we have
both hands tied behind my back for nothing
these times when we climb so fast to fall again
and I don’t wanna fall for it, now…

Matchbox 20 – Downfall

I want you to trouble me
I wanted you to linger
I want you to agree with me
I want so much so bad
come on and lay it down
I’ve always been with you, here and now
give all that’s within you
be my savior
and I’ll be your downfall…
yeah, I’m coming home
on my back
you’re kissing me, your lips painted black
saying whoah whoah whoah, let me be your downfall…

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