A Capoeira demo in the middle of my favorite coffee place. Seriously? And I kept writing anyway.*

*I haven’t read what I wrote that day. It might be, uh, a bit aggressive.

I am going to finish the trilogy. Why, you might ask?* I read a spoiler-filled interview with the author and decided I liked the ending. Yes, that’s counterintuitive. So shoot me.

*Though you probably won’t

Not going to finish the trilogy, after all. It took this kind of soap opera turn where the plot kept going back and forth, and the obstacles were mostly all the same, and characters kept changing their minds and never moving forward, and, well I think I’m relieved of my commitment.*

*It’s not me, it’s you, trilogy.

Decided to read an earlier work of an author I love.*  It’s not as nuanced, imaginative or original as the later stuff, but it’s an EARLIER WORK, people. It’s not supposed to be. I mean, it would be really sad if it had been all downhill from here.

So here’s why I’m going to finish it: I care what happens to the characters. One of the worst things I can imagine hearing as a writer is “Your writing is terrific, but who cares.”

*not going to tell you the name of either.

**Let’s be honest. I have heard it.

When you* write YA people tell you a lot of rules you’re supposed to follow. For example, “never introduce a lot of named characters in the first few pages.” I tested that premise by checking out a bunch of my very favorite YA books. Guess what!** The number of named characters in the first 3 pages varied from 3-8.

So I believe ‘rules’ should be called ‘guidelines,’ except when the books you love don’t follow them, in which case you shouldn’t call them anything.

*meaning me

**I know you already guessed. Play along with me.

A client put us up overnight at a luxury resort and paid us lots of money. Also they loved the show. Also, we loved the show.

Mostly, I’d rather be writing, though.

It won lots of prizes. The writing is delightful. Sometimes it makes me laugh out loud. I couldn’t care less what happens to the main character.

The End

I wondered why nobody was visiting my blog. I was sad. My feelings were hurt. Then I discovered I’d been magically disconnected from pretty much everything. So, to those of you missed my postings* you can still read my recent bits of humor and wisdom in posts immediately beneath this.

 

*The rest of you pretend you did. I will send you a cookie.**

**total lie

Had an interesting discussion with another writer. The topic has been changed to grossly over simplify a very complex subject which I will refer to as ‘teens wearing green hats.’

The protagonist and best friend wear green hats. Other writer points out that in her (actually considerable) experience with teens, they don’t wear green hats.

Aside from the possibility that a writer may know a couple of teens who wear green hats, there is the possibility a reader might find it more romantic or interesting to read about a teen who wears a green hat, even if in real life it’s like writing about a unicorn on American Idol.

In fact, in YA novels most of the female protagonists wear green hats.

That said, one does have to make it believable that the protagonist would wear a green hat.*

*Might still have to work on that one a little.

Writer’s Block is ‘when I block out everything else I was supposed to do so I can write.’ #amwriting