Competition Time!

There is a very cool competition happening over at Medeia Sharif's blog. Check it out here: 

http://sharifwrites.blogspot.com/2010/12/retro-reads-books-read-in-2010-and.html


The competition is for three winners to chose one book of their from the list to follow of Medeia's read in 2010 list 




The competition is open internationally to these countries that The Book Depository ships to for free, and is only open to blog followers. The competition closes December 31st at 11:59pm E.S.T. 


1. Mercury Falls – Robert Kroese
2. Evolution, Me, & Other Freaks of Nature – Robin Brande
3. Shrinking Violet – Danielle Joseph
4. My Big Nose & Other Natural Disasters – Sydney Salter
5. Rat Life – Tedd Arnold
6. WTF – Peter Lerangis
7. Lessons From a Dead Girl – Jo Knowles
8. Looking for Alaska – John Green
9. The Only Alien on the Planet – Kristen D. Randle
10. Push – Sapphire
11. The Fat Girl – Marilyn Sachs
12. The Crimson Petal and the White – Michel Faber
13. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
14. The Earth, My Butt and other Big Round Things – Carolyn Mackler
15. Nothing but the Truth (and a few white lies) – Justina Chen Headley
16. The Mysterious Affair at Styles – Agatha Christie
17. The Geography of Girlhood – Kirsten Smith
18. Bras and Broomsticks – Sarah Mlynowski
19. Paranoia – Joseph Finder
20. Once Upon a Marigold – Jean Ferris
21. Living Dead Girl – Elizabeth Scott
22. Outside Beauty – Cynthia Kadohata
23. Positively – Courtney Sheinmel
24. Wherever Nina Lies – Lynn Weingarten
25. Blue is for Nightmares – Laurie Faria Stolarz
26. The Red Umbrella – Christina Diaz Gonzalez
27. The Shape of Water – Anne Spollen
28. The Missing Girl – Norma Fox Mazer
29. Hush, Hush – Becca Fitzpatrick
30. Infected – Scott Sigler
31. The Adoration of Jenna Fox – Mary Pearson
32. Good Enough – Paula Yoo
33. Neil Armstrong is my Uncle & Other Lies Muscle Man McGinty Told Me – Nan Marino
34. Gone – Michael Grant
35. Fat Hoochie Prom Queen – Nico Medina
36. Indigo Blues – Danielle Joseph
37. What I Saw and How I Lied – Judy Blundell
38. The Dark Path – Luke Romyn
39. Shooting Kabul – N.H. Senzai
40. Pictures of Hollis Woods – Patricia Reilly Giff
41. Nightshade City – Hilary Wagner
42. The Freak Observer – Blythe Woolston
43. The Dust of 100 Dogs – A.S. King
44. Hunger – Jackie Morse Kessler
45. Shine, Coconut Moon – Neesha Meminger
46. Light Beneath Ferns – Anne Spollen
47. Shiver – Maggie Stiefvater
48. A Blue So Dark – Holly Schindler
49. Fancy White Trash – Marjetta Geerling
50. The Force is Middling in This One – Robert Kroese
51. Manifest – Artist Arthur
52. The Mosts – Melissa Senate
53. Silver Phoenix – Cindy Pon
54. Total Constant Order – Crissa-Jean Chappell
55. Such a Pretty Girl – Laura Wiess
56. The Sky is Everywhere – Jandy Nelson
57. Firegirl – Tony Abbott
58. Life as We Knew It – Susan Beth Pfeffer
59. Tears of a Tiger – Sharon Draper
60. How to Say Goodbye in Robot – Natalie Standiford
61. Dragon Chica – May-Lee Chai
62. Feed – M.T. Anderson
63. Suck It Up – Brian Meehl
64. The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod: Ninth Grade Slays – Heather Brewer
65. The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
66. The Duff – Kody Keplinger
67. Matched – Ally Condie
68. Emotional Intensity in Gifted Students – Christine Fonseca
69. Before I Fall – Lauren Oliver
70. Burger Wuss – M.T. Anderson
71. Perfect – Natasha Friend
72. Loser – Jerry Spinelli
73. Chasing Brooklyn – Lisa Schroeder
74. The Boyfriend List – E. Lockhart
75. Hex Hall – Rachel Hawkins
76. Paranormalcy – Kiersten White
77. Freefall – Mindi Scott
78. The True Meaning of Smekday – Adam Rex
79. Kick – Walter Dean Myers & Ross Workman
80. Annexed – Sharon Dogar
81. Oh. My. Gods. – Tera Lynn Childs
82. Whales on Stilts – M.T. Anderson
83. The House of Dead Maids – Clare B. Dunkle
84. Jennifer’s Body – Audrey Nixon, based on a screenplay by Diablo Cody
85. Eighth-Grade Superzero – Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
86. The Iron Bodkin – Amy Allgeyer Cook
87. Deenie – Judy Blume
88. The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl – Barry Lyga
89. Ball Don’t Lie – Matt de la Pena
90. Ricochet – Julie Gonzalez
91. Crank – Ellen Hopkins
93. A Long Walk to Water – Linda Sue Park
93. Glass – Ellen Hopkins
94. Fallout – Ellen Hopkins
95. The Pigman – Paul Zindel
96. The Replacement – Brenna Yovanoff
97. Bird in a Box – Andrea Pinkney
98. Attack of the Theater People – Marc Acito
99. Identical – Ellen Hopkins
100. Bleeding Violet – Dia Reeves
101. The Witches of Worm – Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Some seriously ace books to be won! Don't miss out!

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NaNo Never Again...?

This year I decided to give NaNo a shot. I heard about the National Novel Writing Month last year, but being in the middle of a project already and not wanting to lose focus on it, I figured there was always next year.

So this October I wasn't working on much, just tidying up a few old works I eventually want to rewrite, when I remembered it was almost NaNo time. There were a few ideas I'd had kicking around my head for a while, so decided there was no time like the present to get at least one of them out there.

I didn't do much in the way of planning. For a first draft, I find the more planning I do, the harder it is to write. I concentrate on the outline too much and don't give myself enough room for the story to develop. What I did do, was look really deep into my characters.I did a lot of profiling and background stories for them, really fleshed them out before the actual writing started. I'm a firm believer in characters and how they evolve all by themselves. Our characters carry the story, so I figured the more developed the better. If I got stuck, they could help me. I knew the general outline of my story and the direction it was headed, but other than that I was flying by the seat of my pants.

The morning of November 1st I woke with a knot of fear in my belly and a racing mind. I was terrified of starting my computer, to look at my notes and the very worst - getting that first sentence out there. But that last part always terrifies me. The first sentence of any new project is daunting, but once done is done. And if it sucks, hey, that's where rewrites come in. 

On November 1st I realised I'd made a mistake in signing up for NaNo. Not because I didn't think I could do it, because I did. If I sat down on any given day and said, right, you've got 30 days to write this bad boy, and you don't even have to finish it in that time limit, just get 50k done and we're golden, then I don't think it would be a problem.  What I did have a problem was the fact I had to write to someone else's deadline. Someone else decided it HAD to be November, it HAD to be 30 days started November 1st. And that seriously, seriously freaked me out. 

Once I got started I was fine. The ball was rolling, the words were flowing, the characters were making me fall in love with them and thought about them every spare second I got. 

I hit 50k earlier than the schedule predicted, 'finishing' NaNo on November 10th. This allowed me breathing time, time to relax and realise it wasn't the Hounds of Hell snapping at my heels, just a website encouraging people to write. The book I was writing wasn't finished, not by NaNo's standards. A part of me is glad I got so much done in so little time, as a dear member of my family took a turn for the worst and after a few weeks we lost her, obviously turning my thoughts to her rather than writing. When things got bad I used my book as a way to distract myself and disappear from the world, for as little time as I could.  Today I uploaded my work and got it validated, the final word count of the first draft coming in at 67,813k. There's still a long road until the book is even ready for other eyes to see it; a heck of a lot of editing needs to be done, loose ends tied up and fleshing out to be done.

When I first started, NaNo seemed to be everywhere. My blog feed was overrun of people sharing their past experiences or thoughts about NaNo; Twitter had the hashtag where NaNoers could meet and chat to each other. It almost made me wish I had avoided reading anything about it. Tweeters gave people hints and tips how to expand their novel, encouraged long winded sentences that really only needed a word or two. Bloggers either did the same and encouraged overuse of adverbs just to boost the word count. Others tarnished NaNoers with a hateful brush, calling them hacks and wannabes. Agents slammed NaNo since their query box is always full of half finished and unedited manuscripts come December. 

It got me thinking - why? If you're going to do NaNo, surely the win would feel all the sweeter if you actually wrote fifty thousand words you absolutely loved, rather than fifty thousand words of drivel that when you edit, will probably only be half that amount of words? 

But then there is the flip side - the people who take NaNo seriously, the people who have writing right down to their soul. The people who after having a good chunk of words start all over again because they know it will work better from another angle. 

That's the thing about writing. Whether it be for yourself and no one but you will ever, ever read it, or for future publication, whatever you write, you have to love it. You're going to be spending a long time with this project and you're more likely to keep pruning and polishing it to perfection if you care about it and want to see it at its very best. 

Now, I'm not saying my NaNo project is perfect. Far from it, in fact. But I do love it. I haven't added words just for the sake of it, I haven't had characters talking about their problems over and over just to bump the word count. When I'm done editing and rewriting I hope to have at least fifteen thousand more words on top of the 'finished' NaNo total.

Do I regret doing NaNo? Not really. But I'm sort of glad it's over. The best thing I got out of it wasn't being able to call myself a 'Winner', but for thirty days I got to write alongside some of the best and coolest people I've ever known. The road of writing is a long one, but thanks to NaNo it isn't a lonely one. Your friends are right there beside you, cheering you on. 

Would I do it again? Now there's a question.

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You

Your voice whispers in my memory

of summer days gone by.

Your gentle touch and soft embrace

that always felt like home.

I try to remember everything

from smiles to your shoes.

The way you held my hand

or made me laugh when I was sad.

The memories will soften

I want to keep them strong.

It's hard to remember everything

but I'll always remember you.

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