What? There Is A YA Blogging Community?

Yes, I'm embarrassed to say that it came to my attention only very recently that there is a community of YA litbloggers separate from children's litbloggers. You can find a...ah...few...of them at YA Book Blog Directory.

Interesting Thoughts About An Ugly Situation

Even if you know nothing about the recent plagiarism case that's been big news in the YA blogging community, My Three Cents On The Story Siren Plagiarism Case at Read, React, Review is a marvelous post on issues relating to it. The philosophy professor who maintains this blog covers:

1. The difference between a personal apology and a restorative apology.

2. Bloggers who don't believe blogging is writing. (My own three cents is that perhaps they should be doing something else.)

3.In response to some of the responses to this case--"I’m sorry to see some women participate so eagerly in a tradition that casts women as morally stunted, selfish children, unable to think past their own out of control emotions"

Thanks to bookshelves of doom for the link.

It's Only Noon, And We're Done

Do you not love my blog's new look? Is it not most becoming? If you've read Curse of the Wolf Girl by Martin Millar, you'll get that reference. If you haven't, you can assume I'm very pleased with my computer guy's handiwork.

This is at least the second complete overhaul we've done of Original Content over its lifetime.There has also been lots of tweaking over the years. Still, it's a ten-year-old blog, and in blog years, that's old. Plus Computer Guy did some custom work on it. So last year, when I joined Facebook and decided I wanted to put Facebook buttons on my posts so that readers could easily share what passes for wit and wisdom here, the task was easier said than done, because OC was an old and nonconforming dog unwilling to learn a new trick. The easiest way to do the job was a whole new template, which Computer Guy has already customized. (Because, you know, neither one of us believes there is a well enough that ought to be left alone.) We may find some kinks that need to be dealt with, but right now things seem to be working.

As it turns out, I think the new look is more contemporary. A problem with an Internet presence is that it doesn't take long for whatever you've done to become dated. With writers we're writers. Not only are most of us not web specialists, ourselves, we may not be able to spend enough time on-line to notice that our carefully created and maintained efforts are creeping toward the Internet equivalent of mom jeans.

So while I'm very happy with Original Content's new look, I'm not foolhardy enough to believe it's permanent. So long as OC and I are around and active, we will be changing. But for now, I find my blog's new look most becoming.

What's Going To Happen Tomorrow?

I am booked with computer guy to work on making changes to this blog tomorrow. In the past, blog changes have not gone well. In fact, I received this message from CG relating to tomorrow's plan: "I don't think the blog will take all that long. it is either going to work smoothly or not at all."

Hope you'll hear from me tomorrow. Or maybe the next day.

"Minette's Feast" Blog Tour Coming Up

The blog tour for Minette's Feast by Susannah Reich begins on Monday at Booktalking. It will be stopping here on Friday.

Only One "E"

I'm going to push on and take care of the blogs with "E" names at the NESCBWI site, because there's only one person with an "E" name, though he has two blogs.

David Elzey has an excellent review blog, The Excelsior File, that I've been familiar with for years. Many children's litbloggers write, essentially, book recommendations, because they have a policy of only posting "positive" reviews. Nothing wrong with recommending books. David Elzey's reviews are more like literary criticism, though. He is not a fanboy.

He has another blog, fomagrams, that is new to me. It includes his reading list for the two years he was working on his MFA in Creative Writing for Children and Young Adults.

I think I have something like 50 NESCBWI blogs left to visit. I must think two or three times before starting a project like this again.

And Now For More Of The Letter "D"

That's "D" as in NESCBWI blogs from authors whose names begin with the letter "D."

First up, Betsy Devany's blog entitled...Betsy Devany's Blog. Betsy appears to be a pre-published NESCBWI member. She has been a finalist and had an honorable mention manuscript for the Tassy Walden Awards. That's a bigger deal here in Connecticut than in other parts of the world, so for those of you who don't know, Tassy Walden winners have gone on to publication. According to Betsy's blog, she attends a lot of writer events. She's got a lot on last weekend's NESCBWI conference.

Ann Marie DiVecchia has three blogs, all relating to art. Only one of them has been updated since last summer, Smells Like Crayons, a group blog for nine New Hampshire and Maine illustrators.

Marissa Doyle, who writes who historical and romantic fiction "with a magical twist," is a contributor to an interesting looking blog, Nineteen Teen Being a Teen in the Nineteenth Century. Recently, they've done posts on "the Grand Tour," a term those of us who read Georgette Heyer in our youth will be familiar with, and Queen Victoria's pets.

BroccoliPower hasn't been updated in around a year and a half and only had around 6 posts before then. It was going to be a journal about finding a publisher for a manuscript.

And that concludes the letter "D."

Maurice Sendak Makes A Top Ten List

That's The 10 Grumpiest Living Writers, I'm talking about. I am greatly relieved to see that children's literature is represented.

Thank goodness I liked SFWA's Writer Beware on Facebook. It is a source of great info.

The Thirty-Minute Author Appearance--What I Did And What I Saw

Today was my third morning visiting a student writers' group, and my first time actually conferencing with students. I've only published two short stories over the years, but I have done a lot of self-study of the form. Thank goodness. I'd hate to have had to talk with those fifth graders without having some knowledge of what we were all doing there.

While I was waiting for the young writers to get their juice and muffins and settle down to work, I took a look at the fiction baskets in the classroom. I saw a number of Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Judy Moody books. I also saw several volumes of a series I'd never heard of--Dear Dumb Diary by Jim Benton, who has remarkably little to say about himself at his website. Turns out I have heard of him, though, because he has another series called Franny K. Stein, one volume of which I read years ago.

These writers' group visits of mine are interesting because they take so little time. I'm only there half an hour. We're talking 7:45 to 8:45 AM, so I do have to get cleaned up for the day earlier than I'm used to. What with making sure I have something decent to wear and putting on makeup so I don't  frighten any young ones, I probably spend more time getting ready to go then I spend there.

But, still, I'm home by 8:30 after doing a little writer talking with writers, though very short ones.

Time Management Tuesday: Time "Lost" To Work That Doesn't Make The Cut

Nowadays, writers who hope to come close to making a living at writing or just to maintain a career find ourselves on an assembly line. Because books go out of print faster than in days of old, we can't rely on even a small income from backlisted books. Neither can publishers. We have to write more and publishers have to publish more to replace the out-of-print books that aren't generating income. Because the market is flooded with new books each year from traditional publishers making up for what they consider to be last year's misses, it's harder to get attention for individual titles. Publishers aren't necessarily doing less book promotion--they're still putting out their catalogs and sending out ARCs and sales people--it's just that's no longer enough. So writers are getting pulled into marketing their own work as well as producing it, extending the amount of time they need to stay on that assembly line.

Writing process, revision, agent searches, submissions, relationships with editors, getting bookmarks printed, planning conference presentations, book trailers--the list of subjects writers think and write and talk about relating to our work goes on and on. And it's all related to keeping our assembly lines moving.

In May's issue of Real Simple, author A. J. Jacobs brings up something in his article, Can You Get More Creative? that writers don't talk about a lot. He interviewed Rex Jung, a professor of neuro-surgery, specializing in the brain and creativity. He told Jacobs "...that we tend to think of creative people as churning out one work of genius after another, but brilliance is a numbers game. Creative people tend to be prolific, and usually the misfires far outnumber the hits." Jacobs concludes, "Embrace the suck, for the suck is part of the process."

Anne Lamott became famous for either coining or popularizing the phrase "shitty first drafts." But that word "first" implies that we'll be able to turn the material into something that is no longer shitty. I think Jacobs and Jung are talking about something more. I think they're talking about work that can't be salvaged at all or needs so much revision that the "shitty first draft" may not even look like a draft of the finished product. The ratio of unusable material to publishable work is often very, very high. This is probably what would qualify as writers' dirty little secret--a lot of what we produce does, indeed, suck.

Unfortunately, suck brings assembly lines to a screeching halt. How do we schedule that into our time management plans?