STONES!

Listen, let's just be honest with each other: I'm not going to write a sum-up entry about SCBWI-NY. Frankly, I'm like almost a week late with it, and by blogging standards it's now old news. Besides, the number of excellent recaps by bloggers who were actually paying attention and attended all their seminars is astounding, so adding to the noise would be silly.

Now then, the AE posted a nice entry over at the Carolrhoda blog about little old me, specifically, but generally about verisimilitude* in fiction for and about teens. You might want to read it. There's a picture of me wearing a hat!

Nicely, the AE's entry follows closely after Maggie Stiefvater's recent entry about teen voice, and they come to similar conclusions on similar topics. You might want to read that, too.

I should be WYAODing, and I am starting right now, quite late. Harry and I ran to the vet this morning, however, for an emergency visit. He is fine, it appears, but might have to pass a little stone before too long. Poor thing.

Have a good weekend.

*Also the name of a great tune by Teenage Fanclub

WYAOM! (The M stands for "month.")

The second half of December is totally WYAOD half-month! It began yesterday, sort of, since it was Wednesday, which means SIL babysitting and a half WYAOD. It was particularly special because I think it was the first Wednesday in some time on which I had no reading to do for the Loft workshop (it's over until late January), no homework for an education class (I'm also taking the spring semester off, so that won't change for a while), and no SAB job to help Eric Stevens with (he always needs my help, the bum).

But on Saturday it really kick into high gear! Beth and all the SILs will be at our house baking Christmas cookies for the whole afternoon, and in the morning Beth will be out with Sam buying ingredients for said cookies. That means WYAOD for me!

But it just gets better from there. After Christmas, Beth has a number of days off from work, and I hope and plan to use a couple or few of them as WYAODs as well. At this rate, my current WIP, aka YA MS 3, which is at the moment a hot mess, will be feeling a lot better before the first of the new year.

Oh, also: new crit group forming! We had our first meeting last night. All kinds of fun.

Allow me to ramble and whine about T-shirts, please

I have several favorite T-shirts. Shall I name them? I shall:

Helmet (Meantime-era logo)
01000100 01000001 01000100
Space Invaders
Strong Bad I
Strong Bad II
Four Gregs
SAB
Rockford Spelling Bowl

That's all of them, in no particular order. But here's the thing: Helmet, due to intense wear, and Strong Bad I, due to my having worn it while painting Sam's bedroom, are no longer public appropriate. Clearly, I need to replace those shirts. But meanwhile, I haven't had the extreme pleasure of wearing my Helmet T-shirt in months.

I know!

I wear T-shirts all day, every day (writer lifestyle FTW!), barring some kind of fancy-shmancy social engagement, like a wedding, for which I obviously need to wear a shirt with a collar so the tie won't look silly. But meanwhile, I live in constant fear that my favorite shirts -- the ones still presentable -- will soon become worn and unwearable!

The solution is clearly to right now buy an extra of each of my favorite shirts. Does this sound like a good idea?

But more relevant: why am I wasting blog space and your time with this issue? Who knows.

Today, beginning at noonish, I will enjoy a surprise WYAOD. An hour or so of it will be for SAB work. But after that, I intend to attack YA MS the Third with a vengeance. Much revising needs to be done, and I'm the man for the job.

Ooh! And some friends have lent to Sam a cool little car thingy that lets him practice walking! Enjoy this video.

It's the July WYAOD

I know. It's been almost a week. If you're tracking my resolutions, you're no doubt as disappointed in me as I am in myself. Here's the thing: I spent much of the week, when not working on a new FTM title, or simply doing the best job ever (watching Sam, that is), simply waiting for word on a couple of things.

First, Aforementioned Editor (how long will I keep up this pseudoanonymity of various people and projects?) and I have been discussing final titles for YA Novel the First. It's down to a few real contenders, one of which I'm favoring especially. It was Beth's idea, that one. In fact, nearly all of my favorites were Beth's idea. ENIV is also favoring that one. I suspect it will be the final title. Meanwhile, though, I wait for word from designers and salespeople and marketers, who are no doubt holding hours upon hours of meetings to discuss the issue, I assume, via AE. I know we're all anxious to settle on something, so I'm sure I'll hear next week.

Next, I mentioned very briefly that a writer whom I admire had agreed to blurb YA Novel the First. The exact wording of said blurb is still TK (I think the acronym list will be growing after this entry, by the way), and I'd love to simply just paste the entirety of her email below, but I think that would be in poor taste. For now, since she already made this public news on Twitter, I can reveal that the blurber is Sara Zarr. Yes! That Sara Zarr. And regarding the email, suffice it to say that when I read it to my mom, she cried.

So. The point is, I was hoping to update the Exile with some final word on either of the above issues. It wasn't to be. Instead, I'll let you know that today is a WYAOD for me. Like a giant doof, however, I biked to the coffee shop, ready to work, and forgot the excellent Father's Day gift cards I'm supposed to be using, per Beth's most excellent gift to me. Anyway, I'll be slaving away on YA MS the Third (poor the Second; why have I abandoned you?), and occasionally embarrassing myself publicly by playing air guitar along with "Aqualung," as I am right now. Don't judge; be glad there's no flute solo in this song.

Perfect Thursday

Another week has simply flown by, hasn't it?

It really did go by quickly, and frankly at the moment I can't remember most of it. I'm fairly sure I haven't done my 5000 words for the week, per Purple Clover's challenge, but I am going to take write night tonight, so hopefully I can come close.

How much flashback is too much flashback? I find flashbacks to be an excellent device for maintaining suspense, especially in dramatic and realistic fiction. It worked well for the likes of Jellicoe Road, and Sweethearts, and my own YA Novel the First and YA MS the Second. My current WIP, though, might be taking it too far, with a full three separate eras that need concentration: the first summer, the second summer, and the present day (literally, just the one day). I'm having trouble making this work. My goal yesterday, during an unexpected and most excellent half WYAOD, or WHYAOD, I managed to outline every crucial event in chronological order. Now I simply need to weave the times together into a fabric that will maintain suspense without jarring or confusing the reader. It will be a job of work, a lot of me sitting in coffeeshops, staring into space, and going, "Hmm."

Rather against my typical coy attitude with regard to my WIPs, I sent a few pages -- maybe 20% of what I've gotten down -- off to my agent for his opinions. I look forward to hearing back, but it will undoubtedly be a long weekend while I wait.

Oh, and after a great afternoon of cycling and writing yesterday (including lunch at Hiawatha Pizza--that dude better stay in business!), I met up with Beth and Sam at Punch for more pizza. I believe, by the way, that cycling, writing, Beth, Sam, and pizza are the sum total of the interests listed on my Facebook page. I'm not sure pizza is there, but it certainly ought to be. Which makes yesterday the perfect day!

In other news this week, I joined a new crit group, strictly online, with a group of four other gentlemen (a term I'm using very loosely). I have a feeling we are the only crit group of all guys working on literature for young people in the world. We'd have to be, according to the statistical odds.

Id est

I didn't realize it had been five days since the last post.

As I think I mentioned, Saturday (i.e., two days ago) was WYAODII for me, and it happily coincided with a Tenners weekend event, known through the Twitterverse as #ChapterChallenge. All in all, though I didn't follow the oh-so-strict guidelines as establish by Trish Doller and Josh Berk (i.e., write one chapter per day, Friday to Monday), I did manage to write on Friday, Saturday, and a little bit today over 5000 words, in a total of four chapters and change, most of which, even in the cold light of the morning, seem pretty good. This is for YA MS the Second, naturally, which you will recall enjoyed a Eureka! moment over lunch with Beth last weekend.

The rest of the weekend was spent grilling with friends, of course, and going on many, many walks, including two good ones today alone. I even got out on the bike for a short while today with no place special to go.

In other news, holy crap Sam is pulling himself into a standing position. I'm glad I got a lot of writing done this weekend, because it may have been my last chance for a long while.

BEA is this week. I remain jealous of those attending.

The "check engine" light came on in my car this weekend, too, and, having exhausted my own know-how in car maintenance (i.e., I checked the oil level; it was A-OK), I'm going to have to bring the ol' Camry in to Midas this week. Hopefully, the student art show is still showing at Harmar Mall!

Metallic Pea!

Productive weekend!

So, WYAOD proved very helpful for YA MS the Second. Although I spent a good number of hours outlining before my lunch with Beth and Sam, much of the work I did was tossed after lunch. "Then why was WYAOD helpful?" you're no doubt asking. Well, over lunch, Beth and I did some brainstorming about plot problems with the then-outline, and the solutions we came to were superb! So, the few hours I continued working after lunch were spent salvaging certain existent scenes, removing others, and sketching out a new outline that actually covers the full plot arc of the novel! This is a first for this MS. This coming Saturday will be WYAOD2 for me. I am very excited now.

Well, that was Saturday. Sunday was all about laundry, farmer's market, dog baths, fancy grilled suppers, lawn-mowings, and the like. When it came time to hit the sack last night, I was out in an instant. Felt good!

Unfortunately, this weekend's productivity on the personal side meant no paid work got done. So Eric Stevens is missing a deadline as we speak. His editor is okay with it, I'm told, so he can play catch up over the next few days.

Finally, started reading Jellicoe Road for class. I like it very much so far, about a third of the way through (it's 400+ pages). I am wondering if I would like it more than I do, even, if not for all the reviews I've read that have praised it up and down the mountainside. Also, I constantly have in my head "Jellicoe Roooooaaaaad" sung to the tune of "Holiday Road" from Vacation, with Chevy Chase.