A Little Switcheroo

Once again, I interrupt this blog's regularly scheduled programming of (well) nothing, to bring you an announcement. I intend to start blogging a little more often.

Yes, I've said that before, and it hasn't happened. But this time I actually have something to blog about, rather than simply clogging up your blogger feeds with more posts on  how to 'Show, not Tell' or 'create great characters.' I'm currently at Laval University in Quebec City, (Quebec, Canada) as party of the Explore French Immersion program. This means that I'll be spending five weeks in a French city, speaking nothing but French (supposedly....). 

I realize that my experience learning French doesn't seem to have much to do with writing, so it doesn't quite fit on a blog mainly meant for YA authors. However, the experiences I'm having are so relevant to writers. I'm living in a new culture, being thrown into a new language, and meeting tons of new people. I'm navigating residence life for the first time, and adjusting to being almost completely on my own in a new city.

As writers, we describe characters in extraordinary circumstances. To do that, we have to step out of our comfort zones ourselves, leaving our cozy little writing nooks and getting out into the world. This blog, for the next five weeks, will be the story of a little English major thrown into a world of French. Enjoy! :)

A Double Life

“I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked but really being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.”

                ---- Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

I lead a double life.

This may not seem surprising. After all, what writer doesn’t? Except for those fortunate few who can afford to make writing their careers, we all have to put down our pens (or shut our laptops) and get on with the normal business of working, parenting, or school.

For me, though, even my writing has fractured. Online, most of you know me as part of the YA literature scene. I write YA, blog about YA, and write reviews of YA novels. However, in “real” life, most people know me as the straight-A student who loves reading Shakespeare or Milton in her free time and has plans to do her PhD and be a professor. Those people are shocked that someone who reads The Wasteland for fun, or who can recite Yeats from memory would also have a shelf full of YA novels.

People normally see “high brow” and “low brow” literature as completely separate. They don’t think that Joyce’s Ulysses and Twilight could have anything in common.

Wait.

Did I just suggest that one of the greatest novels in the English language is somehow similar to a teen vampire story?

Yes. Yes I did. While there are many differences between the two, they are, fundamentally, about what it means to be human. Leopold Bloom wanders aimlessly around Dublin, and Bella Swan falls in love with a sparkling vampire, but both are ordinary humans seeking fulfillment. Well-written or not, “teen trash” or highly literary, entertaining or tedious, these stories tell us something about the human condition.

For me, that’s the point of any and all literature. To reach out to other humans, to overcome, as Joseph Conrad would say, “the loneliness of innumerable hearts,” and to truly communicate with someone else.

That is why I can’t find any disconnect between my scholarly studies and my YA writing. Because whether I’m reading The Hunger Games or Beowulf, Paranormalcy or Pride and Prejudice, J. K. Rowling or Virginia Woolf, I’m still reading about fundamental human issues. The need to be loved. To have faith. To belong.

The style may be different. Yes, some styles may even be “better” (but that’s a completely different argument). But, at the core, they are the same.

That is why I can be both 100% YA author and 100% academic. Because I am also 100% a writer. 

Not Quite Graduating

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang, but a whimper.

---- T. S. Eliot “The Hollow Men”

To begin on a cheerful note, the lines I just quoted from Eliot’s brilliant poem kind of reflect how I’m feeling right now. I have just a week left of classes, and I’m done at King’s forever. I’ll never have these profs again, or go to classes with many of my friends. When exams end in a month, I’ll never return as an undergraduate.

There should be ceremony. There should be speeches, and prizes, and fancy black hats, and flowers. Instead, I’m just sort of leaving. After all, I’m only done third year. I’m not even graduating. And yet, because I’m going to Scotland next year, I might as well be.

Maybe this is one of the reasons they don’t advise going on exchange in your fourth year (aside from the fact that getting all your required courses done can be a headache). There’s no closure. There’s no recognition of everything I’ve accomplished at King’s. Even next year I won’t be at the May convocation with the rest of my class since I’ll still be writing exams in Scotland. I’ll have to graduate in the fall, with all the kids who needed summer school to finish up. I’m just sort of slipping away.

I don’t regret deciding to go to Scotland. I’m beyond excited to head off, and I know I’ll have an amazing time. BUT… leaving King’s is a little bitter-sweet. I’ve only been here for two years, and it feels like I’m not really quite done yet. I could do another year.

Maybe it’s a good thing to leave now, when I’m still going to look back fondly on my years at King’s. I see so many of my fourth year classmates sighing “I can’t wait to get out of here!” and I completely understand their perspectives. Four years at the same school could get a little old. For me, I’ll have attended four different universities by the time I’m done my undergrad. I’ve had so many opportunities, and no time to get tired of anything.

I’m excited to move on, but I’ll definitely miss King’s. I guess that’s how life is, constantly mediating between the past and the future. But for the present, I’ll enjoy my last month at King’s, even if that last month is spent frantically writing exams. :)

I'm Going to Scotland!

I’m going to Scotland.

Let me repeat that, with the proper emphasis.

I’M GOING TO SCOTLAND!!!!!!!!!!

It’s still seven months away, and it’s been a long process so it all feels a bit surreal now, but the fact remains: in September I will head off to St. Andrews and spend a year there.

Let me tell you how this happened…

The picturesque town of St. Andrews

I’ve always wanted to go to the UK. One of my dreams has been to go on a “literary pilgrimage” across the British Isles visiting all the places that my favourite authors have lived. I could see a play at the Globe, visit Milton’s house, have a drink at the pub where the Inklings met… my only problem was having enough time to do everything!

In early December an email arrived in my inbox advertising a scholarship opportunity for studying at St. Andrew’s for a year. Since I was just at the beginning of my Christmas break and had very little else to do, I was able to devote plenty of time to the lengthy application. I had to fill out 18 paragraph questions (detailing everything from my volunteer experience to my future career plans), send official transcripts, and write an essay about the famous golfer “Bobby” Jones (the scholarship was provided in his memory). In the beginning of January I got back in Ontario, dropped off my application, and waited.

Coat of Arms

A couple weeks later, I got an email informing me that I was selected for an interview. An interview? I had no idea an interview was involved. I was nervous, but also excited, and waaaaay overthinking it. Eventually January 28^th rolled around and I went in for my interview… and I think I can quite frankly say that, aside from the enormous stress, this was the most fun interview I’ve ever had. All six interviewers were pleasant and friendly, and I felt comfortable from the instant I walked into the room. As it turned out, several of them even liked Doctor Who, and chatting for a minute about David Tennant made for a lovely icebreaker. J

At the end of the interview I was informed that I would learn their decision by Wednesday at the latest, which was yet another shocker, as the website stated that decisions would be made my Mid-February. For the next twenty-four hours I obsessively checked my email until finally, on Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of class, I got the message: “Decision letters are available for pickup.”

Imagine the stress! I had to sit through the remaining twenty minutes of class (apologies to my professor for paying very little attention), before dashing out to catch the bus to the Exchange office. That half hour was quite possibly the tensest time of my life. I arrived at the office at the same time as another girl, and we both picked up our envelopes.

One of St. Andrew's lovely old buildings

I opened mine, and the first word I saw was ‘Congratulations!’ I could barely refrain from jumping, and I definitely couldn’t stop smiling. I just repeated “Oh my God, thank you!” over and over all the way back to King’s. Then I pestered everyone for the rest of the afternoon showing them my acceptance letter… J I’ve got to thank all my Facebook friends for being so supportive and excited for me; it really means a lot. I plan to keep blogging more often over the coming year as I learn more about the exchange. Sometime over the next week I’ll post again about what exactly St. Andrew’s will be like. 

The Big Picture: Why I Don't Like Post-Apocalyptic Novels

When I read a story, I don’t care about the small stuff. Personally, I don’t care if the hero and the heroine end up together or if they’re forever kept apart. I don’t care if a couple characters in an isolated situation live or die. What I want is the big picture: what is the government doing? What’s going on at a global level? If the conflict of a story affects less than, say, fifty people, I’m normally not that interested.

A lot of people feel exactly the opposite; they’d rather read about a couple characters struggling for happiness than a whole world on the brink of disaster. That’s great. I love how everyone has different tastes. But for myself, while I love well-crafted characters, what I want from a story is a mass conflict.

This is why I dislike post apocalyptic stories. Because they promise me a global plot (after all, a catastrophe has just occurred which could destroy the entire earth) and what they deliver is a usually the story of just a couple characters trying to survive.

Take Dark Inside by Jeyn Roberts. It’s by far my favourite post apocalyptic novel because the characters are so well crafted, but the story was just about the four characters surviving. Same with The Forest of Hands and Teeth, which centers on a girl leaving her insular community and venturing into a world of zombies. Same with Life as We Knew It, which concentrates on a single family coping after the moon crashes into the earth. The Eleventh Plague is a little broader, but still stays within one community. Right now I’m reading Ashfall, and that’s just about one boy trying to find his family. Basically, all of these novels are about a single individual/family/community coping with a global catastrophe.

I hate to say it, but I found most of these novels somewhat boring. My mind automatically goes to the big picture. How can the world be saved? If thousands of people are dying, why should I care about one character? Why am I reading about someone nearly starving in a shed when I could be reading about the people trying to save millions?

In this way, post apocalyptic novels infuriate me. The point of the story is so small, basically on the individual level, when I personally feel like it should be so much bigger, on a global level. I can handle reading a romance novel occasionally because there’s no bigger conflict looming on the horizon; it’s all light reading. But when there’s a huge catastrophe, I want to be reading about the people solving that, not the individuals slogging around trying to find food.

I have to add: what I’ve said here is completely personal taste. Every single one of the books listed above has plenty of fantastic reviews on Goodreads. Obviously, some people like it when their books follow just a couple characters rather than looking at the big picture. However, that’s not for me. For now, I’m done with anything calling itself post apocalyptic that concentrates on a single character. It’s just not my thing.

Now… over to you! I’m curious, which sort of reader are you? Do you want the big picture, or would you rather focus on just a couple characters? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. 

SIMULATE News: Filming a Book Trailer

Instead of writing a post apologizing for not blogging in forever, I'm going to give you peoples a very quick overview of what's happening in my writing life (which, coincidentally, has very little to do with writing.)

My WIP, SIMULATE, is currently in its third draft. For me, this means that I'm taking last year's nearly completed, 83k manuscript, and re-working it. Adding a bigger plot, changing scenes, taking some elements out, adding others, changing characters... it's basically a new novel. And it's always changing. I thought I had it figured out a couple weeks ago, but then I got some cool new ideas so I have to fit those in, too.

But what I really want to talk about is an exciting new project I've started with some friends. We're filming a book trailer for SIMULATE! It so happens that one of my good friends loves filming (she's going into a film program at university) and a lot of my other friends are actors/actresses, so I have the perfect people to make a trailer.

The style of trailer we've chosen is similar to the trailer for Veronica Rossi's UNDER THE NEVER SKY, which has various shots done as if the book was a movie. However, instead of having dialogue in the shots, we're just having the narrator do a voice-over for the whole trailer. So, it's sort of a cross between a more traditional book trailer and a movie trailer. I've been disappointed with a lot of book trailers I've seen recently, so I wanted to create one that would draw me in to the story.

We've filmed two days now, a total of about seven hours, and probably have about half of the footage that we'll need for the trailer. Since one of my friends who plays a main character is leaving on Saturday to go perform across the country, we had to hurry and do his scenes today. Even though we had to work quickly and try to adapt (filming a futuristic book trailer in little ole PEI isn't easy), I think everyone involved had fun. For instance, two of my friends got to do some epic fight scenes, which I really enjoyed. It helped that one of them managed to cut his arm on a tree branch, so we had real blood to work with... (don't worry, it was more of a scratch than a cut!)

There was one awkward part, though, where two of my friends had to kiss. We had to have the scene, since it's really pivotal in the book, but since one of my friends is dating (someone else), and the other has never been kissed, we made it a stage kiss instead. Still, they had to do it about ten times, which easy could have been awkward, but they were great about it. Even though they didn't actually kiss it looked real, which is what counted. Plus, afterwards my female friend got to really slap my guy friend, which definitely made up for the kiss. :)

Basically, that's what's happening in the world of SIMULATE. I'll try and post more often about the writing process, since this type of editing is new to me, and as soon as the book trailer is up I'll let you know!

What My Star Ratings Really Mean

I’ve recently been thinking a lot about giving books star ratings and how this works on Goodreads. I know a lot of reviewers really dislike the star system and so choose to just not rate books at all. While I do think that rating books can be a little problematic, I personally like doing it because it gives people a really quick overview of what I thought of the book. For instance, I categorize my book reviews by star rating so that people can quickly see what I like and what I’m not such a fan of.

But ratings can mean different things to different people. On Goodreads, giving something three stars means that you liked it. For me, three stars normally means it was so-so, while books that I like get four stars. So, just so that you people know, I’m going to clarify what each of my ratings means.

1 Star- Disliked; Stay Far Away!

These are books I extremely disliked. Normally I only rate a book one star when I disliked it so much that I actually stopped reading (this has only happened to one book so far.) Normally this means both that the book is boring me and that it has a lot of content that I’m not comfortable with.

2 Stars: Not Worth the Time

These are books that I just really didn’t care for. For instance, Twilight would go in this category. They’re poorly writen, somewhat boring, and just really didn’t resonate with me at all. I will definitely not be buying these books, re-reading them, reading the sequels, or recommending these to anyone.

3 Stars: Not Bad, Give it a Try

These are books that I’m on the fence about. They had some good elements but also a lot of flaws. I probably wouldn’t read any sequels, or more from the same author, but I might recommend them to a friend who likes the genre. Still, I definitely wouldn’t buy these or re-read them.

4 Stars: Pretty Good, I Enjoyed It

A lot of books tend to fall into this category. These are mainly books that I was excited about reading and had heard a lot of good things about, but then just fell a bit short for me. Maybe some of the characters felt flat, or the writing was just okay, or it dragged, or there was a lot of questionable content. Whatever the reason was, these books were good but not absolutely phenomenal. I’ll read the sequels, try to win the books or get them as presents, and recommend them to book-loving friends, but I won’t re-read them over and over.

5 Stars: Highly Recommended

I loved these books! These books are nearly perfect; they might have some minor flaws, but overall everything is great. I’ll definitely be re-reading these books, talking about them to all my friends, and any sequel will automatically be shoved to the top of my TBR pile.

I hope that clarifies any questions you might have about my ratings. Now, over to you. If you run a book blog, or rate stories on Goodreads and Amazon, what criteria do you use for each star?