FML

Right now, I'm in the middle of the copyedits for my second book, FML.  It'll be published by Simon Pulse next summer.  This maybe be the last time I have the chance to change anything about this book.  The truth is, I wouldn't change a single word except that I'm prone to making stupid mistakes.  Luckily, I have a fantastic copy editor.

The funny thing about FML is that it almost didn't happen.

Writing a second book is a bit of an exercise in frustration.  Not for the reason some people think.  Many authors' first books are manuscripts that they've slaved over for years. And when it comes time to deal with the second book, they have only a year or less to do what took them years to do previously.

That wasn't my problem, though. My problem was much more complex.  In many ways, I was lucky with Deathday.  It was the first book I tried to sell.  I got an agent on my first try, sold it to a great publishing house on my first round of submissions, and generally had a great experience.

Fate, it seems, has a sense of humor.

See, I had no problem writing another book.  In fact, between the time I sold Deathday and the time I sold FML, I wrote four full manuscripts and half of at least four more.  My problem was that my second book had to do a lot of things, and none of the manuscripts I'd written were doing them.

Deathday was full of crude humor and touching character moments.  The first full manuscript I wrote after Deathday was a much darker book. Even if I'd been able to get it into publishable shape, many of the people who read and loved Deathday would have been turned off by the darkness and violence.

And that hits at the heart of my problem: I had no idea what kind of writer I wanted to be.  Just because my debut was a funny book didn't mean all my future books would have to be comedies too, but it did mean that my next book couldn't (or shouldn't) be so wildly different that I'd betray the people who'd supported me.

I struggled to discover out what I was good at.  I remember having a conversation with my agent where I told him that it just wasn't possible for me to base an entire career on dick euphemisms.  I felt like I had to expand.  I attempted to write another comedy but the jokes felt forced and I frequently imagined a stern nun standing over my shoulder with a whip, demanding that I be funnier.

Finally, after Deathday had been out for a little while, I wrote a book that my agent thought had potential.  My editor didn't hate it, but didn't think it was my best work either (and rightfully so).  Instead, my editor at Pulse, the wonderful Emilia Rhodes, asked if I'd be interested in developing an idea that she had come up with.

My initial reaction was to say no. I didn't lack for ideas and I worried that if I worked on someone else's idea that I would be surrendering control.  And anyone who knows me knows that I hate giving up control.  But Emilia is a wonderful editor, and I love Simon Pulse and wanted to stay with them, so I agreed to discuss it.

Emilia described the idea as Sliding Doors meets Can't Hardly Wait.  Basically, it would be a story about the love life of a young man over the course of one crazy night. The twist being that a decision at the beginning of the story would cause his reality to split and we'd get to see the outcomes of both paths.

I liked the concept but was wary of becoming too fluffy.  I wanted to write serious stuff.  Now, that might seem silly, especially if you've read Deathday, but the one thing I'm really proud of in regards to Deathday is that it tackles some really heavy issues.  It might not have the depth of some other books, but that was the point.

Still, I was intrigued, and I respected Emilia so much that I agreed to write up an outline and some sample chapters.

I honestly don't remember much about those sample chapters, but they were good enough that Simon Pulse bought the untitled party book.  It was scheduled to come out in 2012.

Clearly, that didn't happen.

When I began writing the book that would eventually become FML, I was calling it A TALE OF TWO PARTIES.  Emilia and I spent a lot of time talking about what this book needed to accomplish.  We were all immensely proud of Deathday, but the truth was that there simply isn't much of a market for crude teen comedies.  Not only that, but I felt like it was the kind of book an author can only get away with writing once.  Emilia and I both agreed that my second book would need to be less kooky and more sensitive.

This might sound calculating to some people, but A TALE OF TWO PARTIES had a big job.  I had to satisfy the people who'd loved Deathday while proving to people who'd hated it that I was capable of writing more than just a book full of masturbation jokes.

And the hardest part was that no one dies in this book.  So instead of being able to tap into the impending death of my main character to create pathos, I had to really dig deep into my characters for the emotion necessary to elevate this story beyond a simple party book.

In my first draft, I failed miserably.

I shoulder 100% of the blame for that.  Because I was looking at two timelines, I made the decision to write the book in third person.  I'd never done it before and it was difficult for me to get into the heads of my characters.  Now, since that time, I've learned a lot about how I write.  My first drafts aren't even first drafts.  They're actually just really, really, really, ridiculously detailed outlines.  But when I wrote the first draft of A TALE OF TWO PARTIES, I hadn't realized that yet. I tried out some different techniques to help me get into the heads of my characters.  I broke the fourth wall and had sections where the different characters stepped out and spoke in first person.  I inserted needless conflict and drama into the story. It was a disaster.

My first and best beta reader is my best friend Rach.  She's been reading my stuff since high school, when I would fax her (literally, I used a fax machine) my pages as I wrote them.  She read my first draft of A TALE OF TWO PARTIES and gently but honestly told me that I'd created characters so unlikable that she didn't want to spend time with them in one reality much less two.

Frustrated, I tried to make some changes, but ended up sending it to Emilia anyway.

After going through this process, I have so much more respect for my editors and for editors everywhere.  If our roles had been reversed, I would have likely cancelled the contract.  The draft I gave Emilia was terrible.  She responded with amazing grace and tact.  I am ashamed to say that I not as graceful.

I knew the draft sucked, and I honestly considered withdrawing from the contract.  Here's what you have to understand:  I have very strong ideas.  I know what I want to say and how I want to say it.  With A TALE OF TWO PARTIES, I was frustrated because the idea hadn't come from me.  I didn't know what I was trying to say with it. It felt rudderless and confused.  When I sold Deathday to Pulse, they had some ideas about what worked and what didn't.  And when I went into revisions, they were easy because I had a strong grasp of the story and knew how to translate their ideas into my words.  With A TALE OF TWO PARTIES, I had no such grasp. I felt like I was writing blind.

Emilia pulled me back from the ledge and we brainstormed ideas. I returned to the manuscript and tried to reshape it into something I could be proud of.  But I still wasn't sure of myself.  My confidence was low and I didn't know what I was trying to say with the story.  In a lot of ways, I felt like I was building Frankenstein's monster.  I was doing my best to write my story while incorporating all of the ideas that Emilia had given me.

I'm a stubborn man.  I freely admit that.  It's not my best quality and can sometimes become a detriment.  Emilia was trying to help me reach a broader audience. It was a real vote of confidence that she believed in me enough to write this.

But I wasn't sure I believed in myself, and that made me very frustrated. Writing that second draft was a horrible experience for me.  I hated getting up to write every day and spent a lot of time procrastinating.

As I neared the end of the rewrite, I began to worry.  I still didn't love it.  I felt like the characters had potential and that the story had something going for it, but it lacked heart.  It lacked that certain something that made people love (and hate) Deathday.

Whenever I'm writing something, I know it sucks if I'm bored while I'm writing it. If I start to get distracted in the middle of a scene, I know that my readers will too.  That's how I felt about Two Parties.

I finished it though.  And as I prepared to turn it in, Emilia left Simon Pulse to pursue another opportunity.  Editors leave all the time.  It's part of the business.  I'd never experienced it, but I'd had friends who had.  I worried what it meant for the book.  Two Parties had been Emilia's project and I worried that Pulse would see how much I'd struggled to write it and decide it wasn't worth keeping.

At the same time, I was also relieved. Not that Emilia had left, but at the thought that Pulse might scrap the book.  Because then I'd never have to admit that I'd failed.  I could say that circumstances beyond my control had led to the book being scrapped.  In my heart I'd know that I failed, but no one else would.

However, Anica Rissi, who was the amazing editor who'd initially acquired Deathday, read the second draft I'd submitted.

She asked for a phone conversation.  No editorial letter, no notes on the manuscript.  Just a phone call.

To say I was nervous was something of an understatement.  I wasn't nervous about talking to Anica, she's a really special editor that I'm supremely lucky to get to work with.  Instead, I was worried that she was going to call me out for turning in a big pile of crap.  I knew it was crap.  I knew I was capable of better.  But I wasn't sure how to get there.

These were dilemmas I never faced with Deathday. Even when my agent called me out for my disastrous misuse of commas, I still had confidence in the book.

Anica was more than kind during our conversation.  She gave it to me straight, laying out what worked for her and what didn't.  I admitted to feeling lost and asked if I could have some leeway to make a few major changes.  I wanted to return to a first person POV and shake up the characters.  Anica gave me the go-ahead.  It is a testament to Anica that, even after the giant turd I'd turned in, she gave me time and freedom to figure things out. I was and am, very lucky.

When I got off the phone, I spent the next couple of days thinking about the book.  Not just the book, but the process and my career and everything having to do with it.  Before I could dive into the revision, I had to figure out what I wanted to say.

I spent a lot of time watching movies and reading books and surrounding myself with things that inspired me.  When I was finally ready, I decided to make a fresh start of it.  I wasn't going to do a revision, I was going to do a rewrite.  I made a new folder for a new draft.  I put all my old notes away.  I even began calling it WRONG IN ALL THE RIGHT WAYS rather than A TALE OF TWO PARTIES.

And then I went to town.  Somewhere in the middle of the draft, I fell in love with the story.  With the characters.  With the whole damn thing.  I didn't dread writing, I looked forward to it.  I wrote the first draft and then immediately turned around to revise it. I used index cards to map out the similarities between the two realities.  Since the story covers only one night, certain things had to line up in both parties. Getting all those little details right was time consuming, but the story was worth it.

When I was finally done, I felt that I'd written a book I could finally be proud of.  I had the confidence back.  I loved the characters so much that I could have spent a million realities partying with them.  And when I finally sent it to Anica, I knew that no matter what happened, I had nothing to be ashamed of.

A month later, I was up in NYC and I got to have lunch with Anica.  She hadn't read the draft yet, but I told her that I really loved the characters this time around and that I think it showed through in the story...finally.

I like to think that she agreed.  When I got the revisions back a short time later, they were pretty minor, with lots of hearts and smiley faces in the margins. I've never been more relieved.

And now I've got the copy edits for the book now known as FML.  It'll be out next summer and you'll get to meet Simon Cross and his crazy friends Ben and Coop.  You'll get to see him F his L in two different timelines, one of which has a blind dog in it, and both of which have the best aquatic version of a Shakespeare play you're ever likely to encounter.  There's beer pong and kissing and bed jumping and bartering and golf balls.  I'm pretty sure that parts will make you laugh and I hope that lots of parts will make you fall in love with Simon and his friends the same way that I have.

It's taken me a long time to get this book right, but I honestly believe that it was worth it, and I hope you will too.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I first got on the phone to talk to Emilia about a crazy idea that was part Sliding Doors and part Can't Hardly Wait.  But I'm glad that she and Simon Pulse believed in me enough to ask, and I'm glad that I said yes.

Things don't always work out the way you expect them to. Sometimes, they work out better.

Why Joss Whedon is My Hero or How I Learned to Love Killing People

Anytime I see that Joss Whedon is attached to a project (be it film or TV or comic book or musical web thingamajiggy) I get an instant writer-boner.

I've been a fan of all things Whedon since I first saw the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which she kills a demon with a bazooka.

With. A. Bazooka.

(Season 2, episode 14 in case you want to go watch it right this second).

Having recently seen The Avengers, I'm reminded why Joss Whedon is my hero.  Aside from his Whedonisms, he's got a real talent for making the end of the world accessible.  Sure, the Hellmouth might swallow the planet or a demigod might lead an army of crazy aliens against the earth, but it always feels so real.

But the reason I most admire Whedon is that he creates stakes that matter.

The problem with a lot of movies (and with a lot of books) is that the stakes aren't real.  You know that no one is going to die.  That everyone is going to make it out in the end.  So you never really worry about them, you never fully invest yourself in their journey.

Whedon, however, has made it his mission to kill every character I care about.  And by doing so, he lets me (and everyone else) know that no one is safe.  Everyone is fair game.

In doing so, I become more invested in those characters.  Their journey becomes meaningful because I know that at any moment, it might end.

There's power in that, and it's a lesson I've taken to heart.

A lot of people were unhappy that, despite my warning in the beginning, I still killed Ollie in The Deathday Letter.  It certainly wasn't easy.  By the end of that book, I'd created a character that I loved.  I'd transformed him from a clueless, hormonal teen into a slightly less clueless hormonal teen.  Near the end, we glimpse the man Ollie could become, and I honestly didn't want to kill him.  But I had to.  Not killing him would have robbed his journey of meaning.  It would have made the time readers had invested into his story pointless.

In order for Ollie's story to matter, the stakes had to be real.

And I think the same can be said of every story.  I'm not saying that you should kill characters in every book.  Instead, I'm saying that every story, every scene, every sentence, must have stakes.  Even comedies must have real stakes.  We must worry that the guy won't end up with the girl of his dreams.  If we know that it's a foregone conclusion, then it's pointless to continue reading.

So, as you write your stories, think about what stakes your story has. If your readers never honestly fear for your characters' lives, then they'll never honestly care for them either.

The Most Perfect 1440 Minutes of my Life

Just found this on Amazon.de.  It's the cover for the German edition of The Deathday Letter.  How cool!  It'll be out this July :)

Firsts

I love working on first drafts of things.

I love revising them too—seeing the finished product that began as little more than a random thought in my head during the long drive to work.

But I love first drafts the most.

They're so full of potential. Everything I write is perfect. There are no parameters to follow, no rules to abide.  Just pure imagination.

My favorite car ever was a Jeep Wrangler.  I've had two and I loved them both.  It's not like I live in the woods.  Most of my driving is straight highway, but knowing that I had the ability to grab the wheel and veer off into the unknown made me feel like anything was possible.

First drafts are the same way.

When I embark on a first draft, I give myself permission to do anything and everything, no matter how crazy it may seem.  I drop characters into the story randomly to see what will happen. I blow shit up. I maim and kill and let characters fall in love.

I let myself fall in love with writing all over again.

At the end of the day, love of writing is more important than money, more important than validation, more important than publication.

If you don't love what you're doing, you're doing the wrong thing.    

Scared But Brave

"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."
–Albert Einstein

I Skyped with a friend last night.  We've both been embarking on new projects.  I always get a little frazzled when trying to come up with new projects.  For me, it's a process of generating a million ideas, falling in love with each one, and then seeing which of those is going to last.  It can be heartbreaking to fall in love for 10k words only to realize that it's not the right story.  But that's the way I work.

Anyway, we've been having conversations about the kinds of books we want to write.  We're both known for certain types of books and have been looking at ways to break out of the mold.  Not that the mold is bad, but in YA, you have to keep moving forward.  You have to innovate or perish. 

My friend told me about an idea she'd had but had been afraid she couldn't write.  We brainstormed and her idea was brilliant.  It was cool and new and she had so many great places she could take it.  She admitted she'd had ideas like it before but didn't think she was capable of pulling off something so different.  But after hearing her idea and how much thought she'd put into it, I knew that she was more than capable.

Your best book is the one you're too afraid to write. I'm pretty sure someone else said something similar, but I Googled it and couldn't find anything.  My point is:  Never play it safe. 

You'll never regret not writing a safe, boring book. 

But you might regret not writing the one that scared the crap out of you.

And because it's Monday and I'm sleepy (lazy), here's a sample of something I'm working on right now.  I'm still in the honeymoon phase, so it might not survive, but I'm cool with that.

3:04:29

I know who you are.

I know what you had for breakfast and that you didn't read today's chapter on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. 

I know that you forgot to put on deodorant.  That you stole a bottle of water from the corner store on the way to school.  That your father hits your little brother.  That you secretly hate the movies everyone else loves and that you'd die if anyone found out.

I know you fantasize about screwing the gym teacher on the soccer field and that your parents would kick you out if they discovered your secret.

I know that you're afraid of dying.

That you're afraid of living.

That you're afraid you're ordinary.

That you're afraid no one will ever love you.

I know what you're thinking

right

now.

           

3:01:57

When you know what everyone else is thinking, you realize that it must've been dumb luck that humans became the dominant species on the planet.  We're so insecure and scared and witless and self-destructive.  Too self-destructive to survive, really. 

           

But here we are. 

Here I am.

Mika Conner. 

Just another Bug, surfing the endless channels of teenage narcissism when I should be listening to Mr. Horsey's lecture on cell division.  His name's not really Horsey by the way, it's Morrisey, but he keeps his hair tied back in a ponytail that practically begs for the equine comparison. 

           

Sometimes, I wish I couldn't hear them at all. It's an endless stream of sex and food and music and sex and sex and sex.  Especially from that kid.  Carter Whatshisname.  He's nothing but a walking, talking hormone. He told everyone last semester that he hurt his neck playing basketball, but that was a lie.  Only his therapist knows the sordid truth.

           

And me.

           

But I'll never tell.

           

Not his thoughts, and not yours.

           

Not unless you do something worth telling.

Screw Everything About This Guy

There are so many things wrong with this video that it's difficult to know where to begin.  But I think that I'm less angry about his despicable attitude toward gays and more about how we've perverted gender roles to the point where we're pigeonholing everyone into these predefined ideas of the masculine and feminine.

Boys must play with trucks!
Girls must wear dresses!

Anything that doesn't conform to our ideas of what genders should be is labeled bad, sinister, defective, and then condemned.

These gender norms don't stop at dresses or sports.  The boundaries children are taught about gender identity and sexual norms can have a lasting impact on who the are and how they think and the sorts of things they choose to study!

Boys don't read publicly because they're afraid of being labeled sissies.  Girls who are good at athletics are called lesbians.  Boys choose not to grow up to be teachers as often as girls because it's seen as a weak profession.

Not to mention that forcing a child to act more according to society's idea of gender roles has nothing to do with that child's sexuality, and certainly won't change the child's sexual orientation. The only impact it will have is that the child will learn to be ashamed of who he or she is.

So yeah, screw everything about this guy.

Books are Dead! Long Live Books!

The trouble with electronic books isn't that they're killing paper books, it's that they're an evolutionary dead end.

Books are amazing.  I will be a reader until the day I die.  In fact, I'm willing to bet that they'll have to pry a book out of my cold, dead hand before they dress me in my Sunday best and bury me in the ground.

I kid. I'm being cremated.

So, I'm not exaggerating when I say that I love books.  I love e-books too.  Being able to get on a plane with my Nook and know that I've got hundreds of  books to choose from should I grow bored with the one I'm reading is pure heaven.

But e-books are an evolutionary dead end, much like the 3D TV or the iPod.  People love them and buy them but they have a limited life and will eventually die out.

E-books represent a convergence of technologies.  They take a book and put it on a device that you can carry around.  They give you instant access to your library and the ability to buy new books on demand.  But that's it.  They don't make the reading experience any better.  They don't offer the reader a new way to interact with the story.  They're just as passive as books themselves.  Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Like I said:  I love books.  I don't think they're going anywhere. But e-books feel like a missed opportunity.

It's no secret that I love Star Trek.  My father and I used to watch it on the weekends and it was one of my favorite things to do.  One of the things I loved most was the holodeck technology.  When Picard would recreate his favorite book and become the main character, I thought that nothing could be greater.

We're not quite at holodecks, but we are seeing a convergence of different technologies that could allow us to interact with stories in ways never before possible.  Our mobile devices can do more than simply tell us a story.  It can allow us to BE the story.

Sounds far fetched?  It's not.  Nearly all phones now come equipped with some form of location aware technology.  My phone knows when I'm at the grocery store and reminds me to pick up orange juice.  Apps exist that tell us where we are and provide us with information about our location.  Our phones can tell us where our friends are and what they're doing.  And Google is actively testing augmented reality glasses that can superimpose information and images over the world around you. 

Take this technology and pair it with great stories and storytelling and you have the potential to take e-books to a new level.  No longer just passive devices that we read, but devices that allow us to interact with those stories. 

I believe I've already mentioned the app Zombies, Run! from a London company called Six to Start.  That app is a first step in the right direction.  While not yet totally interactive, it does form a story around you as you run and then allow you to take that story into different directions based on actions you take later on.  I believe that this is the first step toward the kind of interactive story experience that make people fall in love with stories all over again.  You want to save books and get kids reading more?  This is how you do it.

I love my Nook, but I hope that it goes the way of the CD player or the iPod.  I hope that better technology comes along and swallows it.  It's holding us back from taking advantage of the true potential of the technology in our pockets.

And, who knows?  Maybe one day I'll get my holodeck.  

Review - GONE, GONE, GONE

I think I first heard about GONE, GONE, GONE nearly two years ago.  I remember because at that time it was called THE ANIMALS WERE GONE and I emailed Hannah to ask her if it was a reference to the Damian Rice song of the same name. 

I've been a fan of Hannah Moskowitz since I first heard about her from my agent at the time.  A book about a kid who breaks his bones on purpose?  That sounded like my kind of book.  I was not disappointed.

Hannah's second book INVINCIBLE SUMMER came out last year and I devoured it.  But the book I was really dying to read was GONE, GONE, GONE.  I even tried to snag an ARC when I was in NYC earlier this year.  But I'm glad I didn't, because GONE, GONE, GONE is going to hold a very special place of honor on my book shelf.

GONE, GONE, GONE is the story of Craig and Lio and Craig's animals.  It opens one cold morning after a burglary that results in the loss of Craig's menagerie of adopted pets.  He is frantic to find them, but there are other concerns.  Such as the random killings in the area. 

See, the story takes place during the Beltway Sniper killings that occurred in October 2002, one year after 9/11 (which also has a place in this story). 

I'm often wary of authors using big events as backdrops for stories in order to imbue them with artificial gravity, but Hannah never takes the easy road.  She could have easily played up the shootings and the 9/11 references and the cancer references for pity, but she instead uses them to create an atmosphere of tension that subtly weaves throughout this story of love in the time of chaos.

Because this is a love story.  Lio is in love with Craig.  Craig is in love with Cody.  Craig talks too much and Lio doesn't talk enough.  And no one seems to listen.  The relationships are awkward and confusing, just like love at 15 should be.  Just like love at 15 is.  Everything feels so life and death, and for them, it just might be.  Statistically, the chance either will be shot is miniscule, but if life teaches us anything it's that there are no absolutes in life.

GONE, GONE, GONE is Hannah Moskowitz's strongest book to date.  It's more nuanced and subtle than BREAK or INVINCIBLE SUMMER, and it feels more personal.  The sniper shooting provide a larger scope, but the story still feels so intimate that it's more like reading someone's journal than reading a book...if the journal happened to be written by a talented author. 

I honestly can't wait to see what she does next. 

Burn it to the Ground

You wrote a book. It's good but not great.  You find yourself fiddling with the words. Moving a verb here and knocking out an adjective only to replace it a couple of days later.  You're at a loss.  You don't know what to do.  You don't know how to get to the next draft.

Throw it away.  Delete it.  Put it in a wastebasket and set it on fire.

Writers are emotional.  We love our pages.  They might as well be written in our blood.  That's why we're such shitty editors of our own work.  I love all of my first drafts.  I love them so much that I have a difficult time seeing all of the glaring problems that anyone else can plainly see.

By getting rid of the draft and starting over, I can free myself.  I can let go of the witty lines and pretty prose.  Tackling the problems that seemed too huge before is easy now because I have a blank slate.  Nothing is impossible anymore.

It's like writing a brand new book, except that, having already completed a draft, I have a much clearer idea what the book is about.

Sometimes, the only way to fix a thing is to destroy it.

The only way to start over is to let go of the past.