I have gradually shifted all the pieces of the ms around so that like pieces are together, and the major sections are in order. Ex. all the stuff about beating up the guy is together now; all the backstory is in one area; the huge breakup scene and its aftermath; the night attack; the trip to the walled compound. Also, the not-plotty stuff like the hair-braiding scenelets (don't ask), and the stories the characters tell each other, and the secondary characters' backstories & freewritings, each now have their own little areas of the ms.

So what I've got now is the entire story laid out in a basic shape (a very patchy basic shape), and the non-plotty stuff will gradually be worked in around the action so as not to make the pacing sag too much. That's the ideal, anyway.

Yow, did not realize until yesterday that this is ALA time. Writer friends mentioned BBYA, but I didn't think about the Printz announcements till that was mentioned, too. The reason is that I have a very vivid mental image associated with BBYA, from the only time I sat in on it. It was in San Antonio years ago, and the horror of seeing books discussed so casually--some only got a word here or there ("Eh, it was okay."), no comments at all sometimes, and sometimes the covers were discussed rather than the books (!)--was like being punched in the gut with a lead balloon, to mix metaphors. I can still see the room in my head, and the feeling of walking out into the open air of the Riverwalk, sick to my stomach. I guess that was with my first book (whose discussion I was not present for, hooray!), so maybe it wouldn't be so bad now. Maybe it wouldn't bother me at all. But once you get sick from eating something, like, say, macaroni salad, you are very reluctant to ever taste it again.

So anyway, I was thinking about BBYA, and didn't realize the P. announcements were today, and therefore the winners had likely gotten their phone calls yesterday morning. When I did, I was like, Whoa, what a big change from a year ago. A year ago, that was me! And this year I'm cleaning the gerbil cage, with nothing on my mind but what I'm going to work on WIP-wise today.

I cannot believe how lucky I was. I was at a writer-type thing this past year, and one of the students said something, I forget what, along the lines of "Well, that award was confirmation that your book really was a cut above." But no, it wasn't. Repossessed was dead, until that committee brought it out into the light. Repo got no stars, no buzz, and from the straw vote I saw, it wasn't even going to get on BBYA until the P. honor forced it on.* By the luck of the draw, that book came out in a year when the committee members happened to be people who appreciated it, rather than any of the masses of other people who couldn't have cared less. All those masses of other people had other books in mind that would have been "a cut above." The lesson here is that the inherent value of a book is a whole different ball of wax from notice/acclaim.

I wonder if I only get one miracle in my lifetime. If so, that was definitely it. In the nature of writers everywhere, though, I sure would like another one.

And now, off to WIP.



*In deference to my publisher, I won't even discuss sales.

I think writers who have families and/or jobs have to be able to shift gears pretty quickly if they want to write regularly. But sometimes if there's one shift too many I can't adjust quickly and I get this weird Twilight Zone feeling. Like, the past few days I've been working on a couple of w-f-h sample reading passages for first graders, so my head is totally in that place, but as of this morning I'm trying to turn it off and turn on the upper YA WIP part of my brain. In the middle of all this, family and jobhunting stuff keep popping in. Besides that, I've been maintaining a very low-level inner freakout over a rash of internet blather that's gotten into my head, where other writers are pontificating about the state of YA and the purpose of YA like it's not opinion but fact--FACT, I say!--and carved in stone, and which is threatening to make me feel like a Lose. Er.

And then in the middle of all this my paperbacks of Repossessed got delivered to my front porch today, and I had forgotten they get to have a silver medal printed on them.

I think my life is way ahead of the silver medals. The silver medals don't know that my fifteen minutes was over a little while ago and that this season's fifteen-minuters are about to take the stage. I've got a mortgage payment and Christmas coming up, a WIP that is a big f*cking mess--no, wait, two WIPs that are a big f*cking mess--and I have been a wreck for two days because it's very important that I nail 200 words of first-grade nonfiction, and I'm not sure how to do that.

Maybe I should have spent more time basking in the glow of silver medaldom. Maybe I should have milked my moment in the sun and done my share of pontificating and tried to store up some writerly ego for later. Oh well--too late now.

Anyhoo, I did dig into the WIP today--between all the other sh*t that keeps heading my way--and I am about to dig in again, and so far I'm feeling pretty darn good about it. For no discernible reason I started trying to flesh out some of the girls, and I like where it's taking me. It's not taking me farther, but it is taking me deeper. And now I see some places where I was skimming along, and I see that I need to go back and put myself in scene in a concrete way instead of coasting on generalities.

But enough of this. Back to the WIP.

There's never been any question that I have some kind of plotting disability. I can't even retain information about plotting; my brain turns into a sieve. The irony of this struck me particularly just now, after a long day of writing where I have no idea whether I accomplished anything or not, because I noticed I'd put a sticky note next to my Diet Pepsi coaster. The sticky note says (sic in advance): "plot: result of choices made by characters: the characters take action (or don't) and events happen as a result." The irony? I have published six YA novels of my own. I am just coming off a Printz honor. And yet I have this sticky note defining plot, which I apparently wrote to myself sometime in the past couple of months (I know this because it's a Shonen Jump sticky note, which I picked up at ALA), and which I just now read as if I'd never seen it before. Wha??? Plot is the result of the characters' choices? Who knew? Not me!

Back from Anaheim. Several people are looking at the swordfighting ms now, so I will take a break from it. I need one anyway.

The question is, what next? I have multiple projects going, so the choices are:

1. graphic novel script, first draft completed. This is a completely new format for me, and I have no artistic background, so I hesitate to move forward without at least some idea of what I need to do. There's no point in poking at it helplessly with a stick. A writer friend offered to look at it, so I'll send to her; maybe we can discuss it at some point and see if anything strikes her strongly about it.

2. midgrade semi-historical I started a billion years ago. I think I finally found the right voice and pov character for this, but I'm about midgraded out right now, after so much intensive work on the swordfighting ms.

3. sequel to swordfighting book. See above. Plus, what's the point? If I start it and then can't sell the first book anyhow, my heart with be doubly and triply broken. Why punish myself if I'm not driven to write this ms right now, above all else?

4. sequel to Night Road. This is what I'm leaning toward, maybe because I ended up talking about NR so much at ALA, and also because I'm ready for some darkness and angst for a change. I have some scenes already sketched out--in fact, I have an entire ms for the book. It's just all with the wrong MC. I know who the MC is now, and what he lacks and fears. I have an antagonist I really like, in a twisted way; I've never actually had a real antagonist before, one that I had no sympathy for. I understand him, but I have no sympathy for him. I don't know if that's good or not. It might not be; it might make him cardboardy. But no point in fretting about that right now--it's just something to keep in mind.

My main worry about the NR sequel is whether (in my head) I've pulled away from NR enough moodwise and characterwise to do right by a completely different story. Also, I can feel echoes of the MC from Repossessed in what I'm thinking about this new MC, and I don't think that's a good sign. This new guy has got to be his own person. But maybe if I take what I already have and start reworking it from his pov, and write this one brand new scene that I know is his alone--which I have been excited about for some time, even though it's not a big deal of a scene--I can start to get a stronger bead on what I'm doing.

One thing I must get straight in my head is how this guy (he's a heme) deals with omnis. Up till now, he's been confused with Cole in my mind. I've got to get him out on his own.

off to ALA

No writing today. There will be no writing tomorrow (Thursday), either. Nor on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday or Tuesday. I doubt there will be any on Wednesday, but who knows.

I will be off doing The Author Thing. Which has exactly nothing to do with planting my butt in my chair and working through writing problems.

There will be laundry on Wednesday. That is a given.

Finished first draft of Printz speech. Muddled through most of one chapter of swordfighting WIP. I sort of skipped some of the transitions when they got too hard. I hate transitions. And I don't know how to end the chapter. What I have is stupid. Must think how to make it less stupid. With luck, I'll wake up tomorrow knowing the answer. Without luck...I'll just wake up.

I did think of a way to describe this ms to my agent: Alexandre Dumas with a manga series sensibility.

testing

This is meant to be a daily journal of a working writer. However, I have not written yet today. I futzed around getting this blog set up instead, then went to do family stuff. Now we're back from the family stuff, and I think the blog may indeed be set up. Now I'm thinking I'll chip away at my Printz honor speech, then dig in on the Ending From Hell for my swordfighting WIP.

I have the skeleton for the ending; I know what is going to happen over the last five or however many chapters. I feel fairly sure there's nothing to be done but power my way through it and let it be horribly, horribly wrong in a million different ways, which I will try to fix over the next weeks by going down (and thus eliminating) every dead end known to mankind. The big scary question is, is this skeleton even the right one to flesh out in the first place? I know for sure this question will not be answered today.

And so to work.