Summer Challenge

Let me ask you a question. How do you decide what books to read? I'm serious. Do you spin around and point at a random book in a bookstore? Do you look on Amazon for good reviews? Do you read every NYT bestseller? I'm compiling a summer reading list (yup, it's that time of year again). How do books get on my list? They're recommendations or they're authors that I stay loyal to. Once an author gets a good fan base, things are kickin'. They can usually count on the same people to buy their books, providing they stay within their genre. And that's great news.

But that's not such great news if you're a debut author and nobody knows who you are. There are plenty of books that sit on the shelf of Borders, spines out, which makes it really hard for even the cover to catch anyone's attention. Being a debut author can be a hard life that involves a lot of promotion and hoping that word-of-mouth will pick up.

How many books by debut authors do you pick up every year? My bet is not a lot. And that is a pretty sad thing, because I will admit that I'm not a big new-author-reader either. This past year, I picked up a couple new books just because they caught my eye in the library and you know what? They were awesome! My favorite new find is Garret Freymann-Weyr. She has herself a new loyal reader and her other books are definitely on my summer list. It can be a fun thing to try something out of your usual reading circle.

So I'm setting a goal for this summer: for every two books on my Official Summer Reading List (OSRL), I will pick up one book that I've never seen or heard of before. Hopefully, by the end of the summer, I'll have a lot of new favorite authors and a whole crop of talent whose work I can look forward to for their entire careers.

Want to join me in my summer challenge? It's easy and pain-free! Let's do it.

In A Dry Spell

It's probably not a secret that I haven't written in a month. (Oh, to be back in the throes of NaNoWriMo, when good or bad, at least I wrote every day). It's probably not a secret because if you've noticed, I've only blogged four times in April. I've said before that I don't believe in writer's block, and I still think that's true. Writer's block is just something your brain creates to give you an excuse to not write. So if you acknowledge it's real, then you're putting the blame on your lack of writing on something other than yourself. 

It's absolutely my fault that I haven't written in a while. So what do you think I should do to fix this problem? I'm asking you for ideas to get out of this dry spell (other than, of course, "letting my brain rest for a day" because my brain's done plenty of resting in the past month, trust me). Help a sister out, will you?

Two more things:

My friend Jill made a banner for my blog so I changed the template to match it (she is the best). We spend way too much time at work, and we are running out of fashion magazines to read in our down time, apparently. The end of the month is hardest - come on, new issue of Cosmo; we are waiting for you!

Tomorrow. Yes, April 27, 2010. Donna Jo Napoli's new book, The Wager, will be released in bookstores and online. As a general rule, I read all of her YA publications, regardless of whether I think they look interesting or not, because the world may end tomorrow, but Donna's (we are going to be on a first-name basis now) writing will still be reliably perfect. However, The Wager actually does sound pretty cool. I can't wait to read her characterization of the devil. I'm sure it will be brilliant and I will have a new favorite from her collection. Check it out!

Is Writing Fun?

Rachelle Gardner did a post on this recently, and I think it's never a bad time to revisit this question. I find that many writers have universal experiences which makes it so easy for us to relate to each other. 

I have this theory, see, that writers are the whiniest people ever. We whine when we have to sit for hours on end and the final result is about 500 words, and 500 bad words that we're probably going to end up cutting out later anyway. We whine when the plot doesn't go our way. We whine when our characters decide to not do what we planned for them to do in the beginning and RUIN OUR WHOLE GRAND MASTER PLAN, DAMN THEM. Just who is in charge here? Then we glumly admit that we are not in charge at all and whine about that. We whine about the unwieldiness of first drafts, and we whine about the tediousness of editing. When we're doing one, we always say it's the worst part of the process and reminisce wistfully about the other. We must be thoroughly unpleasant people to be around when we're in one of our "writer moods," which is probably why we hang around each other on the Internet. If anyone listened in our our conversations to our writerly friends, they'd probably think we were bitter people who hate what we do (or maybe mentally unstable people who hate what we do). I mean, we're never happy with what we have! Or very rarely anyway. One minute, your project can be the most wonderful thing ever, the thing you carried in your head for nine months and birthed in glory like some kind of postmodern delivery of Athena, the thing that brings you joy and light to your eyes, and you would never ever EVER part with it, and the next minute, you're about to throw that shit out the window and maybe rip it into pieces and burn it for good measure just so if you kicked the bucket in the next 24 hours, it wouldn't be able to tarnish your name after death. 

Admit it. We are whiny. Do we even enjoy writing? It's like being in labor, except being in labor ALL THE TIME. Without drugs. Well, I guess you could do it with drugs and some authors did.* I think sitting in front of a computer screen staring at a blank document and not being able to come up with anything is the worst feeling in the world. It makes me cranky and irritable and gives me headaches and I am thoroughly miserable when it takes me so long to come up with 500 crappy words.

But I also don't think I've ever thought about giving up writing for good. It doesn't even cross my mind. Why would it? I've just spent the last two weeks without writing because my schedule doesn't permit it and it's not a good feeling. It's like there's always something niggling at me to get back on track. I think for most writers, it is this way. You can try to run away from it, but it will follow you everywhere, like a stalker. Into your bed before you go to sleep. Into the shower. Maybe it hangs from the light fixtures when you go shopping for junk food at Meijer. So you know what? I think it is a universal truth that not writing makes a writer more miserable than writing ever could. For all of our whining, we know it to be true.

Besides, I think it is also a universal truth that when you get those moments when everything flows (you know what I'm talking about), you feel like you just flew so high you found yourself orbiting the moon. When you finally write "the end," it's even better. 

And that's pretty fun, I'd say.

*I do not recommend easing the pain of writing with drugs. You could end up famous, but you could also end up dying in a gutter with your brain swelling into your skull wearing someone else's clothes and drunkenly calling out random, cryptic names (like how Edgar Allan Poe was found). Also, much worse things could happen nowadays. Imagine if Edgar Allan Poe had Twitter or a BlackBerry when he was drunk. He'd probably drunk-text everybody and it would be all much more embarrassing than even dying in someone else's clothes in a gutter, which is pretty embarrassing in and of itself. He'd probably end up on Texts From Last Night and his publicity would be so bad that his agent and publisher would drop him and he wouldn't even be famous.

So really. in this day and age, you can't afford to be a drugged up author wearing a beret and writing in cursive with pens, no matter how misleading my picture is. 

Unless you're J.K. Rowling. Then, as Maureen Johnson said, you could write everything on paper napkins and toss them into the sea one by one and your publisher would send out people to go fetch them and blow dry them and transcribe your priceless words onto a Microsoft document. 

But. You are not J.K. Rowling.

Blurbs

Blurbs are the things on the inside flap or on the back of a book that provides one-sentence or more praise for the book, generally by popular authors. Because I don't want to single out any authors or blurbs or books, an example would be like, "The book Awesomesauce is a paranormal romance with a twist for the ages at the end. I fasted for three days because I was so enraptured by the gorgeous prose that I couldn't put down the book to eat." -Author McAuthorFace, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Schmarry Schmotter and the Schmampires of Schmilight. 

For publishers and up and coming authors, it can be a big deal to get a nice blurb from a well-known, well-respected author with a hefty fan base. But I wonder if it is a big deal for readers? I mean, I don't go out of the way to find books my favorite authors have blurbed. I tend, much more, to read books that my friends (bloggy and RL) recommend. Their opinions are more valued to me than those of a person I've never met who may or may not have been paid or owed a debt or felt obligated in some way to write a blurb. 

Note that, I'm not saying that blurbs aren't sincere, but I've certainly noticed books with blurbs from people who are quite publicly friends with the author of the book. I've also noticed books with blurbs from husband and wife authors, which I mean, REALLY? The average joe reader might not notice this, but I did, and it kind of cheapened the book for me because the marketing team did a sloppy job with that one.

So my question is, do blurbs make a difference to you when you're looking for a new book to read?

PS I don't know about you, but I'm a little tired of blurbs that say things like, "THIS IS THE NEW TWILIGHT," or "THIS IS A TWILIGHT-ESQUE ROMANCE." Please stop comparing everything that is paranormal with Twilight. I actually read a book that said on the cover that it was just that (Twilight-esque romance) and was mildly annoyed to realize at the end of the book that romance was not the main focus AT ALL because the main love interest dies halfway through and is pretty much never mentioned again. Dear blurber, please actually read the book before you compare it to Twilight.

Oh Sister, Where Art Thou?

Today, I'm going to tell you a tragic funny story. Once upon a time, when I was a wee child of six, I lived in a fairy tale land. I was an only child. At the time, I was an idiot and didn't appreciate this fact. No, I wanted a sibling. So when my mom got pregnant for a couple months, I didn't believe her, kept telling her she was just getting fat - which trust me, is EXACTLY what your pregnant mother wants to hear, so TRY IT because I guarantee it'll be fun for the whole family I got very, very excited this is, of course, after I stopped calling her fat and accepted her pregnancy. I really wanted a baby sister. We could share clothes and share makeup (hypothetically, one day; I didn't wear makeup at the age of six like Suri Cruise some people) and be BFFs forever, just like all of the sisters on TV. I was so set on having a baby sister that I bet my dad ten bucks (my dad taught me awesome skills in my formative years like making bets you will never win) that it was going to be a girl rather than a boy. No big deal, except for that fact that I stuck to my guns after the ultrasound that clearly indicated it was going to be a boy.

I was not the brightest crayon in the box, with the "mom you're fat" and then the "it's a girl, I swear!"

Anyway, of course, the sibling gods were against me and I was cursed gifted with a baby brother instead. This was very devastating, not least because my dad kept rubbing it in that he had a son now and he won the bet, but also because COME ON, who was I supposed to have my stereotypical sister camaraderie with? I mean, come to think of it, the sibling gods were against me, ultrasound or no. If we had stayed in China, I would've not had a sibling at all because of the One Child Law, and my parents were set on having a boy because they wanted "one of each." Overrated, I say.

But wait! All of my childhood woes can be erased by this wonderful contest, set by Lisa and Laura Roecker to celebrate 500 followers. One of the possible gifts is a t-shirt that would officially christen me the winner, the fourth Roecker sister. And I know all of you care about my emotional well-being, so you know it is necessary for me to win this t-shirt so I can officially move on with my sister-less life. 

Also, I would be able to use them to get to Libba Bray. Sisters share makeup and clothes and friends and famous author connections, yes?

Go check out the contest! Lisa and Laura are totally amazing, and their book LIAR SOCIETY is coming out Spring 2011.