Desert Dispatches

Yet more on YA

Fri, 16 May 2008 03:49:45 GMT

Specifically on YA reading. Via jmprince and others on my reading list, this Newsweek article on the surge in teen reading.

All sorts of things in there that had me nodding, including this:

Levithan and others cite several reasons for this perfect storm for teen lit, the most obvious two being the increasing sophistication and emotional maturity of teenagers and the accompanying new freedom for writers in the genre to explore virtually any subject. Another is that bookstores and libraries are finally recognizing this niche and separating teen books from children's books.

And this:

Still, most of these books, even the darkest ones, cling to some semblance of hope. And most are smart, well written and do not pander or talk down to their audience. That's a welcome change, because for more than a decade, the common knock on young-adult books has been that there were too many so-called problem novels that self-righteously told kids how to behave in a "just say no" fashion. "A lot of those books were based on fear, they were cautionary and sermonlike. Teen readers rejected them," explains Martin. "Too many books for teens just stated obvious messages, like 'doing drugs is bad.' But now the messages are imbedded into the story. This new crop of writers would rather present drugs as a miserable existence and show what it's like to live through this experience than to preach."

In other words, much of the content that's making adult readers so uneasy? It's not part of the problem with YA--it's part of the whole reason teens are willing to bother with YA literature at all now. Because it's willing to be real, and true, and to show the world instead of delivering lectures about it.

More whispers of a future release

Thu, 15 May 2008 14:57:01 GMT

Bones now has a Library of Congress listing. This geekily pleases me. :-)

It's also available for pre-order from Booksense and Amazon.

A couple weeks worth of linky

Tue, 13 May 2008 16:43:29 GMT

alanajoli made me A lolcat for me. Isn't it adorable? :-)

lnhammer posts his dogmatic writing advice manifesto.

kporterbooks asks are we listening to teens, or just hearing them? (Via revisionnotes.)

Publisher's Weekly reports a new Madeleine L'Engle novel.

msagara on how being a mother is like being a writer.

tammy212 on why she's a feminist.

msagara again, on why we can't all simply choose to write bestsellers, but also on the choices writers can make.

coppervale says: "...never give up what you want the most, for what you want most at that moment." Along with other wise things about the business of being a writer.

When I left St. Louis in 1993 to move to Tucson, the Mississippi River was rising behind me, lapping at the steps of the Gateway Arch. The flooding there gave me a sort of pre-desert lesson as to just how powerful water can be. Yet according to one geologist (and no doubt others) the city's development still ignores the hard facts of living on a flood plain.

Speaking of St. Louis and the Midwest, the good news is that the New Madrid fault may be less dangerous as previously thought. The bad news is that the Wabash Valley Fault just might be more dangerous.

Anyone want to learn Icelandic?

Mon, 12 May 2008 19:25:05 GMT

Specifically, would anyone within driving distance of Tucson and the UofA like to learn Icelandic?

It turns out the UA Critical Languages program will offer pretty much any language, so long as they can find at least four or five interested students, and then can find a native speaker to tutor the class. lnhammer and I make two ... anyone want to join us? :-)

More on YA SF/fantasy

Mon, 12 May 2008 14:21:38 GMT

lnhammer and bondgwendabond say useful things about the problems with assuming YA and adult SF/fantasy publishing is a zero sum game in the first place. Because with the exception of a few lines like Starscape and Mirrorstone, YA SF/fantasy isn't sold by imprints of adult lines, but mostly by completely separate imprints of completely separate publishers that think of themselves as YA imprints first, with SF/fantasy, mysteries, adventure stories, gossipy contemporary novels, problem novels, and all the rest sold side by side.

From a YA imprint's point of view, that YA fantasy trilogy is competing not with the adult fantasy trilogy on the other side of the bookstore, but the bestselling Gossip Girls book and the award-winning animal story on the same shelf, as well as with other YA fantasy trilogies. A YA reader is debating between Stephanie Meyer and Judy Blume, not Scott Westerfeld and George R.R. Martin.

One could argue that in spite of this in the big-picture view adult sales are still dwindling because folks are shopping in the YA section, but I'm not sure I'm convinced it's quite so cause and effect. I think--especially since there are differences in the types of stories being told even when you factor out the coming-of-age thing--that it may be more like adult SF/fantasy is for complicated reasons failing to connect with older readers as well as it used to, at the same time YA SF/fantasy is succeeding in connecting with younger ones (and some adults) in greater numbers than before--that these two things are happening for two mostly different reasons.

As lnhammer and bondgwendabond say, the two "genres" really do act mostly independently of each other, and there are only a few people who even could decide to focus on YA instead of adult SF/fantasy because it sells better.

On YA SF/fantasy sales

Sun, 11 May 2008 17:45:00 GMT

There's been a bit of talk online lately about the fact that YA SF/fantasy is selling better than the adult stuff.

There's an undercurrent here--not by all commenters (and the comments are interesting to read), but by some--that there's something disconcerting about this, that having the good stuff or the best-selling stuff winding up in the YA section somehow diminishes the adult section, because it means fewer of the best books wind up there.

And I've been trying to articulate just what bothers me about this, and I think it comes down to: You're begrudging teens the good stuff. More, you're begrudging teens the good stuff because you want it for yourself.

Cynical-me thinks what's going on here, at least a little, is that adults (especially those who don't particularly enjoy YA as a genre) just can't deal with things actually being in some small way better for teens than for adults.

Teens have to put up with enough nonsense. Why shouldn't the best books being written--or yes, even the books selling the best--be written for them? I have no problem with this, and I wouldn't even if I weren't a YA reader myself--even if these were books I couldn't, personally, enjoy.

Adults control enough of the cool stuff. I see no reason to begrudge teens SF/fantasy market share.

KW West

Sun, 11 May 2008 16:09:04 GMT

Just back from a week at the first Kindling Words West, where I spent my days walking and writing amid the Georgia O'Keefe cliffs of New Mexico's Ghost Ranch, and the nights talking with other writers who were doing the same. My first day or so there especially, I could barely stand to be indoors amid that landscape, so I would write outside, staring out at those cliffs, listening to the wind and the scuttle of lizards over paper-dry bark, until I hit a need-to-think point, then walk until I hit a need-to-write point, repeat as needed. Later, I also spent stretches writing in my room, or in the dusty old unused building I found with a view out onto an arroyo, windows open, singing along with my mp3 player as I wrote.

Most of all I reconnected with the fact that the act of writing, of striving to tell a story as well as I can, is sacred. The rest--the whole business of marketing and selling and building a career--are important, and I don't take them lightly. But in the end, the writing, the commitment to craft and story and getting better--that's what this is all about, and they matter deeply.

Being in the company of other writers who clearly felt the same way--and who gave each other the time and space to create, yet were there to talk to and support one another when we came up for air out of that creating space--made for a lovely retreat.

We can't always drink the mead of poetry; sometimes we make do with the fruitpunch of passable prose

Sun, 11 May 2008 15:53:07 GMT

Dear Protagonist About Whom I Can Say Nothing Coherent Just Now,

You idiot.

That is all,

Me

May/"Frog Princes"

Thu, 01 May 2008 14:31:51 GMT

May's story is "Frog Princes."

I've written several stories about girls who get tangled up with shapeshifting boys the past few years. But this story reminds me that not all shapeshifting boys are created equal. :-)

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:33:02 GMT

I often get asked, "Have you ever written a book from a boy's point of view?" -- because all of my novels (though not all my short stories) so far have had girl protagonists.

I'm never quite sure how to answer that, but I only recently realized that when I do answer, some part of me is apologizing. "No, those just haven't been the stories I've wound up telling so far." "Well, I always do have strong secondary male characters." "No, but it hasn't been deliberate, maybe some day I will, I don't know."

And while it's true that maybe someday I'll write a novel from a boy's POV--because I'd never limit what stories I might decide to tell next week, next year, or next decade; and because the story often knows what it wants better than I do--the apologizing, however subtle, has to stop.

"Yes, I enjoy telling stories from girls' POVs. I find their stories and their viewpoints really interesting and compelling, thanks."

None of these things is quite like the others

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:21:55 GMT

Billy Collins wrote the best poem about critique groups and workshops ever--I reread it regularly.

kateelliott says dogmatic things about writing I can actually get behind. :-)

shanna_s on finding a legitimate agent.

Cute fuzzy and not-so-fuzzy animals at the Reykjavík zoo. Just because.

In Britain, home libraries are more popular than home theaters. Why do I suspect the same isn't true here in the States?

On the problem of Men Who Explain Things. I'd not articulated it quite as well as this writer had, but yeah. That. How many women haven't been on the receiving end of this sort of conversation?

One more reason books matter: a girl reports the molestation of herself and her siblings after reading a book about it. (Via slwhitman.)

Summary of episodes of Woops!, a short-lived post-apocalytpic comedy on Fox. The only real question may be, just how early did this "post-apocalyptic Gilligan's Island" jump the shark?

Revising the number of missing children downwards: According to the Justice Department, there are only about 115 such incidents each year. (Via kate_nepveu.)

Related to the above: Why I let my 9-year-old ride the subway alone. (Via lnhammer.) (ETA: The author of the article has also started a blog, Free Range Kids.)

Stop me before I procrastinate again

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:49:01 GMT

Dear Secondary Character Who's Shaping Up Nicely,

Cool: trying to strike a bargain by offering to recite your poetry.

Not-so-cool: Falling silent and expecting me to write the poem in question.

I'm not a poet. If you are, the least you could do is help me out here.

Me

------
Dear Me,

You don't flinch from slitting throats or destroying the world, but you flinch from writing poetry?

Seriously.

Me

-----
Dear Primary Character Who's Finally Getting Her Act Together,

I knew you had some fire in you.

Okay, I didn't mean that literally. But still, I'm not complaining.

Me

Writing about loss

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:53:01 GMT

Some of my middle grade reading lately has gotten me to thinking about the question of ... why do we so often write about loss when we write for children? (And not only in stories where the beloved pet dies -- in other ways, as well.)

I do it, too -- I can't think of a book where I haven't done it in one way or another, though in Secret it's pretty subtle and not really the main point -- so I don't think we should stop doing it. But I do find myself wondering: do we write about loss because it's a part of young lives, and so relevant to young readers? Or do we write about loss because it's part of adult lives, and so relevant to us--are we projecting our own concerns onto our readers?

Or is that an impossible distinction to make, because children's lives and adult lives exist in the same larger world, after all, and we can't tease them apart or pretend they exist in isolation from one another?

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:24:10 GMT

Several bits of good short story news recently. :-)

"Dragon Offerings" will appear in the March 2009 Tales of the Talisman. (Which remains the only magazine willing to pay in dinosaurs. (I don't know about you, but this is a serious consideration for me when choosing a market!)

"Alien Promises" has sold to Escape Pod. (This one first appeared in Bruce Coville's Book of Aliens. A story about what happens when you promise a friend--or an enemy--that you'll tell them first, should the aliens finally come and offer to take you away.)

"What Fire Is" has been accepted for the fourth Tales of Valdemar anthology. (This one's set entirely in Karse, during the time when heralds and their companions were distant demons to the north, and children were still burned for having magic.)

Talking about writing

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 23:06:18 GMT

I had the honor of speaking to Marge Pellegrino's Writing for Children class over at Pima Community College today about Three Paths to a Story--basically, my struggle to figure out the right way to write. (The very short version: Every story is different, and I just need to live with that. :-)) (More importantly, every writer is different, too, and what works for one might well not work for another.)

If you're in Tucson, want to write for kids or teens, and ever have a chance to take Marge's class, go for it. She does a wonderful job of creating a supportive workshopping environment--one that strongly encourages constructive feedback, yet makes sure it's given in positive ways.

To her students and the other class visitors: thanks for listening, and thanks for all your great questions!

Rigging the end of the world

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 02:19:33 GMT

lnhammer pointed me toward the ~~storyTropes~~ TVTropes entry on the Cozy Catastrophe, an alternative to the "only the mean/tough/etc. survive" end of the world scenario. :-)

I've been thinking for a while about how, just as we can rig the worlds of our stories to make them sympathetic to the ways we think the world does or should work, we can also rig the (fictional) end of the world.

So in the Ember books and, even more, in Life As We Knew It, the food supply and other essential materials are in a sense "rigged" as things we can't get more of--which becomes a way of keeping a power structure in place, because you need a system for distributing--or withholding--those goods. (That power structure breaks down when goods grow sparse though, or when it turns out there's a way out--which there is in Ember, isn't in LAWKI.)

Anyway, what you need to survive in a world like that are connections--to at least some of the people with access to some of the food supply. (This is strongly true in Life As We Knew It. In Ember, while we do find a way out--we then need to find ways to connect and work with the people with access to the food supply in the out we find.)

To survive in a world more like that in Hole in the Sky, where a virus wiped out most of the population, what you need to survive is something closer to self-sufficiency, or else the skills to be the sort of trader who helps other people be self-sufficient. A virus means you tend to live in small groups, not large centralized ones, which encourages self-sufficiency more, because any stray person--any stranger--could bring the virus and destroy you all. Or else you could be one of the lucky ones who manages, at cost, to be immune to the virus--and it's those folks who actually do throw a wrench in the works of the society, because they're playing by different rules.

If you want a world in which the spoils go to those with the most guns and ammunition, you have to make sure the world ends in a way that lets the guns and ammunition survive, or else you have to leave enough infrastructure behind to make more. If you want cooperation to be key, you have to make survival hinge on something that requires cooperation--successful agriculture, say; or maybe needing to keep a big bad from breaching your cooperatively-built town walls. Everything from what how the environment changes to what governmental and physical and infrastructures remain in place rigs the sort of world your playing with. If you want engineering and cleverness to be key, throw the world into a deep dark place that only engineering and cleverness can get it out of.

Or you can have a cosy catastrophe, where things are rigged so that life more or less goes on, and folks don't sweat the end of everything so much.

Pixel-Stained Technopeasantry

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:14:15 GMT

So, I don't have a new offering available for International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, but April's story, "Heart's Desire" will remain up on my web site until the end of the month. :-)

Or else, here's a list of folks who did make stories available specifically for this day. :-)

Fragments found in a file

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:20:14 GMT

Dear Character Who I'm Trying to Keep from Turning Into an Unambigous Villain, Not That You're Making It Easy,

The less time we spend in your point of view, the more I like you.

You might want to think about that sometime.

But not on stage.

Me

=-=-=-=-=

Dear Muse,

What's with the multi-story fascination with slitting throats, or threatening to?

Seriously. There's nothing in my deep dark past for you to draw upon here, so where are you getting this from?

Just wondering,

Me

Horses, bears, boys, etc.

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 22:29:05 GMT

So in a scene that may or may not stay in the final version of TE, we have a boy who has shapeshifted into a bear, and our protagonist is, essentially, riding on his back to get where she needs to go. (This is, alas, one of those things you cannot research directly!)

My protagonist comments at one point that riding the bear (riding bearback?) felt "like flying, or better than flying."

I don't know whether that will stay either yet. But after I wrote it, I stopped a moment. Because this book is YA, but in my middle grade Phantom Rider books, I'm pretty sure my protagonist says pretty much the same thing. Only she was talking about a magical ghostly dream horse, and my protagonist now is talking about a shapeshifting boy.

And I thought, wow, it's true. Girls really do love horses and boys for the same reasons. :-)

Assorted linkiness

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:42:56 GMT

In the Steampunk Star Wars universe, Han Solo is still hot, but C3PO gains a few extra levels of cool, too.

jeannineatkins in praise of uncertainty.

haikujaguar on how our successes are not our identity.

msagara talks to jimhines about being a bookseller.

msagara in her own journal on why you shouldn't believe writers when they tell you they're writing garbage, and why the fact that most writers at some point think they are doesn't mean they don't care about their work.

Someone had to write this headline. I'm glad the Onion was up for the task.

On flinching

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:41:22 GMT

I've been thinking lately (no doubt by way of procrastinating on TE) about what I would do for a sequel to Bones, should I get to write one, and as I tossed possibilities around I had a discussion with lnhammer that went something like this:

lnh: "Are you flinching?"^*

me: "I just don't want to hurt anyone else. I hurt too many people the last book."

lnh: "Wait--a moment ago you were talking about wiping out a whole town, and now you're worried about hurting one character?"

me: "Yes, but that would have been a whole new town. I don't care about anyone there yet. But here now I'm thinking about hurting characters I know."

At which point lnhammer, in his wisdom, simply gave me a long look.

Because of course, fictionally killing a town of people you don't know is nothing beside hurting one character you care about--that hopefully the reader will care about.

The easiest thing I did, in writing Bones, was to wipe most of the planet out in a catastrophic magical war. Apocalyptic horrors are easy. It's the small personal horrors--a baby set out on a hillside, a mother abandoning her daughter, a single plant attacking a single named character--that are hard.

^*lnhammer also told me to stop flinching when I wanted to save W.

A pronouncement about pronouncements

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:42:20 GMT

The writing blogosphere seems to be in a very pronouncement-prone place right now, filled with posts about how "real writers do this" and "you can't really write unless you do that." No doubt I've contributed without realizing it, at this time or another.

But I think I'd like a hiatus on any of us claiming to know anything about how anyone can or should or does write except ourselves. Or, failing that, I'd like for us to all assume there's an invisible disclaimer that goes with every post about writing--and anything else for that matter--even if we sometimes forget to include it explicitly:

This worked for me. I include it here only because I find it interesting that it worked for me, and also because there's always a chance it will work for you, too. But of course I can't tell whether it will; only you can tell that.

For every writing process out there, there will be people who have made a career of it, people who've made a rewarding hobby of it, and people who've done all sorts of in between things that defy easy labels. Writing is a chaotic, no-one-size-fits-all system. Life is a chaotic, no-one-size-fits-all system, if it comes down to that.

I also think I'd like a moratorium on online discussions what does or doesn't make someone a real writer. (Though anyone who considers themselves a real writer--by whatever criteria they personally use--is still welcome to download the certificate, of course.) Each of us is responsible for our own career, our own writing, our own lives. It's none of anyone's concern how anyone else chooses to define themselves.

Because most memes fail to ask the things we really want to know

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:17:25 GMT

1. Have you ever killed a man?
2. With your own hands?
3. What, in your opinion, is the best way to transport contraband across state and country lines?
4. Even if you're transporting explosives?
5. Really?
6. Have you ever stolen a library book?
7. On purpose, or only because you found it under your bed years after you reported it lost and paid the fine?
8. Where were you on November 1, 2007?
9. Can you prove it?
10. You had to think about that, didn't you?
11. How much is it worth to you for me to pretend I didn't notice?
12. Have you spent years building up an immunity to iocane powder? (And if you know a faster method, will you share it?)
13. Name three different ways to start a fire.
14. Now try to convince me you only know that because you were a Girl/Boy Scout/Guide once.
15. How many digits of pi can you recite from memory?
16. Did you have to count out the digits on your fingers to answer that?
17. Did you check online to make sure you remembered right before answering?
18. Does all this talk about numbers make you uncomfortable?
19. Or are you just wondering what it has to do with the rest of the meme?
20. Seriously, where did you bury the body?
21. Where were you on March 16, 2036?
22. If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump, too?
23. What is the ninja replacement score for your life?

Dreamhunter/Dreamquake

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:06:26 GMT

Walking through the YA section of the bookstore last night I realized there are clearly only two ways to survive high school: you can plot and scheme and gossip behind your friends' backs; or you can follow the fairies (werewolves, vampires, your choice) away into another world.

This explains so much about my own high school experience.

Finished Elizabeth Knox's Dreamquake (the second Dreamhunter book) last night. Have copies of my own on order so I can read them again sometime. The last half of the book there were several oooooh and wow moments--and then one thing I thought was surely going to happen, only to give up on it, only to have it happen after all.

The premise of these books is relatively simple: there's a Place where certain people--dreamhunters--can go to catch dreams and then emerge back into this world to deliver/perform them for others. Yet from that the author spins out a million small and large grounded worldbuilding details that made me believe in the Place, rather than seeing it as merely a convenient fiction from which to spin out a story.

(Go to www.rot13.com and paste in the spoilers below to decode them--you can put any responses into rot13 if you don't want to spoil others in turn.)

Naq gura gur nhgube tbrf nurnq naq qrfgeblf ure perngvba. Naq rira gubhtu V xarj fur zvtug qb gung--V guvax qbvat fb jnf cerggl pyrneyl ba gur gnoyr sebz gur fgneg--V ybir gung fur qvq qb vg. Qbvat vg jnf rknpgyl gur evtug guvat sbe gur fgbel.

Jung qvq fhecevfr zr, gubhtu, jnf abg gur qrfgeblvat bs gur cynpr, ohg gur zbzrag jura Fnaql Znfba fubjrq hc (rneyvre V gubhtug ur zvtug; ohg V'q ybat fvapr tvira hc ba gung cbffvovyvgl). Uvf fheiviny punatrf rirelguvat: znxvat gur shgher jr'q frra abg varivgnoyr, guebjvat gur jbeyq jvqr gung'f whfg orra qrfgeblrq jvqr bcra ntnva, naq nybat boyvgrengvat Pnf Qbena'f fzht pregnvagl gung rirelguvat jbhyq jbex bhg sbe uvz orpnhfr bs jung ur'q frra va uvf bja qernzf. Naq yrfg jr jbaqre jurgure guvatf nera'g qrfgvarq gb unccra gur jnl Ynhen fnj gurz nsgre nyy, jr unir gjb guvatf: gur nobyvfuzrag bs uneq ynobe sbe pbaivpgf, naq zber, gur snpg gung ure bja puvyq unf gur ynfg anzr Znfba, naq fb pna'g or tebjvat hc gb or gur fnzr puvyq nf Ynmnehf Unzr. Guvaxvat nobhg gur gjb bs gurz yvivat fvqr ol fvqr va gur jbeyq (naq Ynmnehf jngpuvat guvatf hasbyq n frpbaq gvzr, bayl qvssreragyl) znxrf zl urnq uheg, ohg va n tbbq jnl.

Naq gur tbyrzf! Gur tbyrzf jrer vagrteny abg bayl gb gur cybg ohg gb gur ragver rkvfgrapr bs gur cynpr, jura V jnf fb fxrcgvpny nobhg hfvat gurz ng nyy ng svefg. Ybiryl, ybiryl, ybiryl.

But really it's the inventiveness of the Place and the world--combined with the textured and real feeling of the somehow still dreamlike prose--combined with characters who are also real and distinct and nearly every last one of them significant--that makes this book work for me.

Distances traveled

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 22:28:01 GMT

I didn't quite manage to time this for race day, but today I've reached Lothlórien, fourteen months after I started on the Eowyn Challenge.

The Eowyn Challenge, for those who haven't met it, is a fun way to encourage oneself to walk, bike, run, or pretty much get moving in any way at all--basically, you track the miles you go against the miles followed by the characters in the Lord of the Rings. So far, I've walked, run, biked, swum, and occasionally aerobic-ed and yardwork-ed 920 miles since setting out from Bag End.

There are some tools for tracking your progress on the web site, or you can join me--and jamiam and telophase--over in either jannimetrics or your own journal, too. (If you do start tracking the challenge in your own journal or another, let me know, and I'll make sure my metrics journal friends you!)

Speaking of running, the results have turned up after all. I'd pretty much gotten my sense of perspective in place and know that the point was simply finishing now, but still, it is nice to know. :-)