Ramblings of an aspiring writer

(I know, I know, this should have been up hours ago. I promise to be more on the ball next week. Really.)

For a while now, agents have been complaining about how the parents in YA (especially paranormal YA) are either dead, neglectful, or oblivious. They want stories featuring teens with intact, functional families. On the one hand, I totally get it. I grew up in a big family, my parents have been married fifty years now. A lot of my friends from high school had similar backgrounds. Even those whose parents had divorced still had nice, functional familial units (at least as functional as anyone else’s).

So why not in YA novels?

Here’s the thing, that big, functional family of mine? Lots of drama, and when I say lots, I mean LOTS. We love each other and overall can get along, but get us in tight quarters and someone is going to blow at some point. It’s a given. I think this week on vacation I spent half my time holding my breath, just hoping I wouldn’t be the one to set off the explosion this time.

That would be great fodder for some YA stories. I’m thinking contemporary could do it without too much trouble, and it would be perfect to make fun of in a nice comedic YA. When you’re talking paranormal though, it gets a little dicier. Teens in paranormal are generally dealing with messed up, otherworldly stuff. Unless the parents are involved in that other world themselves, bringing them into it just means they are likely to take control of the story from the teens.

Does it have to happen that way? No. Sometimes an author can work it out where the parents are there and not completely oblivious to what is going on. But as often as not, to get to the meat of the story, the parents need to (in one way or another) be out of the way so the teens can deal with the issue at hand. Does it always mean they have to be dead? No. Of course not. But it would make it a lot harder for a teenage zombie hunter to sneak out at night if she has to share a room with her little sister or if her brother stays up till the wee hours of morning playing computer games. Not impossible, just unnecessarily messy.

Having said all that, it’s great when an author can pull it off. I just think expecting it to be the norm in the messed up situations that are the setting for YA paranormals is as bad as the dead parents being the norm. If the parents are dead, I want it to be necessary for the story beyond getting them out of the way. If they’re oblivious, I want something similar. I want everything to have a reason, and a good reason, within the confines of the story and the characters.

What about you? Does the parent/family issue in YA bug you? Can you name some examples of YA novels with whole, functioning families in them?

It’s kind of crazy looking back over the years and seeing how certain styles come and go (and occasionally come back again). When I was little I remember my sisters talking about how awful bell-bottoms were and how they’d never wear them again. Flash forward about twenty years and, surprise, the look was back. Of course, this time around the fashion industry called them flares, but don’t be fooled, they were bell-bottom redux.

Back in the 80s and into the early 90s there were a few trends in hair accessories that I was sure would never return once they died. I’m talking of course about the hair clip, the scrunchie, and the banana clip.

You know, if you would have asked me years ago which one might come back, it certainly wouldn’t have been the hair clip. You see, the other two either had a utilitarian purpose (scrunchies were more gentle on your hair than rubber bands) or a decorative purpose (I still think that the cascade of hair when worn in a banana clip is beautiful and hard to duplicate in any other way). Hair clips? They were just the “new” barrettes.

Shows what I know. Hair clips have new life creating care-free waterfall effects in hair. Some people wear the look well enough that I’m envious of their gorgeously clippable hair.

Personally, I can’t wait for the return of the banana clip.

So what fashion trend from now do you think should be buried in a deep dark fashion tomb, never again to see the light of day?

This is a vacation issue of updates, so I’m going to be really low-key about it.

My house is [barring robbery, fire, or other (un)natural disaster] in the same shape I left it. Grass is probably getting too long by this point, but there isn’t much I can do about it right now.

Working out? Hahahahaha I walked back and forth from the house to the ocean a couple times today. Helped my son with his boogie board, and ran around Costco and some grocery stores hunting for salmon. Does that count?

Writing is going so-so. The other me did her final read-through on the short that comes out next week last night and made a few quick fixes. The YA, however, is going slowly. Good news, both the first kiss and THE first kiss have been drafted. Bad news? I’m still only hovering in the mid-30s on word count. I don’t know why it’s going so slow, but I hope things pick up sometime this week. I at the very least need to get some mad words on the drive home (glad my husband prefers to be the one driving).

That’s about it. Next week I’ll be home, so I hope to be back on my game then. On the other hand, summer is almost over, and once school starts back up, I’m going to need something different to blog about on Mondays. If you, dear reader, have anything you’d like to see in the Monday slot instead of a weekly update, let me know

Yesterday at the in-laws, the hubs and I took the kids out on the jet-skis. After about an hour, our five-year-old daughter was done. She wanted to go back to the house. Since hubby has been boating and stuff on this lake periodically for twenty-odd years, I stupidly assumed he knew his way around. Yeah. Not so much. Our hour or two out on the lake turned into closer to four hours. Four hours on the lake with two kids tired of being out there. And we won’t even talk about why I wanted to get back.

The funny (in hindsight only) part about all of this is that I had us almost back to my in-laws when hubby decided we were too close to a landmark and the house had to be farther back the way we’d come. Had I stuck to my guns and said, “Let’s just go this way a little longer,” we’d have made it back. But I didn’t, and so our adventure really got going.

Eventually we made it back though, and the only one the sun punished was my husband, so it was all okay. After dinner, hubby wanted to go out again. I kind of wanted to write, but instead of saying no, I agreed to go. His parents had said we could ride the big one together, and when he said that’s what he wanted to do I said okay, even though I kind of wanted to ride on my own.

We were out maybe fifteen or twenty minutes when hubby decided to make a slow tight turn on the big jet-ski. I hadn’t told him that it didn’t turn well at low speeds. We capsized. No big deal. We flip it back over, but somehow it took on water and we couldn’t both get back on (it kept tipping). After a while, I give up and tell him to take it solo back to his parents’ and I swim to the closest landing. Oh, and because I don’t want to call him back to take them on the jet-ski, I end up losing my prescription sunglasses when I get back in the water. (Jet-ski dumped us like five times and I was fine. I jump in the water once and they’re gone.)

Here’s the thing. I’m supposed to be a pretty smart person. From word go today, I had second thoughts about everything that went wrong before it happened, but I didn’t follow those instincts. I went along for the ride because sometimes I get tired of going against the grain.

In the first chapter of my WiP, my main character, Dani, rushes into a situation. It’s completely impulsive and irresponsible of her. It’s stupid. But Dani had been sent on a mission she felt ill-suited for. She was angry and not thinking clearly. She was sick of following orders and going with the grain.

Bad decisions make life complicated and frustrating, but they also make for interesting characters. If you find yourself stuck while writing, I highly encourage frustrating your character to the point she (or he) makes a bad decision. It’s always fun to see where those will lead.

(Apologies in advance for the lack of pictures, hotel internet is being wonky.)

I’m writing this as midnight approaches and thinking of all the things I used to do last minute as a teenager. There weren’t a lot of them, but one sticks in my mind above the others: writing papers. Seems not much has changed.

Tonight as I was telling a story about my five-year-old daughter playing with her Barbies, zombies came up (as they often do in stories about my kids). It led to an interesting realization: I never saw a zombie movie as a teenager. In fact, I think I saw my first actual zombie movie just last October when we saw Zombieland on Halloween.

Now, I saw vampire movies and werewolf movies and ghost movies and other monster movies, but I can’t think of a single zombie style horror flick I saw (there was one I saw later that had to do with voodoo type zombies maybe, but nothing in the way people generally think of zombies today). It’s honestly a little sad because I was a kid when the Evil Dead movies came out. Granted, I was only eight when the first one was released, but it was on video when I was a teenager and made my forays into horror movies. I never saw any of them, and I had mad love for Bruce Campbell when he did the TV series, Briscoe County, Jr. But even that wasn’t enough to entice me to see the films.

It wasn’t until 2008 that I entered the world of Evil Dead. “But Julie,” you say, “you just said your first zombie flick was Zombieland in 2009.” That’s true. I didn’t see Evil Dead as a film. I saw it as a musical (and it’s hilarious — if you have the opportunity to go, I highly recommend it). So, like vampires (which started with The Lost Boys for me), I’m treading into zombies on a wave of humor. It’s a good way to ease into a genre I never thought I’d find appealing. In the last year, I’ve also read two zombie novels: Happy Hour of the Damned by Mark Henry (I laughed so hard I think I peed my pants at least once) and a fabulous YA manuscript by one of my crit partners, Katee Robert (seriously, agents, someone snap this girl up!).

What’s the point of all of this and how does it relate to Way Back Wednesday? The thing is I was a serious kid in high school, and because of that I chose to miss out on a lot of things, some silly (like zombie flicks) and others important. I think in the end, even the non-serious teenagers miss something, but for me, I kind of wish I’d found zombies earlier. Besides, Bruce Campbell was hot.

No major update this week since I’m on vacay.

Not really working out, but doing a LOT of walking. Writing when I can and trying not to get distracted by shiny things.

On a high note, we’ve hit the Air and Space Museum, the Natural History Museum, and the Smithsonian Castle. Tomorrow it’s off to the zoo and the Spy Museum. By the time I get to the beach I’m going to be too tired to do anything but lie on the sand.

I totally planned to blog today. Really I did. Unfortunately, as so often happens, life got in the way.

I’ve spent most of the day running around like a chicken with my head cut off. It hasn’t been pretty, trust me. What that means is it is five o’clock and no blog post.

The thing is life gets in the way a lot. It gets in the way of blogging, tweeting (yeah, I’ve been pretty scarce on Twitter lately too), and sometimes even writing. I didn’t manage any words at all yesterday — I was just too tired to stay up and try to force things. Fortunately, Wednesday night, some of my Twitter friends encouraged me through my exhaustion and I managed almost 1100 words in the hour I had available.

Now, if you do the math, that comes out to a little over eighteen words a minute.

On the one hand, that’s sad. I can type a lot faster than that. On the other hand, I can also stare at my computer for an hour and write nothing. So, I’m taking my 18.3 wpm and running with it. It’s 1100 words I didn’t have before. And honestly, that’s the only way I get things done sometimes.

When other responsibilities get in the way, I do my best and take what I can get with a smile on my face.

I’m not a natural optimist, but this isn’t a career path for a pessimist. So I fake it, and I’ve found if I fake something long enough, eventually even I believe it a little bit. That means that today, even though life happened and got in the way of blogging and family responsibilities are going to keep me tied up for the next two weeks, I’m going to get words. I’m going to finish this manuscript.

Hell. I’m going to finish this manuscript before the kids go back to school.

Yep, you read that right. I’m putting it out there, and I’m going to believe it.

I’m just hoping some time between now and then, life decides to let me breathe a little.

As many of you know, I have a rather warped sense of humor. I think I developed this at a young age. You see, when I was a kid in the 70’s a couple of women single-handedly started trends in hair styles. One was Farrah Fawcett with her long, golden waves and massive feathering (I still love that word)

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Guys drooled over Farrah, and more than one girl I knew wanted that hair (including at least one of my sisters). They spent hours with curling irons and hair spray trying to get it. Farrah was the 70s “It Girl” and everyone knew it.

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She wasn’t the only one to hit with a hairstyle trend in the 70s though. Another woman came on the scene at the 1976 Winter Olympics with a look all her own. It was bouncy and simple to maintain. A lot of women, specifically those looking for a trendy, easy style, went to salons in search of the look. The other people who ended up with it? Little girls whose mom’s were sick of trying to do their hair.

You see, I’m the youngest of six kids — five of us girls — and I’m pretty sure by the time I came along, my mom was just sick of doing hair at all. So, I ended up with the cut. To make matters worse, even when it went out of fashion, mom kept having the stylist cut it that way. I spent way too many years of my youth looking like a boy in a dress, all thanks to figure skater, Dorothy Hamill.

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It might have been okay when I was four or five, but it’s a look you have to have a sense of humor to wear much past that, especially if you don’t have nice, cute, delicate features.

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So, I’m self-deprecating and snarky, and I owe it all to that haircut. What’s your excuse?.

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Just kidding

Quick report this week.

• Fitness (non-writing, obviously) — Still working out, still basically on track. I totally skipped yesterday, but I’m not going to stress about it. I’ve also started a new diet. I’m using this week (pre-vacay) as a trial run since I know I probably can’t stick to it while I’m away. So far, so good.  (WIN!)
• The Devil You Know — This one is in a holding pattern for now.
• Badlands — Waiting on edits
• When Angels Fall — (aka Dani’s story) Still working on it regularly, but I’m not having the huge word days I really want. Pretty sure this isn’t going to be done by the end of the month. (It was kind of an unrealistic goal anyway)  (win-lose)
• The house/yard (non-writing obviously) — Sprinkler is fixed, everything looks okay. Painted our “dining room” (actually library). There were a lot of tears and cursing involved — one end of the room has ceilings that are somewhere between 15 & 18 feet high (hubs says 18, I’m not so sure). Next time we’re hiring it done. (still calling it a win)
• Keep a positive attitude — Doing okay. A little on edge lately though. We’ll see how that works out LOL.

Decent week and I got to hang at my sister’s pool with the fam on Sunday, so that was nice. If I could just get things together here for vacay, I’d be all set  Not sure if there will be an update next week, but I’ll do my best!

People who know me understand that depending on the situation and the people who are around, I can either be extremely loud and talkative or I can clam up and basically disappear into the woodwork. It’s both a gift and a curse, because usually my instincts just drive me to certain behavior, and I have a really hard time changing course. Some friend who know me as one type of person online get a little confused when they meet me in person if it happens to be a “disappear” situation.

Characters can be like that too. I think I know them, and then they surprise me by fading into the background.

In my Divine Children stories, my main characters don’t usually have that issue. Both Avery and Dani, in their own ways, are loud all the time. It’s fabulous since they always have something to say.

But those stories have a secondary PoV in them. Bryce wasn’t so hard. Once I got that boy talking, he had a lot to say, even if he kind of spit it out like he was afraid someone was going to kill him before he managed to tell it all. Now though, I’m dealing with Gav, and Gav is the strong silent type. It’s kind of sexy from the outside, but as the writer, when I get to his chapters, I’d really like him to come out of his shell a little more.

For instance, the past couple days, I was working on a Gav chapter. It’s a major turning point in his relationship with Dani, so I figured it was going to be this really meaty, long chapter. I “finished” only to find out it was half the length of pretty much any of Danielle’s chapters.

I almost pounded my head against my keyboard.  Fortunately, after a little thought, I realized I could carry his PoV a little longer without it messing with the storyline (or losing the purpose of the chapter), and now his chapter fits with hers in terms of length. Seriously though, this guy is going to kill me before the manuscript is finished.

So how about you? Do you have issues with PoV characters not having enough to say? And if so, how do you deal with it?