Per Your Suggestions

I didn’t know what to blog about, so I did what any normal person does: I asked my Facebook friends.

Sara R. asked me to talk about–well, Sara R.’s was complicated. I’ll quote her:

Gummi bears. Gummi worms. Gummi sharks. The variety of animals that are in gummi form. A ploy by PETA to infiltrate our youngsters with subliminal save-the-animals messages? Or just coincidentally shaped candy snacks?

Well, Sara R., that is a very strange request. Actually, there is generally gelatin in gummi animals, and therefore they cannot be eaten by vegans! But they can probably be eaten by vegetarians. Back when I was a vegetarian I didn’t pay attention to gelatin rules, honestly. Probably because I found out while nomming on Altoids, and I didn’t want to give up the Altoids.

Trish asked me to talk about boys. Here’s a line a boy used on me a couple weeks ago:

Your eyes are beautiful. What color are they?

And then today the UPS guy tried to hit on me using this:

What’s your last name? Spalding? That is a BEAUTIFUL last name.

NO IT’S NOT. IT IS A NORMAL LAST NAME FROM ENGLAND THAT EVERYONE MISSPELLS BECAUSE THE GERMAN VERSION IS WAY MORE POPULAR DUDE. That is a TERRIBLE line.

Dudes, just be normal. Please!

Anji wants me to talk about mix tapes. Oh gosh. MIX TAPES. I wish people still made them. I remember this boy and I used to mail each other mix tapes and it was so magical. I had crazy feelings of love for that boy, and I am pretty sure a big chunk of that was the joy of the mix tape in my car stereo, the thrill of seeing his handwritten track list, the knowledge that it must have taken him hours to do this, just for me. That boy broke the heck out of my heart but years later I remember the mix tapes most of all.

Brent wants me to talk about writers block. I think Brent is just being a smart ass. That’s OK, I will still indulge you, Brent. I haven’t had actual writers block in a long time, because I truly think a big part of writing is just sitting down and doing it. And if you do that often enough, it’s habit, and you’ll keep going. But I get blocked for other reasons. Like, with my book out on submission right now, it’s so hard to give Current Project the love and care it deserves, because I’m all Stresso McGee over Formerly Current Project. But, alas, I must force myself to forge onward.

One thing that really helped me was an idea brought up by my lovely friend Siobhan in this post about not breaking the chain. Listen, I know that she’s quoting Seinfeld, but she’s a much cooler person than him, so I’m crediting her. Fair? Fair.

Michael Q. asked me to talk about fainting goats. I thought this was some kind of euphemism but apparently this is a breed of domestic goat! Thank you, Wikipedia. There is even an International Fainting Goat Association. WHO KNEW. NOT ME. Thanks for the education, Mike Q.!

Dan wants me to talk about Jason Robert Brown. I’m sad that Songs for a New World seems to have lost its hold over me now that I’m ancient. There’s something about that album that, for the most part seems so rooted in your late teens and twenties. Which, really, is awesome, because I’m not sure there are that many musicals that are so specific to that point of young adulthood. Also I’m really mad I was too busy last year to catch Parade while it was at the Ahmanson.

Jennifer M. wants me to talk about literary mashups. Gosh, at first they seemed so freaking exciting. When Pride and Prejudice and Zombies came out, I thought that was basically the most awesome idea ever. But I’m growing weary. Already it seems less exciting. However, I do love that people are playing with literature to make new media. Sometimes people get so focused on new technology that literature gets overlooked as something vital to our future, and it’s healthy to remember how much power it can still hold, especially in new forms.

Pearl and Brian H. want me to talk about post-apocalyptic polar bears. I must admit that this is a subject that has never crossed my mind. So here is a picture of one:

That was fun! Next time I’m out of blogging ideas I will do this again.

Now it’s time to get coffee and go to the library.

On Not Liking Things Ironically

The other day my dear friend Josh asked me what was up with my Zac Efron love. Was it ironic, or did I really think he was dreamy?

Well, I think that’s obvious:

POW.

Anyway, this is the thing. You know what I think? I think people claim to like things ironically, when in truth liking things ironically means liking things one knows aren’t cool or intelligent or even very good. But LIKING them. It’s like you still want your awesomepants cred but you want to like crappy and/or uncool things.

Well, guess what? I have given up on my awesomepants cred. I probably had it at one point, back in the day no one had heard of the bands I loved or the web sites I visited, and I’d learned to sneer at anything that was popular. BUT GUESS WHAT? I don’t want to be awesomepants hipstery anymore. I want to be loud and proud about the things I like you may deem uncool.

Because, sorry. Liking something ironically? It’s still liking it. So just admit it!

Here are some uncool things I like:

Well, this, obviously:

Roxette! OK, their lyrics are, at best, inane and/or English as a third or fourth language, but I truly think this is effing good pop music. Some of their hooks make me a little insane with glee. I wanted to post a video, but EMI is insanely stupid with not letting you embed things (right???) so go here and watch.

Do I even have to explain this one? I do not think so.

There’s the fact that this is one of the only TV shows I never miss:

Hall and Oates, oh man! One time a cute boy I ended up tragically dating but before it got weird and awkward got into an emotionally charged argument about which Hall and Oates song was the best. We then realized how passionate we’d gotten over the subject and quickly stopped. But I still believe the only answer to that is this number:

Have you guys ever seen this awful movie Sydney White? Well, it is AWFUL. And I love it. There is a scene where BOYS SING IN A LIBRARY. Hey, I go to the library all the time! NO ONE EVER SERENADES ME.

There are periods of my life where this is one of my favorite restaurants:

So I encourage everyone to loudly embrace all that they love, cheesy or uncool or awful or all three as they may be. I’ve been enjoying being a giant goober more than I ever liked being cool.

An Excerpt from Click

I posted an excerpt from my essay “My Number One Must-Have” from Click! So read it, and then go buy it! IN BULK.

Random Thoughts & Vom

Sometimes I have a bunch of small ideas for blog posts that just aren’t in and of themselves enough. So here are a bunch of random thoughts.

1. I think it’s really weird that one of my favorite albums, Tallahassee by the Mountain Goats, has a line about armies of ghosts in track 6, “Idylls of the King”, and then the lyric “I hope you blink before I do” in the next track, “No Children”. What I’m saying is: John Darnielle obviously foresaw both series two and three of Doctor Who, yes? Also I think – and I’m hardly the first to say it – this album is such a good example of storytelling through a form other than narrative prose. The Mountain Goats are one of those bands that inspire me as a writer as much as anything I read or watch. I marvel at the specificity in description, the sparsity that nonetheless conveys emotion extraordinarily.
2. I keep gearing up for this big post about long-form improv and writing and how having both in my life the past several months keeps informing the other one, but I’m kind of holding off while I’m still going through the program, and also while I’m at work on the book that required me to start taking improv classes in the first place. However, I will say that on Friday I went to an improvised talk show because one of my most longstanding celebrity crushes appeared “on” it. Holy smokes, Jack Davenport is handsome and tall and dashing and sexy, and hearing his voice not through the filter of a movie or television show was unspeakably fantastic. Oh, and afterwards? We might have ended up at the same restaurant. Which is ALMOST like a date, you guys! I mean, except for the part where we’ve never even met and didn’t speak and obvs his wife was there, but, um, still. I highly recommend delicious food in the immediate vicinity of your celebrity boyfriends.
3. I think for me, graduate school is an excuse to talk seriously about very geeky things. This is no different from what would normally be on my mind, but now I get to apply academic-speak and get taken seriously for railing against annoying Facebook groups I belong to and Stephen Moffat’s occasional forays into misogyny.
4. The way I used to feel about Converse, I’ve been feeling about Vans. I’m not sure what that means.
5. So I bought some blueberry pomegranate juice because, summer! refreshment! antioxidants! sounds possibly A++ mixed with vodka! But, you guys. Every time I start to pour my first glass I think about the Ocean Spray commercial where the blue-purple juice spews up and strikes our Young Grower in the face, and I want to vom a little. I don’t think this is the best way to promote your product, marketeers.
   

I want to write an actual post about the awesomeness that was the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, and, oh, I shall. But now I have library books to finish before their due dates, writing goals to adhere to, and juice I need to psych myself into drinking.

Major BEDA Fail

I’m not even going to try to catch up, and while I want to promise I will blog every day in May, we all know that will PROBABLY NOT HAPPEN. Last April I was out of work, which meant I had wayyyy more time for blogging. Also, technology has been against me. Don’t believe me?

1. My cat ate my powercord. It started working only occasionally, and was completely unreliable.
2. This part’s kind of my fault, but I kept trying to use it. My laptop shorted out. I almost cried. I almost had a heart attack, I AM ALMOST POSITIVE. But after a bunch of really smart tech moves like hitting the power button a lot and taking the battery out and putting it back in it started, and I recovered all but a few paragraphs of something I was writing.
3. Oh, right, THEN MY EMAIL GOT HACKED. (Let this part also serve as an apology to anyone I spammed. SORRY GUYS.)

Writing is also hard, you guys. I realized Current Project is clearly missing a vital character, so now I have to actually THINK UP this character and then go back and write them in. I think the book is going to be way ass stronger for it but geeeeeez. Also I’m thinking I derailed a bit and have to backtrack to keep on course. First drafts are Meanpants McGee. Plus my last project was a retread of an old idea, so while I wouldn’t call it easy, I did at least know where it was going. So that makes this one way more terrifying.

But also: more exciting. I mean, if by “exciting” you mean “an activity you do in your sweats while parked on your couch in front of your computer that you are guarding from cat attacks”.

And I know you do.

Advertising Fail

This is what happens when your ad software uses algorithms to create personalized ads:

You know, I think I can keep track of how many Harper Lee books I’ve read without any software at all!

Don’t Stop Believing, I Mean, Reading (Hold onto that Feeling)

I don’t know why April has turned into confessions of previously-held beliefs that turned out to be kind of lame. (Ahem. Ahem. Ahem.) This should probably be the point where I realize I’ve said too much, none of you respect me anymore, and that I should slink off to the corner.

I’m sure you already know that is not what I’m doing. With me, there is never a chance saying too much brings on a silence.

So when I was, well, not but a wee Ames, but a younger one, I was watching Oprah for whatever reason, and she was talking to a bunch of authors. (I guess, say what you will about Oprah, but that lady respects literature and that is awesome.) The writers were giving out some writing advice so I listened eagerly because this was before the internet (yes, I am so old I have a “before the internet” period that is not insignificant), so I wasn’t sitting in a plethora of advice and wisdom and information.

Anyways, some writer lady said NEVER TO READ EVER STOP READING NO READING if you are writing. OMG! I wrote all the time! I also read all the time, but I figured I had to listen to experts and STOP READING IMMEDIATELY. She said if you read anyone else you’d write in their style! I was all, NOOO I DON’T EVEN HAVE MY OWN STYLE YET UGH I DON’T WANT TO COPY SOMEONE ELSE’S.

So, yes. I was an aspiring writer… who did not read. At all.

Probably not shockingly, I wasn’t writing much either! Obviously books aren’t the only form of inspiration to people who… write books. There is music and television and film and theatre and, right, real life! Still. I think it’s no coincidence that my periods of least reading and least writing look a lot like this:

Anyways. I’ve personally found as long as I’m not mainlining one particular author, I do not suffer from style-stealing. Reading really just makes me want to write! Good books inspire me with their greatness. Bad books inspire me to be better. Books like mine make me feel like I’m on the right track. Books unlike mine make me think about things I might not otherwise. Reading my genre makes me understand it better. Reading other genres makes me understand mine better too. Books open me up to new ideas. Books reflect my own experiences, but also make me more empathetic toward others’.

Just remember that next time you watch Oprah.

Blaze of Non-Glory

I’m cheating today; my post is just an elaborated version of a comment I left on someone else’s blog. That said, do you know what? When I did BEDA last year, I did not have a dayjob. Guess what? Working forty hours a week tends to take away from your free time.

Go figure!

The topic of bad teen writing first came up over a Twitter post (you guys, I hate saying “a tweet” so I don’t) by my agent. I responded that I couldn’t share mine because I’d burned it. I was not kidding.

I would like to fully state my case for the record. My parents live on three acres in the middle of nowhere, Missouri. About once a year we’d do a huge cleaning, and – because we could, I guess? – light the trash on fire. I have no idea. It’s so dramatic! Also: terrifying! My room was right next to the fire area!

Anyway, back then my biggest fear was for anyone – and by “anyone” I mean “any adult” – seeing my writing. (Not sure how this translated into my dreams of being published, but if I had to make a list of my illogical behaviour that wouldn’t even crack the top ten.) So one year I threw my old writing into the bonfire. I think I was mature enough to realize my child/teen writing sucked, but not mature enough to realize one day I’d absolutely adore it for said suckage.

A lesson for any teen reading this: resist the temptation of the bonfire. When you are old, you shall regret its fiery flames!

Awesome Book #2

Book #2 is one of those I got kind of mad about after I read it because, GRRR, I DID NOT WRITE IT MYSELF! Same Difference by Siobhan Vivian totally moved the hell out of me and has stayed fresh in my mind even now, months and months after I read it. So I guess because of its awesomeness I can forgive it for springing forth from the mind of someone WHO IS NOT ME. Ahem.

(Maybe? I can work on it?)

There are a lot of big themes in Same Difference: self-identity, reinvention, artistic passion, independence. But I think what hit me hardest was friendship. (If you read Vivian’s first novel, A Little Friendly Advice, you know this is something she really knows from all angles.) For me growing up (and even now) friendship is not this little simple easy breezy joyful experience. It is messy and multilayered and complicated and sometimes causes you way more pain than your romantic entanglements (or at least as much). You think you get your friends, and sometimes you’re right (to your horror) and sometimes you’re way wrong (to your relief… or, right, maybe your horror). It’s scary stuff to grow up on your own alongside other people who are doing the same. You can only hope you’ll end up at the same stops along the way. (Hell, I’m in my thirties and these sorts of concerns still occasionally give me pause.)

So I admire Emily’s journeys – both literal, to art camp, and figurative, as she navigates new worlds within herself. Keeping the story tethered to this theme of friendship really made it drenched in reality for me. It would have been an easy way out for an old choice to prove stagnant and immature, or a new one to be impulsive and dangerous, but Vivian doesn’t take the easy way out with this one.

Also! There’s art! There are makeover-type scenes! There is a cute boy! GO READ IT!

Buy it from an indie bookseller now!

BEDA Is Hard

Oh man, you guys, I only made it through two days of BEDA before FAILING. Oops! But here I go again!

I’m super excited about new Doctor Who though I don’t always trust Steven Moffat, because while he is capable of writing truly genius stuff he’s also capable of giving interviews like this one. But Matt Smith is awesome, and as long as the camera starts devoting slightly less time to Karen Gillan’s legs, I’m onboard. This is definitely less traumatic for me than the transition from Nine to Ten. For some reason that was devastating.

Tomorrow I will write about another AWESOME BOOK. I promise! Not just that I will do it, but that it will be awesome!