From the Inbox page of the 6/29 issue of TIME, in reference to the magazine's recent cover story on Twitter:
"The overblown coverage of Twitter in the media has grown tiresome. Steven Johnson reports that Twitter had 17.1 million visitors internationally in April, but with the U.S. population at more than 300 million, the percentage of users that are American is pretty small. Furthermore, according to Neilson, 60% of all users drop out after a month. 'Once just a fad'? Sounds like it's still a relatively small and concentrated fad. Members of the media never grasp that they are not representative of the country as a whole." - Barb Neff, Santa Monica, Calif.
This is pretty much me. I tweeted in, stayed active for about six weeks, dropped out. It took too much time to read through everyone's tweets, think of interesting things to tweet about, respond to other people's far more interesting tweets, and and respond to people who responded to my often inane ones. Of course, I left Twitter before the latest celebrity invasion, which I probably would've found amusing/addictive in the same way that I find myself actually Googling things like "what will happen now that Lauren has left THE HILLS?" and "Stephanie Pratt bulimia" and "Are Whitney and Jay back together?" Which leads me to ...
Random Bit #2
From the Books page of the 6/26-7/3 issue of ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, in an article titled "When Stars Write Novels":
"Is there nothing LC can't do? Well, uh, yes. Write a 'novel.' Authos need to be judged as writers, not as mutltasking buzz generators .... Publishers these days are laying off staff and cutting the number of titles on their lists; the book business is suffering along with everyone else, and there's little room to gamble on an untried writer, however exciting that new voice. Yet with one eye on marketing opportuntites and the other on TV ratings, these same publishers have given the okay to a larky novice who'd be the first to admit that she just thought authoring might be, you know, cool." - Lisa Schwarzbaum
Two things: One, this is exactly why, despite my morbid curiosity about LA CANDY, and the obvious ghostwriter hired to pen LC's thinly-veiled "fiction," I refuse to pay a penny toward actuallly reading it. There will be enough HILLS-obsessed teens lining up to fork over their (or their parents') hard-earned money, which will only affirm Harper Collins's prediction that this book will be an enormous blockbuster. The underlying message? "Sales dollars trump quality any day" - which is already a huge beef I have with YA currently.
Second, despite a ton of press about Conrad's decision to enter the YA market, few have addressed the fact that it was the publisher who approached HER and not vice-versa. On a recent interview she gave to the ladies of THE VIEW (you know, the one where she admits that Spencer never actually apologized to her - that they filmed his half with her NOT on the other line, thereby confirming suspicions that the "reality show" is heavily scripted), Conrad was asked by a visibly disgusted Whoopie Goldberg why she bothered to write this book. Conrad wiggles for a minute, saying that she'd thought about becoming an author and at first had pitched the idea of a dating book (though anyone who watched her disastrous relationship with cokehead Jason on TV would wonder why LC ever thought - for even a second - that she had valuable advice in the romance department) before switching over to wanting to write something fashion related. Then, she says, her publisher approached her with this idea. (I'd figured this all along; I've heard of YA editors courting certain celebrities whose names would guarantee sales, though when it's someone like Margartet Cho, who actually CAN write, I'm less disgusted by the practice. In fact, I've been disappointed that Cho's entrance into the YA genre has yet to materialize, because when I read about the sale on Publisher's Lunch, and later asked the editor who signed her about the decision, I was seriously excited. Cho writing about adolescence? Yeah, that's something I would have to read.)
The appeal, as Conrad tells it, is that the YA novel gave her an opportunity to explore the side of THE HILLS that the public never gets to see. Critics have often wondered by MTV chooses to shoot the show as if LC and her crew of super-thin, super-cute, super-shallow friends AREN'T super famous; apparently, Conrad shares this frustration. In that same VIEW spot, she talks about how there'd be times when they'd be filming and she'd sneak off to "video village" to hang out with the directors/producers, fascinated more by their process than the carefully edited version of her life that's run since she was a teen. Producing, she says, is one of her ultimate goals; fashion, it appears, is just a pit stop on her way to mogul-hood. Tyra Banks would be so proud.
Not-Quite-as-Random Bit #3
The current state of the YA book biz is something I've been chewing over a lot lately, for a myriad of reasons. Like the fact that despite knowing I should be shooting for commercial fiction with the kind of sexy slant that sells (a la my Lola Dougals books), the truth is, writing something with a prescribed format doesn't interest me at all. Morgan Carter's story, as told in the two STARLET books, was something I dreamed up on my own, and it just happened to have high commercial appeal - not something I crafted to be commercial in the first place. There are dozens of authors who I admire who've become huge successes not by writing flash-in-the-pan, semi-disposable novels, but by culling massive reader audiences the old-fashioned way: through strong writing, patience, and perserverance (see, for instance, the career of Sarah Dessen).
Also, I've been wrapped up in a professional editing job for an accomplished non-fiction author whose first foray into young adult fiction has amazing potential, but has struggled to sell. The thing is, her book, too, sprung from a personal passion but also has that sexy commercial appeal that publishers pant over. So I've had to puzzle over why the book's had trouble finding a home, despite the author's kick-ass idea and impeccable pedigree. My guess is that at one point, before sales dollars trumped everything else, an editor would've taken on the project immediately and helped the author develop her vision. In this market, my first novel, BRINGING UP THE BONES, wouldn't have made it to the contract stage - it needed too much work between the draft I submitted and the one that got published. But back in 2001, when I was named the honor winner in the Delacorte and offered a deal, editors still had the time, energy, and freedom to take on flawed projects such as mine - ones that didn't have the potential to blow up like TWILIGHT. This just isn't the case any more.
Yesterday I traveled down to Dover, to talk to my friend Peggy Dilner's current crop of YA lit students, most of whom are pursuing certifications to become school media specialists. When Peggy first started inviting me to talk to her classes, it was more about being a YA author from Delaware, which was a novelty then (we now have several other YA'ers we can boast, including but not limited to Tony Varrato). Now she asks me to speak to them about my persepective on the industry as an author, and the changes I've seen take place between BONES' publication and STELLA's upcoming one. It's not sour grapes on my part when I tell them how drastically different things have become; when CONTENTS came out in 2004, all YA novels pub'd by mainstream houses were guaranteed review space in every major journal. Just 18 months later, when ANYONE BUT YOU debuted, this was no longer the case. The market had become so glutted that an author had to feel grateful when they were awarded space in a review journal, even if that review was mixed. (Of course, here I'm talking about B-list authors like myself, and not people like John Green or Laurie Halse Anderson, who are superstars and don't need to worry so miuch about whether or not they'll be reviewed as much as if their latest offering meets the high expectations set by earlier best-sellers they've delivered.)
Peggy's heard me speak about my career path and my mixed feelings about the industry for several years now. Last night she got to see a more bubbly side, because right now I'm feeling good about STELLA's general reception, this editing project (which has been so much fun, despite the quick turnaround), and my career in general. I joked to her students that I've declared on more than one occasion I was hanging up my keyboard and done with being an author forever. This week? I'm not feeling "over." I'm feeling inspired to dive into my current WIP, a passion project that's been nibbling at me for six years now. It's good to be in this place again - wanting to write, instead of feeling like I have to, and being more concerned again with telling a great story than whether or not my publishers will be pleased with my market-directed sensibilities. If, for example, this current WIP should fail to find a home (and at the risk of sound cocky, which if you know me in real life, you know is not who I am at all - I have no doubt it WILL find a home), I'd be okay with it. Because I'd have written it for all of the right reasons, instead of the wrong ones that lead me down this bitter, jaded path to begin with.
[I'm far too tired to do all of the hyperlinking I should do here, or even proofread what I've written, so I think I'm going to just wrap up now and hit the sheets until my 11 a.m. conference call with the aforementioned kick-ass writer I'm working with. Please excuse the lack of linkage and the possibility of typos; I've had six hours of sleep in the past three days and I'm about ready to fall over.]
- feeling:
exhausted
Yes, you read that correctly. I've been rearranging my books in the middle of the night, even though our alarm is set to go off in a few short hours and I promised Joe that I'd make sure he got up on time so he can start running his reports remotely from home while he's brewing coffee and taking a shower. This is not something that I regularly do - if anything, Joe's usually the clock-watcher trying to make sure I get to places on time.
But I digress.
Normally my middle-of-the-night organizing projects consist of things like going through magazine stacks that have spread from room to room, tearing out articles, recipes, and other things I want to keep. The goal is always to put them into clear plastic page protectors, organized by topic: cooking, cleaning tips, craft projects, etc. But usually the torn pages end up in white storage bins waiting to be catalogued.
Instead, my night took an unusual turn in that I climbed into bed, figuring I'd read a chapter or two before starting to do a face plant onto my current book's pages. Instead, I got sucked into this three-hundred-page novel that I wasn't even sure I would ever finish. The first fifty pages or so were tedious and hard to get into; too many bread crumbs dropped into too many directions. But then, out of nowhere, I couldn't put the sucker down. I finished it at 2:09 a.m., wider awake than I was before I got into bed in the first place.
So, I did what I usually do when I finish a book, and that is go try to pick out my next read. Only, nothing grabbed my attention right away. This is due to poor organization; all of my most recent reads were stacked in front of piles of books that I hadn't yet read, thus obscuring them from my view. Which meant I needed to sort. My sorting process, though, is kind of complicated in that I'm currently trying to streamline my personal library. One, because the books are overtaking the house, and two, because I need to refinish the two super-tall bookshelves in my old office so that I can move them into my new one (the still-unfinished craft room I've been
Only, this time, I still couldn't find any tome I was willing to make a commitment to. I actually broke down and ordered a few things from Amazon last week, temporarily suspending my own no-buying-new-books rule, but I was able to rationalize the purchase. One of the ones I bought was Amber Kizer's ONE BUTT CHEEK AT A TIME, because Amber's part of the ALAN panel I'll be on this November (as is her mother, an educator, and my good friend Liz Gallagher), and I've been meaning to get Amber's book since Liz raved about it months and months ago. Another was IF I STAY, which is one of those buzzy books I should've read ages ago (even my agent mentioned it as a must-read). I also felt the intense need to order THE HUNGER GAMES, which I've wanted to read forever, but was recently reminded of because of everyone who went to BEA squeeing about its eagerly anticipated sequel. Lastly, Sarah Dessen's ALONG FOR THE RIDE is just about to hit the shelves, and I never make myself wait to read one of her books. NEVER.
[A bit of an aside: did anyone catch the HOLY WOW, full-page ad in this week's EW touting ALONG FOR THE RIDE, as well as the entire Sarah Dessen collection? I think my eyes just about popped out of my head. Super freaking cool. Also: when scanning Amazon to hyperlink the book, I noticed an "erotic romance" that has the same title (by an author named - get this - Michelle Pillow. Think it's a pseudonym, or are women born with the last name "Pillow" naturally drawn to writing erotic romances?). I find the whole thing kind of hilarious. Two of my previous books, CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE and ANYONE BUT YOU, were also shared titles, the first to a mystery novel by Edna Buchanan (although, now scanning Amazon, I see there are like 16 other books with that title as well - at least mine comes up at the top of the list) and the second to a very popular romance by Jennifer Crusie (she bests me in the Amazon title search).
Thinking about Sarah's new release got me thinking about PERFECT FIFTHS, Megan McCafferty's supposedly final installment in the Jessica Darling series. I was almost positive I had FOURTH COMINGS buried in my office, but I can't find it. Which means I either lost it somewhere in the house OR somehow managed to miss buying it in the first place. Which isn't like me, because I'm a huge Megan McCafferty fan. Then again, I didn't read FOREVER IN BLUE: THE FOURTH SUMMER OF THE SISTERHOOD until the first movie's sequel was released on DVD, because I knew I couldn't see the movie without reading the book first. Even so, I think I'd had FOREVER IN BLUE for like two years before actually reading it. Which isn't totally unlike me, because as I've said, I often lose things in my own house for ages and ages.
While trying to dig up FOURTH COMINGS, I found books missing dust jackets; dust jackets missing books; books that I'd borrowed, read, and never returned; books that I'd borrowed, never read, probably never will read, and should return ASAP; books that I want to loan to other people who may or may not read them, and who may or may not return them. I almost never loan out something that's part of the permanent collection, even to trusted friends, because you never know what will happen to those precious babies in someone else's hands. I learned this lesson the hard way, when my mom managed to seriously mangle one of my very first galleys; to this day, I always tuck one pristine galley of each book onto my special "I Wrote These" shelf. So in those cases - when there's a book I know someone should read but I can't loan out, I usually just tell them it's a must-read in an e-mail or something. My friend Carolee, who's great at using her local library, has no problem tracking down these titles on her own, and I love her for it. I myself am eagerly awaiting the grand re-opening of my local library, which was literally demolished a couple of years ago and had to be rebuilt from the ground up. It's supposed to be open for business by August, and just the other day we saw that they'd finally put in a parking lot where there used to be a pit, so I'm so super psyched.
I just looked at the clock on my laptop and realized it's almost 4 a.m. WHY AM I SO FREAKING WIDE AWAKE? This is probablematic not only because I have to make sure Joe is fresh as a daisy and out the door by 8:15 a.m., but also because my Monday to-do list is something like 17 items long. As many women will attest, when the spouse or spousal equivalent is on vacation, it's difficult to get your own stuff done. Why should we work when they get to play? This is why Joe and I have subsisted mainly on Lean Pockets or Annie's Naturals Shells and Cheese, both bought in bulk at BJs, for the past week. I've got a freezer full of things like beef tenderloin and boneless pork tenderloin and bone-in chicken thighs that need to be turned into minor culinary masterpieces, but even though I've had recipes pulled for a few weeks, I haven't had the energy/determination to make a shopping list for the missing ingredients. It doesn't help that obtaining said ingredients will most likely require trips to three different stores - Shoprite, which is just down the street, the Newark Farmer's Market, which is a little bit further down, and Trader Joe's, which is all the way up by my mother's house. That last stop is particularly pressing, as I'm down to the last few squeezes of their store-brand version of Tom's of Maine toothpaste that tastes like licorice (I have this weird mouth issue where I can't tolerate fake mint or cinnamon or even orange in my toothpaste - they make my tongue break out in tiny sores. Even at the dentist, when I get my twice-yearly cleanings, I have to ask for the strawberry or bubble gum flavored kid's polish, because everything else gives me those same sores).
So, yeah. Four in the morning and I'm only slightly sleepier than when I started reorganizing my book collection some two hours ago. This is so not good. I wonder if diving into Amy Koss's THE GIRLS (which is what I ultimately decided I will read next) might help. Then again, it might keep me just as awake as Joshilyn Jackson's THE GIRL WHO STOPPED SWIMMING did.
[MONDAY UPDATE: Didn't start THE GIRLS yet; opted instead for writing some silly Facebook quiz about "How Well Do You Know Lara?" Finally got sleepy at 6 a.m. and crashed so hard that I didn't hear the alarm go off in the morning. Joe, did, though, and was confused as to why I wasn't hitting the snooze button. He got me up at 8:15 so I could see him off, and I was determined to stay awake all day so that I could go to bed early and get back on a normal schedule. This resolve lasted until 2 p.m., when even HARVEST MOON couldn't hold my attention any longer. Took a three-hour "nap" in the living room before waking up and deciding to chuck all and climb into bed. Was woken up at 7-ish, when Joe, now home from work, slipped in behind me and pulled me close. I explained to him about the not sleeping thing, and then, because all I'd eaten the whole day was a peanut butter on whole wheat sandwich, I was starving. I grabbed the only quicky thing we had - a partial pint of ice cream - and after six spoonfulls felt so sick I ended up puking. AND I was still tired. So we climbed back into bed and took another three-hour "nap," waking around 10:45. Joe went into caretaker mode and heated up some soup and made me a toasted cheese sandwich. We watched the last 40 minutes of a PUSHING DAISIES episode we started two weeks ago before hitting our respective laptops. Well, I actually watched a hilarious MIGHTY B episode I'd DVR'd before coming to edit this post. Now it is 1:12 a.m. (so much for complying with our new house rule of turning all electronic devices off at midnight) and we both should be in bed, but of course the "napping" made things worse. Oy. So now I think I will go start THE GIRLS and try to get myself sleepy. This is all probably far too much information than anyone needed, but I seem to have diarrhea of the mouth lately, so ... it is what it is. Until tomorrow ....]
- feeling: exhausted (now, I mean)
Yeah, it was that bad.
But one of the worst side effects of this career crisis was that I lost something that had been very, very dear to me as early as the age of two.
I lost my love of reading.
My bookshelves overflowed with novels - ones I bought, ones I'd been given as gifts, ones I'd gotten free from appearing at trade shows or conferences. Lots of books by wonderful authors that had great premises and seemed like stuff that, just a few months prior, I'd been devouring at the rate of six to ten a month. But with burnout came apathy, and suddenly I didn't care anymore if I'd read the latest Printz contenders, or the hot novel everyone was blogging about. I even stopped reading most blogs, and became terrible at keeping up my own - odd because I'd been a fervent blogger as far back as 2001.
But then, not long after I returned from last fall's ALAN conference in San Antonio, I got the carton of books given out to every attendee (provided that attendee pay for shipping or transport the enormous and weighty carton home by themselves). In it I found books like Laurie Halse Anderson's WINTERGIRLS, and John Green's PAPER TOWNS (which, oddly enough, I'd purchased for myself right before the trip, and ended up gifting one of the copies to a stepcousin who's also an avid reader). There were books by authors new to me, like Madeleine George's LOOKS, and Donna Freitas's THE POSSIBILITIES OF SAINTHOOD. I can't remember how it started, or which book I devoured first, but suddenly, after a long dry spell where the only things I was reading were Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series (and don't get me wrong - I love these books and they were exactly what I needed during my self-imposed exile from YA) and the many magazines I subscribe to through discount sites (a full year of both EW and TIME for $24 total? Sign me up).
So, yeah. I made a deal with myself not to purchase any new books until I'd managed to wade through the thick stacks in my office, in the living room, in the bedroom, the dining room, and the bonus room we've dubbed the Jungle Room, because when I purchased the house the previous owner had nothing but 10,000 plants in the poorly insulated space walled off with energy-inefficient jallousy windows.
And then, I got back to devouring.
I hadn't realized how much I missed reading until I started up again. Instead of passing out in my living room easy chair, ingesting hours upon hours of DVR'd TV shows (some good, some marginal, some downright bad), I began canceling series recordings. NIP/TUCK didn't hold my attention like the aforementioned WINTERGIRLS did - and if you haven't read it yet, you need to get yourself a copy, because it's some of the most harrowing, heart-breaking fiction I've read in a long time, and the characters were so real and disturbing to me that the night I finished it, I couldn't fall asleep for hours because the story kept replaying itself in my head.
Two weeks ago, when Joe and I were up in Bethlehem for the private family viewing held the day after his grandfather passed, I had in my bag an ARC of E. Lockhart's THE TREASURE MAP OF BOYS. In it, the main heroine Ruby Oliver is, once again, grappling with anxiety issues often triggered by sticky relationships with both her peers and the boys who make her heart go pitter-pat. I'm a huge fan of E's writing, and have been since she asked our then shared publicist to send me an ARC of the first Ruby Oliver installment. Reading this book, though, at that particular time, reminded me of the healing power of fiction. Ruby is my favorite kind of protagonist - smart, funny, fully flawed and yet still completely relatable and endearing. And it was ironic, because all of the tragedy Joe and I had been experiencing in our personal lives were giving us both regular panic attacks - serious ones, the kind where your heart races and you want to rip your skin off because everything feels so unhinged. In one scene of TREASURE MAP, Ruby practices a trick her therapist taught her to control anxiety, passing a ball back and forth between your hands. Something about the repetitive motion was supposed to quell the brain crazies. So when I was experiencing my next panic attacke, I reached for a stress squeeze ball sitting nearby and tried out this method. It worked. That's a practical thing. The less quantifiable part of reading this book and that particular time was that it made me laugh. It made me marvel, once again, at Emily's brilliant wordplay.
Bibliotheraphy: it was exactly what I needed.
In a few months, I'll be participating in the upcoming ALAN conference in Philly, speaking on a panel of gusty girl writers about books featuring gutsy girl characters. And I'm excited about this, because it's not only a topic I'm passionate about, but it brings me to a conference filled with brilliant writers (including my very good friend Liz Gallagher, who I only get to see a couple times a year since she insists on living on the opposite coast) and editors and educators and librarians. But you know what else I'm totally jazzed about? Getting that trademark carton of new, exciting, possibly YA-canon-changing novels to feed my rekindled habit.
This is one habit I definitely don't intend to break.
To read more about Alton and his meatloaf theories, go here.
Then, on Saturday, we drove up to Chester County Book & Music Company for Liz's reading (her debut, THE OPPOSITE OF INVISIBLE, came out last week, and this was her first public signing!). Joe and I dorked out by putting on matching snowflake sweaters and "Hello, my name is" tags that read TEAM LIZ! (We brought supplies and ended up making more tags for other supporters). Oh my gosh, what a turnout! There must've been like 40 or 50 people there, buying multiple copies, and indulging in the gorgeous layer cake that had the book's cover on its frosting. Plus, it was so good to see Liz, who radiated happiness in her special Liz way.
Sunday was divided between more revision work (STELLA is almost - ALMOST - ready to be turned in) and playing DESIGN REMIX with Joe. For the uninitiated, DESIGN REMIX is this great show on HGTV where Karen McAloon redoes a room using only what the homeowners already have, $50, and some paint. The long overdue craft room remodel is coming to a close, so we were in high gear. First, we took the legs off my old dining room table, sanded them and spray painted them a matte black. Then I orderd two yards of this gorgeous, black-on-white medallion print oil cloth, which I'm going to staple to the table's top (an idea I actually got from DESIGN REMIX). We tried painting peg board apple green (one of the accent colors), but even after sanding it the peg board was still too slick and showed every single brush stroke. So it was more spray paint (a light sage, but now we're thinking white might play better in the room). Oh, and there was this old lab table-turned work bench I'd picked up at a resale shop for $15 a few years ago, and it was rusted and ugly, so we sanded it down and sprayed it with a dark pewter paint that has a hammered metal finish and now it is fabulous. In the actual room, I sat down with a zillion plastic bins and got crazy with my label maker, so now there's even a clear shoebox marked "glass gems." Once my new desk arrives, I'll be moving into the space and oh - I can't wait. Before and after pictures to come.
So now it's Monday morning, and the ALA book awards have been announced, and I feel so completely divorced from the whole thing. I mean, the ceremony took place less than 35 minutes from my door step, but these books ... the only Printz finalist I even heard of was Amanda Jenkins' REPOSESSED, and I haven't read a single one. This started about a year ago, when I got burned out on the business and quit every single industry-related listserv I belonged to. I don't hear about buzz until the buzz has passed. And you know what? I'm okay with that. I like living in my little dark corner of the world (though when I was at Liz's signing, I did feel the need to purchase 13 REASONS WHY, which was edited by Kristen Pettit (who I work with at Razorbill), and about which I've heard amazing things.
CURRENTLY READING: an ARC of Sarah Dessen's LOCK & KEY, which I managed to snag at NCTE last November.
UP NEXT: Liz's THE OPPOSITE OF INVISIBLE, of course.
Happy Monday, all!
- feeling:
productive
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zeisgeist- Lara M. Zeises
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