Author: Shellie

‘Fess Up Friday: Surprises

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As of this morning, the word count on the draft I’m writing for NaNoWriMo is 8,691. I’m not quite done writing for the day, but there you go.

As expected, I’ve been NaNo-ing I mean, engaging in the narcissistic commerce of writing all week long, with very little narcissistic commerce of revising to speak of. (Thanks to you, Ms. Miller, I have finally learned to spell narcissism correctly.)

Since there’s already enough negative NaNoWriMo energy going around the blogosphere these days, let’s talk about some of the great things NaNo has done, yes? There are many benefits to NaNoWriMo including encouraging discipline, getting a first draft out of it, bringing together a community to cheer you on. As for me, the biggest benefit of NaNoWriMo this week is that it has shed some light on my process as a writer.

I mentioned in a previous entry that I had two ideas I was kicking around for NaNo: one that was just a seed of an idea and one that was more fleshed out. I went with the seed. It just felt right. Now, rewind to earlier this year. My SCBWI chapter had a run of talks about scene and structure and there was a lot of talk about the benefits of plotting out your novel before you write it. (For a crash course in plotting, check out Hélène Boudreau’s blog, “Plotting… OCD Style”

So, on the heels of all this great advice, I decided I was going to write my next novel outline style. I took a week and mapped out the entire thing. I made chapter summaries;I had an inciting incident, and plot points 1, 2, and 3; I knew the ending. I sat down to start writing and made it through the first chapter before taking a couple of days off. I wasn’t feeling it. I started it up again, trying to cheer myself on with the reminder that I already had a climax and an ending. I wrote a couple of scenes into chapter two and was just done. Between the move and everything else, I never went back to the project.

And now I know why. I like surprises. I like fly by the seat of my pants drafting. I like to follow my characters through twists and turns . It’s happened to me every day this week. Just as I think about moving my characters from Place A to Place B, one of my characters picks up her backpack and takes off to Place M. And suddenly a whole other piece of her world opens up. It’s kind of awesome.

(Not that I’m knocking the outline, by any means. Novels need structure and writers need to impose structure on their novels. I just find that it’s a more useful tool in revising than drafting.)

I suspect I’ve always known this, I just lost a little confidence in my process. The unknown can be scary, but for me it works. I’d like to write another thousand words today. Just this morning, my protagonist decided to cut school, outran the security guard, jumped in her truck and high-tailed it out of town. I can’t wait to find out where she’s going.

Reading:

Paper Towns by John Green

Watching:

Still with the Rock Band mania here. The Clash at Gallifrey is about to start our regional tour!

The Anti Anti-NaNoWriMo Rant

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I have a new favorite phrase this week. It is “the narcissistic commerce of writing.” I’m not sure what it means, but I love it anyway. Now instead of telling people that I spent my day revising or writing my novel, I’m going to say that I spent the day engaging in the narcissistic commerce of writing. Make that into a hashtag, Twitter.

Anyway, if you’ve made it this far without clicking the link, let me spare you the trouble. The link goes to a Salon article by Laura Miller called “Better yet, don’t write that novel: Why National Novel Writing Month is a waste of time and energy,” which pretty much tells you all you need to know about the article. Not only does the author completely miss the concept of NaNoWriMo, but also she pretty much slaps any would-be writer in the face and basically says that if you can’t get the job done without NaNoWriMo, then you’ve no business trying to be a writer.

Wow. Snap judgements much?

It isn’t like I haven’t heard this sort of derision before and not just about NaNoWriMo. What is it about writing that brings out the hateful in other people? Why is writing the only hobby that requires a measure of success beyond simply doing it and enjoying it? Why are there no articles deriding the narcissistic commerce of cooking or the narcissistic commerce of crocheting. (You know, I’ve used this phrase three times now and I still have no idea what it means.) And why is it that so much of this contempt comes from other writers? (Ms. Miller appears to have a couple of book credits to her name and isn’t the article proof that she herself engages in the narcissistic commerce of writing?)

I’ve wondered if it’s jealousy. I know what jealousy feels like. I know what it’s like to be writing for 10 years, to receive one rejection after another from lit mags and then to watch an acquaintance get a handsome book deal from her blog. Oh yeah. I know jealousy. But what I don’t understand is stomping on other people’s dreams.

In a couple of hours my husband will come home from work and get an earful about the article. He’ll likely nod and shake his head in disbelief at all the right places and he’ll probably ask me why I was reading some jerk’s opinion instead of working on my own novel. A little while later I will go out for drinks with my girlfriends and I will tell them all about the article and we’ll all roll our eyes and share our stories of jerks who try to crush our dreams. And they’ll ask me how NaNoWriMo is going and how my revisions are going because they care. Because they know that just because I haven’t been published (yet) doesn’t mean I don’t take what I do seriously.

I’m pretty lucky to have people in my life that support what I’m doing, but not everyone has that support system. I read something like this article and it’s water off a duck’s back (after a significant amount of ranting, of course), but what about those people who don’t have that support system? What about the college student that dreams about writing a novel, but is going into accounting because her parents want her to have job security. What about a housewife who has a great idea for a romance novel, but doesn’t think she can find the time to write it? Now imagine that two days into making a crazy attempt at fulfilling a dream, they read a discouraging article like this one.

When you’re surrounded by other writers and people in the writing industry, it’s pretty easy to forget what it’s like to just start out. It’s easy to forget that writing can be a big scary thing, so scary that many people want to, but never do it. NaNoWriMo isn’t for the pros; it’s for the people that need to just take a chance and follow a dream. I think some people have forgotten that.

‘Fess Up Friday

/ Shellie / 1 Comment

It’s been a busy week. Actually, it’s still a busy week and I’m writing this in between my volunteer gig and making a mad dash to an afternoon happy hour (priorities, people!) and I don’t even have the time to come up with a sub-title for today’s ‘fess up.

Revision continued this week. I noticed today when I checked my to-do list that I’d anticipated editing up to chapter 10 this week. Ha. Hahahaha. How does that saying go? I love deadlines. I love the noise they make as they go flying by? I didn’t make it to chapter 10 this week and considering that the revision project is a total of 17 chapters, I think I was setting my expectations a little high thinking I’d be done with it in a week.

Actually, I got through chapter five this week. That sounds way more impressive than it actually is since the first five chapters are pretty darn finished. They still need polishing, of course, but I’ve yet to encounter any place within those chapters that is obviously missing a scene or something.

Which brings me to chapter six, which is obviously missing a scene. Ugh. There’s definitely something missing just after the ending of chapter five and the beginning of chapter six just isn’t cutting it. So I spent a good deal of this week trying to figure out what will go there. And of course, patching a hole in a manuscript is not like patching a hole in a pair of jeans. You can’t just cover it up and then have it be “fixed.” If you do it that way, it will always stand out. (Hm… maybe it is like patching a pair of jeans.) No, changing chapter six is going to change everything after that. I’m practically sewing a new pair of jeans.

Or, I’m just being overdramatic.

Anyway, as I’m sure you’re sick of me telling you, NaNoWriMo starts next week. I have no idea what to expect yet when it comes to blog posting, but I’m pretty sure you won’t hear from me again until mid-week at the earliest. Good luck to my fellow NaNo’ers! I can’t wait to hear about your progress.

Now for the fun stuff.

Read:

  • Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron
  • Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature by Robin Brande
  • Something Like Fate by Susane Colasanti

Watched:
Nothing. Hubs and I have been playing Rock Band 3 pretty much non-stop. We are awesomely nerdy.

5 Tips for NaNoWriMo

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Or, the obligatory National Novel Writing Month tip post. They are all the rage these days, as they should be. I love reading about writing tips and tricks and so I’m offering you some of my own, specifically for NaNoWriMo. Please add your own in the comments!

1. Start writing on November 1st. If you’re really a diehard, stay up until midnight and get the first few paragraphs down. If you’re less of a diehard, get up before everyone else in the morning and start writing. Don’t put off writing your first batch of words because there’s nothing more discouraging as playing catch up on day two or three. Inevitably each year I have one writing buddy that doesn’t start on Nov. 1 and sends me an email on Nov. 3 or 4th, lamenting how far behind they are. Don’t be that person.

2. Round up and build a buffer. If you’re writing daily, you need to write 1,667 words a day to make the word count required to win. But I like to round up a little more. Aiming for 1,670 words a day is a good way of doing that, but if you’re going to round up, consider rounding up to 1,700. Not only does this stretch your writing muscles a bit more, but it also helps build a buffer in case of a mid-month emergency. And, hey, if you keep it up you’ll have bragging rights to a 51,000 word manuscript.

3. Reward yourself for completing small goals. Okay, the big reward for winning NaNoWriMo is that you’ll have a completed draft, you can download a web banner, and you’ll even get a discount on an absolutely awesome piece of software. But sometimes, those rewards seem so far off. I like to reward myself for accomplishing various milestones along the way. They don’t have to be big rewards,* but you should set them ahead of time so that it gives you something to work towards. For example, this year, I’m giving myself the reward of one cheesy 99-cent mp3 download for every week that I meet my project targets. Overall, I’m only spending about $4 on my reward, but my eagerness to finally own “Your Love” by The Outfield is priceless.**

*Honestly, I’m ashamed how much the promise of lunch at Chick-Fil-A will pull me through a particularly difficult week.

**Yeah, I know. My musical taste leaves a lot to be desired.

4. If you can’t resist the internal editor, then let him out to play . . . on another manuscript. I admit, I have a big problem turning off the internal editor. I don’t revise extensively, but I do make frequent use of the delete key. If you have a hard time keeping your internal editor in check, try distracting him or her with something other than your NaNoWriMo novel, like a draft of a novel you’ve been meaning to revise or a critique partner’s manuscript.

5. Rules, schmules. In the end, your only competition for the NaNoWriMo win is yourself, which makes some of the rules seem a little arbitrary. You know how you write best, you know what goals are important for you to consider yourself a winner. If one of the rules of NaNoWriMo is getting in the way of your goal, consider breaking the rule. If on November 1, you suddenly have the hankering to write a collection of short stories, go for it. If you’ve already got a first chapter written, but you’re dying to tell that story, I won’t tell anyone. In the end, NaNoWriMo is about writing for YOU. Use it as you see fit.

Why So Serious, NaNoWriMo?

/ Shellie / 4 Comments

It’s that time of year again. One week from today marks the start of National Novel Writing Month, that one month of the year when hundreds of writers commit to contributing at least 50,000 words towards their novel by November 30.

I first heard about NaNoWriMo while in the MFA program, around 2001 or 2002, but at the time dedicating a month during peak midterm grading and finals preparation to a novel just didn’t seem feasible. I joined the site in 2005 with grand aspirations of participating, but it wasn’t until 2009 and being faced with the possibility of being shown up by a class of eighth graders.

Here’s the story: A friend of mine is a middle school English teacher. Every year she’s incorporated the NaNoWriMo Young Writer’s program into her curriculum and because of the way her school is set up, at the time she brought this up, she’d had one class that had completed three novels over the years that she taught them. This was the group of eighth graders. And at the time, I was futzing with my short stories, had an MFA degree, but had never even written one book. Nothing motivates me quite like pride and envy and off I was on my first NaNoWriMo attempt. I won (take that eighth graders) and had so much fun doing it, I vowed to do it as often as possible. 2010 will be year three for me.

I get mixed reactions when I tell people that I’m doing NaNoWriMo. I’d say most people are supportive. They think it’s cool or fun or they just see the crazed look in my eye when I talk about it and humor me. But there’s always a nagging minority that doesn’t see the point and isn’t afraid to say it. “Why would you want to do that,” they ask, but what I think they’re really saying is “why aren’t you taking this writing thing seriously?” And I’ve heard that a lot, from writers and nonwriters alike. And I can kind of see their point. It’s a game, a lark. It’s got a cutesy acronym and in one month you’re done. Moreover, it encourages the writer to write with abandon and to put quantity over quality.

Why would anyone take it seriously?

I’d argue that the naysayers are probably underestimating the number of people who do take it seriously. I’m sure there are a good portion of NaNo’ers that have no thought of being published and just want to write a novel in a month, but so what? Are they really hurting the craft of writing by participating? Sure, there are those that write “The End” on November 30 and ship the entire manuscript off to an agent or editor on December 1st, but that doesn’t hurt the rest of us any more than the usual slush pile does. At least, I don’t think so. I don’t know… what do you guys think?

Myself, I take NaNoWriMo very seriously. While for 11 months of the year I’m good about cranking out my morning pages and  working on a revisions or a draft, I am never as disciplined and eager to write as I am come November 1st. I The first NaNoWriMo got me writing a story I’d been kicking around in my head for five years. It taught me that despite years of whining that I can only write short stories, I am, in fact able to write a novel. It got me sitting at my desk daily, facing the page and feeling guilty as hell on days when I don’t.

And it all happened because I didn’t want to be shown up by an eighth grader.

** If you’re interested in being a NaNoWriMo writing buddy, I’m registered on the official site as Chicklit. Come find me!

‘Fess Up Friday: In the Land of Maybe

/ Shellie / 2 Comments

Well, now. THIS is what a week is supposed to be like. I finally kicked the cold/allergy/alien infection or whatever it was that kept me down for the last couple of weeks and got back to work. Since then work has been divided into two distinct categories: revision and maybe.

The revision is pretty straight forward, though very slow going. After I finished the second draft of Prodigal back in May, I printed out a copy, put it in a three-ring binder and let it rest for a couple of months. This week I pulled it off the shelf and began reading it just as I would any other book, but with a pen in hand. I covered about half the book, spending quite a bit of time making notes as vague as “put more stuff here” and as specific as changing language and rewriting entire pages. I think I’ll call this the hard copy phase of my revision process.

I realize it would be way more efficient to pull up the document and do all this revising on the computer, but I seem to work better off a hard copy. For one thing, it helps me turn on editor brain. I’ve trained myself to have writer brain in front of a blank page on the computer screen and I don’t want to confuse the two. Also, I find it’s better to let my proposed revisions marinate before making them permanent. I’ve learned this one the hard way, but that’s another story for another time.

The other thing I’ve been dealing with is the approach of NaNoWriMo. I’m doing it for the third year and possibly against my better judgment. Unfortunately, I’ve been wrestling with which idea to work on in the allotted month. There are two contenders: both contemporary YA pieces. One has been floating around in my head for about a year now and exists in snippets of freewriting here and there in my notebooks. The other appeared within the last few months and has no plot to speak of and several significant characters are missing names. I’m not even sure of what it’s about, though I am exploring that in my morning pages.

Anyway, all this thinking means that when wasn’t revising this week, was in the land of maybe. The land of maybe (apologies to Russell T. Davies) is that happy place where the ideas are flowing, but have not yet wilted by having to commit them to paper. It’s a lovely place to be because it means you can zone out in front of the back window with an apple slice at your lips until your husband comes along and asks what exactly you’ve been doing, staring into space for the last ten minutes, and then you get to say, “writing.” In the land of maybe, anything is possible. Your hero can be a magician or a ninja. Or both! Your characters are alive and real and not marred by the inconsistencies between chapter 2 and 12. And you are the Best Writer Ever. As I said, great place to be, but you can’t live there and I’ve only got another week before I have to start making some very real decisions, starting with which idea to work on.

So that’s what a semi-productive week looks like around here. Now for the obligatory media consumption:

Read:
The Astonishing X-Men Omnibus by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday
X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga by Chris Claremont

Watched:
X-Men
X2

(Yeah, there’s a theme. When I get hooked on a topic, I get hooked bad. Playing in a different genre sandbox than what I’m currently writing in is also a little helpful.)

Peaches, books, and three Girl Scout bites

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Well, I didn’t get to spend as much time at the Texas Book Festival as I would have liked. I made it to the festival on Saturday afternoon and caught a bit of Scott Westerfeld‘s panel before running over to the cooking tent to meet up with a friend for Deborah Madison’s presentation. For those that are interested in such things, Deborah Madison is the author of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone and Seasonal Fruit Desserts, the latter of which I picked up at the festival after Madison said she wanted to write a dessert cookbook that anyone could use. I’m an easy sell like that. Besides, after staring at that gorgeous tart on the cover for an hour, I was completely under its spell.

The panel also included several local organic growers who spoke about the challenges of organic farming. Perhaps the most interesting (for me anyway) was the fact that the mass production of food has changed the collective palete. Madison cited research that revealed that to the majority of people under 35, the idea of a soft, juicy peach is repulsive. That blows my mind. Even more mind blowing is the fact that this is the new standard for commercial peaches. If the consumer wants a firm, dry peach, the industry will give it to them.  (And apologies for being all vaguey about this, but I wasn’t taking notes and now I’m paraphrasing and my GoogleFu is not strong today.) And makes me very sad, but you know what?I think there’s hope.

My mom, bless her, was (and still is not) a fan of cooking. As such, my childhood palate was pretty much defined by Hamburger Helper and canned green beans. For years I thought green beans were disgusting. But when I got interested in food and cooking my own, I began to acquire a more diverse palate. I wanted to learn more about what food was supposed to taste like. I’m in my thirties now and, while I can’t shop at the farmer’s market as much as I’d like, I’m a much more conscious eater and cook.

There’s a lot of debate these days about the quality of young adult fiction and whether the current titles are encouraging teens to read more but also setting lower standards or limiting their palate for literature, if you will. This is not a new debate by any means. During my MFA program I constantly heard complaints about the “trash” kids and adults were reading. Any mention of John Grisham or the Harry Potter series was met with groans and scowls.  My peers worried that if people develop a palate for commercial fiction, literary fiction would “die” and then who would be there to preserve the “good” writing?  And while I recognize it’s totally snobby and elitist, I can’t side-eye it too much since during my single years one of my dealbreakers was anyone that thought The DaVinci Code was the Best Book Ever. You say hypocrite, I say, it’s complicated. It’s… a peach.

One one hand, yes, anything that sparks an interest in reading and books is great. Say what you will about Twilight or Harry Potter, but I know several people that got interested in reading again because of those books and then went on to read The Hunger Games trilogy and other books. Books they may never have sought out if something hadn’t happened to spark their interest in reading. What I find problematic are that some readers never explore new kinds of writing. They find something that they’re comfortable with and that they like and they don’t try anything else. Much like that soft, juicy peach, the idea of experimental literature or short stories or poetry is alien to them.

Despite my mother’s aversion to cooking, she did instill curiosity in me. If she (or, more likely, someone else) put something in front of me that I was skeptical of, she insisted I take three bites. “Three Girl Scout bites” she called it, though I have no idea how Girl Scouts figure in there. Anyway, if after three bites, I still didn’t like it, I didn’t have to eat it. Now, I was a kid, I learned quickly how to exploit the hell out of this, but that’s not really the point. The point is that I tried something. And I made some interesting discoveries because of it. Fried okra, for example, rocks. And fresh green beans are superior to the canned variety and easy to cook, too. And the discoveries continue to come. Just recently I’ve discovered I love vegetarian cooking – that it’s not all about cheese and tofu.

I’ve made similar discoveries with reading too. In fact, I am where I am today because during one trip to the bookstore I decided to bypass the literary fiction and check out the YA section. I picked up Sarah Dessen’s Someone Like You and was hooked. A couple of years ago, a friend suggested I check out Scott Pilgrim and after some hemming and hawing about manga, I read it and fell in love. This is how diverse palates are made. By not dismissing anything without trying it.

I admit that when I heard that thing about the peaches, I was shocked, appalled, and a little grossed out. When I went to the grocery store yesterday, I may have actually scowled at the peaches. But I refuse to believe all hope is lost – for the peaches or for readers. As long as there are farmers markets, there will be a soft, juicy peaches. And as long as there are readers trying and recommending new books, there will be diversity in the bookstores. Hey, if I can grow up on a palate of hamburger helper with a side of Sweet Valley High and turn into a foodie and a voracious reader, then there’s hope right?

‘Fess Up Friday: The FAIL week

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Well, that didn’t go well.

Remember last Friday when I was all, “Tra-la, tra-la! I’m feeling better and birds are singing and sickness will not get me down?” Well, I spoke too soon. Friday was fine. Great, in fact. On Saturday, I felt like I’d been trampled by a herd of elephants in my sleep and the feeling did not go away until Wednesday afternoon. Whatever it was that I got last week was not through with me yet.

So I guess I answered my own question. Yes, writers take sick days. I ended up taking a sick week, since the minute I actually started feeling better, I had to run all the errands and work on all the paying assignments I’d put off since Saturday, including a critique of a fantasy piece that has me all excited for my crit partner. Work on my own projects definitely fell by the wayside, but I took a lot of heart in a comment Adina West left last week about how watching a good film or two counts as inspiration for later writing. This is so true. I draw a lot of inspiration from films and television shows. To me, a well-told story is a well-told story; it doesn’t matter if I read it or watch it. It even makes me a little sad when people, especially other writers scoff at television as if it were a lesser medium. I feel sad for everything they’ve missed out on: The Wire, Friday Night Lights, Mad Men, just about anything written by Joss Whedon…

What tv shows, movies, or other forms of media inspire you? Comics? Art? Puppets?

And on that note, I managed to do a lot of reading and watching television this week. Here’s what I

Read:

  • The Sky is Everywhere, by Jandy Nelson
  • The Wishbones, Tom Perotta
  • Seth Baumgartner’s Love Manifesto, Eric Luper

Watched:

  • 30 Rock, Season 4 (Yeah, the entire thing. I mentioned I was sick, right?)
  • Friday Night Lights, Eps. 4×1 – 4×6

And a reminder for any of you Austin (or nearby) types out there that might be reading this. The Texas Book Festival is this weekend at the Capitol. The author list is pretty amazing: Laurie Halse Anderson, Scott Westerfield, Holly Black, Justin Cronin, Varian Johnson, and well, too many to name. I plan to be out there for as long as my health holds up. You can follow me on Twitter for updates.

Happy Writing!

 

‘Fess Up Friday: The sick day edition

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‘Fess Up Friday coming up just as soon as I . . . a – A – ACH-OO!

The week started out productively enough. I restarted this blog, I did some work on my work-in-progress, I finished up a couple of critiques, and I read like a fiend. By Wednesday I was happily trucking along, making big plans for the rest of the week. I could easily churn out another 1,000 words on my WIP. I could finally sit down and polish my query. But then on Wednesday night, I was sniffling and coughing. By Thursday afternoon, I was zombiefied and wondering, do writers get sick days?

I’ve always wondered this. At my corporate job, it wasn’t even a question. If I felt bad or the least bit contagious, I’d call in, maybe check my email, and spend the rest of the day recuperating on the couch with my kitties and a healthy dose of reality television. It’s a sick day, right? It’s meant to be spent vegging out and melting your brain. But since I quit corporate to write full time, I don’t know how to handle these days, as evidenced by the crushing guilt I felt flipping between Netflixed episodes of 30 Rock and Arrested Development. (Okay, maybe the guilt wasn’t crushing, but every once in a while I definitely felt like I should be writing.) At the same time, my brain was definitely switched to Off. Reading didn’t hold my concentration and my one attempt at the WIP resulted in just moving a couple of articles around.

I’m curious about how other writers handle sick days. Do you write through the headache/fever/cold? Do you try to do something productive but not taxing, like visit blogs or do agent research? Do you just scrap it all and set up shop in front of the television?

For the record, I’m feeling better today. Definitely closer to 60% human, I’d say. Unfortunately, I lost a morning to de-germifying the sheets and house even though Hubs seems to have it, too. I see more Lysol in my future, I’m sure.

 

Okay, now for the fun stuff.  It’s Friday, what is Chicklit…

Reading:

  • Room by Emma Donoghue
  • Bras & Broomsticks by Sarah Mlynowski
  • After the Kiss by Terra Elan McVoy

Watching:

  • Mad Men, “Hands and Knees”
  • American Teen
  • The Greatest
  • Iron Man 2

 

Happy Writing!

Linkage: On Chick Lit

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(As in the genre, not the username.)

I tend to get a little prickly when people dismiss books as being chick lit. For example, “Oh I’m not reading anything special, just some chick lit” or (from a guy) “I’m not going to read that, it’s chick lit.” It annoys me but I’ve never been able to articulate why it annoys me. When I’ve tried, it has turned into a thousand word rant on literary elitism and that damn MFA program. These sorts of outbursts are better left off the blog.

However, one of my favorite authors briefly tackled the subject on her blog and I think she summed it up very nicely:

. . . I did an interview the other day where I was asked what I thought of the label “chick lit” and how it’s applied to my books. It’s an interesting question. The truth is, I feel like the label “chick lit” is kind of lazy. It’s a way of grouping any book about a woman which has NOT been classified by the Powers That Be as Literary into one incredibly vast category. Personally, I love books about women, Literary and not, and I’ve read enough to them to know that one word cannot possibly define everything that is out there. Is Jennifer Weiner the same as Meg Cabot who is the same as Suzanne Finnamore who is the same as Jennifer Belle? No, no, no and no. It’s like saying that all YA books are the same because they are about teenagers. I think, personally, that it’s up to you as a reader to define what a book is to you. It’s different for everyone. Which is a great thing, and really what reading is all about, anyway.

Via Sarah Dessen.