Hey, Where Is My Letter From Hogwarts?

This week, I reread The Deathly Hallows and have decided, on the whole, I like it much better. It is, to this date, the only Harry Potter book I have not reread countless numbers of times. The other ones, I practically have whole passages memorized. DH, I felt it was so anticlimactic upon finishing it at 6:30 am the day it was released (also feeling quite numb and dead from exhaustion and the fact I'd have to get up in two hours for traffic school), that I put it on my bookshelf and did not touch again until a few days ago. 

But I have revised my opinion upon rereading it. And my conclusion to that is that HP is still the most rereadable books I've ever read. You can reread them endlessly, and they only get better. Also, by this time, three years gone after the release, it's impossible to read any of the books without an overarching emotional reaction to the whole series. The resonance of the series and my attachment to the characters is so strong that it's practically impossible to read anything HP without liking it to some degree. When I cracked open the first chapter to DH, man, the nostalgia hit me like a brick wall. Yes, it was much better the second time around than the first time, where I was trying to beat the clock and the rest of the world in finding out What Happens At The End.

But this all does not change how much I still love HP, guise. The world is so freaking real, you feel like the characters must exist somewhere on this good, green earth, if only you knew where to look. And I very much enjoyed revisiting them.

So in the spirit of that, I would like to celebrate Harry's birthday (July 31). It's too bad that we don't share one, because that would be pretty sweet, but unfortunately, mine is a day before. I'm fated to share a birthday with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is, let's face it, marginally less cool than The Boy Who Lived. 

Happy Birthday, Harry Potter!

Snape kills Dumbledore. What?

Doin' It Wrong

Even though there is no definitive "way" to write, everyone is different, it's hard not to feel like I'm not doin' it wrong for this latest manuscript. I've written for a long time, and I have a trunkload of unfinished manuscripts from when I was young and inexperienced (laugh now, that was like three-four years ago because I am SO OLD, you know). I knew I have a chronic problem with finishing things. I lose interest and I give up. It's a horrible waste of notebook. I render almost every notebook I buy completely useless because I'll fill it halfway and then forget about it.

So for my first novel, so afraid was I of not finishing, that I was mainly concerned with hitting a word count every day just so I could get everything on paper before my quitter-face came on. It worked. I banged out a novel. Not a really great one, but I finished, which was a big milestone. I even rewrote the whole thing from scratch - another 70k words - finished the second draft too. My second novel was during NaNo, so obviously I had to hit a word count every day. It's not good. Writing fast gets it completed, but "completed" is pretty much the only thing you can say about it.

For The Forever City, I've been writing excruciatingly slowly. Because I don't have a word count goal every day, and I edit as I go, which means deleting 500-1,000 words at a time when I feel like a scene is badly written or doesn't need to be there. This is not supposed to be the way you do first drafts, but this is the way it's happening for this one. I can't decide if this is going to be better or worse. We will see.

On another note, I'm turning twenty on Friday, which makes me not a teenager. In three days, I officially will have beaten teen pregnancy. WIN. Major accomplishment.

*ALSO, I realized that since I have a MacBook, my keyboard doesn't actually have a "backspace" key. Haha, picturefail.

Yay For the Y Chromosome

Even though I have written boy characters before, The Forever City is the first book I've written with a boy-POV. In case you have not noticed by now, I am not a boy. So this is why I appreciate posts like this by Hannah Moskowitz, who is the coolest thing in the blogosphere I've seen this year. Maybe even last year. Maybe even ever. Therefore, I am shamelessly pimping her blog and I think you should all follow her, if only for the purpose of being listed as part of her magical school of gay fish (followers).

Also, she is my age and makes me feel like I've done nothing with my life. I feel that way a lot though. It's an inevitable feeling when I'm surrounded by awesome bloggers (not literally surrounded, like you're all breathing down my neck at B&N while I'm trying to drink my green tea latte).

Let's all go ahead and admit that at least 70% of YA literature right now is straight up directed at girls' fantasies about romance.* Not that I'm blaming a certain obnoxiously in-your-face vampire franchise (try avoiding it for a week, YOU CAN'T), but you have to agree that on some level, this particular franchise is responsible for the deluge of books about boys who exist in the book to do nothing but serve as a romantic interest for the female MC.** If you are a boy, would you be interested in this? Probably not. I can tell you, my brother hates YA. And since my brother is not exactly what you would call an advanced reader, he doesn't read a lot. It's not like he's going to venture to adult books, and he's not interested in romantic subplots (which 90% of YA books have).

I've honestly never thought hard about how stereotypical boy characters are before. And I will go ahead and admit to you all that the last book I read with a boy MC was Percy Jackson, authored by a guy, so it wasn't even really a problem (not to mention, that's MG, not YA). Maybe I should read more books with male MC's - REAL male MC's, not the I-live-to-make-a-girl's-dream-come-true male MC's. Yes. I will make that my goal for the next year. More boys.

Not only do boys deserve to read 3D boy characters, but girls do too. Let's not make boys what they are not - accessories. They make mistakes, they are stupid, they have interests other than that pretty girl down the street. Anyway, a kickass girl character deserves a fully-fleshed out boy, not a cookie cutter perfect one.

You can also follow the link on the side list of Blogs I Stalk. Hannah's blog (Invincible Summer) is there. All the blogs on that side, I read every single post, even if I don't comment. Go. NOW.

Oh, well for the disclaimer, if you are offended by cursing, you should still go. Just, IDK, wash out your eyes afterward or something. She writes the way I talk in real life, but I try to censor myself in writing. Ish.

*All of the statistics in this post are completely made up. By ___% I really mean, the majority.

**No doubt, these books existed before Twilight became the anchor of pop culture, but Twilight surely hasn't done anything to slow the trend. Also, I feel like it is necessary to include my 800000th disclaimer about how I don't really hate Twilight, it's just the easiest example to use because everyone knows about it.

Race in Fiction

Okay, I promised I wouldn't endlessly revisit this topic after my last post, but this has been floating in the forefront of my thoughts for a while. Because one of my secondary characters, Terra, is African-American, but I am, quite clearly, not African-American in any way, shape, or form, and I'm pretty sure you'd never be able to trace any African-American ancestry in my blood ever. (I used to lie in elementary school when we did genealogy projects. I'd say I had Mongolian blood, which is a huge crock of shit, but I did it because I was jealous of the other kids who got to be Irish, German, English, French, Ukranian, Polish, Italian, Scottish, Celtic, Welsh, Norwegian, Finnish, ETC PLUS A BILLION and I just got to be Chinese. I wanted to be diverse, okay.)

So naturally, I have been thinking about portraying a character who is a different race than myself and also not white (this is the default race, no matter how you look at it). Ever since Zetta Elliott (African-American author of A Wish After Midnight) wrote a guest post for Justine Larbalestier's (author of Liar and How to Train Your Fairy) blog, which at some point included the sentence, "Mostly, I just wish white authors would leave people of color alone." I am taking this out of context massively, but no matter which way you slice it, this sentence was included. You can read the full post here if you so desire, and be aware, that I am not in complete agreement with the opinions expressed. Justine also said this: "I frequently wish non-Australians would not write about Australians or Australia because they so often get it wrong." This is only a wish. She's not for censorship, but nevertheless, her views on writing what you know have been verbalized.

Even though I think this is an unfortunate opinion to have, opinions like these make me worry about my inclusion of a character who is not of my own race. My book is not making any kind of political/moral/societal commentary on race. Terra happens to be black. That's the way she came out in my head, so what? Justine and Zetta would say that I should do some serious research to make sure I'm not "writing her wrong," but come on, seriously. How am I supposed to go about doing research on "mannerisms and culture of black people" without making that sound and BE essentially racist? Even if that wasn't clearly racist, if I did do research on that subject, I'd be writing a caricature of a black person and not a real, unique individual. I guess this means I'm going to write her like I'm going to write her. That's the best I can do.

Have you written a character outside of your race? Were you nervous about it?

This Will Blow Your Mind

I read every book cover to cover. Really cover to cover. I read all the acknowledgments. If authors took the time to write them, then readers should take the time to read them, right? I read the copyright page from top to bottom.

One of the weirdest things I do when I read, which I'm pretty sure most people don't think of, is read what kind of font the text of the book is set in. It's not always written. I think Penguin Group doesn't put down the font (yeah, I am just that obsessive about it).* But the reason I look to see what font is used is because it often seems to be some sort of inside joke for clever readers who bother to look.

Fun facts:

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, a book series with Greek mythology, is set in Centaur font.

The Kings Are Already Here, a book about analyzing what you want in life, is set in Filosofia font.

Stay With Me, a book with lots of references to foreign cities, is set in Venetian.

Eat Pray Love, with settings in Italy, India, and Bali, is set in Italian Garamond.

Cybele's Secret, a book that takes place in Istanbul, is set in Antiqua Turkish.

Of course, lots of books don't have cool, metaphoric fonts, but I still like seeing what they are (Time Traveler's Wife is set in Minion font; Her Fearful Symmetry does not have a font listed). Plus, it makes you feel somehow accomplished when you come across a book that DOES have cool, metaphoric fonts.

Now, I'm letting you into this secret so you can feel included in the inside joke as well. Go look inside your favorite books and see what the font is!

*No, it is just very rare for Penguin Group books to have the font listed. I have noticed Simon & Schuster seems to be the best bet.

**I am almost certainly reading too deeply into this. I am like a conspiracy theorist.

Her Fearful Symmetry

Would like to recommend!

I'm so pleased to have read the first book of the summer that I can guiltlessly recommend. I have read a lot of enjoyably mediocre books this summer, and I'm so happy to finally be able to tell you: I read something awesome! 

I always intended on buying this book, but I forgot about it until I saw the new softcover at B&N a couple of days ago (this is the old cover displayed on the left). Her Fearful Symmetry was published in 2009, Audrey Niffenegger's second book that sold for an advance of $4 million.

Regardless of how you felt about The Time Traveler's Wife (I loved it immensely), you should try Her Fearful Symmetry. For one, it doesn't resemble the first book at all. If you covered up the author's name on both, you probably wouldn't even be able to tell the same person wrote them. 

It's a delightfully quirky ghost story for people who don't normally like ghost stories. A pair of twin sisters, Julia and Valentina, have been bequeathed their late Aunt Elspeth's flat in London, and the stipulations are, they must live there for a year before selling it and their parents are not allowed to enter. 

The characters are wonderfully drawn. There's Martin, the upstairs neighbor, who has crippling OCD and cannot leave his flat. There's Robert, Elspeth's past lover who does research on cemeteries (LIKE ME!). And there's Elspeth, who is less dead than you might think she is. I loved how everyone retained a kind of magical, fantastical quality to them, even when their flaws made them seem very real.

The mood is unbelievably creepy and good. The creepiness just hovers around the edges, making you think something scary and horrible is going to happen throughout the whole book and the climax/twist is perfect. The ending is perfect. This is an example of excellent storytelling. I can't think of anything I'd do to improve it. In fact, the minute I finished it, I flipped it back to page one and started to reread. It's that good, guys. 

Important: To be fair, I would add that the reviews on Amazon are not particularly positive, but the criticism mostly seems to be, "This is not as good as The Time Traveler's Wife." To which, I would disagree. If you are looking for something that is LIKE TTTW, you are going to be disappointed. Also, if you don't like reading literary fiction and are more of a BANG GIVE ME QUICK-ACTION PLOT NOW person, you will also probably be disappointed. 

The other criticism is that people cannot seem to suspend their disbelief when it comes to the twins' strange habits and their decisions towards the end. I find this particularly strange as criticism, because hello, Audrey Niffenegger is the person who wrote a graphic novel called The Three Incestuous sisters; if you're not expecting lurid, weird, social-norm breaking, and magical realism, then honestly, Audrey is probably not the author for you. 

So, take what you will from that, pro and con.

Things You Love and Hate

I am notoriously good at having hypocritical relationships with things. Here are two things I almost always have when I'm writing, yet are TOTALLY BAD for my writing.

1) Internet. My family is in-between Internet companies, so we don't have Internet at home anymore. While this is driving me crazy, it's turned out to be crazy-good for my writing. Turns out 50% of the time I'm "writing," I'm actually on the Internet, pretending to do "research." Facebook counts as research, right? So without the Internet, I no longer have to do "research," which means I am mostly writing when I say I am writing.

2) Coffee. Coffee is to me the way Twizzlers are to LiLa. I have somehow convinced my brain that my best writing comes as a result of caffeine, which turns out to be a complete lie. Because recently, when I have caffeine, I start having heart palpitations. Yeah, I'm being serious. It does that weird fluttery thing and I feel like I can't breathe unless I loosen my clothes and go somewhere cool. This is, undoubtedly, bad for my health, and yet every time I go to a cafe (because I have also somehow convinced my brain that my best writing comes as a result of being in a cafe), I buy coffee. Not to mention the caffeine makes me really jumpy and practically unable to focus on one thing for more than 5 seconds. I don't know why this is happening. I used to drink coffee almost every morning during school. Hmmm. But honestly, I should probably stop because I don't want my heart to stop functioning.

Is there anything you use as a writing crutch? (I signed up for WriteOnCon today, and now I'm super excited.)

My Children

No, this is not a post about how, SURPRISE, I secretly have four kids living in my closet.*

This is a post about how funny novels are. I love reading posts from authors about how their writing process goes. They usually have unique answers. My favorite is probably Libba Bray's, who famously said, "I drank lots and lots of coffee, and I cried a lot. Also, I've heard I didn't smell good." This is probably closer to truth than anything I've heard. 

But the funny part is how no matter the number of novels you've written and how much you think you have a writing process figured out, it seems like every novel requires a different approach. Like children. Each novel has similarities in style and voice, but also enough differences to show that no, we are not being churned out of a machine.

Recently, I started working on a third novel, and it made me laugh how much different this one was than my last two. Better, for one. My favorite part of starting something new is how noticeably better than writing is, simply because there has been more writing before it. Practice makes perfect. Or improvement, at least.

My first novel swirled around in my head for at least a couple of years. I plotted it out and replotted it out on notecards. My second novel came in a dream. I wrote long character biographies just so I could get to know the characters better. The third one is the scariest for me. For one thing, it's only been around for couple of months in my head. Secondly, it came with a title (The Forever City), which almost none of what I write does. Thirdly, this novel fully encompasses what E. L. Doctorow said: "Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

At least, I hope I can make the whole trip that way. Other than a bare, skeletal concept of what is going on, I have no idea what the next scene will entail. I've just been seeing as far ahead as the next couple of paragraphs and doing it that way. I would not consider myself a pantser. I don't like this method. It freaks me out not knowing where I'm going next. But the novel seems to know where it's going, so I guess I have to trust it.

PS I have also been reminded of how much I hate beginnings. They are so awkward and you feel like you have to kick off with something profound and beautiful, when you really know you're probably going to rewrite it four hundred times in the future, so whatever you're putting down doesn't even matter.

*Seriously, I don't have kids, I promise.

**Sorry if I haven't been following your blogs closely in recent days. My family's Internet has been spotty and we're switching companies, so yeah.