Robin Layne's Blog: From the Red, Read Robin - Posts Tagged "ya"

Been awake since about 1 a.m. and can't sleep. What irregular sleeping patterns! But it's all the better for you, if you want to read about my experiences at Wordstock, because I've have a lot of things to juggle, and only in the insane hours of the middle of the night do I feel justified to do something I don't absolutely have to do. I figure I'm too tired to pursue my obligations during such an hour. And I'll test out that semi-dream state I heard about, although I don't remember any of my dreams of the evening.

I was going to start with some highlights, but ended up covering a good amount of detail in the order that I enjoyed it.

The event began an hour later than I expected, and I was there early even for my expected time. It wasn't clear that doors open at 10, not 9, so it was hurry up and wait, then wait and hurry up. Fortunately, two books vendors had their ware on display out front, YA and poetry, respectively, and I was soon so engrossed in looking over those that I missed the 10 o'clock starting time. (My watch band broke that morning, so I had my watch in the pocket of my tight pants and I didn't look at it that often.) I rushed in to do the Open Write, and after waiting in a line with nothing much to do (books, books, everywhere, but none of them to read!. My nine minutes of fame was a disappointment. My fingers had a hard time finding the proper keys on the laptop, and I lost much precious time going back and fixing mistakes in a slow way I'm not used to. My prompt didn't inspire me much, and what I wrote was banal and incomplete. I will try again this morning with a different prompt and a different judge and I'll ask ahead of time what to do about typos. (My home keyboard is a large ergonomic one designed for carpal tunnel sufferers.)

I barely made it to my first panel, "Putting Words in the Mouth of God." Three authors with radical approaches to religious subjects led a fascinating discussion of saints of old, and imagined ones of today--their courage, their determination, and even their humor. I think it was Colin Dickey (but it might have been James Bernard Frost) said that there is no laughter in the New Testament--an idea I find absurd, considering the laughter I and many others experience under the power of God today and the absurdities of some of Christ's sayings. Who could have kept a straight face when the carpenter described a current religious leader swallowing a camel, or a judge with a beam of lumber sticking out of his eye? Dickey, who wrote Afterlives of the Saints said that Lawrence was the patron saint of comedians; Lawrence joked about being done and ready to eat while he was being burned to death. Dickey thought that Lawrence seemed to come from another religion. Certainly, he doesn't belong with the Jesuit who told his class the story and then upbraided them for laughing at it.

This reminds me of a dating site I am familiar with. You can use multiple choice answers to fill in some basic information, and if you pick a religion, you can say you are "very serious about it," "somewhat serious about it," "not very serious about it" or "laughing about it." To be serious might be to be devoted to your God or faith with all your heart that you are able, or it could mean you are a stuffed shirt. "Laughing about it" could mean you don't like the label you've been given and you make fun of it, or it could mean you just plain don't care. Or it might mean that your religion really makes you happy. How often these days is laughter really about happiness, and how often is it an expression of cynicism, ridicule, or a shallow escape from deep sadness or anxiety? I think even in those cases, it can sometimes be healthy. The problem comes in when "taking things seriously" means we can't laugh at ourselves, our circumstances, even our sufferings and deaths. As I like to put it, Don't take yourself seriously; you're just a character God invented.

Someone in the audience pointed out that today people with the intensities of the once-admired saints are labeled with mental disorders and subdued with drugs. Where are the zealous today? Tanya Hurley said that much of her novel, The Blessed, about three reincarnated teenaged girl saints, takes place in mental the ward.

Panelist James Bernard Frost wrote a very Portland- (Oregon)culture story called A Very Minor Prophet: A Novel, concerning people who have lost their religion and still need something. And based on some of the things I've heard and read about religion, losing it can be for some the best way to start on a path of real life. As Frost put it, religion is stiff and reverent, and new life is needed. The dwarf preacher in his story gets carried away, swears, and is a laughingstock but a breath of fresh air. But the author says it is a Christian message and that some ministers have expressed appreciation for this unorthodox book.

All three of the panelists grew up in Catholic homes and were influenced by stories of the saints. Dickey appreciates their spunk, although he is an atheist today. Within Christianity, it is chiefly Catholics (and then only those who actually LIKE Catholicism rather than those who have found themselves scarred and left the Church) who don't treat "religion" as something of a dirty word. It used to be a good thing to be thought of as religious, but today, both the born-again crowd and New Agers prefer to call themselves "spiritual" and the people outside their belief system "religious."

After this panel, I was hard-pressed to decide whether to attend a reading by two apocalyptic writers or listen to parts of A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry. Poetry feeds the soul and I don't read or listen to enough of it, so I chose the latter. Persona poetry turned out to be just what I guessed it was: poetry written from the point of view of characters other than the poet--the poetic version of first person fiction. I got to meet the goddess Calypso, who finds Odysseus washed ashore like a drowned kitten and wonders if she can keep him; a Russian fairytale version of Snow White; a total jerk of a man; the Hulk; and more. The poets said that you need empathy to wear the mask of another person and that not everyone is capable of doing that regarding people very different from themselves. These poems were great, and I want to try writing more of this type of poem myself.

The next event I attended was "The 'Adult' in 'Young Adult,' about handling "adult" subject matter in teen novels. I put "adult" in quotes here because, as both audience members and authors acknowledged, everyone is younger in some ways and older in others. I didn't take down who said what here, but it was said that who you write about determines a books niche rather than who you write for.

I learned some interesting facts about libraries: 1. Faced with budgets that limit the number of books they can order, they don't so much out-and-out ban books as avoid ordering ones that are likely to create a hubbub. 2. At least some libraries buy the newest titles, keep them for a little while, and then send them back and buy the fresh new titles.

Many questions strayed from the topic. People wanted to know more about techniques of writing YA. Most YA is written in first person. Third person can be done, but authors using it tend to tell rather than show. It is important to keep an intimate point of view, whichever approach you use.

Next, from authors Lisa Burstein and Katie Kacvinsky, I learned some surprising things about what publishers and reviewers consider acceptable today in young adult books: sex is, drugs and alcohol are not. However, Steve Brezenoff includes drugs and alcohol, as well as cussing in his YA novel, Brooklyn, Burning. A writer must be true to the characters. The writers also pointed out that teens always feel like they have a spotlight on them. Yes, I remember that self-consciousness well!

I'm getting increasingly tired and it's getting fairly close to the time I should get ready, so I'll gloss over most of the next talk I went to, featuring Steve Brezenoff and Inara Scott. I was very glad I went to this, though, because it was a great relief to hear from successful published writers who don't follow all those rules they tell you you have to do: Brezenoff doesn't write every day. Inara says you don't have to. She writes in spurts like me! At last, I have been validated! She said, "If the passion's not there it's okay to take a break." As a pin I inherited from my mother says: Screw guilt.

There is, it was said, a huge crossover between young adults (up to age 21) and adults--about half and half. Understandably, then, there is more sex and violence in YA today than there used to be. Parents concerned about what their children read can ask booksellers and librarians about books appropriate to their ages, and when the youths liked a book they can ask for similar titles.

It was pure enjoyment listening to Ray Rhamey read from The Vampire Kitty-Cat Chronicles. Told from the undead tomcat's point of view, it is funny and takes into account a lot of practical matters that vampires might have to deal with. I absolutely had to buy it. I confess my mind wandered as Rhamey read from two of his other books and I didn't get interested in them, but afterward I ran to the bookseller's table, bought the last copy of Vampire Kitty available, and ran to get the author to sign it for me.

I heard a new term from two different writers, the second one explaining what it means. A pacer is a writer who doesn't plot. Rhamey writes to see what happens. He wrote the kitty story online at first, something I did for a while with one of my vampire characters. That character, by keeping his own journal, seemed to invent himself; he developed in a matter of months while others have taken years.

The final panel was about sidekicks, or secondary characters. A sidekick isn't necessarily the protagonist's best friend. The sidekick is almost always of the same sex, but there are exceptions. There can also be more than one of them. Sidekicks can be a contradiction of the main character, to keep things in balance. A panelist gave the example of Don Quixote's Sancho Panzo. The character may be an externalization of the protagonist so he isn't talking to himself; the sidekick can be either antagonistic or agreeing.

For my novel-in-progress, Blood of the Willing, I like to throw my protagonist Mary together with her cantankerous and humorous friend Darrell for contrast in personality and in views toward how to handle the problem the book poses. Darrell, the traditionalist, thinks vampires are purely evil undead monsters that should all be killed. Mary finds herself taking a different view and approach. Either way they choose, both approaches have serious prices to pay.

I think I have finally said all I want to say about yesterday's half of the book fair. Tomorrow is here, that is to say it is 5:33 a.m., and I have to "get up" in less than half an hour. I pray I will have an energetic day in spite of my lack of sleep. I look forward to my workshop on starting a series.

I was more prepared Sunday, although I did forget the guidebook I had marked up with my plans for both days because I'd left it by the computer to refer to while writing my last entry. In a way, that was all for the best, because I had wanted a fresh map for the new day. After I got my hand stamped with the trademark red chair and lamp (free admission for either day you pay for a workshop), I sat down to plan my second day all over again. At the same table sat a woman writer with her young bookworm daughter. The woman was impressed that I marked the intended stages on my map with the time for each one (having been confused Saturday by my earlier technique of numbering the events in chronological order starting with 1), and I was impressed that she writes children's books about animals for National Geographic. I had brought along Vampire Kitty-Cat to read on the way there and back, relieved to finally be reading fiction again instead of my editing tomes. I recommended it to the woman's daughter.
Again, I missed the 10:00 starting time. They ought to blow a shofar or something. I only missed it by a couple minutes this time, but it was enough time that I again waited in line for the Open Write--not for long, though. I learned that you could write as many times as you wanted in the day, which is not what I had been told Saturday. I didn't have time to keep trying, although it would have been fun to go several times. I was, as the Blues Brothers say, on a mission from God: a mission to get as much as I could from the book fair as a writer and reader, and to make contact with potential employers and clients. Writers, editors, and students have to eat, too, and years of dedicating myself to my schooling as prices have risen and food stamps lowered have slimmed my pocketbook considerably.

My prompt this time was more helpful, and my fingers were surer on the small laptop keyboard. I made fewer mistakes and spent less time correcting them. I wrote a halfway decent little story, stopping ahead of my deadline because I heard someone else's timer ring and mistook it for mine. If I hadn't sent the story in when I did, and if I had thought about it a little more thoroughly, I would have perhaps mentioned the actual spell that brought the dragon into my life before it singed my hair off when I was trying to teach it to light my barbeque. But maybe that's better left unknown. After all, it was obviously a magic book I was reading, and those things can be dangerous.

I wasn't around the Attic Institute booth when they announced the winners, so I had to wait for the email to find out. I didn't really think mine was that original, but there was a category (I think they made it up for the writer) called "Best use of mythical beast." For a millisecond, I wondered if I had my claim to fame, but of course it wasn't me. After all, there was nothing incredibly unusual about my dragon.

From there, I sat watching a panel on a large stage, called "Twisting the Tale," about putting characters into horrible situations to create an exiting story. The subject could have been exiting in itself, and useful to a writer, but in my view it was but mildly interesting, and became less so the more it went on. The authors simply read from and talked about their books; I didn't get any specific tips about how to torture my own inner people. I did hear a thought-provoking quote from Kurt Anderson, author of True Believers: "Her belief in her own sanity was so strong, it led to insanity." This leads me to respond with a couple more quotes: "It has the ring of truth." --Gandolf, in Tolkien's The Hobbit. "Sanity is overrated." --that famous poet, Anon. How many of us label ourselves sane and a certain minority insane--and how often are the labels really accurate? Is anyone truly and fully sane? How do we define sanity?

I left my seat and walked up and down the exhibit hall, my envelope of resumes and business cards in hand. My painful shyness of the day before had fled. Saturday, at the end of the day, I had approached a friendly man from Minuteman Press who invited me to spin a wheel for a prize. Since he printed books for self-publishing authors, I'd chatted with him and asked him if he referred clients to editors. He said he did, and I gave him my resume and business card and chatted with him for some time. Now, I was amazed at how many publishers in this exhibit hall expressed an interest in my editing for them. I also signed up to do reviews for The Portland Book Review in exchange for free books.

At noon, I went to the panel on teen thrillers, featuring April Henry, author of The Night She Disappeared (based on a true story), Jeanne Ryan (pronounced Jeanie), author of Nerve, about a deadly online game of Dare, and Kimberly Derting, who writes the Body Finder series, about a girl who can find corpses and their killers by their "echoes" and "imprints," respectively.

The authors said that there used to be a big leap from books like Charlotte's Web and Nancy Drew to adult thrillers like Stephen King's--nothing less scary for teens to read. Elsewhere in Wordstock, it was expressed that this jump tends to be the habit of young male readers, anyway. One of the authors in this panel said she found psychological thrillers more frightening than horror because they could really happen. (I'll make a note to include plenty of things that could happen along with my fantastical themes; this goes hand-in-hand with my philosophy that the more realism I can include, the more easy it is to imagine the fantasy elements as true also.)

Why do these authors write their thrillers for young adults? They said it was their natural voice, they liked the pacing, and that teen experience is fresh, new, and always on the surface; a teen's best and worst day in life can be in the same hour. (Sounds to me as if teens are all bipolar--speaking of the fluid definitions of sanity.) Teen years are full of firsts: first kiss, first job, first day of high school . . . Writing (or reading) YA, you get to experience it all again. Teens also make enthusiastic fans. One author said they will come up to her and say theirs is the best book they have ever read . . . although she may find out later they never finished it.

Sorry I didn't sort out who said what here. I suppose I was more interested in the flow of the conversation and the information itself, since I am writing YA myself.

One of the authors said she wrote what she thought was an adult book, but because it had a teen protagonist, her agent said it was a teen novel.

But one thing that needs to be kept in mind is that some things can be too grisly for teens. The next matter is what not to include in YA books and why. They said that the books can teach but that learning should not be their main purpose. They should entertain. They should be pretty clean. A teacher was fired over some language in books. The author didn't want to make that happen to a teacher. The panel also said a YA book should not be a "problem novel," simply a book showing that a teen is not alone in being in a certain situation.

Publishers can grow looser in their standards as a series goes on. And teens like dark subjects. If they cannot find them in YA books, they will go to adult ones.

Tips for writers of teen thrillers and other books:
1. As I wrote in a special note to myself at the top of the page, when you leave one character on a cliffhanger, try to switch points of view to another character.
2. No matter how much you hear or read from and about other authors, there is no right or wrong way to write a book! This advice was so freeing to me, I wrote a big YES! in the margin.
3. For those who can afford it: I have heard more than one recommendation at this Wordstock of a computer program called Scribner. They said it's ideal for writing books. You can keep applicable photos, web pages, and index cards on the pages you are writing on and you can move them around.
4. If you can't get Scribner, you can cut out pictures from magazines that look like your characters. I have done this at times. It helps if you have some art ability of your own and can draw them, either from found pictures or from your own imagination. Then you can put those pictures up where you can refer to them and be consistent about their features.
5. Regarding research: If you are fortunate enough to get to North Carolina, you can take advantage of the Writer's Police Academy, started by a retired officer tired of writers making mistakes in their fiction. It sounded like a stupendous opportunity.
6. Also regarding research: Although Google is extremely useful for finding all kinds of facts, Phillip Margolin (who moderated the panel and also happened to speak at Willamette Writers this month)prefers to call and visit detectives and other professionals people in person. He finds that he or they will think of things he wouldn't have come up with otherwise. Margolin says these professionals love to help out.

The next panel I attended was "The Heart of the Matter," which according to the guidebook was concerned "compelling characters and stories . . . born from painful emotions and events in the author's life." It turned out that the panel didn't talk about writing fiction but memoirs. Although it was moving and empowering, I came away wishing I'd heard something about how to transfer my pain into fiction, and feeling slightly guilty that I'm not pursuing memoir. I could relate to the writing of a memoir book but not to the publishing of it. These writers pretty much said, Screw what your family thinks; you owe it to the world and yourself to open up and spill your darkest secrets and let others out there who have experienced similar abuses know they are not alone (yeah--the opposite of what the last panel said about "problem stories," it seems). I feel alone in that the things I most want to keep to myself are not among my sufferings but among my joys. I am considering letting my own memoir be read and possibly published posthumously (assuming the end of the world, so to speak, doesn't come first; dystopias was one of the themes at Wordstock this year, and I think it's an appropriate year to focus on them).

I felt a little guilty that I spend so much time writing fiction and letting the depths and heights of my experiences and emotions weave into them. I have fun skewing and exaggerating them beyond recognition and find catharsis in the midst of it. Why whine about victimization in my dysfunctional family and elsewhere in my life when I can take those experiences, add those of others I have met and read of, mix in a healthy dose of dark fantasy, and empower my characters to do things I could never do in my mundane life as a kind, gentle person? Wow, I've really turned this part of my report into a rant. This is not to say that anything I heard at said panel was invalid or unhelpful; it's just that it wasn't what I expected.

Since I find myself loving to write fiction more than nonfiction, I will talk about how fiction and fictional techniques figure into memoir.

Duff Brenna, who dealt with an abusive childhood by writing Murdering The Mom: A Memoir, ended up using three points of view, with third person limited and second person voices to vary the distance for himself and his readers. Jerry McGill, who was shot and paralyzed by a random stranger, had to invent his unknown attacker and give him a fictional history in Dear Marcus: A Letter to the Man Who Shot Me. Truth, as the panel pointed out, has multiple perspectives. I have even heard this concept applied to our Maker: "Mister God hasn't got a point of view--only endless viewing points," says the little girl in Mister God, This Is Anna.

The panelists explained the notable difference between memoir and autobiography: in memoir, if you can't remember something, you can make it up. In biography (auto or otherwise), you are obligated to get the dates and facts right. Getting dates right may be attainable, but who really knows the facts of even part of a life, much less years of a life? Although the moderator said she knew that children remember well what happens to them, at least one panelist said memory is fickle. (Here is a demonstration of it: I'm not sure who or how many of the three expressed that.)

Another important difference to note may be particularly of interest to memoir writers: Small independent presses will publish dark themes. Large commercial publishers want no dark material and they want all to be transformational. I find this to be a contrast to trade fiction. Here we are lifting up the dark themes in fiction with such writers as Stephen King and ignoring the who-was-its of the truth that inspires such fiction when they write what really happened to them. If you doubt that dark fiction comes from dark truth, try reading Stephen King's On Writing, which relates many of the horrors of the author's own experiences from young childhood on that prove what I read once in a Writer's Digest article. Whatever happens to you, no matter how bad, if you are a writer, "It's all copy." (Again, my fickle memory lacks an attribution.)

Just a little was said about a work of fiction, Yuknavitch's Dora, a Headcase (which Goodreads doesn't have in its database). The author said this teen book gets a lot of "adult hoodoo" trying to keep secret what the teens experience. Again, no "problem books." By all means, keep those who suffer from abuse and mental illness isolated! After all, we have met the enemy, and it is us, so let's imprison ourselves.

A little free dark sarcasm for you there.

The dark stories of real life are tales you "can't wrap up into happy little endings," one of the authors said, adding that a good movie, play, or book makes you feel sick at the end, not necessarily happy.

A note of hope for writers: Although celebrities sell a lot of copies of a book fast, lesser known authors sell their copies of a book longer. The two types of writers even each other out over time.

From there, I rushed to my workshop, "Starting a Series," by April Henry, and found it had already started. Some of what I heard I had already figured out on my own. For instance, the first item in my notes: make careful decisions with the first book.

Good news: Series (serieses?) sell very well, especially among teens, who get used to the whole setup the first book and then the series doesn't require as much of the reader. Adults like a series because they like the characters, which "seem like old friends." A series is no harder to sell than a stand-alone.

Every good series needs a hook, an overarching idea, but each book must not be the same. Each book must be whole and complete in itself, with a conflict and a resolution and some anticipation of what is to come. Writers, don't let people feel like they just walked in when they pick up a later book in the series. On the other hand, provide background information only when needed. Trilogies often have the flaw of the second book ending on a "downer."

A series is much more character-driven than a stand-alone book. Try using things you know well and have an inside scoop on to round out your main characters. You may want to write about two or three main characters and switch point of view. Note: I went to a meeting last night in which a writer said she was forced to re-write her mystery because a an agent or publisher told her there are no multiple points of view in her genre. Her genre is the same as April Henry's--mystery. I wanted to talk to her about Henry, but the acoustics in the room made it impossible for her to hear me from across the room, my foot was hurting for unknown reasons, and I was suffering from a bout of shyness and social awkwardness. Maybe it's better I didn't challenge the poor woman. At any rate, one point of view you wouldn't want to include in a mystery is the murderer's. Need I say we don't give away who done it? (That keeps my current work-in-progress from being in the mystery category; who done it is pretty clear early on; how to stop her from doing it is the problem.) To continue with my notes from the workshop: The characters should be bigger than real life. We already have real life. Make their lives more interesting and exciting than ours. Turn up whatever is the character's thing, their job, task, hobby, etc. Give your character a special area of expertise, and explore a new facit of it in each book. Give them bad habits readers can relate to, whether small-range or serious, that they are always trying to overcome. For instance, your character could have an alcohol problem that fluxtuates with each book.

Some flaws stay with a character forever; others are overcome. Perhaps the external problem is solved in one book while the harder, internal problems continue. The character could deal with a different problem each book. The characters must grow and change, with the main character most affected. A lot of life-changing things must happen. We want to read about people with a lot of trouble and problems--not like we want our own lives to be! She also said to make all the characters likable and important--although I wonder whether this is as true for villains as for heroes. There are, as you no doubt recognize, characters we love to hate. Perhaps if we really understood them we might like them to more or less of an extent, but fiction doesn't always allow us enough time to get to know them that well. If the same villain continues throughout a series, he may be sympathetic to the reader, though. One of my Goodreads friends suggests I strive to make a villain so sympathetic readers will root for him or her. I'm not sure whether I want to go that far, but I think I could strive for that with some of them, at least.

It is hard to avoid stereotypes. April Henry's suggestion is to break down stereotypes, mixing the traits up like a sectioned flip book. I can only hope I come to recognize stereotypes in the first place to that I can effectively mix their traits. Add the unusual, she said, and don't make characters too similar to one another.

Ask yourself what your characters love, what they are afraid of, and what they want. What do they struggle with, and what do they try to hide? Don't forget disabilities in the characters and their relations.

Oh, I see the suggestion about the magazine pictures was made in this workshop. You can also go to stores that match your characters' income level and pick out what they are likely to wear. I suggest taking pictures of them if the proprietors don't mind. You might even find otherwise expensive items in thrift stores and actually buy them. Yeah, I think cheap because I have to. I'm so glad my daughter isn't like my niece, who insisted on Dolphin brand shorts when they were the in thing; my daughter has always loved Goodwill, where you can find some of the coolest stuff for just a few dollars. I'm thinking of a few reasons why buying the clothes might be better than taking pictures of them: you can clearly see them from all angles; you can be familiar with the feel of the fabric; if they fit you, you can wear them and know what they feel like and look like when worn; if they don't fit you, perhaps you can find people they do fit who can act out the characters to help you write scenes, and to play out scenes as publicity gimmicks.

A new point of view in another book that has never been used in an earlier book can confuse readers. ("Uh-oh," I wrote in my notebook's margin; I have planned to write my second and third books partly using new POVs of some of my secondary characters, but as long as Book 1 already is, I can't go back and add those points of view--don't think I should, anyway, because it would make the story too complicated, especially for young adults. This is a rule I think I will bend, because I and others love some of my secondary characters and I think their POVs are aching to burst out. It helps that one of my POV characters in my first book reads some of another character's diary, which introduces her point of view a little. But I also want to bring new characters into the second book, and I feel I need the point of view of at least one of those to make the story work. I was thinking of introducing him through letters rather than the traditional POV narration.

Meyer Briggs and other online questionaires are good for characterization.

Unless you pick a specific year for your setting, try not to nail down time too much.

Consider stories that can go across several books. Leave some information fluid; you don't have to know everything in advance. You will have new ideas later. Don't save the good stuff for later. Use your good ideas now. You have a chance to get this first book book published. When you approach a publisher, she said not to try to sell on the series. Just try to sell the first book; with that in mind, write the ending on a strong note. My concern with this is that I would like my book cover to include the name of the series on it; I've even been working on a logo.

April Henry said to list things the character would never say, do, or think. Then find situations when they have to do these things. I guess writers have to be cruel to their darling characters. Henry says to make their lives as bad as possible for as long as possible; it makes reading more interesting.

Of course, we writers also have to figure out how to get our characters out of these scrapes so that they survive into the next book. Or do we? Shall we let them continue as vampires, zombies, angels, saints? Depends on the genre, I'd say. Probably best not to suddenly turn a standard mystery series into a paranormal one.

Because the workshop let out at 4:15, I was late for the next event on the Tri-Met YA stage, which had also switched topics with the one meant to come after it. I listened to David Levithan read a little from his novel, Every Day, about a boy who wakes up in a different body each day. My memory fails me at that point (did someone else take over my body for a while?); all I know is that Wordstock was soon to end and I had more tables to visit in the exhibit hall. I do remember while canvassing the place that I noticed I was too late for the beginning of "New Trends in Teen Paranormal." I figured it was more important to find work than find out what was being published now, because it's useless to follow or predict trends, and what does the knowledge of what is already being published really do for you, anyway? Even though I still didn't visit every possible market for my editing and writing in the hall, I came out confident, and I found a good magazine I might contribute to and make good money. It's a literary magazine for parents, called Stealing Time. They pay on acceptance, which is a good thing.

So much more I could have enjoyed. So much more I could say about the books I learned about. But that is enough for me to say. I can't blog my whole life away. Poor novel is being neglected, among other things.

Happy reading, happy writing! And enjoy your life as well!