Monthly Archives: July 2016

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Why Not Sign Up for Camp NaNoWriMo?

Fiction Fix Typewriter

For those who may be learning about Camp NaNoWriMo for the first time, it’s offered twice a year – the months of April and July – as a kind of warm up for the biggie, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), in November.

Last year, I finished editing my previous NaNoWriMo novel at the end of June and signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo in July to work on an old, unfinished manuscript. This past April, I signed up again to work on a different novel that I’d started in December.

So why am I writing this when it’s almost halfway through July? To be honest, I almost gave up on the idea of participating this time. No, I haven’t finished the novel I worked on in April (although I did achieve the word count goal I set for myself). What happened is that I came up against a writer’s roadblock that I’ve written about numerous times: the mid-novel slump.

There is little more frustrating for a writer than knowing how your novel will end but then getting lost on the way. It reminds me of the family vacation we recently took, in which my GPS simply wouldn’t believe that our destination was on Sugarloaf Road. It was glad to take us to an empty field on Sugarloaf Mountain Road. While it’s a little misadventure we can laugh about now (and others who have been mislead by GPS can commiserate), at the time, it was aggravating because we knew where we wanted to be, just not how to get there.

Of course, with my novel, I can’t blame GPS. I was cruising along just fine and decided on the perfect twist to give my story more tension. The only problem was that I wrote myself into a hole in which I couldn’t write myself out.

Not knowing what else to do, I committed a big no-no: I went back to the beginning and started editing. Although it’s cost me a lot of time, I’m glad that I did. I’d written quite a few things that I’d forgotten, so I took notes along the way. I also trimmed a lot of extraneous words. And as I went, I realized what I would have to do when I got to that problematic scene that had effectively stopped my forward momentum: I would have to cut it.

There’s still tension, just not nearly as much. Although my scene isn’t the shocker that I originally planned, it’s no longer stalling the manuscript. It meant cutting 20 pages out that I spent days writing, but sometimes that’s what you have to do. I’m just glad that I’m moving forward again.

So now that I know what I’m doing, even though it’s 13 days in, I’m signing up for Camp NaNoWriMo. I am giving myself a low word count goal (12,000 words) because I hope that’s all it takes to finish this novel. Knowing my propensity for verboseness, it’ll likely be longer, but that’s okay. It’s often the scenic route that is most memorable.

 

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Read. These. Books.

It’s already July – that time of year when I look at the book list that I created on January first to assess how well I’m keeping up. This year, I am pleased to say that, of the 27 novels I hoped to read, I’ve already read 22. I hope I’m not speaking too soon when I say that 2016 may be the year I’ll finally read every book.

Of the books I’ve finished, I would like to highlight the multitude of teen fiction titles that I’ve recently read.

Florida Teen Reads books

Read these books!

I mentioned in my book list post that my cousin’s wife is on the Florida Teen Reads committee. Last fall, she gave me a pile of the books she’d read for the committee, assuring me that there was a little bit of everything: sci-fi, romance, mental illness – you name it. I was excited to add them to this year’s list.

As always seems to happen, I read a few books from my list, and then I deviated some – that’s life, right? By May, I’d only read one of teen books I’d borrowed, but a message from my cousin-in-law gave me the little kick I needed to keep going. She would need to get two of the books back by the fall because they’re Florida Teen Reads finalists. I read both titles back-to-back – Every Last Word by Tamara Ireland Stone and Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon. It was apparent why these books were finalists, and since I was on a roll, I continued reading the other FTR books, too.

Some of these books shine brighter than others. Knowing his taste, I had my husband read some of them and not others. One I had to twist his arm to finish, and he was glad he did. Another was the first book of a series, and Thomas liked it so much that he bought the whole trilogy – we both read them all.

Girl in PiecesIn the middle of reading all this teen fiction, I received an interesting opportunity: to read and review a teen fiction novel that hasn’t been published yet. While I’ve read books prior to publication before, it’s usually because I’m editing them, and that’s a completely different experience than being able to read a book to enjoy it. In this case, “enjoy” is a little too tame a description – I devoured Kathleen Glasgow’s Girl in Pieces in two days. (Read my review on Goodreads, and purchase it this fall.)

Before you say, “I’m not a teenager – why would I read any of these?”, let me assure you that teen fiction is not just for those in the 13 to 19 demographic. When I was in college, I took a class on young adult lit, and it was a rather recent genre classification at the time (in fact, much of what we read had previously been grouped with children’s lit). Books that fall into the YA genre star characters who live the issues that real young adults face. Okay, yes, sometimes the teens in these books are being chased by dragons, but they’re still coming of age and having all the issues that that entails.

Parents may find some YA issues uncomfortable, such as substance abuse, suicide, sexuality, and mental illness. Guess what? These are tough issues, but we can’t just put our heads in the sand and pretend they’re not there. When I read about a girl who hung with the cool crowd at school while keeping her OCD hidden from her best friends, I was glad that such a book was out there. It’s normal to read about the underdog succeeding – and I love those books, too – but to read about a cool girl with issues? Well, isn’t that life?

Today’s teenagers can only be sheltered so much. As a parent, I understand being protective, but I also would rather supervise my child’s exposure to these issues by handing him a book and then talking about it than praying that that kind of thing never happens. Who knows? My kids may have friends who face these issues one day – and many of these books list resources that provide support and help. Even within a fictional (and sometimes fantastical) setting, teens are capable of applying what they read to real life.

Read these books! Then share them with a teenager you care about.