The Avid Reader

Aspiring YA Authors! Have YOU Written the Next Big YA Book??

Today on the blog I'm talking about 'The Next Big YA Book' event, hosted by Hipso Media Publishing and Jenny from Supernatural Snark.

Basically, aspiring YA writers can submit their complete manuscript for consideration, and the winning book gets a publishing deal! How could I not promote this when I'm an aspiring YA writer myself?! (Though sadly my own work in progress is nowhere near ready to be entered in this competition! Right about now I'm bitterly regreting every single day that has passed without getting some words down.)

Read on for more details and if you've written a YA book, be sure to enter!

Calling all authors!

If you have ever hashtagged #amwriting, #MSWL, or #IWantToBePublishedSoBadlyMyEyeballsMightPop, than pay attention.

From September 17^th through October 1^st, Hipso Media Publishing and Jenny from Supernatural Snark will be hosting the ‘Next Big YA Book Event.’

Why is this good news for #amwriters?

Here’s how the event works. Most publishers work exclusively with agents, which makes it difficult (more like close to impossible) for up-and-coming writers to get their work seen. Well, Hipso Media Publishing will be opening their doors to all YA writers who dream of traditional publication, but can’t seem to catch a break. Writers who have mountainous ideas, along with an actual mountain of rejection letters. Hipso wants to pick one of those writers, and treat them like the literary rock star they are, showering them in every publishing perk someone of their caliber deserves:

-  Publishing contract with a generous royalty program

-  Custom cover from Seedlings Design

-  Candace Book Blog Book Tour

-  Exclusive front-page podcast on AuthorsOnTourLive, iReadBooksRadio and iHeartRadio (which gets an average of more than 1 million hits a year)

-  Novel as an eBook on all major retailers – Kindle, Nook, iBooks, Kobo, around the world

-  A featured post on Supernatural Snark

-  Awesome book swag, and more…

Once the winning manuscript is picked, Jenny from Supernatural Snark (Owner of Seedlings Design) will work with the author to create a custom cover that will be sure to shout, “NEXT BIG YA BOOK”. And then she’ll do a featured post on Supernatural Snark, to make sure the world hears.

No agents, hoops, or hassles. The only criteria are that your YA manuscript be finished, you must believe it’s great, and it must not already be published somewhere else.

Here’s the link to the submissions page and contact info:

http://www.hipsomedia.com/the-next-big-ya-book/

Good luck and happy writing!

Also, if you have written, are in the process of writing, or even are thinking about writing a YA novel, let's connect!

I'd love to have some writer friends to motivate and encourage me!

Writers Write

If I'm honest, I've always known I was a writer. I was writing picture books from the time I could hold a crayon. I won a state-wide poetry contest in second grade (which was the last time I wrote a poem worth reading!) and I filled notebooks with short stories and (terrible) poetry right up through high school. Friends pestered me for the next installment in my mini novels. Teachers read my short stories and encouraged me to pursue a career as a writer. I read voraciously and I daydreamed about one day being a published author myself.

Then I went off to college and for a lot of reasons I just stopped writing fiction. And the longer I went without writing, the less like myself I felt. But at the same time, the more time that passed, the more intimidated I started to feel by the prospect of writing again. I think deep down, I was afraid that I might have somehow lost my talent for writing, and if that was true I just did not want to know it. If I never wrote, I never had to officially know that I could not, in fact, make it as a writer. So much of my personal identity was tied up in seeing myself as a writer. For years I told people that I was an insurance claims adjuster, a nanny, an SAT tutor... but in my mind, those were just jobs I held to pay my bills. In my heart I was a writer. But I was a writer who didn't write. A lot of authors will tell you that this is something which doesn't exist. They will tell you that a writer writes, period. That there is no such thing as a writer who isn't writing.

And I get what they're saying, sort of. But...

I still call bullshit. Writers stop writing for all kinds of reasons. They come to writing late in life. They try other hats on for size before they realize that writing is what they are meant to do. I am a writer because I found my way back to writing. I am a writer because I found it in myself to push past my fear and uncertainty and just start putting words on the page again. I don't think less of myself because there were years when I wasn't in a place yet where I could do that. I think more of myself for clawing my way back to this thing that I love, and for loving it even more after so much time away. 

This past fall, I decided to stop thinking about writing a novel and actually write one. In November, I participated in National Novel Writing Month, and while I didn't "win", (complete my novel in one month), I did come the closest I've ever been to a complete first draft. Equally valuable, I had also spent a month cultivating some writing discipline. Nearly every day in November I sat down with my laptop and added words to my story, and it felt amazing. I felt creative and focused and like my old self again for the first time in years.

When November ended, I had 45,290 words written. Coming off the NaNoWriMo high, I hit an awful slump where I immediately decided that every word I had written thus far was utter garbage and that far from being close to a first draft, in fact I would soon need to scrap almost everything I had written and start fresh. The self doubt was crushing and I cringed when people in my life asked me how my novel was going.

Fortunately, rather than rashly deleting most of what I had written, instead I set the manuscript aside and decided to look at it again in a few weeks with fresh eyes. I reread my work in progress tonight and miracle of miracles, I no longer hate it. In fact, I even like it again. I even feel like it's kind of great, in a rough, first draft kind of way.

If I continue with the plan I have in mind for my story, I estimate that I'm about two thirds of the way through my first draft. Right now I feel like the most important thing for me is to get back into the habit of writing every day again. With that in mind, I'm setting a modest goal for myself of writing 500 words per day. If I feel about two thirds complete at 46,000 words, that puts me 100% complete at 69,000 words. At a rate of 500 words per day, in theory I could have a completed first draft 46 days from now.

FORTY. SIX. DAYS.

Which is amazing and wonderful and the hugest of milestones. I will be beyond ecstatic if 46 days from now I'm printing off a first draft and starting revisions.

But you know what? I'm a writer right now. 

Book Review: Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose

I purchased this book on Amazon. It was actually something I had to read for one of my Education courses, but I ended up loving it so I've decided to review it here!

Publication Date: April 10, 2007

Goodreads Summary:

In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters to discover why their work has endured. Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart - to take pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; she is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in George Eliot's Middlemarch. She looks to John Le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue and to Flannery O'Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail. And, most important, Prose cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which all literature is crafted.

My Thoughts:

In Reading Like a Writer Francine Prose suggests that all great writers are readers of great literature. She contends that one need not pursue an advanced degree or attend writer's workshops in order to improve their writing - rather, all they need to do is become avid readers. This is a book that teaches readers how to be good readers. It also serves as a great writer's manual because it offers both inspiration and concrete, practical ways to improve one's writing. This is definitely a book that aspiring writers will read again and again.

Early on in the book, Prose shares her dismay that so few people today seem to read great literature. She talks about her frustration teaching literature to graduate students who have never read Pride and Prejudice or A Good Man is Hard to Find.  

Prose seems determined to tackle this problem with Reading Like a Writer. The book is peppered with citations from various great works of literature, used to show examples of truly skillful writing. Prose talks about how to write good dialogue, and then shows an example of it. She expounds on the importance of efficient but beautiful sentences, and then shares several examples. The result is that this book is, in part, a collection of some of the juiciest, most compelling snippets of some wonderful works of literature. At the back of the book, Prose includes a list of recommended reading that includes these texts. The inevitable result is that the reader will find himself eager to discover these stories for themselves. I know that I added several books to my "to read" list over the course of reading this book!

From a writer's perspective, one of the things I loved best about this book was that Prose repeatedly reinforced the idea that “literature not only breaks the rules, but makes us realize that there are none”. For every suggestion she makes, she offers examples of great works of literature that did just the opposite with great success. This is one reason she does not place too much stock in writer’s workshops, which might encourage a writer to change some aspect of his work to follow an utterly arbitrary rule of writing, when in fact his work correctly ignored said rule in the first place. As Prose points out, the beauty of literature is that it is all so different.

Reading this book and reflecting on Prose’s advice to aspiring writers has affected me in a profound way. After reading this book I feel more inspired than ever to make a serious attempt at writing a novel of my own. Prose has encouraged me to worry less about what others write, and instead to forge ahead with my own writing secure in the knowledge that of course my work will be different than that of the authors I so admire, and that is in fact a good thing. The irony is that Prose has made me feel this way while at the same time filling me with the irrepressible desire to read as many of these great books as I possibly can, in hopes of improving my own writing. 

In short: if you love books - reading them, or writing them - this needs to be on your bookshelf!

Have you read Reading Like a Writer? What did you think of it? What other writer's manuals do you recommend?