Happy New Year!

Wishing you all love, silliness, kindness, and adventure in 2010!

2009 - the List

Now that it's actually the end of the year, I'm compiling of list of "best of" and "worst of" and "most clueless" and so on. Feel free to disagree, chime in, ponder your own list...

Heroes
Iranian protesters
Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger

Boneheads
Anyone comparing anyone to Hitler or Stalin
Richard Heene (Balloon boy dad)
Sarah Palin
Michael Bay
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Bank CEOs. Yes, all of them.
Anti Vaccine scaremongers
Rod Blagojevich

Best Movies
The Hurt Locker
Fantastic Mr. Fox

Best TV Shows
True Blood
Friday Night Lights
Mad Men
Planet Earth

Fave Pop Culture Icon
Lady Gaga

Smartest User of the Internet
Amanda Palmer

Award Winning Book for Kids that Deserves It
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Other terrific books for kids I read:
Story of a Girl by Sara Zarr
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E Lockhart
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

Hottest
Alexander Skarsgard

Deceased Celebrity I'll Miss the Most
Larry Gelbart

Best Personal Accomplishment
I wrote and wrote and wrote. In two years - two novels and a tv script. Goal for 2010 - get an agent, sell something.

Best Moment
First African-American President of the US is sworn in.

The View From Paradise

(Above - the view from Dad's desk in Kaneohe.)

I've been enjoying near-daily trips to my favorite beach in the world (really, my favorite place in the world) and hanging with my parents, (my two favorite people in the world).

So I'm pretty lucky. I got five pages written on the plane ride over, but haven't done much since. Too busy eating and bodysurfing and seeing movies with Mom and Dad.

There are worse things.

Best Christmas Song

My favorite Christmas carol is "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentleman" for some reason. Probably because it's in a minor key.

But the best Christmas SONG? That's got to be "Fairytale of New York" by the Pogues. I've pasted a live version below to watch, so you'll get a taste of the lovely lead singer Shane McGowan (the woman, who actually is lovely is the late Kirsty MacColl) and his lack of teeth.

How can you not love a Christmas song with lyrics like:

It was Christmas Eve, babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me,
"Won't see another one."

Then, at the end of the song, the woman sings:

You took my dreams from me,
When I first found you.

The man replies:

I kept them with me, babe.
I put them with my own.
Can't make it all alone,
I've built my dreams around you.

Hope and love amidst tragedy and pain. That's the Pogues!

Best Writing Advice

Check out this post by Jennifer Blanchard at Procrastinating Writers for a list of the 43 most inspiring writing advice posts of the year. Excellent stuff lurks past every click.

My fave, which preaches to my choir, is this post from Larry Brooks at Storyfix.com. It gives you, on one page, the keys to making your story WORK.

Get inspired. Set yourself up to write the hell out of your book in 2010!

Interesting bits, at least to me

I've been busy - work is nutty, the holidays are upon us, beloved friends visit, parties happen, free screenings are offered. I feel most fortunate!

But I haven't written or blogged much. Time to make up for that! Herewith a few dribs and drabs that have interested me in the past week or so. Many of these come from my Twitter feed. Love that Twitter!

I found inspiration in gazing at Charles Dicken's handwritten manuscript for "A Chistmas Carol" here. How reassuring to see such a great writer revising himself extensively!

These purses would make great Christmas gifts for the female reader in your life. I'm lusting after To Kill a Mockingbird, Alice in Wonderland, and a few dozen others.

My favorite soap opera, As the World Turns, got cancelled and will end next September. I haven't watched in years, but my grandmother introduced my mother to it when she was 12, so it almost feels like the end of a family tradition. You can learn a lot about how to prolong a storyline watching soaps!

I set up a Google Alert thanks to writer Greg Pincus's tutorial here.

I lusted after this ancient Egyptian magic wand, made of hippo tusk. Wanted to write a story incorporating it somehow.

With help from friends and their muscles, I threw away my very old, very loved couch (photo here) thanks to Los Angeles's bulky item pick up service. And my new couch arrived, confusing my Ancient Cat briefly. Then he curled up on it happily.

The holidays are nearly here! I hope to post a "best of 2009" list soon, but I like to wait until it's closer to the end of the year. Who knows what delights might pop up before New Years?

Who will tell these kids' stories?

The NY Times today features a brief but fascinating glimpse into the life of a child after they've been hit by a stray bullet.

I can't help thinking - how will this affect them as they get older? What kind of lives will they lead as they enter their teen years? Good grist for the writers mill, and food for thought about how one act of violence leaves ripples in the pond that never quite go away.

What makes a great kid's book

The Upstart Crow Agency blog has a great post up that features publisher Little, Brown's LIST OF ATTRIBUTES THAT MAKE A GOOD CHILDREN’S BOOK.

It's a great list to show you what makes a great kid's book, and a way to inspire yourself to make your book as good as possible.

Meanwhile, Happy Thanksgiving to one and all!

How to Make Them Stop Reading

The ever-informative Guide to Literary Agents Blog had a great post recently from guest blogger Livia Blackburne called "7 Reasons Agents Stop Reading Your First Chapter."

All novelists should take a look-see, because we all fall prey to cliches, boring conventions, and lazy writing at times. I expected to find the "don't start with weather" dictum, since that's a common theme when you talk to agents and editors. But I was more surprised to see that some writers give readers Too Much Information (TMI), as in detailed descriptions of bodily functions or even surgery. Ew. My sympathies, agents!

National Book Award YA Winner

Looks fascinating. Did you know that in 1955 a black teen girl refused to give up her seat to a a white person on the bus nine months BEFORE Rosa Parks? (Read more here.) Another example of how kids can make a difference in the world.

Am making notes for my to-read list...

Kids Can Make a Difference

When ten-year-old Will Phillips refused to stand up and pledge allegiance because he thinks we haven't lived up to the ideal of "liberty and justice for all" he really started something. Turns out Will thinks gays should be able to marry, and until they can, he won't take the Pledge.

As his father Jay Phillips says, "He felt that just because he's ten years old doesn't mean he doesn't have opinions, doesn't mean he doesn't have rights, and doesn't mean he can't make a difference."

Here's Will and his father on CNN:




What a smart, brave kid. The ten-year-old inside me loves the fact that one kid, taking a stand, can cause people to think about important issues like this one.

Childhood Memories

I loved Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and Zoom when I was a kid, lo, many years ago. Thanks to YouTube I found my absolute favorite sketch from Zoom (below). For some reason, this song remains totally intact in my memory. It makes me wonder why kids latch onto certain songs or phrases or events and not to others. With the benefit of hindsight, the song presages much in my life. First, the song. (Note, the tallest girl in the cast here is named Nina. That always tickled me too!)



The protagonist here is, of course, the cat. I am a proud cat-owner, cat-saver, and cat-lover. (I love just about every other animal too!) Did my love of this song foreshadow the fact that my current work-in-progress features some very important cat elements?

Also, the song has a certain violence to it. I don't think they'd let kids sing something like this ("97 pieces of the man was all they found") on children's programming today. Can it be just a coincidence that I write about kick-ass protagonists and love to write action scenes? Yay, violence! (in fiction, that is.)

The cat here is also quite the underdog. Shot at, given away, sent to the moon - how could a little cat survive all that? Yet he does, he keeps coming back. It's a lesson for writers. Pile the woe onto your protagonist, put her in impossible situations and then have her get herself out of them. Let the cat that came back be your template.

(Side note: I can't help thinking this song inspired "Stray Cat Strut" by the Stray Cats. The attitude in it is very similar.)

Idea Alert!

People wonder where ideas come from, and I tell them that the ideas are the easy part. It's the writing that's hard.

That's why ideas are so fun! They seem to slip out of the ether into your brain. Sometimes it's a character that sparks it, or a scene arrives unasked before your mind's eye. Today I was listening to the radio during my lunch hour, listening to a story and I thought, "someone should write a novel or a screenplay about this."

Or maybe I should. For me the idea usually involves an underdog of some kind, facing terrible odds, huge conflict, in a setting I haven't quite seen before in quite this way. Stories of strong women inspire me, but I've also written two TV pilot scripts that feature male protagonists. But they are always strong, always full of internal conflict, facing huge external conflict. I love interesting historical settings too. I'm a big buff of Ancient Egypt and Tudor England and have written or contemplated writing all kinds of things set in those times.

So today I got a new idea. I'm very excited about it and no, I can't tell you what it is. It's too new, and it needs quiet, uninterrupted nurturing right now. But it just might become my next book.

But I really should finish my current book first!

My First Five Pages

Rock. Just saying.

I reread them yesterday, and they kick butt. This is the new novel I'm talking about, the one only my faithful/fabulous crit partner Elisa Nader has read all of. (My classmates last spring read the beginning.) No, you can't read them yet. Sorry.

I rewrote some other bits of the beginning, but in the spirit of NaNoWriMo, I must get back to finishing that first draft. I'm not doing NaNo this year because I was already at page 204 (!) on November 1, and the rules of NaNo say you must start a new book. But I'm all about the cranking out of words this month. So here's to you, NaNo writers. Write on!

Photos - Cambria and San Simeon

Finally downloaded my photos from my trip to Cambria and San Simeon with my Mom. We had a blast, ate very well, tried some delicious local wines, saw how the (very) rich lived at Hearst Castle, and watched the elephant seals battle and snooze. My normally amazing digital Canon Rebel camera was giving out error messages like pancakes, so getting shots at times was a struggle. It pooped out royally at the elephant seal beach, alas. I really wanted more shots of these elegantly schnozzled beasties.

You can see the entire photostream here on Flickr.

And here's a taste of the beauty we imbibed.

Teens' Top Ten 2009

Eleven thousand teens voted on their favorite books of 2009! The official list page is here, but I've cut and pasted the list below.

Listed author E Lockhart notes that books with pink covers never get on these lists. Hmm. An anti-pink conspiracy, perhaps?

1. Paper Towns by John Green (Penguin/Dutton)
2. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
3. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic)
4. City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare (Simon & Schuster/Margaret K. McElderry)
5. Identical by Ellen Hopkins (Simon & Schuster/Margaret K. McElderry)
6. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins)
7. Wake by Lisa McMann (Simon & Schuster/Simon Pulse)
8. Untamed by P.C. and Kristin Cast (St. Martin's Griffin)
9. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart (Disney-Hyperion)
10. Graceling by Kristin Cashore (Harcourt/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Scarily or fabulously, I appear to be somewhat in sync with teen readers. I've read five of these, all excellent:

The Hunger Games
City of Ashes
The Graveyard Book
Wake
Graceling

And I have a sixth (The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks) waiting on the shelf. Looking forward to Paper Towns as well!

Flu Addled

Sorry I haven't posted recently, but I've been house-bound for nearly a week now thanks to the flu. At least I think it's the flu. Mostly I'm just exhausted, with sinus fun to complete the picture. But I haven't had a fever spike in two days and today is slightly better than yesterday, so I do think I'm (slowly) mending.

It's tough to be so tired. I don't know how the chronically ill manage! I haven't been able to read much, let alone write on my second novel or brainstorm my next script. I haven't generated any new query letters or been able to sit down and play the piano for more than 15 minutes, and that rather poorly.

It all makes me grateful knowing that I will get better, that this shall pass, and that my usual vigor will return. I'm a bit impatient, but am trying not to overdo things and relapse. It's a struggle not to give in to the feeling of uselessness and lumpiness being sick brings on. I keep thinking that I serve no purpose, that I'm not contributing, that I'm not creating.

But sometimes I guess you just have to lie still.

So that's what I'm doing. Within the next day or two I hope to be back at the keyboard, working on a story.

Fave YA Books II

Tomorrow When the War Began by John Marsden is, quite simply, one of the most riveting books you'll ever read. Teen or adult, if you like a page turning, thought provoking late-into-the-night read, you'll love this.

Teenage Ellie and her six friends return from a camping expedition in the Australian bush to find that their country has been invaded and occupied by a foreign army. Everyone they know is a prisoner of war, so they must find a way to stick together, avoid the enemy, and eventually - fight back.

Marsden's got a great premise here, but it's the voice of narrator Ellie and the way she and her friends grow and change under the pressures of the plot that make this book so riveting, honest, and real. Beware, this is the first in an addictive series. Read this one and you'll want to get them all.

Only Book 1, this one, was available in the US when I first read it. But I was so determined to find out what happened that I ordered the rest of the series through an Australian bookstore and paid the high shipping fees to get the sequels as soon as I could. Later, when a TV producer asked me if I knew of any books that would make good TV, I instantly recommended this series. Her company ended up losing a bidding war over acquiring the rights to the books. And still they haven't been made into a series or a movie. If the rights have become available again, producers would be wise to snap them up. It's that good.

Update: I just found out that an Australian movie of the book is now filming! It started shooting in late September. Keep your eyes peeled in six months or so. I can only hope it's half as good as the book.

Ban Book Banning

Top YA authors like Maureen Johnson and Laurie Halse Anderson continue to face attempts to ban their books. Read Laurie Halse Anderson's response from her blog here.

I think the emails and letters from kids whose lives were changed by her books say it all.

Censorship is wrong and un-American. And when you ban books that deal with tough subjects for teens, people can get hurt. Teens need to know that if they make a mistake or suffer a tragedy, all is not lost, that they are still valuable, that others have been through similar experiences and come out stronger on the other side. If that resource is taken from them, they may suffer irreperable damage.

Thank goodness for organizations like Kids' Right to Read, which confronts challenges to books all over the country.

Banning books makes me want to go out and buy tons of the banned books and distribute them for free to every teen I see. Instead, I might reread Halse Anderson's brilliant, award-winning Speak.

Next week is Banned Books week. What banned book will you be reading?

Sufficiently Cracked

As I posted a little while ago, Larry Gelbart was one of my favorite writers. Since then I found this previously unpublished essay from him about what it is to be a writer. You can find it here.

It's full of gems like:

"If even one short sentence of anything I’ve ever written in anyway reflects this dream-like passage called life, I can only hope that the mirror I’ve held up to it has been sufficiently cracked."

If you're a writer, it'll resonate. If you're not a writer, it'll give you a bit more insight into how we nutballs think.