Two summers ago, Rachele Alpine

Fortunately, thanks to teh interwebs, we reconnected later. Now I know Rachele is a beloved teacher, a voracious reader, and an all-around great gal.

Big thanks to Rachele for taking time out of her BUSY life (teaching! MFA! book on submission! wedding planning?) to guest post. She really is a super woman.

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I have never been a big superhero fan. Yeah, I loved the Spiderman movies, but I think it was more because of Tobey McGuire’s dorky cuteness than anything else. I have two friends who write/illustrate comic books, but besides looking at their work once in awhile, I never really got into the superhero craze.

However, when Kristan posed a question the other day about what writer “superpowers” I wished I had and which ones I already possess, I started to think a lot about superheroes and their special abilities.

First, I thought about fictitious superpowers. You know, the kind that you see in comic books and movies. The powers that a person would never have, but it would be awesome if they did. I ruled out invisibility, because even though it would be kind of cool to creep around without people knowing, there might be some information I’d find out that I didn’t want to know. The same goes with the power to read people’s minds. Some things are just best not knowing. Flying would be fun for about five minutes, but then I’d just get bored and figure all my friends would be asking for rides to places on my back to save money on gas. I think if I could have a fictitious superhero power, it would have to be extreme speed like the Flash. I have so many routine things I do everyday that life would be so much better if I could speed through them and spend time on the more important stuff. Instead of taking forever to blow dry my hair, clean the house, drive to work or exercise, I could do it in a matter of seconds with my super fast speed. I’d be able to focus on things the things I love like writing (hooray!), reading and watching bad reality TV (think of all the episodes of Teen Mom and The Real Housewives I could catch up on if I could speed through the boring every day tasks!).

If we were talking about writing superpowers, I would wish for the power of outlining. I just simply cannot do it. I’m the type of person who likes to sit down and write and write and write. The problem is that I’ll often hit a wall with my writing. I have had to push stories aside and let them simmer before I can go back to them with fresh ideas. My writing often looks like puzzles with pages cut out and spaced out all over the floor so I can work on creating an outline after I get stuck. I admire those who first have the dedication to sit down and write an outline before starting a story (I always want to just start to write) and then use that as their road map. How nice life must be when you know the route your story is going to take. It’s fun to have my characters surprise me, but there’s too often those points where they just stand around and look at me like they’re all expecting me to point them in the right direction. The superpower of outlining would help me do that!

I do have a superpower with writing! I possess the coveted YA writer power of understanding teenagers. I’m surrounded by them eight hours a day as a tenth grade Language Arts teacher and when I go home I’m addicted to bad MTV reality shows. I love teeny bopper movies (I can’t wait for Easy A and never tire of Mean Girls) and have piles of journals from my high school years that I often go back to for inspiration. I feel like when I write, I can easily channel “teen speak” and “teen thought.” I know what they’re thinking, because I hear what they’re thinking in the classroom all day. I know what stresses, upsets, angers and excites them. I may not be a teen anymore, but I’m still a part of that world and it helps me so much with story development.

Writing superpowers really is an interesting concept. I believe we all have one and with a click the power button on a computer, the uncapping of a pen or rip of a fresh sheet of notebook paper, we call this power into action. So what about you? What are the writing superpowers that you have and what are the ones that you wish you could have?

Sonja Seawright

So I hope y’all will leave her plenty of good comments, too. After all, you just might win something awesome. ;)

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Step 1
Decide that you will write a princess fairytale (as opposed to an animal based fairytale or whatever) and then determine that a fairytale written for young children is approximately 2000 words.

Step 2
Begin with “Once upon a time.”

Step 3
Write a long history of two nations going back no fewer than three generations in order to justify why anyone would want to kill a beautiful princess who is friends with animals, because if animals are your friends, you must be good people or people who cannot form relationships with other humans. Scrap this idea after you see you have written 1800 words and the princess hasn’t even been born yet… nor have her parents.

Step 4
Go back only one generation but add a third kingdom’s history into the mix. Scrap this idea at 800 words when you realize you will need at least 500 more words to get to the birth of the princess.

Step 5
Learn from past mistakes and start with the princess’s birth. Write in detail about her mother being in labor, how the princess looks purple and sticky when she comes out, and how her older brother (age three at the time) is terrified of this disgusting creature. Scrap this idea after it’s taken 1000 words and has, perhaps, more detail than is necessary for the preschool/kindergarten set. Feel slight pain, as the three year old’s reaction to the purple sticky alien baby was some pretty good writing.

Step 6
Start at birth of princess without any gory details or sibling rivalry. Introduce prearrangement of marriage into another royal family. Introduce bad guy who wants to stop royal marriage. Realize you have introduced a lot of things in about 500 words. Continue doggedly ahead, determined that this time, you will get it done. Describe princess’s idyllic childhood and friendship with animals. Realize that you’ve taken 1000 additional words to age the princess to marriageable age, bringing you to about 1500 words, and you still have not started the main conflict with the bad guy nor introduced her to her marriage prospects. Select virtually all of the text and hit delete button with more force than is strictly necessary.

Step 7
Start at birth of princess without any gory details or sibling rivalry. Introduce prearrangement of marriage into another royal family. Introduce bad guy who wants to stop royal marriage. Cut 997 words from the process of aging the princess by simply writing the following: “Seventeen years later…” Close your eyes and imagine the princess’s friendship with animals. You will know even if no one else ever will. Open eyes and start introducing conflict with bad guy. Realize that bad guy has been doing nothing to stop the wedding for seventeen years, which is necessary for the plot but makes no sense. Realize bad guy is now quite old and really has no reason, at this point, to kill the princess anyway. Scrap bad guy’s motivation, which means scrapping this particular bad guy, which means returning back to the very beginning. Again.

Step 8
Pound head on keyboard.

Step 9
Start at birth of princess without any gory details or sibling rivalry. Introduce prearrangement of marriage into another royal family. Age princess with three words, “Seventeen years later,” and then introduce revamped bad guy with revamped reason to kill. Have the princess meet her marriage prospects. Now you’re getting somewhere! Only to find yourself inexplicably having the princess show her marriage prospects around her kingdom while explaining to them its agricultural and building systems, not to mention the conservation (!) efforts of the nation.

Step 10
Decide that it might be best to go back to writing novels. Wonder if you had the good sense to save that bit about the purple sticky baby and the horrified three year old. Spread out over 80,000 words or so, that idea had potential…

Please give Sarah a warm welcome, and remember: most thoughtful comment of the week gets a prize! (I don’t know what yet, but I promise it won’t suck.)

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There’s a lot of talk out there in the blogosphere about branding, platforms, etc. I recently read an excellent post by Wordbird about the topic. Madeleine points out that it’s very important that the book you’re writing is the one you want to make as your career—otherwise you could be branded for life.

This is problematic for me. I still don’t know which direction I’d like my writing career to go at this point (other than in the money-making kind). I still consider myself an apprentice and while I am writing a YA paranormal story (ghosts, not vampires), I don’t know if in ten years time I will want to be in the same place. I would still like to experiment some more with dystopian, contemporary, fantasy, middle grade and literary. If I am to write within these genres, will my only option be to adopt several different pen names?

There is also the possibility that the need for genres will fall to the wayside as e-readers and e-books become more and more popular. Without booksellers needing to know where to shelve a book, genres may become more blurred. Still, I would think that a consumer is the deciding factor on this one. When browsing online for books, you would still need categories and ways of organizing titles. I guess it just wouldn’t limit the amount of books being “bought and shelved,” which is a good thing for us writers.

Todd Newton’s post about Lady Gaga’s platform pointed out that even if you don’t like her music or her style, everyone knows what is “Gaga” and what isn’t. Just the other day, Scott Mills, a BBC radio one DJ mentioned how he’d like to change up OMG to OMLG (oh my lady gaga). It just proves how strong her platform is and how recognizable she is as an “artist.”

At this stage in the game, for me, the most important thing I have to worry about is writing. Sounds like such a nice problem to have compared to the mania that surrounds the publishing world. Call me silly, but I still want it—the book being published, the book tour, the book readings, catching a glimpse of my book in the book store or a trailer of my book online. One bit of relief is that at the heart of my stories is my own very special brand of humor. I may not be able to bottle it and sell it, but it certainly keeps me sane and keeps me enjoying this crazy career choice.

For subtle but mind-blowing genius, check out agent Donald Maass’s post on “The Inner Journey” at Writer Unboxed today:

A journey needn’t involve travel but it does enact a transformation. For a transformation to occur, two things are needed: outward events and inward change. Great novels use both.

Then over at the Divining Wand (which is a fabulous resource for learning about authors, particularly with new books coming out) Tanya Egan Gibson wrote about getting to know people through characters, and understanding real life through fiction. One of my favorite lines was:

“I can’t imagine a life without stories. But fiction, I think, is a means, not an end; a prescription, not a cure.”

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Just 2 links today, folks. I’ve been crazy busy, both with work-work and with writing-work. Since Andy and I are on vacation all next week (first cruise for both of us!) I have been rushing around the office, trying to make sure everyone’s got what they need and the poor temp that’s covering for me won’t be up a paddle without a creek. Or whatever.

Meanwhile, I’m also off and running (or maybe jogging) on the new YA manuscript, and I love it. Looooove it. It’s fun and fresh and full of adventure. It is a joy to think about, and a joy to sit down and write. Even the rough patches, one of which I hit last night.

As for the blog, don’t you worry. I’ve lined up some AWESOME guest bloggers for next week. Want a hint? One has freckles, one plays origami with the earth, one is mighty with both pen and pencil, and one sets me straight in my own comments every. single. post.

(Thanks, girl!)

Fortunately a coworker lent me her copy of the book (which she pre-ordered and then picked up from Barnes & Noble) and I read it yesterday. Folks, I was WRECKED after I finished that book.

If you want to know exactly how I felt about it, good and bad, check out JJ’s post (warning: MAJOR SPOILERS). She pretty much hit every nail on the head for me.

(There are some great discussions going on in the comments over there too.)

But if you’re not spoiler ready, or you just don’t care that much, let me talk about the book in broader terms. Truthfully, it was my least favorite of the series. I didn’t feel fully prepared by Hunger Games or Catching Fire for what Collins wrote in Mockingjay. The first 2 books were “adventure” stories; this last one was war. In Mockingjay, Collins took every good thing and broke it. She broke Katniss. And that was so, SO hard to read.

But the good kind of hard, you know?

Overall the writing in MJ was solid, and just as un-put-down-able as HG and CF. The pacing was a bit off, like she could have used 4 books instead of 3… But the twists, the characters, the way she brought things full circle from earlier books and scenes — that was all impeccable. Collins has a gift, and I hope I can reach that level of storytelling someday.

Maybe I would have done a few things differently, but as a whole, I think the trilogy is spectacular. Similar to Harry Potter, in some regards. (That’s another series I need to re-read…)

And if nothing else, Hunger Games has really opened my eyes to what a book can do. What a writer can do. What I could do. It has inspired me in so many ways for my next manuscript, Mountain Girls. (That’s a project name, not a real title.)

Now it’s just a matter of sitting down at the keyboard and making. it. happen!