It’s getting “drafty” in here…

The one thing I should never do is read my first drafts before they’re finished, because I always think they’re crap. And by and large, they kind of are.

To think, I was actually going to query my first draft of the WIP I’m working at some point. I told myself  ”self, this is good stuff! This is stuff that could get published today! And then, after like two months, we’d get a movie deal! Oh, Demi Lovato could star! And It could totally be her first ‘quasi-adult’ role, and I could launch her into the stratusphere of superstardom, and then I’d get like JK Rowling famous…”

…As you can see, this train of thought only had one stop; Delusion.

Seriously, Demi's my homegirl. Honest. Mostly.

This WIP started life as a NaNoWriMo novel–I gave it one pass through, a quick edit (which consisted mainly of finding all the -ly and “justs” and hitting delete), then started amassing my lists of potential agents. I would get accepted, and people would bid over my work, and agents would be setting up cage matches to get a piece of action. You know why? Because I’m that awesome. That’s right, I was officially Kanye Westing it. My huge ass ego took over and I figured–

I'm sorry KC, you're writing a good blog, imma let you finish, BUT CARA DELIZIA IS THE BEST DISNEY CHANNEL STAR OF ALL TIME! ALL TIME!

Uh…okay then Kanye…so…where was I again?

Oh, right. My expectations of my novel far exceeded what was actually within the realm of possibility of it. If I had queried that “second draft” of my novel, I would’ve gotten more rejections than I could handle. It would’ve made me quit and I would’ve stopped writing, possibly forever. It would’ve been pretty well devastating for me.

Drafting, for some reason, is an oddly new concept for me. I’ve been writing since I was old enough to know how to load WordPerfect…in MS-DOS. Yes, MS-DOS. I had to know how to do MS-DOS to write when I was like, five. I don’t miss those times. But in all that time, writing new drafts of something I knew was not something that happened very often. Most of this had a lot to do with the fact that I never finished anything. But the few things I did finish, I never thought about redrafting.

Which is one of the many reasons I cringe when I read anything pre-NaNoWriMo “I need to get my shit together, I want to do this for a living” revelation. Those stories are hard to look at sometime–it’s all about the potential and the disappointment. “Wow, when I first wrote this, I thought it was awesome. But really, this is just shit!”

This isn’t quite the case I’ve found with my current WIP. But after putting it away for a little while and tinkering with other things and coming back to it, my shiny golden ticket to the big time looked more like a bronze, slightly tarnished bus token. I still loved it, but it seemed to be missing something.

At first, I thought it was just the beginning. As long as I fixed my hook and first chapter at the beginning, then the rest of the story would just work. And then I woke up again, and realized that there were bigger things to do, and a way to make the story even better than before.

So I broke down, and started rewriting the whole damn thing. This is my official second draft, and now, I’m even more in love with my little novel that could. And I’m looking forward to starting the draft after this, when everything is nice and in place and I can start polishing.

I still get that nagging feeling that my first drafts will end up unpolishable turds–I’ve been trying to not get that nagging feeling, because usually that means I don’t finish. The first drafts are always the hardest; not because they’re not easy to write, and not because  they’re not good. Mainly because they force us to look at the objectively once we’re done with them and realize that they may not be as awesome as we originally thought, which is always, like, the worse thought. We want to think that everything we’ve ever written has been sunshine and rainbows.

Those first drafts are there to humble us and make us better. Also, to shatter the dreams that we will ever co-star in a movie based on our novel with Shadia Simmons and then go on to have a storybook romance with her.

Le sigh...

KC

Book Banning and Forced Reading

My mother let me read whatever I want, and I will always love her deeply for that.

There was never a time when a book me or my sister wanted to read was kept from us. Oh sure, she was more strict about music (I’m twenty-two and I still get nagged about buying music with a parental advisory sticker), movies (she’s made me return inappropriate things to the store) and games (we she was probably the most strict about). But books? Oh no, my mother would never make me put down a book I didn’t want to read. The reason for this is something that I believe more parents should take into consideration.

Namely, if your child is reading A BOOK, why take it away? Why make book reading a chore an ordeal?

While I’ve always enjoyed reading and loved it (and as a proud graduate of the “Hooked On Phonics School Of Learning”), I always liked reading on my own. I absolutely despised reading in school, hated being force to read books I didn’t like, and hated looking for the “hidden meaning” or subtext of all these people’s books. In school, reading went from being something I loved doing to something that was like pulling teeth.

“No,I don’t know what the subtext behind Hamlet is! Isn’t this a play? Isn’t this just supposed to be a story!? WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO HAVE A SECRET MEANING!”

It’s always said that teenagers don’t read, but I think the issue is more complex than that. Teenagers do read, and I think they like to read. But when you ake something that’s supposed to be for leisure and entertainment and turn it into dissecting the vast mysterious of the literary universe, it’s no wonder people get frustrated. It’s no surprise that reading books in high school could turn people off of books when you consider that most high school English classes make reading into a big “THING”, something your parents force you to do so you can finish your homework.

Which is more disheartening when you read things like people wanting to ban something as innocuous as The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson being attacked, or The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie getting banned because it mentions masurbation or Looking for Alaska getting challenged because of “graphic language and sexual content” (and there is no truly explicit sexual content, as someone who read and loved Looking for Alaska can attest to), or even a classic book like To Kill a Mockingbird being threatened be banned for silly reasons.

I understand the need for parents to not want to expose their children tocertain things, but they must also understand that my mother never stopped be from reading a book that I wanted to read. Reading books, more than watching movies/TV or listening to music, is supposed to be about broading your horizons. It’s supposed to be about living vicariously through someone else and hopefully taking the lessons they learn for yourself.

Sheltering kids from things you may find “unsavory” doesn’t really protect them fro those things, at some point and sometime those people will be forced to confront them. Trying to ban the sexually explicit content doesn’t stop the fact that we as humans are bombarded with sex pretty much every we go and with everything we do, somehow, some way. Just go look at a magazine rack and your seemingly innocent grocery store. Nor will hiding dirty language hide the fact that most people fuckin’ curse, they just have the good sense to not curse around people who might be offended by said fucking cursing, nor does hiding books about racism, sexism, ism-isms, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy and uterus biting hide kids from the fact that these things occur.

…Okay, not that last thing.

When we treat books like they’re a taboo thing, we hurt their intergrity, and make reading books an inherently bad thing. When we do that on top of forcing children and teens to read books they may or may not like, we send the message that the books that were banned are bad, but the crud we’re forced to read in school is supposed to be the good stuff.

We also teach that reading books is a much more complicated process than it is. How many people have struggled to find out what the subtext is behind a book, what the plot behind the plot is supposed to be? Is there really some meaning behind The Great Gatsby? Why can’t Catcher In The Rye just be a story about adolescene (and not even a really great one at that)? I can’t even understand what’s being said in Their Eyes Were Watching God, now you expecting me to write at length about it?

What ends up happening isn’t so much that people are deeply affected by those books (thought they can be), as they reguritate whatever their teacher’s tell them is important, or the sputter on and on in essays about something that doesn’t make much sense to them or their teachers. I never did really well in school, but one of the good things I always could do is mimic the tone of my teachers, because in general teachers like hearing what they said regurtitated back at them.

The aspect of “reading is done as entertainment” is lost in school–instead it’s “reading is done to make you a more worldly, deeper thinking person”, which isn’t necessarily a terrible idea, until you consider that a lot of these great authors weren’t planning on having teenagers plumb the debts. Most writers will tell you that their intention isn’t to add symbolism and metaphors that you can’t see unless you squint really really hard. Most authors would tell you they were more concerned with writing a story that lots and lots of people liked.

And I could add another thousand words talking about how much summer reading sucks. Just what kids want, to be studying all summer for a test! That’ll get ‘em reading!

The best thing we could do would be not to ban certain books in schools but to allow students to read whatever books they want, as long as their age appropriate. Making kids read something they want to read would go a long way towards encouraging long term readership and a thriving book industry. The people that read today will probably read tomorrow. Well, they will until they realize how silly and pretensious a lot of contemporary adult fiction is, and then they’ll keep on reading YA, which is where the action is out anyway.

But bannings books and then forcing kids to read could very well contribute to decreasing readership and people stop buying books AND THE FALL OF PUBLISHING AS WE KNOW IT! And that’s no good for me, because I hope to have a very long career in writing novels. And even if I don’t, I will instill the same “read whatever you want” thought process in my children that my mother did in me.

KC

Where’s The Line?

Every day I write YA, I struggle to straddle that fine line, between writing what is acceptable for YA, and what would be acceptable for a Kevin Smith film. After all, Kevin Smith is a big part of the reason I write today; I started working on more raunchy, Smith-esque, dialogue heavy screenplays before I turned back to writing novels. One of the best things I think I’ve written is a screenplay in that vein–all in all I wrote two complete screenplays, both of which I’m proud of, and both of which are currently rotting on my old busted hard drive and I need to recover.

When I started to write YA again, it was hard getting out of that mindset–toning down the raunch, paring down the dialogue and trying to get to the heart of the story. The thing about writing screenplays as opposed to novels is that there’s a little bit more  room for ambiguoity–you can leave a lot of stuff out, and there’s a LOT more room for pouring on the raunch and hoping it works.

In YA? Not so much.

My main character Fiona is something of a tomboy, and she certainly has a potty mouth. This is part of her character, and in general I feel like language in YA isn’t a that big a deal. Not to mention that her best friend is constantly scolding her for her bad language. But once again, I find myself struggling to find the line between “this is how teenagers talk and act” and “this belongs in a Judd Apatow movie”. It’s so akward for me to be writing a teenage, female, sexually active person and not feel as though I’m being slightly creepy while doing so, or feeling like people will think that.

In general, YA treats sex fairly well. There’s books like Twilight, which are nothing but huge, long allegories about not fucking and starting to pump out babies the second you get married. (Not that I’m biased or anything.) There’s books like Kendra by Coe Booth, or Lost It by Kristin Tracy or The Virginity Club, which handle it extremely well, leaving just enough there to get the idea, but not crossing the line on top of it. Even the much maligned Gossip Girl isn’t super descriptive about sex.

It’s the constant question of where the line is, between mature and appropriate for teenagers, and dipping over into adult content. For example, after being involved in some backseat shennigans with a boy, my MC Fiona shouted out “Ewww, you came all over my stomach!”

And suddenly, in my flurry of writing instead of working, I had to stop. Suddenly I asked “okay, is this over the line?”.  It’s not like I haven’t heard teenage girls use that terminology before. The argument that girls are pretty little angels who only giggle and talk innocently about sex is GREATLY exaggerated. As someone who sat with four VERY sexually active teenage girls in high school, I could tell you some stories that would make your brains ooze from you ear.

But I would never write those things down in a book. They’re way too much. I try to be aware of what will and won’t sell, and while this is probably a Bad Thing for upcoming author, I’m not sure I could put what those girls said in this novel, even in the context of it being somewhat centered around sex.

I try my best to find the line, and maybe walk a little left of center of it, but I never think I cross it. Until I got to that sentence. And that word, “came”, used in that context…for some reason, it stopped me cold. It was totally within the realm of something Fiona would say; she’s nothing if not blunt to a fault. But still, it felt a bit…whoa.

I had to step away from it and think, not would “adults be offended by this” (because let’s face it, adults are predisposed to be offended by EVERYTHING), but would potential readers be offended by it. The answer came back most of them wouldn’t but some would. Still, it worked, but something about the phrasing bugged me.

It’s that damned line. That line that I’ve been treading, ever since the idea “Girl who once had STI returns to school and tries to start sex-education club in her fundementally Christian town”. The line that I think most people that write what might be considered “edgy YA” walk and try desperately not to cross.

Or, maybe I just stress about it. As Coe Booth herself once told me, it’s probably me procrastinating–I just need to finish.

*sigh* I hate it when published authors are right.

*slinks off the keep writing*

Why I Write YA

Recently I’ve been doing something that’s been working pretty well; I’ve been bringing a notebook with me to work and writing there. Since the majority of my ideas tend to come during the day, this has worked very well. I only started this WIP about three weeks ago, and at the rate I’m going, I’ll be finished by the end of the week. That’s right; THIS week. I haven’t written at this pace since NaNoWriMo last year, when I finished my first ever novel (Or first real novel, anyway). And even though I’ve skipped around a few parts, the story itself will be more fleshed out when I go back to transcibe it and add it to the things I’ve already written.

Of course, since lately I’ve been doing more writing than working lately (don’t chastise me, if you worked where I did you’d find whatever you could to avoid working too), my co-workers have started asking me what I’m writing. I should’ve expected it, but it’s always awkward talking about it. I hardly ever show my writing with people who aren’t other writers or friends of mine who are writers. So I’ve found it strange that probably for the first time ever, I’ve had to actually explain outloud what my novel is about.

Co-Worker #1: So what’s your novel about?

Me: Ummmmm…well…it’s kind of about what happens when a “normal” guy (yes, I did the stupid quote fingers) goes on a cross country road trip with a sort of “Heidi Montag” type of girl.

Co-Worker #1: …So it’s a horror novel then?

That was a joke, of course. Still it was weird saying it outloud. I could go on for pages when I’m riting about what my novel is about, but saying it OUT LOUD? To other people? For a long time I didn’t tell people I wrote at all; writing is such an intensly personal thing that I didn’t want someone to ridicule me for having a bad idea. I can take written critism, but people telling me to my face that something I wrote sucks, or that an idea I have is bad? FOR SHAME! THE HORROR, THE HORROR!

Luckily, the few people I’ve told the idea to outloud have told me that they actually like the idea. And my description of it has gotten better as well.

The other question I get asked is what kind of writing I do, which still makes me a bit uneasy. I love writing YA, but I always feel like there’s this unfair stigma attached to it. Authors like Justine Larabalstier have talked about it before; she writes YA and will always write YA. But despite the fact that she’s successful, people still ask her when she’ll write “real” novels for adults.

Allow me to explain why I write YA, and while I’ll always write YA.

Because adults are fucking boring.

Now, hear me out. I’ve tried reading a lot of adult books. As an aspiring author, it wouldn’t hurt for me to read things outside of my pre-defined genre. Unfortunately for me, I don’t have much patience for a story that dilly-dallies a lot before getting to the good stuff.

Contemporary literature tends to dilly-dally a lot. They can be overly wordy, dreadfully boring affairs, where a lot of stuff doesn’t happen. Recently I tried reading a book called “I Just Want My Pants Back” (which in itself is full of win for the title alone), but the first chapter is just some kind sitting around his apartment, getting ready to go out.

Why not start me off when he’s already out? We came from the lack of pantsness, thank you very much! I don’t need to read about the takeout he ordered or the pot he smoked or the time he wasted sitting around doing nothing. While I understand the need to immerse oneself in the world of a book, I feel like in a lot of cases there’s too much telling people about the world, and not enough showing.

Since a lot of YA revolves around teens, there’s a greater sense of urgency, a greater since of NOW OR NEVER. And since most people who read YA are impatient bratlings like me who are probably juggling numerous tasks, a lot of YA comes right out of the gate. When you’re a teenager, every little thing can become something BIG. Their characters who are dealing with big first–first loves, first times, first encounters with vampires or the undeead. Everything is heightened; the drama is more tense, the feeling are deeper. Writing and reading YA is just more fun than reading literature, at least to me.

When my characters hit a point where they are only talking and are doing anything worthwhile, I start to get bored. And if I start to get bored, I can’t imagine someone else wouldn’t get bored as well. There’s so much to explore and such more to say in YA. I could write an ‘adult’ book, I suppose, but I’m not sure how I’d make it exciting or tense without avoiding it become some sort of Lifetime movie. There aren’t many lessons you can teach in comtemporary literature, to your readers or yourself.

YA allows a lot more exploration of how the world works, how people can change, and a lot more lessons about ourselves. I mean, every book doesn’t have a moral so to speak, but whenever I’m done reading a YA book, I feel a little better off for doing so. I think that’s ultimately the affect I want to have on my reader’s–I never want them to end a story going “well, that’s several hours of my life I’ll never get back in which boring people did boring things and nothing ever changed or really happened.”

On that note, if you have any suggestions for “adult” books I should read (ROMANCE NEED NOT APPLY, thank you), leave them in the comments and I’ll check them out.

Until next time

KC

S-E-X in YA

Writing hot scenes in YA is difficult. Even though I have some intense scenes in my WIP’s I always find myself restraining myself from being too graphic. Then again, “too graphic” is always so friggin’ subjective. I’ve read the way some YA writes up sex scenes, and most of it’s handled with a “the less you talk about the better” fashion, or with fades to black, which is what I tend to do. But there’s always still the question of “how hot is too hot”.

One thing I find a do is that when I’m writing a male protagonist (either in third-person limited or first person), things tend to be more graphic. Not too graphic, but it’s a little bit more about what the character does, where as when I’m doing things from the female prospective, it’s a little bit more about what’s happening and how it feels. It’s a weird switch, but I do think that’s how guys and girls talk in general.

Ask any guy who has had sex which it’s like to have sex and they’ll tell you what they did, or what  a girl did to them. But as someone who spent most of his junior and senior high school years sitting with a group of highly sexually active teenage girls, I find that girls are for more apt to talk about the sex actually feels. I’d also like to take the opportunity to clear up the rumor that girls do not talk about sex, because they do, ALL THE TIME. They’re just more adept at waiting for guys to not be around before they talk about it, but they definately do talk about it.

I’ve also realized that even though most of the novels I’ve written have some kind of sexual content, in most of those situations, the sex itself isn’t particularly spectacular, which I think is a HUGE difference between YA books and TV aimed at teens. You’d think a show like The Secret Life Of The American Teenager would be a cautionary tale, since the main character get pregnant in the first season on the show. But everyone, EVERYONE on that show has sex, which I find kind of odd. I mean the main character on the show had a kid. Obviously they showed what one of the consequences of sex when you’re a teenager can be, but it’s almost completely negated by the fact that everyone on that show is having sex all willy-nilly with little to no consequence.

Meanwhile most of the scenes I’ve seen in YA books are tame and a good portion of them are awkward and/or bad. It’s why it’s so funny when people trying to get books like “The Bermudez Triangle” by Maureen Johnson banned when it contains absolutely no sex scenes. None. Of read it, twice. The closest it comes to one is two girls kissing, but the only kiss, and that’s that. Or even funnier still is the difference between “Gossip Girl” the book, which is relatively tame when it comes to sex if nothing else, and Gossip Girl the TV show, in which Blair’s sole goal in life comes for Chuck to pork her. (Which flies in the face of the books, but I try and not be a “THIS DOESN’T HAPPEN IN THE BOOKS!” fanboy too often). If you watch pretty much any show that’s not Degrassi: The Next Generation that’s geared towards teenagers, sex is treated like this mystical, magical thing. And don’t get me wrong, it is awesome, but it seems like the thought process sometimes it’s that it’s much more detrimental for a fourteen-year-old girl to read about sex than it is for her to watch it on TV.

Most of the first times and sex scenes I’ve read in YA books are clumsy, awkward affairs, and when you think about it, sex really is  clumsy, awkward affair anyway. In general writing is more honest than TV in that we delve into ourselves somewhat and remember this awkward first times and experiences and place them on the page, rather than presenting a super idealized version of something. My characters are but an extension of me; maybe a slightly younger version of me, but me none the less. Some ultimately do get down to the business of sexing, but I like to think that I don’t write them fooling around for the sake of them fooling around.

I mean if it was up to TV execs they’d just flash boobs cross a screen for thirty minutes.

So I work in the vain of trying to present sex in it’s actual state rather than the lofty dreams and fuzzy lighted glory you might seen on the television. But it’s tough, balancing that line between the ideal and actuality, between what’s cheesy and what’s clinical, between choosing to describe what’s happening or just describing how it feels, and if I do either of those how do I avoid going into purple prose mode without being so crude I’ll turn people off? Is the word “straddled” way to sexy for YA or is it just a normal adjective?

My goal is to be realistic without being graphically so, which is a lot harder than it sounds. What words are off limits? Can I say “dick”? I mean he said “dick” without it actually meaning penis. How far is too far? SOMEONE TELL ME!

*sigh* I guess the general rule of thumb to follow is that “if you think it’s going to far, it probably is”. I like to think that’s worked pretty well for me thus far, so I should stick with that.. Almost every thing I’ve read has been very tasteful in handling it, so I should take a cue from them.

Or, I could just fade to black, like “Breaking Dawn.” Because no one was actually WAITING for Bella and Edward to go at it, and no one actually wanted to read that. Right? RIGHT?

Does anyone have in general rules of thumb when it comes to writing sex in YA? Do you avoid it altogether? What’s the protocol, hmm?

KC