not really here/not really in absentia
Extraordinarily BUSY and TIRED at the moment, and a tiny bit behind schedule. And sniffles! It's allergy season AGAIN, apparently. Also, today I am hating all the people. All the people are being obnoxious and then some. Phone yelling; it's not good for the soul.
Anyway, I signed on ( along with about 70 other people: wow!) for
jbknowles' JoNoWriMo+1.5, which is explained here and started yesterwhen. In which I set a new deadline and attempt to finish the first draft of Aztec Dance Tunes by November 30. I really, really, really, really want to finish a draft of this one before I start VC, because I already know what the next book is and ideally I could start that in time for my first semester. And work on the necessary revisions to ADT at the same time.
So yeah, back to progress-o-meter tonight or tomorrow. I also got a Hello Kitty iPod adapter for le auto. It makes me happy.
And, you know, everyone's linking to John Green's fabulous Printz speech, so why not me? My favorite part is this:
Writing for kids is the only kind of writing I know how to do that I feel is halfway noble. In his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, William Faulkner said, “The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, one of the pillars that help him to endure and prevail.” This is precisely why I write for young adults, and I think it’s why most people in the business do what they do. When you are a teenager, you discover that life is messy. Life is defined by ambiguity and confusion and unfairness and a pervasive randomness. It is in adolescence that you realize you are not safe, not in any sense the word, and that you never will be.
When I was a teenager, I remember reading a book by the sociologist Peter Berger in which he said, “The difference between dogs and people is that dogs know how to be dogs.” This is what we do as teenagers, and forever after: We try to figure out how to be people. I like writing for teenagers because they are still trying to figure out how to be people in un-selfconcious, forthright ways-because they are still open to the idea that a single book might change their understanding of how to be a person. It is my fervent hope that, at least for some teenagers, books can play a role in helping them navigate the labyrinth-that books can help show us how to choose the awful pain of love over the strange comfort of destruction, that books can be a pillar to help us endure and prevail.
Anyway, I signed on ( along with about 70 other people: wow!) for
jbknowles' JoNoWriMo+1.5, which is explained here and started yesterwhen. In which I set a new deadline and attempt to finish the first draft of Aztec Dance Tunes by November 30. I really, really, really, really want to finish a draft of this one before I start VC, because I already know what the next book is and ideally I could start that in time for my first semester. And work on the necessary revisions to ADT at the same time.
So yeah, back to progress-o-meter tonight or tomorrow. I also got a Hello Kitty iPod adapter for le auto. It makes me happy.
And, you know, everyone's linking to John Green's fabulous Printz speech, so why not me? My favorite part is this:
Writing for kids is the only kind of writing I know how to do that I feel is halfway noble. In his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, William Faulkner said, “The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, one of the pillars that help him to endure and prevail.” This is precisely why I write for young adults, and I think it’s why most people in the business do what they do. When you are a teenager, you discover that life is messy. Life is defined by ambiguity and confusion and unfairness and a pervasive randomness. It is in adolescence that you realize you are not safe, not in any sense the word, and that you never will be.
When I was a teenager, I remember reading a book by the sociologist Peter Berger in which he said, “The difference between dogs and people is that dogs know how to be dogs.” This is what we do as teenagers, and forever after: We try to figure out how to be people. I like writing for teenagers because they are still trying to figure out how to be people in un-selfconcious, forthright ways-because they are still open to the idea that a single book might change their understanding of how to be a person. It is my fervent hope that, at least for some teenagers, books can play a role in helping them navigate the labyrinth-that books can help show us how to choose the awful pain of love over the strange comfort of destruction, that books can be a pillar to help us endure and prevail.