Liebster Award

It's been a while since I've done one of these! Thanks so much to Jessica Schley, who found my little corner of the Internet and somehow decided it was worth it to stick around. I have to say that unfortunately, I'm going to cheat on this and not actually nominate 11 people as the rules say, because to be perfectly honest, I do not follow 11 people with readerships of fewer than 200 people and I barely follow people in general since law school started. However, if you feel like you want to participate, I fully welcome you to self-nominate and then comment so I can read your facts like the stalker I am. I do enjoy reading about other people. Sorry. I know this is a huge cop-out, but really and truly: I do not regularly read 11 blogs. I read maybe 4 or 5. And most of them have 200+ followers.

So these are the rules (that I am partially breaking):

1. Thank the blogger who presented you with the Liebster Award, and link back to his or her blog.

2. Answer the 11 questions from the nominator; list 11 random facts about yourself, and create 11 questions for your nominees.

3. Present the Liebster Award to 11 bloggers, who have blogs with 200 followers or less, whom you feel deserve to be noticed. Leave a comment on the blogs letting the owners know they have been chosen. (No tag backs.)

4. Upload the Liebster Award image to your blog.

I'll try my best.

Questions

1. What's your favorite part about writing?
I have two answers. My nuts-and-bolts answer is drafting. I vastly prefer drafting to editing. I've never liked editing anything, including academic writing, so it applies here to. But also, drafting is just much more fun. You get to see a story come to life. The best part is when you write something that you hadn't planned, but you're on a roll, and then stuff starts coming from your fingertips that surprises even you. You know what I'm talking about. I like it when the plot takes me for a spin instead of the other way around. That only happens during drafting. My existential answer is that writing satisfies my soul. What? Cheesy? Yes. I don't know how to explain it, but I am not happy if writing stories is not a part of my life. I don't mean it has to be happening every day. I go months without writing sometimes. But I notice that those are months where I'm not incredibly happy. I like creating stories. I like the way words fit together on the page in new and unexpected ways. I like working through my real problems in an abstract fictional way. I like how "real" truths are illuminated the most beautifully in the guise of fiction. So it all adds up to this: writing brings me joy.

2. Who is your favorite character?
Let me premise my answer by saying: this is a totally impossible question to answer. There are so many amazing characters out there and I cannot in any way begin to rank them in which I like the best. But I will give an answer anyway and I'll explain why I picked this person. My "favorite" character is Percy Jackson. This does not mean I think he's a better character than any of my other favorites. I love Percy because he is one of the clearest examples in my head of a character who is larger than life. More than Harry (who is carried, in my opinion, by the world J.K. Rowling created), more than Katniss (who is strong, but the premise, again, is the highlight), etc. Whatever, Greek myths are obviously awesome, but I've thought long and hard about this, and I'm pretty damn sure Percy is far and away the most important part of those books. He stands alone. And not to be lame and sentimental or whatever, but I started writing original fiction again after I read the Percy Jackson series in January of 2009. Haven't stopped since then. I guess some books just speak to you. It so happens that the one that spoke to me the loudest was a children's series about Greek monsters. So sue me.

3. What do you absolutely have to do before writing/to get settled in to write?
I have to have at least several hours on hand. I am not one of those people who can seize 30 minutes of free time and use it to write. I have to know I have an entire afternoon before me. This does not happen very often anymore, hence why I do not write a lot currently. Also, coffee helps.

4. What are the books on your nightstand?
I have a list of books on my metaphorical nightstand listed on the right sidebar. It's more of a to-be-read list, but I update it regularly. If we're talking actual nightstand, I'll just mention the books I brought to law school. It's a limited number because I live in a dorm room, and I'm not including the numerous titles on my Kindle. This is physical copies only: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, Paper Towns by John Green, An Abundance of Katherines by John Green, Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins, Stay With Me by Garret Freymann-Weyr. I also bought and now own: Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King, Everybody Sees the Ants by A.S. King, The Madness Underneath by Maureen Johnson, Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse by Lucas Klauss, and My Most Excellent Year by Steve Kluger.

5. Laptop or desktop? Mac or PC?
Laptop. Definitely, definitely Mac.

6. Do you have a playlist for your writing?
If you mean, do I listen to music while I write, the answer is yes. It's usually whatever I'm feeling. Could be pure pop. Could be indie. Basically one of those two categories. If you mean, do I make a playlist that expresses what I'm writing, the answer is sometimes. It's usually short, like 3-5 songs that I feel define the theme. Or express perfectly a particularly scene. But one thing I definitely do is associate books with music. Some songs just remind me of certain books and every time I hear that song, I'll think of the book. (Percy Jackson's got a whole lot of trigger songs.)

7. What's your favorite genre to read, besides the one you write?
I write YA contemporary, so my favorite genre to read is just that. I don't know if it's cheating to say my other favorite genre is fantasy? Because I used to write fantasy before I switched a few years ago. Historical is also good. Historical was my favorite all through junior high and partly high school ... because I wrote historical back then. Ehh, starting to realize I'm not creative with my reading tastes ... I'll also say that I enjoy reading YA literary. That's a big one for me.

8. Tell us about your WIP/recent release/upcoming release.
Not published, not close to being published. Current WIP is titled The Earth Between Us, and it's about a girl whose father has a nervous breakdown, so the family moves to where they used to live in rural Blueberry Bay (Door County, WI), and she studies cemeteries for the summer. She's not good at making friends, so spending time with dead people is kind of her outlet for avoiding the drama of real life. Also, there's a boy. I'm on chapter six, man, that's as far as I've gotten. I'm assuming character development will happen and Things will be resolved.

9. What book are you reading today?
Um. I started My Most Excellent Year, but then The Madness Underneath came out. So probably, I'll read that instead because it's higher on the Urgency list. I also watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower and totally adored it, so I feel really compelled to read the book and be hipster about it. To be totally accurate, though, the book I'm actually reading today (and every day in the foreseeable future) is Gellhorn and Byse's Administrative Law. Womp womp.

10. Where do you stand on the Oxford comma?
I worked at a student newspaper for 3+ years, and AP Style dictates that Oxford commas should not be used. I'm here to say that AP STYLE IS WRONG. I ALWAYS use the Oxford comma except for in a journalistic setting. Because it's right. Grammatically. Logically. Morally.

11. Give one piece of writing to your blog readers—could be writing related, or totally not.
I have a post of writing advice to young writers on the right sidebar under popular posts. So read it, if you're so inclined. I wrote it some time ago. At this particular moment in my life, I feel exceptionally unqualified to give anyone advice about anything. But here goes.

I am really stressed out and worried about my future and uncertain about my life right now. I have an existential crisis almost every week. I go through staggering highs and steep lows regularly. Maybe it's hormonal. Maybe it's part of being in your early twenties. Maybe it's the dramatic life shift that is the transition between college and law school. Maybe it is finally being in a place where I'm no longer the big fish in a small pond. Maybe it is very frequently being told, you are not good enough anymore. Be better. It might be a massive fear of failure. Or fear, at least, that I don't know how to handle failure when it happens. This has easily been the craziest, hardest, and most emotional year for me so far. It feels like the start of something and the end of something, but I can't tell which is which.

But today, I had a dessert outing with a friend at night after hours and hours of straight studying during spring break. I went home. Stepped out of the car onto the driveway. I looked up, probably out of a subconscious surrender to a greater force than myself. And there were a million stars out. The kind of sight you'd never see in Boston, but you might on an especially clear night in the rural Midwest. I remembered all the summers in high school when my friends and I drove out into the cornfields and looked up at those stars and thought our futures stretched infinite before us—undefined, but magnificent in our imaginations. How I never would have dreamed to be where I was today, and if I did, I would've thought that I had no reason not to be eternally happy. But that was a long time ago, and I was so different. It was sad. I was sad.

I stood outside, just looking up, for a few minutes. After a while, I realized that maybe it wasn't what I thought. I could see Orion's Belt, a winter constellation, and I knew six months from now, it would be below the horizon again. Because everything moves in cycles. Even the sky. Even you and me. The biggest and smallest of things. We are the same. And in another six months, we will all be completely changed.

So. Be patient. Because nothing is forever. Not even the bad stuff.

Facts

1. I can recite all of the presidents. This is probably not an impressive thing, but I like to pretend it is.
2. I'm functionally dependent on coffee. Not caffeine, because caffeine pills are gross. Coffee.
3. I am really obsessed with Lord of the Rings (the movies). Actually. As in, once, someone told me on a date that he couldn't see why they were so awesome, and it was kind of a dealbreaker. I'm not kidding. I laughed and said it wasn't (but I was lying).
4. Team Unicorns or Team Zombies? I'm Team Unicorns. I don't get why zombies are fascinating to people. That's probably someone's dealbreaker out there, but whatever, that's how I feel.
5. I strongly believe Helvetica is a superior font to Arial. Arial is ass-ugly, don't try to convince me otherwise.
6. I spend a tragically huge amount of time watching videos and reading blogs about fashion.
7. I prefer Dunkin Donuts coffee to Starbucks.
8. I am a huge nerd. I mean, this is obviously true, but I recently came to the conclusion that my nerdiness has surpassed all levels of social acceptability and sometimes, all I want to do is talk to people about my fascination with administrative law. Is that a problem? Probably.
9. It is an undeniable part of my personality that I live to please authority figures. Always the teacher's pet. Rarely contradict my parents' wishes. It gets boring.
10. I swear by the truth of the Myers-Briggs test. I am an ESFJ. Scary accurate.
11. I will be in DC this summer working for an awesome federal agency, so if you're there, hit me up/let me know, and let's be friends. Unless you're a stalker or a criminal. Please do not contact me, in that case.

Questions for YOU (if you choose to answer them, since I failed at nominating)

1. What's your favorite book-to-movie conversion?
2. Describe your favorite thing you've ever written.
3. What's the worst part about writing?
4. If you could meet any author, who would it be? (It doesn't have to be your favorite author; maybe your favorite author has a terrible personality.)
5. If you want to be an author, would you rather be a full-time author or have it as a side-job? (Always curious about the answers to this one.)
6. Best setting for a book?
7. Which fictional friend group would you want to join? (e.g. Harry-Hermione-Ron)
8. Okay, I'm sorry, I have to ask: Harry/Hermione or Ron/Hermione?
9. Which genres do you prefer to read or write?
10. What's your favorite book from when you were a child?
11. What the book do you re-read the most?

Okay, I think that's it. Thanks again, Jessica, and hope some random lurkers enjoyed my answers if they made it this far.

Thoughts While Perusing An Indie Bookstore

I have the good fortune of living quite close to an incredible indie bookstore in Harvard Square. It's kind of bad because I keep dropping by to buy novels. It's a bit of a retail therapy thing, honestly; I get stressed out (this is more and more frequent) and so I buy books. Books, as always, to me, are an escape, and I need that escape really bad sometimes. It's funny, because I have a Kindle here, but I still buy paper copies of lots of books, and it's making me hope that maybe the book industry is less doomed than I originally thought. Then again, we're all book junkies here, so it might be different for the average reader.

I recently bought two books that I'm excited to read:

Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse by Lucas Klauss

Obviously, what caught my attention was the title. I'm pretty into the cover design too, and I'm all about the shallow stuff when it comes to cover design; logically, I know it's marketing, but I can't help but like a book with a minimalist cover. I read a couple of pages and liked the voice a lot (importance of voice, reaffirmed), and plus, it just seemed like a cool, quirky contemporary that I'd be into.

It also has a cover blurb from Morgan Matson, and as much as I think cover blurbs are really not useful items for readers to pick books off of, hey, I love Morgan Matson, so what can I say. Plus one for this book.

My Most Excellent Year by Steve Kluger

The cover and title are both lame-ish, but I read the jacket blurb and was obligated to buy it. It's set in Boston, and as an adoring new resident (Cambridge counts, right?) of this incredible city, I had to check it out. I mean, I adore books where I can identify parts of the setting, so it's cool. (I'm looking at An Abundance of Katherines -- the part set in Chicago.)

Also, the idea seems fun, the characters seem likable, and again, read the first couple of pages and was into the voice.

I'll get back to you on these books. So far, I've read six novels in 2013, but I'm honest-to-God not kidding when I say I have zero time. I just finished Ask the Passengers by A.S. King (GREAT book, by the way) and it was by virtue of the fact that I treat reading novels like a job now. It's like I have to schedule it into my day, and I war-horse through those chapters like I'm leading a charge.

I mentioned before that I continue to buy paper copies. What I do is this. Well-known books, books like Ask the Passengers and Code Name Verity, etc., I buy on my Kindle because they're new releases and I don't want to pay double the price for hard cover. (Certain exceptions being books in a series that I'm already following or new releases from an author I'm particularly fond of; so The Madness Underneath by Maureen Johnson, Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan, etc.) My hypothesis is that hard covers are just not going to do that well in the future. I'm sure they're already doing poorly now, but I don't know if they'll even keep making them. I like hard covers, sure, but I prefer paperbacks more, and I just don't see the point in buying twenty-dollar hard cover new releases when I can pay nine bucks on my Kindle.

And then, I thought, I will be very sad if and when bookstores go under for good. Because the point of buying paperbacks for me is they're books I'm willing to take a chance on. I haven't heard about them from recommendations, I haven't read any reviews, and I likely don't know much about that author. Paperbacks are the ones I buy in bookstores by virtue of stumbling upon them while scanning the shelves. People will always buy books like Code Name Verity, Song of Achilles, Ask the Passengers. They caught on quickly and benefited from marketing and huge word-of-mouth. But what about those smaller titles that people end up buying because they find them randomly while perusing the shelves? Some books will never get great word-of-mouth, and if bookstores die, once those books have missed the boat, sales will fizzle out and die because nobody will be looking for them. Worse, nobody will ever accidentally see anything they're not looking for.

It'll be a hugely tragic day for my book purchasing experience when I can't scan shelves anymore. I'm not sure how I'll come across that magical new discovery. There's really no experience on Amazon that can replicate that. Maybe someone can create a kind of virtual bookshelf where book buyers can peruse by spines and titles in author-alphabetical order like in a bookstore.

Until then, I'm glad I have a bookstore close by.

Snowpocalypse

View from my dorm room

It's snowing like crazy outside. You can't really see it in the photo, but it's big snowflakes and it's been going for hours. As you know, we're supposed to get something like 2 feet of snow.

I'm drinking coffee (in a desperate attempt to stay awake) and reading International Law. But you know what I'd like to be reading? A nice, shivery horror. Like Long Lankin. I was thinking that today would've been great to curl up for the first time with that book.

It's dreamy and happy enough outside that I wouldn't get all creeped out (nighttime is NOT the time for me to decide to get all cozy with a horror).

There's just some weather that's good for certain genres. Don't you think so?

Some Favorite Quotes

Actual second semester starts next week, which I Do Not Want. At all. I think grades are also coming out soon, which I want Even Less. But in the meantime, at least I've been being good about writing. 2,500 words today! I've also been reading more than usual. My goal for this year is 50 books. That's about a book a week. Which is pretty ambitious for me, but I'm assuming I'll do a lot of catching up over the summer as I'll probably lag during the semester. I've already read five in the new year, so I'm on track. I'll do a recap, probably, when I get to ten.

Oh, and if there are any really great debut novels out there, I'd love to hear about it. Especially contemporary, but any genre is okay. I feel like I've been sticking pretty tightly to known authors recently, and I like new discoveries.

I read a really good quote from Please Ignore Vera Dietz today, and it made me think about some of my favorite quotes from novels. Obviously, there are a lot of great lines out there, and I have the misfortune of only having a limited number of books with me in Massachusetts. But here are five that I love and that I have on digital post-its on my laptop to remind me of how wonderful language is. (None of these are spoilers, by the way. I don't think they give away anything that isn't self-evident in the first ten pages of the book.)

"They skipped over me like a space between words." -- Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King

"As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once." -- The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

"I die, Jane. The world grows more gorgeous every day. I am only forty-six — that may seem old to you now but a day will come (and sooner than you think) when forty-six seems very young indeed. I am only forty-six and it would seem tragic but for one thing. In you, I found infinity; in you, I was reborn." -- Margarettown by Gabrielle Zevin

"It is just that she was fifteen once for the first time, and Peter walked across her heart and left his footprints there." -- Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

And maybe most importantly:

"Tell them stories." -- The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

Happy reading! (And writing, if you are.)

Book Rant: Everybody Sees The Ants

Lucky Linderman didn't ask for his life. He didn't ask his grandfather not to come home from the Vietnam War. He didn't ask for a father who never got over it. He didn't ask for a mother who keeps pretending their dysfunctional family is fine. And he didn't ask to be the target of Nader McMillan's relentless bullying, which has finally gone too far.

But Lucky has a secret--one that helps him wade through the mundane torture of his life. In his dreams, Lucky escapes to the war-ridden jungles of Laos--the prison his grandfather couldn't escape--where Lucky can be a real man, an adventurer, and a hero. It's dangerous and wild, and it's a place where his life just might be worth living. But how long can Lucky keep hiding in his dreams before reality forces its way inside?

Michael L. Printz Honor recipient A.S. King's smart, funny and boldly original writing shines in this powerful novel about learning to cope with the shrapnel life throws at you--and taking a stand against it.

I cleaned out the Harvard Book Store of A.S. King books. Next on my list is Please Ignore Vera Dietz (Printz Honor book). This is the same author, by the way, that wrote Ask The Passengers, but I haven't gotten to that one yet.

I think one of the major selling points about King's books is that she does modern magic realism. I don't see a whole lot of that in contemporary fiction, and she does it so well. Plus, this is a realistic, tasteful book on bullying with a likable instead of annoying, doormat male main character. The blurb says that everybody can see the ants, and everybody has a little of Lucky inside of them. It's true. Even though the level of bullying Lucky experiences has never happened to me and is utterly horrifying, I can sympathize with his plight in a very personal way. I know what it's like to think nobody wants to be friends with you, that there is nothing interesting about you. I think this is something everybody has experienced, and King brings out the pain of knowing that. She has written a book about the real thoughts of suicide from teenagers, and I would stake a bet that people are lying if they have never at least wondered about suicide. If you haven't, you are a rare breed. I have never been suicidal, but because teenaged emotions are so strong and often seem to be like the Most Profound of all things, I have certainly thought about what it would be like to kill myself (without any intention of actually doing so). It's like wondering what it would be like to attend your own funeral, and what people would say about you.

(I really hope I'm not the only weird one, and that my assumption that people think about this stuff is true.)

I love that this book has supporting characters that are flawed. I love that Granddad and Lucky's parents, Aunt Jodi and Uncle Dave -- even Charlotte Dent, a character that gets almost zero actual page time -- have a level of depth that you know is unbelievably difficult to accomplish if you have ever tried to write a novel. King is thorough and thoughtful, and genuinely an extremely good writer.

Her plot is quiet, but weirdly, very profound -- not in that way that some YA authors are, where they're actively trying to make their books seem profound. She does it effortlessly, almost as an afterthought. It makes you think. It makes you wonder. She is growing on me as one of the really notable YA contemporary writers (obviously, I am behind, as the Printz award committee has already figured that out). I don't know that I had a eureka moment after finishing and felt like it was a life-altering book. But it was solid and pretty flawless as far as I was concerned. That's all you can ask for, and so rarely do you get it.

Catalyst

I haven't written original fiction since last summer, and I am so excited to start again. The thing is, when I'm in between projects, I tend to have months of dry spell (last thing I wrote was Percy fic in October), and that's not very good. And you know what makes me start writing again?

Being unhappy.

I realize that sounds super unhealthy, but for whatever reason, I rarely start projects when I'm in a good place. That doesn't mean I am ALWAYS unhappy when I write. I'm usually pretty happy. But it takes a moment of true misery to get me going on a new project. When I started writing original fiction, it was freshman year of college, and I was lonely and unhappy, and fiction is the thing I do when I don't want to deal with reality. Novels, I can count on. They have a beginning and an actual resolution, and a protagonist who goes through a character arc, and a level of predictability that real life can never have. For a control freak like me, novels are comforting. Second semester of that terrible freshman year, I wrote an entire novel for the first time, and that's how it started.

Writing makes me happy. I can be unhappy, but then when I have a project to concentrate on, I am in general a much more joyful person. I don't know if this a prescribed coping mechanism, or if it's dysfunctional, or whatever, but it's what works for me.

I really hope I can keep this up through second semester, when I know I will ACTUALLY be busy again (right now, I'm in J-Term, which means we only have one class per day and it's pass/fail). Anyway, I wrote the first 1,000 words of a new project, titled The Earth Between Us. It's about a girl who spends her summer studying cemeteries. I'm not totally clear on where this plot is going, but what's best for me now is probably to just get some words on a page and get the ideas going. I already feel like something that has been missing in my life for a long time has come back, and I feel much, much better. I love writing. Here are the first couple of paragraphs:

***

I didn’t intend on spending my summer around dead people. To be fair, I wasn’t spending a whole lot of time around the living either, so maybe it didn’t make that much of a difference. But I had planned on being mostly in the basement of our suburban home, friendless except for Charlotte Brontë (who is, in fact, dead) and Elmer.

Elmer also doesn’t count as a living person, as he is a cat. Why Elmer? Who knows. My sister named him that when we brought him home as a kitten. Said he looked like an Elmer. I’m not sure what she meant, but he looks like a tabby cat. Sunburst orange with darker stripes. Like so many other things, my sister lost interest in the cat once he stopped being a kitten and stopped being cute. She left the name behind, though. That’s what we’ve called him ever since.

Anyway, I read somewhere once that cats carry some kind of weird parasite that makes people prone to suicide, and so the stereotype of the crazy cat lady might actually hold water. Owning a cat automatically ups the chances that you’ll develop depression, probably not want to see people, and then die alone. And then on top of that, everybody knows that dentists have the highest rate of depression among any occupation.

What happened was this.

 

My father is a dentist. My sister and I have model-caliber teeth as a result. But in April, my father did what any person who is employed in the field of dentistry and owns a partially overweight cat is apparently extra-prone to do: he had a nervous breakdown.

Bad News (For My Wallet) & Miscellaneous Items

(Check out my review of Me Before You that I also posted today. But if you don't, here's the quick summary: go read it right now.)

Guys, books are kind of expensive. Which is good, because I'm all about supporting the publishing industry. But I just discovered there's an independent bookstore like 5 minutes away from me, and it does cool stuff like allow you to pre-order The Madness Underneath by Maureen Johnson and get it as a signed copy with stickers. I am a whore for signed books.

So that's what I did today. And also, I bought Everybody Sees The Ants by A.S. King, which I'm excited to read. I have a Kindle, but I would say I buy about 50-50 print versus e-book. It's still nice to feel a hard copy in your hands.

Buuut, print books are somewhat more expensive than e-books, so I can already feel the danger of living close to a bookstore. I'm going to spend so much money, it's problematic. Especially as I'm a poor student. Anyway, I don't know how many people go to indie bookstores instead of big chains, but it kind of feels good to say I'm supporting a local bookstore rather than a behemoth?

I mean, I'm still mad that Borders is gone, and begrudge Barnes & Noble for being the only major bookseller left.

Other cool thing that I learned yesterday. LOIS LOWRY LIVES IN CAMBRIDGE? Not that I'm going to stalk her or anything, but I might memorize her photo and try to casually run into her in parks and bookstores. Which is totally not stalking, because as I learned in class the other day, the criminal stalking statute in Massachusetts requires the victim have a reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury in addition to three instances of harassment and a state of mind at the level of purpose with regard to conduct.

Fun facts for if you ever visit Massachusetts. But hopefully, you never stalk anybody anywhere?

And I want to start writing again. Soon. But man, staring a blank page is hard, so hard.