Sorry to hear your leg is acting up, and a latex allergy sounds lousy. And ugh, finding out those stories are true is so creepy.
I wholeheartedly support books which are not all about romance. I like those from time to time, but enough is enough! Awesome alternate history adventures would be a refreshing change :D
I wholeheartedly support books which are not all about romance. I like those from time to time, but enough is enough! Awesome alternate history adventures would be a refreshing change :D
I've recently been reading a lot of YA books--thanks in large part to the elevator having been broken at the main library from February to July--and what I've been finding is that, with few exceptions (Tamora Pierce and Laurie Halse Anderson come to mind), most YA books fall into two categories:
1) The stories about boys, who actually do things, solve problems, and get to be interesting;
2) The stories about girls, who have many problems that are unsolvable and must simply be accepted and lived with. Also, the biggest issue in fictional girls' lives seems to be the lack of a boyfriend.
Seriously, I saw crap like this when I was growing up. But there was an excuse then; most of the books for teens when I was in high school were written in the 1940s to 1960s. Most of the newer YA books were written in the late 1990s and early-to-mid 2000s. You'd
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Yeah, even when I was in elementary and middle school in the 1990s, I couldn't find much decent YA at all, let alone decent YA with a female protagonist - and a female protagonist who didn't much care about getting a boyfriend at the moment was about as common as unicorns. Part of my problem might have been that I was mostly getting books from used book stores and libraries with not-so-new collections, because somehow I missed out all Tamora Pierce books but one. So I ended up with a lot of "boy books" and adult sf/f. How hard can this be, honestly? Especially since there were a few, like The Girl With Silver Eyes from 1980, that showed it could be done. (No romance whatsoever, iirc. But I haven't read it since '96 or so.)
Some newer ones, like the Gallagher Girls series and The Agency: A Spy in the House (haven't gotten my hands on that one yet), have teenage girls being spies and getting involved in criminal conspiracies and such... but at least in Gallagher Girls, getting a boyfriend or accepting that you just can't endanger cute
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Where are the girls who just do spy stuff without having to spend half their time handling the distraction of the cute-but-untrustworthy guy they've been forced to work with?
That baffles me too. A lot of the guys in YA have girlfriends or boyfriends, but romance and sex aren't their whole focus. They have other stuff to do. But so many authors just focus on nothing but for teenaged girls. It's as if they really believe Byron's line about romance being a woman's whole existence. (It sure as hell wasn't mine when I was a teenager.)
I watch arcaedia's journal--it's quite good. I hadn't heard of jmeadows or e_moon60 before, but I'll add them to my friends list.
SWFA and MWA do have a lot of great advice about writing, both on the creative and on the business end of things. I need to start looking at both again. Thanks for reminding me.
At least the bastard who killed her was caught and executed. That makes me feel better. I know he's not out there killing other little girls.
I'm going to have to go to the Wound Center at Hartford Hospital to get the leg looked at. At the moment, I'm limited to Kotex, surgical tape and Bacitracin (an over-the-counter antibiotic ointment). The last thing I want is for this thing to get infected. The Wound Center is not open on weekends and doesn't take walk-ins, so I must make an appointment first thing tomorrow morning. (After 8:30. The office is not open before then.)
Just keep writing. Write what you want to, then find the market for it later. An agent might help, too.
I am. I started writing something longhand last night in bed--space pens are lovely when you have to hold the notebook over your head!--and got about a page and a half done. And I like the character, though I don't know her name yet.
My problem is that I don't know how to make romance the A plot, and I really don't know how to show a relationship growing or developing or whatever. As far as I'm concerned, once the couple knows they're in love, the story is effectively over. They date or they don't. They get married/stay together/become exclusive or they don't. And afterwards they either have to deal with disappointment or have to learn to put up with each other permanently, which is vital but not very romantic...and, at least when I'm writing it, not exactly great in terms of story elements. There's no plot, there's no conflict...there's just nowhere for me to go and no story to get me excited
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I wholeheartedly support books which are not all about romance. I like those from time to time, but enough is enough! Awesome alternate history adventures would be a refreshing change :D
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I've recently been reading a lot of YA books--thanks in large part to the elevator having been broken at the main library from February to July--and what I've been finding is that, with few exceptions (Tamora Pierce and Laurie Halse Anderson come to mind), most YA books fall into two categories:
1) The stories about boys, who actually do things, solve problems, and get to be interesting;
2) The stories about girls, who have many problems that are unsolvable and must simply be accepted and lived with. Also, the biggest issue in fictional girls' lives seems to be the lack of a boyfriend.
Seriously, I saw crap like this when I was growing up. But there was an excuse then; most of the books for teens when I was in high school were written in the 1940s to 1960s. Most of the newer YA books were written in the late 1990s and early-to-mid 2000s. You'd ( ... )
Reply
Some newer ones, like the Gallagher Girls series and The Agency: A Spy in the House (haven't gotten my hands on that one yet), have teenage girls being spies and getting involved in criminal conspiracies and such... but at least in Gallagher Girls, getting a boyfriend or accepting that you just can't endanger cute ( ... )
Reply
That baffles me too. A lot of the guys in YA have girlfriends or boyfriends, but romance and sex aren't their whole focus. They have other stuff to do. But so many authors just focus on nothing but for teenaged girls. It's as if they really believe Byron's line about romance being a woman's whole existence. (It sure as hell wasn't mine when I was a teenager.)
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SWFA and MWA do have a lot of great advice about writing, both on the creative and on the business end of things. I need to start looking at both again. Thanks for reminding me.
And I hadn't thought of PEN. *adds to list*'
Thank you! You've been a big help.
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I'm going to have to go to the Wound Center at Hartford Hospital to get the leg looked at. At the moment, I'm limited to Kotex, surgical tape and Bacitracin (an over-the-counter antibiotic ointment). The last thing I want is for this thing to get infected. The Wound Center is not open on weekends and doesn't take walk-ins, so I must make an appointment first thing tomorrow morning. (After 8:30. The office is not open before then.)
Just keep writing. Write what you want to, then find the market for it later. An agent might help, too.
I am. I started writing something longhand last night in bed--space pens are lovely when you have to hold the notebook over your head!--and got about a page and a half done. And I like the character, though I don't know her name yet.
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