so one of my twitter faves, jamie adams, asked me to participate in this writing process blog. I was equally surprised and flattered when jamie asked, and then on her blog she called me artistic AND charming, so she basically just moved up to the top of my favorite people list. also, follow her on twitter, because she's cool.
this is a "tagging" hop, and this is the quote that started it all: "We writers share these things, but informally during workshops and at conferences (and, for a handful of established writers, in printed interviews), but not so much through our open-forum blogs. With the hashtag #MyWritingProcess, you can learn how writers all over the world answer the same four questions. How long it takes one to write a novel, why romance is a fitting genre for another, how one's playlist grows as the draft grows, why one's poems are often sparked by distress over news headlines or oddball facts learned on Facebook..."
so here is the part where I answer four questions.
what am I working on?
this question really should be, what am I NOT working on, because it's always everything all the time. well I'm currently querying my newest completed ya contemporary. it's a little dark, and I don't want to give away too many details because I'm weirdly superstitious when it comes to my writing. other than querying, I am writing a new ya contemporary that has all the sads with a tiny bit of quirky mixed in. again, not gonna get into those details, because the silly superstition thing blah blah blah. but I both laugh and cry while I work on this ms.
how does my work differ from others of its genre?
oy vay. I guess I don't know that it really does. I write mostly ya contemporary. I fought against that for a really long time because I was determined to write fantasy, but then all these contemporary ideas kept flooding my head and wouldn't go away and now I have more than I can ever hope to write. I try to stand out among my genre with voice and I try to spend a great deal of books dealing on families, which seems to be lacking in a great deal of ya books. bust mostly I just write what I love and hope that others love it too.
why do I write what I do?
oops. I sort of already answered this in the above. I write ya contemporary because it won't leave me alone, try as I may to write a million other things. contemporary just calls to me like a lighthouse, beckoning me home. and also, I love writing about normal kids going through normal stuff. and also, I like making people cry.
how does my writing process work?
it generally starts with me having a dream about some ridiculously crazy idea that I jot first thing in the morning. then by the end of the day I realize that only about 10% of it will work in a story, so I start plotting.
NO, WAIT, I don't plot. All my cps just laughed so hard at this. I pants through everything, all the books I've written. I mean, what even is plotting?
so my writing process works like this: I write. then I call my cps and bore them to death with all my ideas and make them validate me and tell me I'm doing a good job. and then I write more. I try to write 1k a day, but that's basically a joke because I either write one sentence or 5k words. there is no method to the madness. only madness that I try to reign in on a daily basis. I make notes on post-its and stick them all over my room. I eat lots of gummy worms and drink too much wine. and then I write some more.
for this thing, I get to choose two more peeps to participate. I'm happy to announce I'm tagging one of my #nerdherd loves, mandie, and my lovely CP (and very old friend) brianna. make sure to check out their posts next monday!
