Updates and BBW

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Clearly, my five posts weekly resolution has been smashed. Then it was stomped on, put out with the recycling, and run over with a steamroller.

Oh well.

Tonight, the first 20-odd pages of YA MS the Third are on the chopping block in my Loft workshop. Early reactions are positive, but I manage to retain fear. It's my nature. I'm strong like that: in the face of positivity, I maintain a lack of composure.

I think I mentioned a trailer for YA Novel the First. Perhaps that was on Twitter. Regardless, I've decided, I regret to say, to redo much of it. The more I fiddled with it, the more of the book I felt I was "giving away," such as it is, and not adding much to the trailer itself, visually or oomph-wise. It eventually became really ineffective. So I'm backing up about three of hours of work, rethinking some of the sketches and the narration script. With a live-in babysitter set to arrive tomorrow afternoon, hopefully I can get it done by the middle of next week.

Not that there's any hurry, of course.

As I just noted briefly, by the way, Beth's mother-in-law will be arriving tomorrow afternoon. She'll be with us until Tuesday. I'd warn you that I might not update much during her visit, but since I've been about the slackingest blogger in Minnesota anyway, why bother.

I can hardly believe I haven't said a thing about Banned Books this week. Everyone did, except me. Of course, as you likely guessed, I am opposed to the banning of books. That said, I expect someone will challenge |-1|, and that bothers me not at all. It seems to me that much of the art teens have loved since "teens" became a demographic has been heavily challenged, regarded by much of the adult world as somehow dangerous. I don't expect that will ever change. And frankly, if it ever did, I expect art for teens would simply push farther, as it should. The teen age is one defined by its burgeoning individuality and independence from arbitrary adult and societal authority. Absorbing that which is challenged and subversive is a rite of passage, and a crucial one.