The Hunger Games

I was all set to post this blog about The Hunger Games trilogy today, but Susan beat me to it.
Come on over to her fabulous blog - Inkspells

No need for me to blog it when she's already started a discussion, right? Except I can't help it. I have to say something.

This series is AMAZING!

The reader in me is SO grateful to Suzanne Collins for a book that recaptures that "Don't talk to me, I'm reading" feeling. That "read under the covers with a flashlight" because I can't put it down feeling. That "need to recommend it to everyone you meet" feeling. Even that "need to blog about it even though someone else did" feeling. ;)

The writer in me wants to know WHY it works that way.

What amazes me about Hunger Games is that I can analyze it as a writer without losing any of the reading pleasure. That's rare for me.

I was discussing Hunger Games with a friend via email last night and she suggested that the writing puts her completely in the world of the story. I absolutely agree, but HOW and what else?


First of all, despite the subject matter which sounds harsh, The Hunger Games is extremely readable. You don't feel like you have to work at it; you're just absorbed into the story. You immediately want to root for Katniss against terrible odds because she's had such a hard life, she was so heroic in taking her sister's place, and she doesn't think of herself as anything extraordinary. Then there are all the little jabs of tension. In Book One, every time you get lulled into what is happening, there's a reminder of what's really ahead and how she can't trust anyone. By the time you get to the actual games, you're already completely captivated by the story. Forget putting it down then.


And of course there's the love triangle (verdict still out for me on that one).


Hunger Games reminds me of a cross between Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and the TV show JERICHO (that dystopian theme) with maybe a little Lord of the Flies influence. But it's so much more than that.

So have at it, if you will. Have you read The Hunger Games? What do you think makes it so compelling? And of course I have to ask, which team are you on?

Apparently I'm not alone in needing to discuss it - the Dear Author website had over 1000 comments! Dear Author is one of Scholastic's official District Blogs for this. So if you want (make that NEED) to discuss The Hunger Games more than just here or on Susan's blog, you can follow along on a different website each day up until the release. Each District has fabulous prizes to give away.


If you haven't read The Hunger Games and Chasing Fire yet, there's still time before the Mockingjay release next Tuesday (August 24th).



ETA: The teacher, writer and reader in me all love that there's so much excitement about this trilogy. Scholastic even has a countdown clock on the website.




If by chance you somehow missed all the hoopla about the trilogy this summer, just Google The Hunger Games, you'll get something like 7,290,000 results to choose from.

Healthy Writers - Not My Mother's Vegetables

Today marks my debut as a columnist on the Healthy Writer Blog.

If you're not familiar with the blog, I hope you'll drop by and check it out.

Healthy Writer was started about a year ago by writer Trish Milburn to chronicle her efforts to live a healthier lifestyle. Writing may be a sedentary career, but it doesn't have to be an unhealthy one!

Over the year the blog expanded with Michelle Butler, Tawny Weber, Keri Mikulski and Rachel Kleinsorge each taking a day and focusing on a different aspect of living a healthier life. Today I join them with a Saturday column on vegetables.

My post today is called Not My Mother's Vegetables and the vegetable du jour is the amazing superfood Kale.

I hope you'll come by and check out some of the videos and recipes.

WriteonCon

A week or more ago we were talking about all the people heading off to various conferences and what it felt like to be the ones left at home.

Well this week, all that changed. If you haven't discovered it yet, head on over to WriteonCon, an awesome online FREE conference. The conference is aimed at writers for the Kidlit market but the advice being offered is applicable across genres and the entire idea is extremely cool.

For example, if you're in need of motivation or validation, try this presentation by HarperCollins editor Molly O'Neill - Give Yourself Permission

Last night I participated in/really just observed an online video chat with agent/former editor Mark McVeigh - Working with Agents and Editors

Today there is a workshop on Plot and Pacing that I'm looking forward to spending time on.

There are also upcoming live video chats on querying, building an online presence and the revision process from both the author and editor perspective.

Be sure to check out the schedule of events. It's mind-boggling.

The conference actually started on Tuesday but almost all of the sessions are available as blogs or transcripts on the site.

Huge KUDOS to the organizers of this event. It's absolutely amazing.

Visiting Day

I've had too much time with my own words lately. I'm spending today visiting around other blogs. let me know if you've got one I should see!

The Long View or No Quick Fixes

We live in a world that rewards our need for instant gratification. That's not news, but it is the topic of the next chapter in Writing from the Inside Out by Dennis Palumbo.

He starts this chapter with a thought-provoking description of a commercial he saw - a guy in some sort of new age looking head phones with the headline "You'll be meditating like a Buddha in thirty minutes." (p. 91)

Think about it.

And then wonder - are we like that in our writing?

Do we expect it to be something we can learn in a week? A year? Ten years?

One of my favorite tweets from RWA was this:

Definition of "hope" = just met an author who shopped manuscripts for 15 YEARS! This year - sold nine books.

I'm going to think of this the next time I feel overwhelmed by how long I've been at this and the difficulty of breaking in to publishing.


But back to the chapter - so much wisdom, so much to think about.

Take this quote -

Being a writer - with all its successes and failures, raptures and rejections - is a life long endeavor. Less a career choice than a calling, its rewards are often so private and ambiguous as to be inexpressible. It's as much a perspective on things, a way of organizing one's experience as it is a job. (p. 92)

He goes on to quote from John Fowles about whole sight and summarizes that

Seeing things whole, having the long view, is the only way to live the writer's life. It's committing yourself to a concept of writing as an integral, ongoing part of your life, omstead of ust a series of external events - good or bad reviews. deals made or lost, great or awful days at the keyboard. It's seeing your writing life as though it stretched to the horizons - all the ups and downs, hills and valleys, smoothing out from this lengthened perspective. (p. 93)

Finally, Palumbo advises to listen to your instincts; take a workshop when you feel you need one, write feverishly when the impulse is there, but do it with a view to expanding your writer's life, not in a frantic chase after the hot technique or genre.


What particularly speaks to me about this is that it seems to allow for those burnt out times when you need to pull back. Fill the well, if you will, so as to have something to write about.

I had to back up and live life for a number of years because writing had depleted me. It was a chore that I dreaded rather than the life I wanted to live.

As I type that, I'm struck by the apparent contrast of this wisdom with what I've heard quoted from the keynote address Nora Roberts gave at RWA10. I don't have the exact words but the common paraphrasing I heard was that writing is hard, sweaty work that you just have to do.

I agree with Nora (after all, who am I to argue?), but I have to wonder what she'd think about Palumbo's long view.

What do you think?

Best blogs from RWA

As I read around the various blogs reporting from RWA and SCBWI, my mind is quickly going on overload. There's so much good information that I don't want to forget. Most of it is important no matter what genre you write, so please take a look.

It does seem that there are fewer blog updates this year because everyone is tweeting their thoughts. If you want to follow that - the hashtag is #RWA10 although some are also using #RWA2010.

If you run across a blog I haven't mentioned, please let me know in the comments. I'll be adding to the list as the weekend continues:

But first a bit of fun and a tribute to RWA which has been raising funds for literacy for so many years now.

This was shot and posted by Sarah Wendell, SmartBitchesTrashyBooks




The list (Check back; it's building):

From RWA -

1. Just for fun - the RWA hashalbum - Twitter's feed of everyone's photos.

2. Scott Eagan - Remember your Theme

Scott also blogged that he's now accepting agency queries for Love Inspired books.

3. Barbara Vey - On Librarian/Bookseller Day
Barbara Vey - Workshops and Parties

4. The Misadventures of Super Librarian

RU at RWA romanceuniversity

6. Happy Endings Blog - Daily updates


From SCBWI Conference -

1. The Official SCBWI Conference Blog Be sure to scroll down and check the archives because they've been doing pre-conference blogs as well as blogs during the conference.

2. Susan Kaye Quinn's Inkspells with updates

Myths, Fairy Tales, Woody Allen and RWA

A funny thing happened on the way to writing this post. I got inspired. Mega-inspired.

Seriously, the thing I'm most envious of the people in Orlando is how they'll all come home inspired and eager to get to work. I remember that rush. It's very cool! But thanks to the magic of cyberworld - FB and Twitter - I'm coming away with that same inspiration.

That's a good thing because envy can make us crazy.

In the opening passage of the chapter entitled Myths, Fairy Tales and Woody Allen, Palumbo shows that envy with a description of the opening scene in Woody Allen's Stardust Memories.

A glum Woody Allen sits in a dark, dingy car with other lost souls. Looking out the window he sees another train car - shining, brightly lit. Inside, beautiful men and women laugh and drink champagne...Woody despairs. Why isn't he in the sparkling car with all the sparkling people?

I'll link the Youtube clip for anyone who wants to watch it themselves, but I also wanted to talk about what it means for writers. It's easy to make the comparison between all the sparkly people at conferences and those of us left behind. But is it all sparkly at conferences? Be honest, have you ever felt just a little less sparkly even when there because either you weren't published yet or you are but you're midlist so your sparkly people are the NYTimes bestsellers? Is sparkly relative?

I think in the end, we're all in charge of our own sparkly feelings. I sparkle when my story is flowing, when I know that writing gives me a high like nothing else. So rather than think about the sparkly people at RWA, let's talk about us.

How do you sparkle?

From Stardust Memories