annajarzab

OH. MY. GOD. YOU. GUYS.

Packing is so awful! I walk into our living room and just marvel at how we were able to get so much stuff to “fit” (I use the word loosely here, because we had stuff shoved in every crevice) in our teeny, tiny apartment. It’s absurd how much stuff we had hidden away in little nooks and crannies. My roommate and I were discovering all kinds of stuff–an adorable set of juice glasses I’d completely forgotten I had, knives we’d never used (which will be displaced by the set of knives my mom sent me a while ago that are currently living at work, which I realize makes me look like a serial killer, but whatevs), a pizza cutter…the list goes on and on.

The problem with our old place (this is the part where I talk about living in New York, which I feel like is only of interest to people who live in New York, so you can skip this if you don’t care) is that it had about zero amounts of storage. That doesn’t really seem to make any sense because I’m telling you we totally forgot about things we had, but it’s because everything was shoved into the few small cabinets we had, and we never had any cooking space (most of this discovery happened in the kitchen), so we had no desire to cook, hence the not using anything we had (I swear to God, I have pots and pans I used to use in Chicago that I absolutely have not  used since I moved to New York, because my roommate and I have just used one frying pan and one sauce pan to cook our food for two years), because there wasn’t any room to do anything with it.

This is all about to change. Our new apartment has an actual kitchen–small, but actual. It has cabinets for our things and some more counter space and is going to be a joy to spend time in. We keep marveling over this. We’re like, “We’re going to have dinner parties!” every five seconds. But I know my roommate and I, and we need to plan that stuff immediately upon moving in, or it won’t happen. We’re quite inert when we’re settled.

But anyway. What is it about packing that makes your belongings start multiplying like the loaves and fishes? Every time I think I’m done packing, I see something else I need to pack. It’s ridiculous. I’m so tired. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a week because my room is a shambles (also, after several weeks of not having heat and freezing at night, it’s a frickin’ sauna in here).

I can’t wait for all of this to be over and to be in our new place. I know I’ll shed some tears over leaving our own place–not because I love it (I do NOT), but because we spent two years there. Eesha and I are, in so many ways, totally different people than we were when we moved in. We’ve both gone through some heartbreak, and my life has completely changed because of AUT, and we’re very good friends now, whereas when we moved in to the apartment we barely knew each other. We’ll never be those girls again. We’ll never move to New York for the first time again. It’s the end of an era.

But because my default is to always believe that my life will be the same forever as it is at the moment (obviously a fallacy, but it’s just my mental default), I’m always looking backwards, not forwards, and I forget that the end of an era is always the beginning of a new era. Last night when I called him for Thanksgiving, I gave my dad this whole speech about how this upcoming year is going to be my year. This is the year things are going to go well for me, I just know it. I’m not usually the type of person to make grandiose pronouncements like that, but I’ve been tired and stressed out for a long time now, I’ve worked very hard for a long time without a break, and I’m ready to create some positive change. I’m looking forward to 2010. Not just because of AUT, although of course because of AUT, but also because I’m excited about the possibilities of the unknown.

I know how lucky I am. I have managed to make a real, honest to God life for myself in New York, which, aside from all the cliches, is actually very hard. I need to sit back and enjoy it. I need to let it wash over me and be grateful. I need to relax. That’s what I’m focused on for 2010. I believe in 2010.

But right now, it’s 2009, and I need to go to bed before I fall over and start snoozing on the floor like a Sim. Because the movers are coming at 9 AM. Oh boy.

Just in case you’re interested, Briana from The Book Pixie just posted an interview with me on her site. Just your everyday Jarzab ridiculousness, with plenty of run-on sentences, in case you’re into that sort of thing.

NCTE is an annual conference for English teachers, proper name National Conference for Teachers of English, and this year it was held in Philadelphia. I didn’t go, but thanks to some friends on the inside I got to see some pictures, including a picture of AUT at the Random House booth! Observe.

There’s my little darling! (I’ve been feeling very fuzzy and maternal about AUT lately, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.) Doesn’t it look like it’s about to topple off the table? Because it’s EDGY–GEDDIT? You get it.

Actually, it looks like Cyn Balog’s Sleepless is about to knock it off the table. Rude, Cyn. Rude. By the by, have you read Cyn’s first Delacorte book, Fairy Tale? I’m not big on the fairies, but I have to say that I really liked Fairy Tale. I thought it was funny and didn’t take itself at all seriously, which made it a perfect read for me. I found the characters sympathetic and likeable and I was really rooting for main character, Morgan. Anyway, I feel like I don’t talk about books I read that I like enough. YA books, I mean.

Let’s detour on that point for a second. I’ve read a lot of YA this year, probably more than I’ve ever read in one year in my life. Some recent faves have been The Secret Year by Jennifer Hubbard (if you like All Unquiet Things, you’ll like The Secret Year; Colt and Neily are brothers in spirit), One Lonely Degree by C.K. Kelly Martin (I read that a while back and might’ve mentioned loving it, but if not, I LOVED IT), and my friend Alex’s Brightly Woven (but you knew that).

Nina LaCour’s Hold Still was beautiful (you can watch Nina’s Borders live Point of View event here–that’s actually a link to all of the archived POV events, including ones with John Green, Jay Asher, Gayle Forman, Amy Efaw, and Laurie Halse Anderson), Amy Efaw’s After was haunting and great, Beautiful Creatures was TO DIE FOR (I had withdrawal for days after finishing it, like I missed it–LIKE A PERSON), Lauren Oliver’s Before I Fall was very well done, pitch perfect, and I’ve recently gotten completely sucked (ha! geddit! sucked! like a vampire sucks blood…you get it) into the Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead, Blood Promise easily being my favorite. If you hate Twilight because you think Bella’s boring and agentless, you’re going to love Rose from VA–that girl can kick some ass.

So there are some book recommendations for you. I can also say with the utmost confidence that The Naughty List by Suzanne Young is just lovely, really funny and bright, with such an original voice. Sorry some of these books are not yet released, but buy them as soon as you can, hm?

That’s really all I have for you, unless you care that we can get the keys to our new apartment tomorrow! And move in this weekend! Which is an awful big relief for me. Now we just have to schedule movers and do the damn thing, and then done. Which is good, because AUT comes out in less than two months now, plus Christmas (I’ll be going to Chicago for ten days–thank you, Corporation I Work For, for being so generous with the holiday time off!), plus MB revisions, which should be coming any day now–I’ll just be happy to get moving off my plate. I can’t wait to settle in to my new sweet digs.

Oh yeah, guess what? I’m totally not going to finish CH by the end of November! Like you ever believed I would.

There are many reasons for this. The first is that I, um, decided to add a new character, who I basically ganked from a book I started writing a while ago (it was my fake NaNo book last year! Fake meaning I did not work on it during NaNo but fronted like I might) that I’ve pretty much decided not to bother with. I’m…not so sure this is going to work, but I’m trying it. But now I have to go put him in the first 200 pages, because I really can’t finish the book without at least giving him a through line to the end. I just can’t work that way, it’s weird.

This decision seemed totally brilliant when I made it, but now I don’t know. We’ll see. I don’t experiment a whole lot with my books–I call ‘em like I see ‘em and don’t get fancy with the risks and such. So this is something new and different for me! I don’t know about CH, you guys. I’m very attached to it and I think parts of it are good, and I think that if I work on it it will get very, very good. BUT there’s a whole lot going on and I don’t know how hospitable the market would be to this kind of book. It’s contemporary, but it’s less high concept than AUT and MB and now the new character’s kind of putting a spin on everything…I just don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see. I like it, though. I’m happy with it, even though it’s a hot mess right now. It’s got all the right elements, I just need to wrangle them into shape. Which is the fun of it, obvs.

I’m also progressing on the CH-related short story I started a few weeks back, working title TGITW. Or TGIF, if you grew up in the nineties. Or Thank God It’s Thursday if you’re Shannel.

So anyway, yeah, it’s going pretty well. I think it’s good. As good as a not-yet-finished short story in first draft by someone who rarely writes short stories can possibly be, which is not very. But I like it, and it’s helping me work through some things, both character-related and also personal, maybe. Whatever. The point is, work is being done Chez Jarzab, even though I have packed most of my stuff in boxes and am very nervous that we don’t have keys to the apartment we plan to move into THIS WEEKEND. Which is not that big of a deal, but we don’t know when or how we are going to get these keys, which isn’t great.

OMG guys I haven’t told you about the apartment. Suffice it to say that it is great, and we signed the lease so technically it is ours from Dec 1 onward, but that doesn’t mean all will go smoothly! This is Manhattan, baby. If you’re not flying by the seat of your pants, you’re not living.

I’ll give you the full tour of the new apartment (with photos! taken on my iPhone! so not of great quality! deal with it) when I can actually, um, go in it because I have keys. We can all discover if the apartment has a dishwasher together! (I can’t remember.) But it does have a WASHER/DRYER IN THE APARTMENT (everyone who lives in New York who reads this blog just cursed me out and then swooned), of that I am SURE.

Let’s cross our fingers and hope that I get to move in on Saturday like I planned. I said cross your fingers! Thank you.

Okay, so on Friday night I saw New Moon, and, you guys? It was awesome.

It’s been getting a lot of horrible reviews, but it’s really hard to tell (j/k! it’s not really hard to tell! it’s totally obvious) if the movie is actually bad or if movie reviewers are by nature inclined to pan and hate the Twilight franchise and all it stands for because its target audience is young females and LORD KNOWS they can’t stand to see us making choices that reflect buying power. Keep the ladies in their places! Only men should be able to determine if a movie makes millions and millions of dollars at the box office simply by blowing up everything in a seven mile radius (ahem Transformers)! Because honestly, the over-the-top melodramatic romance of Twilight is the lady version of blowing stuff up.

My only concern about the film was that there was going to be too much Jacob. LOL this movie is all about Jacob, I know that, but I’m staunchly anti-Jacob, or at least I used to be. Okay, I’m still anti-book-Jacob–Jacob in the book is a total whiny brat of a tool who manipulates Bella and attacks her with his mouth. I’m also anti the way that Bella tolerates all of that shizz from him, but let’s not put Baby in a corner just yet or whatever. I have a point!

But here’s where it gets tricky: Taylor Lautner(’s chest) made me like Jacob a lot. I finally understood why maybe she might pick him, except of course I knew she wouldn’t (SPOILER!) pick him, because if there’s anything Stephenie Meyer does right in that book, it’s make a contract with the reader (I, the undersigned, Stephenie Meyer, do solemnly swear to make sure that Edward and Bella end up together as vampires at the end of this series) and stick with it! I believe in making a contract with the reader and not veering off in crazy directions when it makes no sense and presenting an unbelievable choice as a legitimate “twist”/solution.

So yeah, Team Edward 4 Lyfe or whatever, but also I get the Jacob thing now, although I still hate him in the books and always will. They were right to stick with Lautner, even though I know he went through many months of unhealthy body building to get them to hire him back, and I cringed for the first half of the movie every time he came on screen because of that awful wig they had him in. He was very likeable and believable as Jacob, and I actually believed the words that were coming out of his mouth. He might be the best actor of the three of them? Although you know I heart my RPATTZ so I don’t even know what I’m saying, crazy talk, obviously. By the way, they played the trailer for RPATTZ’s new movie (March 2010 baby!), Remember Me, before New Moon (of course they did) and it looks super great.

My favorite part of the trailer (aside from RPATTZ) is that his character reminds me somewhat of Neily, who I love. Which is funny, because I always thought RPATTZ would be a more appropriate portrayal of another character in the book, but whatever. Since Remember Me is as close to an All Unquiet Things movie as I think we’ll ever get, I’ll take it!

Secret shame: I now have two RPATTZ posters in my office. It’s okay, I work in children’s publishing–it’s allowed if you have it up ironically. Whenever people comment on it (because they do) I always tell them that he’s watching over me while I work because he loves me and he just wants me to be safe. TWILOLZ!! Gets a laff every time (I don’t think it’s ever gotten a laugh, actually).

So anyway, I thought the stuff between Bella and Jacob in New Moon was sexy and funny. The movie was a lot of fun, actually. A lot of people are using the word “joyless” to describe the relationships the series presents, and while that’s in a lot of ways true, I thought there was plenty of fun here. Lots of smiles between Bella and Jacob, he jokes around with her, even Bella says a minorly funny thing at the end of the movie when Edward’s trying to convince his family not to let Bella become a vampire and she gives him a breathy “Shut…UP” which is way more amusing in the delivery than it is on the page.

I did miss Edward. I do heart him–his hang ups about being soulless and damned are very sad to me, and one of the most interesting things about him. I can’t imagine how depressed he is or must have been for those 90 or so years he’s lived as a vampire. To believe, to truly and steadfastly believe, that there is nothing beautiful or special or good about you, must be such a hard burden to bear, a crushing weight. And if Bella lifts that weight for Edward, then good for him. And also, I get why he left her. People laugh at the whole, “I’m dangerous and I can’t protect you” thing, but he’s right–he IS dangerous and he CAN’T protect her, OBVIOUSLY. Jacob, too. They’re both dangerous creatures who could kill her as soon as look at her, and they’re often getting tangled up in a bunch of nasty supernatural business that she has no defense against. They should both leave her the hell alone, if they really want her to be safe. But they can’t because love or whatever, so fine. But at least he had to try, and that’s commendable.

Also, one final thing, because I’ve been thinking about this a lot. People say that Edward is a perv because he’s an old man lusting after a teenaged girl, even though he looks like a teenaged boy. And while that is not an incorrect theory, per se, I don’t find it all that problematic. While I would agree if it was, say, Carlisle who was dating Bella, because he’s an actual mature man, and was when he was turned into a vampire, I think Edward is probably pretty stunted as a result of all his spiritual and emotional hangups and his general antisocial behavior. He leads this lonely, passionless life, experiences nothing, feels nothing, like a depressed Peter Pan.

Strangely, I’ve never heard the “ew pervert” argument about Jesse, the immortal boy from Tuck Everlasting who falls in love with Winnie, even though he’s a hundred years old by that point and she’s like fifteen or something. Because Jesse’s a boy, not a man. He’s just been a boy a lot longer than most boys are. In that book, Mr. Tuck explains to Winnie how, when time ceases to matter, it ceases to exist. Immortal beings (such as they are) are outside of time and not subject to its rules or the things it brings a normal human–maturity, wisdom, knowledge, age. So Jesse and Edward are not, inside, the equivalents of 100 year old men. They are boys who have stepped outside of time. I think that’s different. And also amazingly interesting.

And now for the coda: how great were those Volturi, AMIRITE? Creepy and pitch-perfectly insane, just like in the book. Except Jane, who was just creepy and awesome. Dakota Fanning FTW! She stole the movie.

Why do I feel as though every blog post has to have some punny or referency title, insofar as that’s possible? “Light me up!”?? Why, Jarzab, why?

Anyway, look what I got in an email yesterday from my editor!

That’s a photo of the cover of All Unquiet Things made into a light box for the Random House booth at the Frankfurt Book Fair last month. Cool, right? (They were setting up when this photo was taken, which is why there are no books on the shelves.) It was so cool of RH to do this, and thanks must go out to sub rights for taking the picture–and my editor for sending it to me.

How’s the book going, you ask? Fine. I’m over 200 pages now, which is what we call progress. I’m also doing something which feels stupid to me now because it’s distracting me from the actual writing of this novel, but will feel smart to me six months from now when I’m revising–I’m writing a short story from the perspective of another character that takes elements of the novel-in-progress and explores them in greater depth than would be natural for the novel-in-progress (this is CH, by the way) given the narrative structure and point of view from which it’s told.

Reasons why this is stupid:

• I’m busy.
• I can only write one thing at a time, so every minute spent writing TGITW (which is the abbreviated title of the short story) is a minute not spent writing CH.
• I’ve imposed a deadline of November 30 on myself w/r/t CH because I will probably get my MB editorial letter this month and because MB was rougher when it went to my editor than AUT was, and it took many months to get AUT to the place where it is now, it will probably take many more months to get MB to the finish line, and I don’t want to leave CH almost-done until February or whatever. No wounded soldiers!
• November 30th is not very far away and there are other things that will probably suck up my time, including but not limited to AUT promotion (such as it is/will be), apartment hunting and moving, Thanksgiving, and my job. I guess that’s a longer way of saying the first thing.

Reasons why this is smart:

• The whole point of writing TGITW is to allow me to have a conversation with a character in CH that I’m still, for some reason, not entirely capable of understanding at this point in the process of writing the novel. I’m hoping that this will change when I’m done with TGITW. I know that TGITW is basically a more sophisticated (in intent, perhaps not in execution) version of the character manifestos which made AUT’s characters so real (in my opinion). So I know from experience that this type of writing is going to help me get into the mind of my character, and I will be grateful to myself later when I am on more solid footing with her.
• Extra content for the website! Except, not for, like, ever. This book isn’t even contracted yet, and TGITW would be total spoiler territory, so it’ll be a while. But still! The me of three years from now will thank the me of today.

In a semi-related note, I think it’s about time I started rolling out some more hidden content. It’s been a while since the last time we added a doll to the site. I’ve got a couple of things up my sleeve, so be sure to check back over the next few months. I’ve also got this ridiculous plan where I will post the character manifesto for the killer in AUT, but it will be password protected, so I’ve got to talk to Eric about how we’re going to do that. It probably won’t go up until the book’s been out for a while, though. Still, I think it’s a pretty cool idea.

So I’m watching Ugly Betty again (and thus commences another television-themed blog post). I know, I know, that show went downhill once they made Henry get Charlie pregnant and move back to Tuscon and then move back to New York and then mess with Betty’s feelings for a season and a half and THEN, rudeness of all rudeness, try to pass off that Gio person as a reasonable rival for Betty’s affections. As if.

Anyway, I stopped watching. Except I caught maybe one episode last season, when Betty had just started to date Matt, the rich guy. And I don’t remember caring much about the episode but I do remember thinking “I miss Henry but that dude is CUTE”. I don’t know what made me watch the season premier on Hulu a few weekends ago, but I did, and I am TO-TA-LLY HOOKED, you guys! Mark and Amanda! How did I forget how much I loved them?!

But Matt, oh, my dear, sweet Matt. Apparently, he and Betty broke up at the end of last season because Betty kissed Henry (who was in town visiting from Tuscon with his new girlfriend, also known as Hazel from Gossip Girl with blonde hair and a spray tan) and Matt saw and Matt’s heart went kersplat! all over the sidewalk but because he’s totally not over it, not even a little bit, he got a job as Betty’s new boss at Mode and is now being a complete jerk all over the place and barely doing his job because he’s too busy trying to get Betty to feel at least some of the pain he’s feeling. Mission accomplished!

I feel him, I really do. He’s so in love with Betty and all he wants is to be back together with her, but he’s so angry at her and she’s playing it so cool that he can’t get there. He’s just hurting himself, you know, because the meaner he is to her, the longer he keeps taking it out on her professionally, the less chance there is for them to get back together. But I also get Betty’s position–he’s being such a dick to her! She regrets kissing Henry and even though the show isn’t so great about telling us what Betty feels for Matt (way to make her less sympathetic, show), I SUSPECT she’s still in love with him.

In the middle of watching one of the latest episodes on Hulu, I went into the kitchen to get some iced tea and asked my roommate, “Have you ever watched Ugly Betty?” And she’s like, “I’m watching it right now!” Which is why we live together, by the way. So I launched into my opinionz about Matt, and said, “Betty needs to stick up for herself and he needs to shape up or I’m going to get off the Matt train.”

(Which is what we say about boys each other likes when they’re in our good graces: “I’m totally on the so-and-so-train.” Not even clever! But still true.)

Anyway, is it wrong that I love everyone on that show except Betty? She’s all, wah wah, my boss/ex is being mean to me, and no one likes me at work, which, NO ONE EVER LIKED YOU AT MODE, BETTY. Also, you’re not very good at your job. I mean, come on. After many, many seasons and many, many opportunities to “discover” that Mode and fashion “aren’t superficial”, she’s still hungering after the meatier stories. WELL OKAY THEN. Quit. Ugh.

I have no sympathy for Betty. She is a grand idiot. First of all, when Matt asked her at the end of last season if she still loved Henry, she was all, “Well, there’s a part of me that always will.” NO! That is not the answer! The answer is, “No, Matt, I love you.” I’m single and I know this! It’s not rocket surgery. I resent having to live vicariously through her in order to enjoy the rest of the show, but I’ll do it, for Matt. And Marc and Amanda and Hilda and Justin and sometimes Daniel.

Matt’s totally my new fake boyfriend.

You remember how I was telling you all that I’m writing a book about two estrange sisters, that I’m calling CH, not because that has anything to do with the title, which is constantly changing although I think I might’ve settled on something, but because those are the initials of the sisters? Well, that’s going pretty well, actually. I’m 190 pages into the zero draft–you know, the version of the book that’s so crappy you can’t show it to anyone because you’ll die of embarrassment if anyone finds out just how bad a writer you actually are?

Sunshine and roses today on the Jarzab blog, you guys!

Anyway, it’s going really well. I know! You thought I was going to complain. Writing this book has been an interesting experience for me–continues to be, really, since I’m not done with it, or even close. It’s been interesting because it’s been difficult to immerse myself to the level that I’ve found myself immersed in other books in the past–even GR, which I’ve been writing on and off this year as well, is much more alive in my head than CH has been. The characters in CH–C and H, mostly–have been hard to get to know.

I’m writing this book without an outline. That’s a little different for me. I’m writing GR with an outline, because it needs one, but I can only get so far on the outline without doing some serious research/puzzle creating, and I don’t have time right now, which is why all my writing energy is devoted to CH. But writing CH without an outline was purposeful, because I knew that I wasn’t going to really acquaint myself with my characters any other way. I had to let them lead the way because I didn’t know them well enough to guide them. I’m still trying to get to know especially H, because she’s difficult to penetrate, but I think more will come in the first draft.

Which leads to the point of this post–I’m over halfway done with CH! Which is cause for celebration. I always assume my books are going to be around 300 pages, because that’s been the truth so far with AUT and MB. They’re usually a little bit shorter than 300 and then expand in the revisions process, because I tend to focus on advancing action and character through dialogue, and then Joanna and my editor are like, “How about some introspection here? And here? And here?” So stuff gets added, which is funny because I feel like most writers have to cut in revisions, and I always have to beef things up a bit.

Of course, this is where all the hard work comes in. I’ve been setting my characters up for a major emotional rollercoaster, and now I’m about to plunge them straight down into it. There’s a lot going on in this section, so it’s important to keep it taught and well-paced. I very much adhere to the Kurt Vonnegut quote: “Every sentence must do one of two things–reveal character or advance the action.” Although, while true about sentences, it’s absolutely true about scenes. I try to never have a scene in my books that doesn’t do one of those two things, because I just think readers have more important things to do than listen to a character wax poetical for five pages.

(That’s not to say I always succeed; there’s two pages in MB that will almost certainly get cut in the revisions process with my editor, because my narrator makes this long, drawn-out, fairly specious comparison between falling in love and living in New York that makes sense to, like, only people who live in New York, which is not many of my readers. I love it, and I’ll fight tooth and nail to keep it in because I think it’s an interesting way to talk about how people relate to each other, but, you know, we’ll see.)

This is entirely unrelated to all the stuff I’ve just written, but I found this cute fake Polaroid picture on my friend Shannel’s blog and I wanted to post it (this is Shannel and I with our friend Carmen at her wedding). Look, it’s the ubiquitous blue dress!

I put up a new post at The A Team about recording an interview for the audio book of All Unquiet Things. It was such a fun, cool experience, and I hope I wasn’t too much of a spaz (scratch that, I know I was, but hopefully in the most amusing way possible). The Random House audio people are the best. It went really well, and I am psyched.

As you may know if you read her blog, one of my favorite writers/Tenners/bloggers, Alex Bracken, author of the lovely Brightly Woven, lives in New York. Alex and I email back and forth daily, and we try to get together once a week for an in-person chat with food. We’ve been trying out a bunch of different places in different neighborhood; tonight was Lasky’s on the Upper West Side, a really quaint Jewish deli.

As you may also know if you read Alex’s blog, she was in college when she wrote Brightly Woven and was a senior when she got her agent/publisher, so she was consumed by revisions her second semester of senior year. We were talking about that, and how she felt about it and so forth, and I brought up something that is going to start being my stock answer when people ask me in interviews what advice I have for young writers (particularly those in high school or college): Be patient with yourself.

I’ve wanted to be a writer for a really long time, since I was a pre-teen (or “tween” as we are apparently calling them these days LOL publishing speak whatevs), and I always equated “being a writer” with “being published.” Ever since I actually finished a book my senior year in high school, getting published was the consuming passion of my private life. I fantasized about what it would be like to be published, and of course I had a terribly unrealistic view because I didn’t yet know anything about publishing. In fact, it wasn’t until I actually started to work in publishing that I calmed down a lot about being published, because, let’s be honest, it isn’t all sunshine and roses. (Although sometimes it is! It sort of depends on the day.)

And, curiously, when I stopped working so hard on being published and devoted all of that energy to writing well, I started writing better, more publishable stuff.

Becoming a writer is a process of indeterminate length that requires an indeterminate amount of energy and patience. It’s important not to put too much pressure upon yourself to publish, because then you’re writing for other people and not yourself. You should always write for yourself. As Kurt Vonnegut says, “If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”

You have plenty of time to be published. All the time in the world, really. Don’t rush it. You’re a writer already. Write the best book you can, edit it, and then write another one. Lather, rinse, and repeat until you’re positive you have a book that’s ready for the world (and be honest with yourself about that). Trust me, you’ll be happy you did, because when that book hits the shelves, you’ll be proud of the work you did.

Guys: WE HAVE A PROBLEM. People have been yammering at me about how great this new show, FlashForward, is, and I’ve been like, how much TV can I watch? I mean, check it: Gossip Girl, House, How I Met Your Mother, Glee, 30 Rock, The Office, Dexter, Psych, Castle…THAT’S A LOT OF SHOWS. Considering I don’t even have any sort of TV hookup in my apartment (we have a TV, but we only use it to watch DVDs, which has nothing to do with conscientious objection, just so you don’t think I’m a hypocrite–my roommate and I were just too lazy to call Time Warner), that’s some pretty impressive boob tube consumption.

BUT, I was bored on Sunday. Saturday? I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter. What matters is, I asked my roommate what she was doing and she was like, “Catching up on FlashForward.” ALL RIGHT, I GET IT: I NEED TO WATCH THIS SHOW. So I did. And it was great. Super great. Super duper great. I loved it. I can’t wait for more episodes. And that, my friends, is the problem.

You see, my friends, there’s a reason I don’t watch Lost. Okay, I thought the pilot was boring, but ALSO, I cannot handle shows that drag you along, season after season, drawing out a mystery that will, in all likelihood, never be solved, but if it is solved, will most likely disappoint. Maybe I’ll watch Lost when the whole thing is over and I’ve already read the synopsis on Wikipedia so I know what to expect (I love spoilers, can’t get enough of ‘em, my friends hate me).

FlashForward is so one of these shows. My hope is that they’ve learned a lesson from Lost and actually know where the whole thing is going, so we don’t have to watch for five seasons and then go, “REALLY? THAT’S IT?” Fingers crossed. I know I did a bad thing by watching and investing in this show. I’m going to end up constantly refreshing Hulu, foaming at the mouth, making crazy eyes at the computer and mouthing the words, “But what does it mean?” over and over again, I just know it. (Was that a terrifying mental picture? Excellent, mission accomplished.)

Also, Booklist review. That page is where all the reviews are going to go from now on (well, I mean, the good ones; the bad ones you can search out on your own, thank you very much), and I’m going to try not to make a big deal out of them–not because they’re not important to me, but because I know you guys don’t come here to hear me brag about how everyone loves my book. When you read a review, just imagine me, wide-eyed and grinning, incapable of believing my own luck at being so honored. Can you do that for me? It’s much better than imagining me doing that other thing, with the mouth foaming, etc.

Okay, so I sort of decided a while back that I wasn’t going to post a lot about reviews and stuff like that, because I don’t want this blog to be all about the cool things that happen to me, since really it’s supposed to be about my struggles as an artist (barf) and also the dumb crap that happens to me. I don’t want this to turn into the sort of blog where when people read it all it is is “Reviews from people who love my book!” and “Foreign sales!” and whatever. I want it to be the place where you go for your daily (okay, weekly…OKAY BI-WEEKLY) dose of schadenfreude. I have a big enough ego as it is, no need to pump it up even more (although don’t worry, it’s Dubbs’ duty to take me down a peg, and she does a fine job at it).

Really, I just wanted to post about this so that I could use that blog post title.

But today was a surprisingly exciting day in the world of My Book. Actually, this week was sort of exciting. I heard from my publicist, let’s call her MO, which was fun. She’s already hard at work giving AUT its best shot at success, which is comforting to know. She also sent me my author questionnaire. It was so hard to fill out, you guys. “Describe yourself” is not exactly the sort of open-ended question I enjoy. I filled it out like a weirdo; my answers were very “Wah wah”, very Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. It probably won’t be at all helpful to her. But those things are HARD. I also have hopelessly few contacts. Q: “Do you have any contacts in schools or libraries?” A: “Not really.” P.S. You like that picture? I feel like my blogs need more visuals. You’re welcome.

So anyway, that was exciting thing number one. Exciting things number two and three were completely unexpected and quite pleasant. First, I got a little mention in today’s Shelf Awareness. It was in the section about the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association trade show, and mentioned how a sales rep from Random House picked my book as her favorite (not of all time, I’m sure, but from my season). I really appreciate it! It’s great to know that the reps are on your side.

And then I found out towards the end of the day that GalleyCat chose me as their featured book today, which was really nice, also! The support is very flattering, although I’m starting to feel a little nervous about AUT going into the world, but I’m excited, too, so it all evens out in the end.

Next time we meet, I’m sure I’ll be whining about how the book I’m writing feels unpublishable or something equally annoying. Stay tuned!

So, as I mentioned last time I actually typed something into this little white box, I’m going to Chicago next weekend to visit my family, more specifically my sister, Fishie, who goes to college there now. I remember my first year in college pretty clearly–I was miserable. Okay, not miserable; I met some really great people (like Shannel, frequent annajarzab.com commenter and cute dog owner, among other things), took good classes, and Santa Clara is the most amazingly gorgeous school on the face of the earth, so I couldn’t complain on that front.

But I was homesick. I’d always been a homesick kid; I wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t endure a one-night sleepover, but being away from my family and my house for more than a few days was cause for concern, because I was also the sort of kid that worried all the time (and have grown into an adult who worries all the time). I remember how I got through band camp (YES BAND CAMP, shut it down); I would lay awake at my bunk at night and mouth the words, “Okay, tomorrow it’ll be five days until I get to go home, and then the day after that it’ll be four days, and after that will be three…” on down until I’d talked myself through the remainder of the week, which seems both really obvious and also really pointless, but it calmed me well enough.

So anyway, I went home a lot during my freshman year, because I was having a hard time adjusting, my family only lived forty minutes or so away, and my parents both worked in the South Bay, so it wasn’t hard for them to pick me up after work. I feel bad that my sister doesn’t have that option, because truthfully, you do grow out of it. Or I did, anyway. I went home for weekends less and less until my senior year, when I went to LA to visit my two best friends more than I went home, probably. But it’s nice to have the option, to ease into living on your own and dictating every facet of your existence, which is pretty difficult, as all adults in the audience will agree.

I know Fishie is missing our family and missing home, so I’m glad to be going out there to spend time with her. She, our cousin Em and I are like a tripod–have you all seen The Girl Next Door? It’s one of my favorite movies ever. As a disclaimer, it is about a boy who falls in love with an ex-porn star, so there are off-color jokes and swearing and stuff like that, just in case you can’t tolerate that jazz. I was reluctant to watch it at first because I thought it would be like American Pie, but it’s not–it’s actually a really sweet coming of age/love story, and I highly recommend it.

Anyway, there’s a really great scene where Chris Marquette and Emile Hirsch are trying to convince Paul Dano to help them do something huge–you don’t know what it is at the time–and he’s hesitant because he’s kind of the goodie-goodie of the group, and Marquette tells him that he has to help, because they’re a tripod, and if you take out one of the legs they all fall. Watch for yourself (language alert). That’s how I feel about me and the girls–we’re almost eight years apart in age, but we’re a unit, in a way that’s different from how my New York friends and I are a unit, or Fishie, JJ and I are a unit.

So I’m trying to figure out what to bring with me from New York as little gifts, and one of the things I decided to do was make Oldies CDs for them that they can then put on their iPods. Fish and I especially grew up listening to Oldies almost exclusively in the car–that, or Hall & Oates or Michael MacDonald (Dad is a huge fan) or the Big Easy soundtrack on our annual car trips down to Mississippi for the family reunion (and come on, depending on how young you are, those things qualify as “oldies”)–so it’s a bit of home. I’m trying to compile the best Oldies list I can from the songs I have or are willing to buy on iTunes and this is what I’ve come up with so far:

1. The Crystals - And Then He Kissed Me

2. Billy Joe Royal - Down in the Boondocks

3. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Down On the Corner

4. The Supremes - Love Child

5. R.B. Greaves - Take a Letter Maria

6. Sly & the Family Stone - Everyday People

7. The Temptations - Ain’t Too Proud to Beg

8. Creedance Clearwater Revival - Bad Moon Rising

9. Angels - My Boyfriend’s Back

10. The Beach Boys - Be True to Your School

11. The Beatles - I Want to Hold Your Hand

12. Bobby Vinton - Runaround Sue

13. The Foundations - Build Me Up Buttercup

14. Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons - Walk Like a Man

15. Herman’s Hermits - Henry VIII

16. Jay and the Americans - Come a Little Bit Closer

17. Looking Glass - Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)

18. The Isley Brothers - This Old Heart of Mine

19. Simon & Garfunkel - Cecilia

20. The Tokens - The Lion Sleeps Tonight

I think that’s a pretty good list. I tried not to double up too much on the artists, although I couldn’t help but include CCR twice. Some of these are my favorites–”Brandy”, for instance. “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” reminds me of Chicago specifically because the Lincoln Park Zoo used to use it in its advertising. I was going to put “California Dreamin’” by the Mamas and the Papas as the last song, but you know what? That’s kind of a sucker punch to someone who’s missing California, and also it’s a little tainted by Mackenzie Phillips’ recent revelations, so I don’t want to touch that one for a while.

This is all apropos of nothing, except that I spent a great deal of time organizing my iPod this weekend and came up with quite a few kick-ass playlists, which inspired this CD making in the first place. And what is a blog if not a place to catalog your life down to the most boring, most minute details in the hopes that someone will be tricked into reading about it and think, “Hm, this person really knows their Oldies”?

Boy I’m tired. I mean seriously, I feel like I’ve been running around like a chicken with my head cut off for many, many weeks now. The good news is that I’m starting to adjust to my new job. I have such a terrible memory that I tend to forget bad things, like how hard it is to start a new job and not look like a total incompetant asshole all the time, or at least feel like one. But what’s the other option? Stay in the same place for eternity because it’s comfy and easy? Wait, that was an option. REDO!

Just kidding.

Anyway, nevermind that. You come here to hear about writing! No, you don’t. Well, maybe you do. On all counts I pretty much fail as a blogger, but it’s officially October (scarytown, I can barely remember a single day in September), which means that it’s just three short months until AUT comes out, and things should start picking up, or maybe they won’t, I don’t know. I’m sure I’ll have plenty to complain angstily about when I get my MB editorial letter–I mean, that’s just a thing we authors do, not because it’s productive, simply because it’s easier than revising. So you have that to look forward to!

In the meantime, what to talk about? Hm, well okay, I’ve been steadily adding to my writing notebook, which I carry around with me and jot notes down in. For a while it was all GR notes all the time, and I was like, “Forget CH! I’m working on GR! It’s fun and exciting!” And then yesterday I got hit with a bolt of inspiration and now my notebook has a partial CH synopsis in it. OF COURSE IT DOES! When am I actually going to sit down and write these books, you ask? All in due time, my friends. All in due time.

Another fun thing is that I’m going to Chicago next weekend to visit my family. My baby sister just started her freshman year in college, so I’m going to stay with her for a couple of nights, and at my aunt’s house for a night. My cousin is going to come down from Madison, where she is a freshman in college, and on Friday I’m going to go to Browne & Miller to see Joanna and Danielle, which is always great. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I worked there the summer of 2007, so it’s like a homecoming of sorts for me.

I’m also moving at the end of the month. Where? I don’t know. Somewhere on the Upper West Side. Do I have an apartment yet? Oh, no. No, no. When do I have to move? November 1. This is going to go really well, I think. JUST KIDDING. Moving in New York is awful, as is apartment hunting–can’t decide which is worse, probably apartment hunting because it seems interminable. And I haven’t done it in two years, so I’m rusty. But the upside is at the end of it I will live in a nicer apartment in a better neighborhood, so I’m just focusing on that and letting all the other crap fade to the periphery.

And that’s all the news in my life. Read the new Dan Brown book; it was good. What’s up with you?

Okay, so listen: I could do the schpiel where I say “I’m such a bad blogger!” and “OMG so long since I blogged!” but you guys are tired of that, right? I should think so. I mean, I do it EVERY WEEK now–sometimes not even that often!

So instead, something new and different! Not so new or different, but whatever. My thoughts on TV plus a boring personal story. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Obviously, Glee is the best show on television right now (and I say this EVEN THOUGH Gossip Girl is rocking my world because Chuck and Blair are doing the relationship thang and it is so so so amazingly cute, obviously). I mean, come on, musical television? It’s not an easy thing to do–ask the writers/actors of Viva Laughlin or Cop Rock (see what I did there, Tony? Stole stuff right from your trivia night). But Glee gets it right because it’s a high school show, so it gets more leeway for ridiculousness, plus it’s got some hyper-realism going on, like Ugly Betty or Pushing Daisies–everything is brighter than normal, everyone has a heightened personality, the jokes are more extreme, etc. You get that you’re in another world, and you buy it. Plus, the music, a great blend of show tunes, glee club standards, and pop/hip-hop, is to die. I’ve downloaded many a song from Glee that I’d never had any interest in before the show–and I’d rather listen to the Glee versions than the originals.

What does this have to do with me, other than I like the show? SO GLAD YOU ASKED. (Although you won’t be, in a second.)

See, this week (if you haven’t seen it, spoilers ahead, sort of), Kurt joined the football team to make his dad proud/cover up his flamboyant behavior. Except, through Will’s interference, he ends up teaching the entire team the “All the Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)” dance, supposedly because they need to learn rhythm and fluidity, to loosen up and relax on the field, or whatever. Mostly an excuse to play “Single Ladies” 87 times! But anyway, Kurt was like, Hey, what a good intimidation tactic–nobody’s going to expect you to bust a move on the football field, to Beyonce no less! And eventually the team comes around, and that’s exactly what they do, and then they WIN THE GAME BECAUSE OF IT. Behold, the McKinley High School football team dancing to “All the Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)”:

I lost my mind when I watched that the first time, and again every subsequent time (I’ve watched it a lot). I mean, pure joy. What’s better than that?

Anyway, the reason I felt it was necessary to blog about this was that when I was a senior in high school I moved to California and transferred schools. I was a competitive swimmer in high school, so I joined the swim team when I got there. Now, my old swim team was huge, disciplined and super competitive. The caliber of talent on the team was so fierce that I was never on varsity, even though I was a decent swimmer. We did morning practice three days a week and every day after school, on holidays and over breaks, and we won most of our meets.

But my new school, though it had a swim team, was not competitive at all. I was on varsity, which should tell you something, and was one of the best swimmers on the team. We lost all of our meets except two, and one of those was a forfeit. You see what I’m saying? Not so great. The thing was, I had an amazing time on that team, and I was basically miserable on my old team. My life revolved around the SHS swim team, and we worked so hard, and people were so self-centered and awful in some ways. It was just really difficult and stopped being fun, but it was my entire world so I could never imagine quitting. But the DHS swim team was so fun, because nobody took it too seriously–nobody planned on competing in the Olympics or winning state or getting a scholarship. We were just there because we liked to swim.

And we decided that, if we weren’t going to be good, we were going to be memorable, so one of our JV boys swimmers choreographed a dance to a very special song. You may have heard it, and if not, after you do, you’ll never forget it:

Yeah. We started out every meet by dancing to “Tunak Tunak.” It was so awesome, and still one of my favorite things about high school. We just looked totally crazy. Good times.

Oh boo. I’m afraid to look and see how long it’s been since I posted something, so let’s just go with IT’S BEEN A WHILE. Sigh. Oh well! As I told you before, I’ve been busy getting a life and working and stuff. And reading! Always reading.

I put aside CH for pretty much no reason except I got sick of working on it and missed GR, so I’m back on that train. I know I always said GR was going to be a big book, in terms of how much work it was going to take to accomplish what I want it to be, and probably in terms of pages as well, but I don’t think I ever realized HOW big and HOW much work it was going to take until pretty much the last week or so. Because I spent five days drawing the floorplans of a house. FIVE DAYS. Let me tell you, I did not miss my calling as an architect. If I didn’t know for a fact he’s busy with school and everything, I’d call my friend Scott, who goes to SIARC and just have him do it for me, but alas.

It was kind of cool to design a house though, especially a crazy house with lots of secret passages and hidden doorways and enormous ballrooms and stuff. I was ridiculously proud of it and actually showed it off to my friends at the bar yesterday, just because I really can’t put it up here for you guys to look at and I’ve got no one else to foist it upon. I also made a nice family tree, which was an unexpected detour on Tuesday night but fun all the same. This is the stuff I like best, you know. The prep work. The stuff nobody really sees unless you whip out your notebook and keep a vigilant watch on your friends as they handle it, lest they accidentally set it down in a puddle of Bud Lite (drink responsibly!).

So things are moving. I’m working on the GR synopsis, which, while far from completion, is significantly farther along than I ever hoped it could be (mostly because I never worked on it before now).

As for my other books, I’m still waiting on an editorial letter for MB, which is sort of a relief. I thought I’d have it this month, and I was dreading it, because I’m exhausted and I know it’s going to be a lot of work. I’m sure I’ll be happy to work on it when it comes, though. MB has a special place in my heart because I am, in my bones, a funny, light-hearted person and secret romantic–AUT is dark and sad and serious, and while I like writing all of that, MB is sort of like a vacation in a lot of ways. I’m back to dark in GR, so it should be a welcome project when it comes along. It can’t be sturm und drang all the time, you know?

AUT is, predictably, resting in a cocoon for the moment, although I did get an exciting piece of sales news today that I’m sure I can’t share on the blog (and, truthfully, don’t wholly understand so I wouldn’t even attempt to explain what it means, but my editor seems pumped!), and I found out who my publicist is, although I haven’t talked to her yet. So the whole being published in January thing isn’t a dream! I was worried. I’ve been having some pretty vivid dreams lately.

I know I’m behind on emails, and ARC requests, and I’m honestly sorry about that. The only thing I can say in my defense is that I’m busy? Which, we are all busy, I get that. I will get to them eventually, I promise. I actually have many things to get to that I haven’t been able to do in a while, so please bear with me, my life has been undergoing some rearranging and–fun times!–I’ll be moving soon. Just to a new apartment, probably in the same general region of Manhattan, if not the same neighborhood, but still. Moving in New York is a bitch, and I have yet to find a new place to live. So fall will be pretty stressful and busy, but it’s mostly exciting stuff, so I’m happy about it. Posts might be a bit thin on the ground, though (is that a thing people say?), I warn you.

Ugh, sorry for being so MIA. Lately, there just seems like so many better things to do besides blog. And, I mean, go me for experiencing the outside world, stepping away from the computer and living life, but seriously, WHAT ABOUT MY LOYAL READERS?!

Anyway, what have I been up to? Writing, if you can believe it, although I’m in one of those writing valleys where I’m putting a lot of words on the page but none of it seems to be going anywhere. I talked about how I’ve gotten a lot of CH written, only to decide to rewrite it, only to decide to delete the last scene I wrote and just go on from there, which is going okay, although I haven’t touched it in a couple of days. I don’t know. I really should plot things out, I know this about myself, but plotting seems so hard to do when you just want to get into the thick of writing. I get really overwhelmed by all the possibilities offered without at least a rough outline, and then I get paralyzed, and then I don’t write. As my roommate would say, bad mojo.

This past weekend, I mostly worked on GR. I KNOW! I haven’t talked about that book in forevs. Because I haven’t really worked on it in forevs. But I started to write it again, albeit slowly and with trepidation, AND I decided to really go ahead and write myself a full outline for this one, even though I’m already about eighty pages into the actual manuscript. This book is going to be so rough to write. I haven’t got everything figured out yet, and I’m still puzzling out a lot of the most important details, which is stalling any real progress. But I feel oddly confident about it right now, like it might actually get written and not be terrible, which is odd for me right now but I’m going with it.

Other than that, I’ve just been hanging out with friends, working and reading. Lather, rinse, repeat. I feel so much better about living in New York than I have for the past almost two years now (which: hasn’t it only been two seconds? or two decades?). About a month and a half ago, New York suddenly clicked into place for me–I feel like I belong here, like I’ll be here long-term and rather than being sort of depressed about that, I’m happy about it. Which is cool, because this is a hard city to live in if you don’t really commit to it, and I was feeling the strain of trying.

Also: Matryoshka Monday! On Tuesday!

Russian Doll Squishy Keychain from Fredflare.com

Remember how I said I was going to completely rewrite CH yesterday? Well, this is where it helps to actually read what you’ve written lately instead of just go upon the impression that you’ve formed of your own story as you’ve written it. I sat down yesterday to rework CH, start from the very beginning and rewrite the whole damn thing, and I started to think about what I’d already written. I opened up the full manuscript document I’d been dumping all of my chapters in and started reading. Well, the beginning could use maybe a little tightening–something closer to what I’d started to write in the do-over–and I can fix that when I start revising.

But actually, I think the first draft is pretty good. The only part where it veers off course is about ten pages from the end of the manuscript as it stands, when I have a couple of scenes that I thought would throw the main character’s family life in sharp relief by comparing it to another family life, but after having written those scenes I don’t think they add anything. They’re just a distraction, and also they make the main character’s relationship with her boyfriend-y person a little more serious than I want it to be at the moment.

So, to make myself feel better about the whole thing, I deleted those scenes and am now writing again. I realize that the most important part of this scene for the main character is not how her encounter with her boyfriend-y person’s family compares with her family–she sees her family situation pretty clearly, and it almost seems mean for me to be like, “Here’s a functional family in which the siblings are close and have no secrets and totally love each other!” when she already knows that her family isn’t like that–but how much she’s willing to tell him about her family situation, and the bad relationships she’s building and the fault she bears in all of that.

So yeah. No rewrite as of yet. Possibly later, if I find it necessary, but once I took out the scenes that weren’t working it made me feel a lot better about the manuscript as it stands. Trial and error, ugh.

It ain’t just a TV show.

(Remember when Starting Over was a TV show? Is that still on? I never watched it.)

As you know if you read my last entry, things on the writing front have been productive, page-wise, but not book-wise. I thought maybe I’d keep on keeping on, change directions/tone/whatever to get the book on track to the end and then revise the crap out of it to make it all blend and fit nicely together into a cohesive whole, but I think I’m too far gone to do that. I decided two days ago on the subway to work that I was probably going to have to start the whole thing over again.

And actually, I’m not freaking out about that. After all, I’ve started a book over before, and it’s being published in January, so it’s not an intrinsically bad thing. For one thing, I think I might have settled upon a name for the book (er, several names; I’m in the process of narrowing it down)!

What’s stopping me from diving into a rewrite is strategy. When I rewrote AUT, I rewrote AUT. Not a tiny shard of the originally book remains. I don’t even think I could locate a copy, digital or otherwise, of AUT version 1 at this point. I didn’t back then, either, which necessitated me starting completey over, plus I had an entirely new plot. This is not the same–I’m going to keep the same general plot, but de-emphasize some elements that I’ve been focusing too much on in an attempt, I realize now, to avoid the real meat of the story, which is of course more difficult to write, and also bring an entirely different series of events to the forefront of the story. There’s a lot of good stuff that I want to keep, but I’m always wary of taking things apart and reassembling them with new material. Bumpiness can be smoothed out in revisions, but still. Maybe I should just write everything anew, I don’t know. If you know me, you know I’m loathe to lose a good joke, so it’ll be hard to let go of some of these scenes.

But, of course, onward and upward and it’s not like those scenes can’t be picked up and molded into the new version if I want them to. Right now I’m focusing on research; I’m going to start reading Slaughterhouse Five, and I’ve been listening to Paddy Casey’s “Saints and Sinners” and Ingrid Michaelson’s “Soldier” over and over.

On an entirely different note, Diana Peterfreund has talked many times about how damaging book piracy is to authors, publishers, and most importantly readers, because if you don’t buy books or check them out from libraries it sends a message to publishers that you don’t want to read them, and I’m pretty frustrated that she keeps having to say this, that it keeps happening to her and lots of other authors, and that it will probably happen to me in no time.

Honestly, this is ridiculous. Yes, I know books are expensive and take up a lot of room–hence the state of my apartment, which is overflowing with books, and my bank account, which is, you know, anemic. I GET IT. Books are a luxury. But for God’s sake, if you want to read them, do the decent thing and buy them, or check them out from the library. That’s what libraries are for! To democratize–actually, socialize–reading. Libraries are free! You can get a (free!) library card in no time at all, and then you can check out as many books as you can possibly read–for FREE! But the cool thing about libraries is that, while it’s free for you, they actually buy books, so publishers stay in business and authors can afford to keep writing the books that you can read, FOR FREE!

Now, I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but also there’s something I’d like to talk about that is tangentially related–selling ARCs on eBay. Working in publishing, and being a writer myself, this is something that really frustrates me. ARCs are NOT for sale; they are very expensive for the publisher to print, but they do it for publicity purposes, so that booksellers and reviewers and journalists can read the book in advance to prepare for when the book is sold to the public. If you get an ARC of a book, it’s because you are one of the lucky people who gets to read the book early. The last thing anyone should be doing is SELLING an ARC, because they say right on the cover that they are NOT FOR SALE and it is ILLEGAL.

I know some authors who get excited when their ARC is being sold on eBay, because it proves to them how much some people want to read the book, but honestly they should be upset. Because however much money that ARC goes for, it doesn’t matter–it’s not going to the author, and it’s not going to the publisher. It’s going to the seller, someone who got it for free in good faith. Some people might say that it’s the same as selling used books, that that money isn’t going to the publisher or author, either, but it’s actually not the same, because selling a used book is legal and selling an ARC is not. Also, somewhere along the line that used book was bought new, and that money did go to the publisher and author (well, maybe the author, but definitely the publisher). ARCs were never purchased, and they cost so much money to produce.

So please, don’t sell or buy ARCs. Get them from the publisher, lend them to your friends, read them, love them, pass them around, but please, for the love, don’t sell them. And don’t buy them. And don’t download pirated books. Rant over.

There is a moment, I think, in many a writer’s life when they look at a book they’re halfway (possibly more, in terms of pages anyway) done with and go, “I’ve lost it.” Not their “muse” (oh how I shudder to type those letters in that sequence with that meaning!) or their mojo or anything like that. They’ve lost the book. Somehow, in the grocery store of life, while they’re throwing things into a cart and checking nutritional facts and prices, their growing child hops out of the cart or lets go of their hand or whatever and wanders away.

Don’t panic! First of all, it’s a hypothetical child. Second of all, it’s not like the child is really lost. It’s somewhere in that store, and is this metaphor making any sense? Probably not, and it might be a little unnerving as well, at least to those among my tens of readers who have children.

Whatever, my point is, somewhere along the way of writing a book you realize that you’ve lost your focus, or maybe it was never there to begin with. You’re not sure what you’re trying to say, and even though you’re chugging along, adding pages and piling up plot points, you’re not really going anywhere.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been working on two projects this summer, GR and a second, family drama with no name because the name I gave it in my head would never, ever sell in real life and I can’t think up another one at the moment no matter how hard I try. We’re going to call that one CH, the initials of the two sisters in the story. It’s a story about sisters, have I mentioned that? It is. Two sisters, dramatically apart in age, divided for a long time by the older one’s choice and now reunited and trying to mature in their own separate ways while also dealing with the messiness the older sister’s defection years earlier caused in the family and in the younger sister’s life specifically.

It’s a story about secrets, as so many of my stories are (no idea why, I’m terrible at keeping secrets, I have this almost pathological need to be honest about everything to everyone). It’s about deciding not to know someone, or to “know” them as someone different than who they really are, which NEVER WORKS, do you hear me? Just a little tip from me to you, that never works. Spoiler, I guess. Not really.

It’s a story about anger, as so many of my stories are. It’s about the way in which growing up is the single most terrifying and exhilarating period of your life, where half of you wants to soldier on into the future while the other half is dying to crawl into your mother’s lap and be protected from the world. It’s about guilt, and how denying yourself the right to grieve is the most damaging thing you can do for yourself. And it’s about making choices based on fear, and about how that sometimes doesn’t work out so well probably.

And you know what? As the manuscript stands, none of that is even remotely clear. Except for the anger part, my main character is pretty obviously angry, bitter and resentful. But she’s fun at parties, so who cares?

When I think back on the process of writing AUT, it seems so easy to me. When anyone asks, “How did you do it?” (granted, this happens almost never) I go, “I dunno. I just did.” My memory is pretty awful in general, and also I tend to remember mostly good things, which is why I don’t really have any lingering resentment over being teased in grade/middle/high school, even though I know I probably was.

All that remains of writing AUT in my memory is the good stuff; it feels like I snapped my fingers and it happened. Logically, I know that’s totally untrue. It took me seven years to get to this place with AUT. That’s a long time when you’re only twenty-five. And I’ve lost count of how many drafts it’s been through. And let’s not even mention how seven years ago–four years ago!–it was an entirely different book with a different plot. So…yeah, it took me a while. And it was hard. And I suffered, and I agonized, and I beat myself up about it and doubted my ability to write it and despaired and floundered. I’m sure I did. Plus, for a long time it just wasn’t very good.

But I don’t remember any of that, really. I just know how that book makes me feel, and can appreciate how perfectly it expresses so many things I thought and felt and experienced during the time that I was writing it.

I feel similarly about MB, although I reserve the right to feel differently when I actually have to edit it this fall. That book captures in many ways how I felt while I was writing it, in an entirely different way than AUT does. I don’t feel that way anymore, but I can remember it and look back on it somewhat fondly, I guess.

But GR and CH…something is not cohering the way it should. Maybe I’m not opening myself up to these books enough. GR is my albatross–I want so badly to be writing it, I really love the premise and the characters and the research I did to prep for it, and it’s not happening for me right now. I came up with a possible solution to my problem, but part of me is afraid to try it because it might fail and then I am Out Of Ideas.

So I’ve been working on CH, and I thought it was going really well, until I realized yesterday that the Jell-O is not setting properly or something. (That’s right! I’m a writer! Dessert metaphors for everybody!) I think that’s because I just recently decided to take it in a darker direction, and I’m starting to get more insight into an important character who has remained something of a cipher so far (which is sort of part of the point I’m trying to make about deciding not to know somebody, but characters cannot remain ciphers to me, or the reader), and now what I’ve written, which is largely light teen romance, is clashing with the new tone.

I could finish the book and go back and change this in revisions. I might just have to do that, because I’m not yet comfortable with this new tone–I haven’t worked in it for long enough to feel confident enough to go back and weave it through the previous chapters, tint them with the darkness that I’ve added to the pallette. Not yet. Not now. But I’m having a hard time with the transition, fully accepting the new plan and committing to it.

I’m a bundle of writing neuroses, as you can probably tell. This might have something to do with the fact that I haven’t finished a book in a year. Which is, really, a stupid thing to fixate on, but I want to be a productive writer and I’m starting to doubt my ability to complete projects. My new mantra is, “You wrote two books, you can write a third,” no mention of the fourth, fifth, sixth, twenty-eighth, two hundred and seventh book I want to write in my long dream career (probably not going to finish two hundred and seven books, though). I can’t put too much pressure on myself, or I will crack under it. I’m already starting to see the fissures forming.

I cannot lose patience with myself. This is very important, I think. I can’t go to my computer every night and say, “Write ten pages, and write them well.” It’s my inclination, but it’s too unfair and it won’t make me produce any good work. I just can’t squeeze it out. It has to be a little more organic. I need to give myself the space and time and room to write another good book. Two of them. More eventually, but just these two for now.

At the risk of making this my official Longest Boringest Blog Post Ever, I’m going to close with a quotation from The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong. It’s a quote about reading and listening, but I think it applies to writing as well:

You have to open yourself to a poem with a quiet, receptive mind, in the same way as you might listen to a late Beethoven quartet or read a sonnet by Rilke at a party. You have to give it your full attention, wait patiently upon it, and make an empty space for it in your mind. And finally the work declares itself to you, steals deeply into the interstices of your being, line by line, note by note, phrase by phrase, until it becomes part of you forever…If you seize upon a poem and try to extort its meaning before you are ready, it remains opaque. If you bring your own personal agenda to bear upon it, the poem will close upon itself like a clam, because you have denied its unique and separate identity, its own inviolable holiness.