Today marks the release of The Spiderwick Chronicles Movie!
To see heaps of interviews with the writers, Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, click here.
Congratulations, Holly!
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I’ve seen a lot of folks coming to my blog looking for plotting board advice in the last few days, and I’ve also seen a lot of blogs directing people here, or otherwise commenting on the method. Some are snarky, “Make sure you put on your sunglasses!” (I think referring to the fact that post it notes tend to come in neon colors?), some are skeptical, and some are supportive. The methodology of creating a plotting board is probably one of my most frequent of frequently asked questions. I’ve answered many of them on this blog. I’m thinking of doing a big, be-all, end-all plot board post and then putting it up on my sidebar, but that will have to wait until after this week, because I’m on deadline. But again, to answer the most common questions: 1. Different squares are for different scenes. Maureen McGowan saved me from having to come up with a blog topic today, but she’s also making me break my own rule about not doing this tag thing. So of course, I’m changing it to fit my meme rules, which is that I don’t foist this on anyone else. Do it if you will. Rules: Now, this meme presupposes that there is anything about me which could be considered unimportant. Fie, I say! 1. I have two — two — pairs of gray fleece pants. One light, one dark. Illuminating, isn’t it? 2. I’m drinking a ginger ale right now. I prefer Canada Dry to Seagram’s, I’ve decided. I don’t know if most people have ginger ale preferences. I think that’s probably reserved for the Coke/Pepsi divide, in general. 3. Every time I look in my freezer, I want to defrost the rest of my wedding cake. Mostly because it takes up a lot of space. 4. The fact that so many of these items are devoted to food/drink is actually important. I’m hungry. 5. I have double-jointed elbows. It drives SB crazy. 6. The heroines of both of my contracted/published books/series have names that begin with A and have two syllables: Amy and Astrid. This may seem important, but it’s not. It’s entirely coincidental. Off to vote. Calling all Writers: Seventy Days of Sweat returns this week. The sponsors, Yours Truly, HelenKay Dimon, Jaci Burton, Larissa Ione, Lauren Dane, Portia Da Costa, and Shiloh Walker invite you to join in.
I’m joining in this round as I have a book due in approximately one month, so I’m writing my butt off right now! Who’s with me! And, as an initial inspirational post for those of you still in the planning stages, check out this amazing essay by 70DoS founder Alison Kent on plotbraiding over at the Plotmonkeys blog. A girl gets married, and completely misses a review of her book, despite the fact that her editor did, in fact, send it to her that weekend. Then, later, when she’s looking at the proofs, in which her editor has considerately included a quote from said review, she if muchly confused. But, hey, cool! Diana Peterfreund continues the enjoyable, breezy charm she delivered in Secret Society Girl. Under the Rose is every bit as involving and hard-to-put-down as its predecessor – perhaps even more so – as the stakes rise higher and higher for its thoroughly likable, conspiracy-minded heroine. Adding skullduggery to the hotbed of hormones on a college campus makes for an intoxicating blend. If college life is a kegger, Peterfreund’s series is a cocktail in a sugar-rimmed martini glass, sophisticated and easily gulped but delivering a satisfying kick. Read the whole thing (a few months late). Thing the First: Justine Larbalestier talks about the ethics of blurbing, asking for blurbs, and being blurbed. Good stuff here. As someone who is still shaky on the puzzling protocols of the blurb praxis, I found it helpful. Thing the Second: Ooh la la, Nalini Singh! Mine to Possess is #32 on the NYT Bestseller List! Congratulations! I’ve loved Nalini’s writing ever since her first book, a Silhouette Desire about a sheik. Seriously. Sheik. In her hands, though…. I’m so excited for her! Thing the Third: Cameron Mathison is a funny guy. I loved him on Dancing With the Stars. And I wonder, should I ever become a soap-slash-reality TV star, will I be asked about my early career posing for romance novel covers? Also, Cam, how much did you get paid? Let’s talk. Yes, that is a book by the fabulous Julie Leto. (She says the reprint edition has a different cover.) Have a great weekend! Oh, Maureen Johnson, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways… So when everyone was debating about “Chick Lit,” I was probably off eating a sandwich somewhere and missed the whole thing. Which was fine by me. Except that I kept getting these interview questions over and over again, people asking me about my favorite “fellow Chick Lit writers” or how I felt about something “as a Chick Lit writer.” Unlike Maureen, I have actually described myself as a chick lit author because my SSG books are about a young woman’s journey to self-discovery and adopt a breezy, humorous tone. They also feature covers sans heads (or pink, and yes, I got letters saying “I don’t usually read pink books, but I loved yours!”), a healthy smattering of romance (you know, like The Matrix), and of course, is about and written by a woman. That’s the real issue here. Like Maureen, I have been told that my book are not chick lit, because they don’t contain that holy triumvirate of chick lit stereotypes: shoes, cities, shopping: And I’ve also been asked about the shoes, cities, and shopping in my books, by people who have obviously never read them. In fact, when my first book came out, it was promoted by someone who said, “I don’t read ’shoe’ books myself, but this one looks interesting.”I think the word “shoe” may appear once in my novel.
Though since Pantalaimon the laptop only has drives for “discs” and not “disks” then I suppose the point is moot. My brother tells me that USB is the way to go anyway and something about Apple Air Jordan, but I digress. The point is, it’s difficult to have a conversation wherein the people involved are defining the terms of the topic differently. Yesterday, SB and I saw a bumper sticker: “You say PIT BULL like it’s a bad thing.” I feel that way, and have for years. Keris Stainton of Trashionista writes: I’ve recently been asked elsewhere to define chick lit and … I can’t. Apart from that it will probably (but not definitely – see Lisa Jewell’s A Friend of the Family) have a female main character with a relatively snarky tone, I think the genre has widened enough that you can’t set any parameters on story, setting, age of characters, anything … particularly not the wine they drink or shoes they wear. The best I could come up with was that I know chick lit when I see it (which isn’t at all helpful to anyone else, of course). Which brings me to my second point… But genre is damn slippery, even at the best of times, as pointed out recently by Justine Larbalestier, David Moles, and Maureen Johnson (in the same post as above: “If established literary terms are stable as jello molds, then Chick Lit is a soufflé sitting on a fault line. It only means whatever the latest and most effective argument says it means. Or whatever you guess it means. Or whatever Wikipedia says it means. Whether the books under the banner are in any way similar (except for the sex of their authors) . . . well, that’s another question.”) To quote Maureen’s agent: Lately, when people ask me what I write, I tell them I write a series about a girl who joins a secret society at her Ivy League University, and it’s kind of like Bridget Jones. They’ve heard of Bridget Jones, because there was a movie. (Seriously, though, how funny would it be if I said it was kind of like The Other Boleyn Girl, Stardust, and No Country For Old Men? I’m occasionally tempted to be dadaist, because cocktail parties in DC can get a bit predictable. There was a period of time where I started telling people I was a professional smoke jumper, but then Sailor Boy threatened to lock me in the house.) I did an interview a while back where all roads led back to this discussion of chick lit, of the value of chick lit, and, like Maureen said, how I feel about such-and-such “as a chick lit writer.” (It even went so far as to make a bizarre claim that the unicorn book, a young adult fantasy adventure with gorings, decapitations, and extended hunting sequences, was “chick lit.” Someone picking it up expecting Bridget Jones’s Diary is going to be pissed.) I don’t do the genre snobbery thing. Good books, bad books, all over the place. There are genres that aren’t my cup of tea, but I’ve pretty much learned never to say never on that one, because one will presently come along to make a liar out of me and I’ll adore it. And, like Maureen, I’m fine with being called a chick lit writer, because I do think the SSG books work as I define the term. And I’m fine with not being called a chick lit writer because someone thinks books without shoes or shopping don’t count. I’m not so much fine with calling the unicorn book chick lit though, since I don’t see it matching anyone’s definition of that term. It’s more like Jellyfish Lit. (Sorry, Maureen.) Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines. Plus a flight to Washington this afternoon. Busy day ahead of me. Check out: Finally, we have a bit of Prince Caspian news. When I saw the ad on the night of the Superbowl, I was so excited. Of course, I had to go look up the trailer. Doesn’t it look great? I think I even like the changes I’m assuming they are making based upon the trailer. Skandar Keynes (Edmund) is looking all grown up, too. SB says I would like him even if he were played by a troll, though, since Edmund is my favorite character. In fact, I have another article coming out in the upcoming Ben Bella Books anthology THROUGH THE WARDROBE, about how great King Edmund is. Folks all over are talking about the value (resulting smackdown to be found here, here, here, here, and, even at GalleyCat, who calls for the dude to be replaced), classification, and fun of writing a YA novel (or not). (Updated to add: Susan Adrian was also posting about it here.) This weekend at my writing retreat, I was asked “Why YA?” a good dozen times, by writers who would never consider, have never considered but were curious, and those who not only had considered, but really wanted to. At the last cocktail party I attended, I was alternately sneered at (“Oh, just children’s books,”) and applauded by an adult fan of Twilight. I’m baffled by the assumption that the books are easier or simpler. High school students read more than the average adult, and the books they read are the big ones: Shakespeare, Hemingway, Faulkner, etc. If they can handle that in their classes, they are equipped to handle all kinds of stuff in their pleasure reading. I wonder why this happens. I wonder why actors in movies and television made for children get markedly less respect than actors in movies and television made for adults. I wonder if it’s the same impetus that causes folks to look down their noses at teachers, or say, “just a kindergarten teacher?” to a friend who is a kindergarten teacher. All of my favorite books were books I read as a child. That’s enough for me to say why YA.
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