New WIP?

"Like I said, I'm good at being alone. But being alone when no one's around and being alone in a school full of judgemental teenagers are two completely different things. One is solitude. The other is loneliness."

I love you, new WIP.

I christen thee, I KILLED FIONA WASHBURN.

"Writer's Block"

So, I'm listening to NPR and doing nothing instead of studying for my exams and writing, like I should be. And the thought occurs to me, a thought that has probably stabbed you in the arm a few million times if you're a writer like myself or something that has never occurred to you, as you are a reader, absorbing the fruits of whoever you're reading being stabbed a few million times.

Is there such a thing as writer's block? 


I'm inclined to say yes. I'm inclined to say, of course there is! Then I have a reason to not write for two weeks straight and not plot enough and not fall asleep thinking about all the different possible outcomes of my current WIP. Then I have an excuse to everyone who asks, "Hows the writing going?"

I'll just frown and say, "Writer's block." They'll nod, like they completely understand. Which most probably don't, aside from my few friends who do write. And that's fine! Keeping those out of the know makes it seem more legitimate.

But when I open up a new Word document or peruse an old one, kind of whispering to myself all of things I've written down before, I have to concede that I don't really believe in writer's block. I believe in my inner editor, who wants everything figured out before I put the words down on the page, who wants every plot point tucked neatly into that corner of my brain labeled 'Writing', who would rather not write anything at all if it's not going to be perfect. I believe in my lust for words, in loving them so much that when I read a good, wordy book (and not even anything ridiculously literary - Deb Caletti satisfies this for me!), I gobble those finely-structured sentences up and then pick them apart in my brain. I believe in not having ideas, which is not writer's block, not at all. Because the absence of ideas is when you break out your Moleskine and do freewrites or when you write poetry about how the summer sun looks outside, while you sit, dipping your feet inside of a fountain.

But writer's block? No. Writer's block is writer-slang for being afraid or for being lazy or for beating yourself up for not writing everything perfectly. Writer's block is an excuse, and I refuse to make excuses.

What do you think? Am I just talking out of my butt?

WIW: April 11-17th, 2011

Total Words Written: 12, 419
Total Cups of Coffee Drank: 9
Total Number of Headdesks: 43,000

This week was pretty awesome. Last Monday, I had a burst of inspiration fueled by too much caffeine and too much sleep and I wrote 10k words within two days. But I have finals next week, so this week is not going to be a very productive one in terms of writing. (In terms of everything else, probably not either. I will probably just watch Weeds and finish Season 5 and listen to Manchester Orchestra.) I did, however, get another story idea this morning that my mom really helped me with, so I'm going to file that away in the idea bank for a later time.

Just wanna bang out this scene that's been in my head for the past few days, so hopefully my word count will shoot up a little bit more.

Announcement!

As some of you who follow me on Twitter may know, I've been working on a new WIP these past couple of days. On Monday, I wrote 7,000 words, and 3,000 the following day, which excites me to no end. I am not a fast writer by any means, but the voice of this character and the idea for this story was just bursting out of me. That stream has already slowed to a trickle, but I'm not going to give up hope!

Anyways, in light of that, I've had a lot of time in front of my computer lately, listening to indie music (I've made the observation that most of my favorite bands have two-word names: Snow Patrol, Say Anything, Vampire Weekend, Manchester Orchestra), and therefore, a lot of time to think. About maturity and loneliness and death and, after listening to a live show with John Green today, the experience of being someone else. I don't indulge in these types of thoughts enough; it's easy to get so caught up in life's shallow ideas that you forget to wonder about just being human. Not that being caught up is a bad thing, but for my writing, it hasn't been necessarily helpful.

When I first started this blog, it was because I loved YA and because I wanted to share that with the world and maybe talk about my writing a little bit. But as things have happened in my personal life, I've definitely matured a lot in the past year and realized that the most important thing of all to me is writing. The absolute most important thing in my life.

Thus, I've decided that Read Sam, Read! is going to become less and less about my adventures with reading and reviewing YA and more about my adventures in writing and what that's made me think about. My current WIP has made me realize how little significance can be given, in novels, anyway, to violence towards other people, especially death. It's also made me wonder how I would feel if both of my parents suddenly died or if I had to be uprooted and live with a bunch of supernatural creatures to get away from the supernatural police.

And I like thinking about that type of thing! I like sharing it with the world and see how other people view those things. It's interesting how in my own head I am, and how often I have really groundbreaking thoughts that I never share with anyone but myself. It's a trope of being a writer, I think, that I converse with myself inside of my head daily. In any other passion, that might be looked at a little strangely.

This is not to say that I will not review any more YA novels -- on the contrary, I will definitely still being reviewing them! But that is no longer the central focus of this blog. I may even --gasp!-- change the name to something more appropriate.

If you've gotten this far in this post, I commend you. Thank you for reading half of a novel worth of my thoughts.

Review: Enclave by Ann Aguirre

Title: Enclave
Author: Ann Aguirre
Pub. Date: April 12th, 2011 (Yesterday!)
Page Count: 259 pages
Summary: New York City has been decimated by war and plague, and most of civilization has migrated to underground enclaves, where life expectancy is no more than the early 20's. When Deuce turns 15, she takes on her role as a Huntress, and is paired with Fade, a teenage Hunter who lived Topside as a young boy. When she and Fade discover that the neighboring enclave has been decimated by the tunnel monsters—or Freaks—who seem to be growing more organized, the elders refuse to listen to warnings. And when Deuce and Fade are exiled from the enclave, the girl born in darkness must survive in daylight, in the ruins of a city whose population has dwindled to a few dangerous gangs. As the two are guided by Fade’s long-ago memories, they face dangers, and feelings, unlike any they’ve ever known.

Review: I'm not gonna lie - I'm not a huge fan of the cover. But I love post-apocalyptic novels, especially those that are really well-done (like my absolute fave, THE ROAD, by Cormac McCarthy, or Garth Nix's SHADE'S CHILDREN), so I couldn't wait to get my hands on this one.

Aguirre's writing style is very direct, which I love. There weren't any flowery passages that I had to get through, just pure, simple description. It fit the tone of the book well, because Deuce, the main character, is more concerned with being a Huntress than admiring the beauty of anything. The mysterious Fade is assigned her partner and, I'm not gonna lie, he made me a little swoony. But I thought their relationship fell a little too flat and the ending, which I will not reveal here, didn't wrap things up the way that I'd like it to. It didn't wrap much up at all, actually. I hate it when books do that because even though I know there's going to be a sequel, I want there to at least be SOME closure. But there really wasn't.

Another thing that I didn't enjoy about ENCLAVE was the main character, Deuce. As I said before, the tone of the the novel suits her, but she comes off as a little too cold and too into combat for my tastes, and I couldn't relate. Not that you need to relate to the MC to make a novel good, but in most YA, it helps makes the character more believable, I guess.

Overall, there were aspects of ENCLAVE that I really loved - mostly, the writing and Fade's swooniness - and while there were others that I didn't, my opinion about it is most definitely positive. I will be reading the sequel, I assure you! And I encourage you to pick up a copy as well - it just came out yesterday!

Overall: 3.7/5 stars

The Journey of Awesome

The other day, I was sitting in my Fiction Technique class, scribbling in my moleskin, trying to come up with a new story idea while my professor droned on and on about how she is now a DOCTOR and we should call her DOCTOR and she has an AGENT and she's publishing her NOVEL and none of us students could possibly ever write the way that SHE does.

So I started to freewrite, and what came out of that little freewrite is what is now my new WIP that I'm super excited about. It's been so long (probably two years?) since I've come up with an idea this big and inspirational and I really need something to work on while I'm querying TSTB, or else I'll drown myself in edits until TSTB is polished within an inch of its life. I love that novel so much, but goddamn. It had consumed my life for three years.

I've spent the past four days just turning this idea over and over in my head, picking out plot points and figuring out the love interest and trying to wrap my head around writing something that is completely outside of the contemporary realm within which I usually write. I won't give a huge summary right here because it's still in the planning stages (ish, I've written like 4 pages), but I will reveal to you the AWESOME name that I came up with while trying to fall asleep the other night:

THE REAPING OF JONAH SALT

Expect to hear more soon! (This might account for my spastic amount of posts last week and the absolute dearth of them this week.)

Enclave Author Interview!

"New York City has been decimated by war and plague, and most of civilization has migrated to underground enclaves, where life expectancy is no more than the early 20's. When Deuce turns 15, she takes on her role as a Huntress, and is paired with Fade, a teenage Hunter who lived Topside as a young boy. When she and Fade discover that the neighboring enclave has been decimated by the tunnel monsters—or Freaks—who seem to be growing more organized, the elders refuse to listen to warnings. And when Deuce and Fade are exiled from the enclave, the girl born in darkness must survive in daylight, in the ruins of a city whose population has dwindled to a few dangerous gangs. As the two are guided by Fade’s long-ago memories, they face dangers, and feelings, unlike any they’ve ever known."

1. Tell us how you came up with the idea for Enclave.
Recently, in an interview, I was asked why I chose a post-apocalyptic world for my YA debut. The answer is actually two-fold. First, I wasn't sure I had the voice to write a beautiful contemporary in the vein of Jennifer Echols, but I wanted, quite desperately, to write a YA. So I decided if I couldn't do a compelling young protagonist in this world, I'd invent one.

I'm a child of the eighties, and we saw filmstrips about what would happen if the bomb dropped. Sometimes we had nuclear drills in addition to fire and tornado. When I think about twenty small children huddled under their desks in case the Russians let one fly, well, it's rather absurd, isn't it? But that sort of fear shaped my psyche, so that's definitely a contributing factor. The other reason? Well, I'll just quote the interview I did with Karen from For What It's Worth: "I think it's because they're uplifting. No, seriously. You take a world in utter disarray. Things are incredibly bleak. Then a hero arises, someone who has the desire and drive to succeed, no matter what. And this person changes his or her world in some fashion. How can that message not be incredibly valuable to young adults? I think it lends hope that there can always be brightness, no matter how dark it seems."

For me, that's the absolute crux of the matter. People need to believe they can make a difference--that one person standing strong can turn the tide. It's easier to demonstrate that in the Razorland world, but that example of internal fortitude will serve readers (of all ages) well.


2. When did you first start writing?
When I was eight, I wrote a story for a school writing competition called THE MYSTERY OF THE GOLDEN DOUBLOON. This seminal, self-illustrated work was about two best friends who went to Florida on vacation and busted an illegal treasure hunting ring. I won the contest. I went to the state finals and met Shel Silverstein, who read to a bunch of us from WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS. In that moment, sitting on my square of carpet, I thought, they pay him for his words. this is what I want to do. Later that same year, my teacher told me writing wasn't a real job and I should pick something else. As it turns out, I am stubborn beyond the point of common sense, as I never did choose another career.


3. What are your favorite YA dystopian reads?
I don't read in the genre I'm writing, so the only YA that even comes close to that description that I've read is THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO. Loved that one. My favorite dystopian novels are LORD OF THE FLIES, A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ and THE HANDMAID'S TALE.


4. I know that you usually write for adults - what made you decide to write a book with a teen protagonist?
The age of the protagonist fit the world.


5. Who are your biggest writing influences?
I love many authors' work, but consciously, nobody, because I strive to write my own books and not emulate anyone else.