Christina Cann

So, you know that I’m working on this idea for a superhero novel, right? Well, I decided to see what was being published in that area for teenagers right now (besides comic books and graphic novels) and the answer is…not a whole lot. I thought that the library would have dozens of books on the subject, but I only left with five after spending an inordinate amount of time with the YA librarian.

One of the books I picked up is the first one in Meg Cabot’s 1-800-WHERE-R-YOU series, When Lightning Strikes. It’s about a girl, Jess, who is struck by lightning and, instead of dying or suffering really horrible consequences, she gets the ability to know where missing children are. She wakes up the day after the strike knowing where two kids she’d seen on the back of the milk carton were. And it keeps happening everyday.

Like most Meg Cabot books (not that I’ve read all of them by a long shot—did you know that she’s published over fifty books in eleven years? That’s over four books a year!), it’s a light and breezy read. Jess is a likable character and the plot unfolds really quickly. The story has taken some unexpected turns, which I really like. It keeps me on my toes.

I’m not sure if I’ll read the rest of the series (there are four more after this one). I picked up a few other superhero-ish books that I’ll get to first, not to mention the craft books I wrote about yesterday. But if you’re looking for a quick read about a girl who gets a superpower, this one is pretty good.

Well…I wrote almost 2,000 words this weekend. Not on my contemporary WIP, but on my new idea for a superhero novel. And you know what? I am having a lot of fun with it. That will of course wear off, when I’m mired in the story and just want to get it over with and dear god why did I think I wanted to be a writer anyway—but for now, it’s fun. And I’m going with it, and I want to add at least 500 more words to it tonight. The other idea will be on the back burner with all the other ideas I have stored away in various Word documents.

And about what I wrote on Thursday: I’m still thinking of revising the current novel I’m shopping around. My critique partner has it and will get back to me about it in the next couple of weeks. Meanwhile, I took out a few books in the library that I’m hoping will help me. Whether they make me feel like “Oh my god, I can’t believe I sent out that drivel to a few agents” or “Wow, I’m in much better shape than I thought I was,” either one will help me (and my peace of mind) out.

The books I borrowed are The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile (which seems, right now, like it was written completely for me), Writing the Breakout Novel, and Plot & Structure. I figure the last one can’t hurt when I’m trying to figure out how to structure my new WIP, which is unlike anything I’ve ever written before. I might play around with formats to see what works best for the MC’s story. Only time (and a lot of hard work and dedication) will tell!

So, goals for the week:

• My current word count is 2,441.
• Write at least 2,000 more words in my WIP. I’m going to a conference out of town this weekend for my day job, so that seriously cuts into writing time, but I think I can cobble enough time together during the week to do it.
• Start reading The First Five Pages and think about if anything applies to my first ms.

1.    What are the titles of the last three books you read all of?

Wow, déjà vu? I just wrote about this on Tuesday! The last three books I completed were A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove by Laura Schenone; Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver; and Story of a Girl by Sara Zarr.

2.    What are the titles of between three and five magazines you subscribe to or used to subscribe to?

Currently I subscribe to Writer’s Digest and Bitch Magazine. (Shout out to Bitch Magazine! It’s a must-read if you love feminist critiques of pop culture.) I used to subscribe to Jane Magazine before I realized that they had become a total parody of themselves. (They folded, anyway, and offered me Glamour or Marie Claire or something in their stead. See what I mean? I declined the offer and collected my whopping $9 check.)

3.    What’s on your night table? (we figured this one was borderline, since it involves the bedroom, but if the vibe is right and you preface the question with the background story I told above, you could make it work)

Oh, it’s a very tame question in my case. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan (I told you I love reading about food, though I am having trouble getting through this book – I feel like it’s AVM but written in a less warm manner). There’s also a box of Kleenex, my face moisturizer, a couple bobby pins and ponytail holders, and the only necklace I own.

4.    What are the three best things that happened to you in the past seven days?

Well, the G20 summit began in my hometown, so I’ve been working from home, which is sweet. I blog for my day job, and one of our posts got picked up on the Wordpress homepage, so we got a ton of hits from that. And a huge box of garlic arrived from Seed Savers. I know that wouldn’t be on most people’s “best things” list, but I’m pretty excited, because it means we will be able to grow our own garlic next year! But it also means a whole lot of physical labor this weekend for my husband and me. Which, come to think of it, we’re desperately in need of, so…works out!

5.    What was your senior yearbook quote, and what would your yearbook quote be this year if there were such a thing?

We didn’t have senior yearbook quotes. In fact, I don’t even own a yearbook from the high school I graduated from. I was very jaded about the whole high school thing. Somewhat ironic, I suppose, since now I want to make a living writing about people who are living it.

(Questions via friday5.org.)

Well…the torture is not over yet. I’ve been writing a little this week (not nearly as much as I should, of course), but I’ve also been thinking a lot about revising my work that I’m currently shopping around. I’m just not sure if I’m there yet, if the story is strong enough. I’ve gotten some rejections from agents – par for the course, I know, but it’s making me really, deeply think about the manuscript and if it’s there.

I’ve asked a critique partner, who read the last draft of it, to read it through again and let me know what she thinks. In the meantime, I’ve started musing about ways to make the story stronger and deeper. I haven’t actually started tinkering with it yet, but I have been letting things simmer.

I’ve also randomly started turning to my husband and saying things like, “Instead of the mother being a weak, scared woman, I’m thinking of making her a strong, scared woman.” I’m sure he’s very pleased about it.

So, there you have it, on my first themeless Thursday. More writing about writing. Is that not the definition of fun or what?

Last night, my husband and I were walking home from the bus stop and he pointed out a fragrant bush in a neighbor’s yard.

“Honeysuckle,” he said, and it took me back.

Here’s the summary of the book from the author’s website:

Fourteen years ago, when Grayling was just a baby, her strangely remote mother left her behind with Grandmother. The circle of women who share Grandmother’s big old house have puzzled over the matter, but for Grayling life is good. As she says, “This is my grandmother’s house, where the honeysuckle rain falls in the summer, where most stories have beginnings, middles, and ends.” The women watch over one another, and everyone watches over Grayling and her friend Colleen.

But this summer will bring changes – a new friendship for Grayling with Aaron, and the reappearance of her mother. She visits her mother in San Francisco and meets the strange young man who calls himself Dancer but might better be called Danger. Impulsively, far from home, she puts herself in jeopardy.

Grayling’s encounters with death, love, romance, and peril help her discover the ending of one part of the story and join the circle of the rain catchers.

When the honeysuckle rain falls, the women, including Grayling and Colleen, catch it and use it to rinse their hair. I have always wanted to do this, ever since I read this book. Maybe I’ll snip a clipping of my neighbor’s bush and plant one in my own yard.

This book is so beautifully told that it stays with you. It’s a slow story, focusing on character and backstory, which I’m not sure would be published today. Parts of it still stay with me, like the honeysuckle rain and the image of a house with hands on the clocks. And one rule of etiquette I’ve always liked came from Grayling’s grandmother; she says that a good guest never drops by and stays for longer than an hour.

And that cover! That might be the part of the book that lingers the most. Despite Grayling being a quiet girl, the cover is so bold and beautiful with its yellows and oranges. I simply love it.

How cliché, right? I know the movie just came out and according to the paperback cover it is a “national bestseller,” but…whatever. I love reading books about food. I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle earlier this summer and I am not exaggerating when I say that it really changed my life. I am more conscious about the food I eat, I try to only eat food raised or grown close to my home, I had a good-sized outdoor garden this summer and my husband and I are going to try an indoor vegetable garden this winter. (Not sure how successful we’ll be, but hey! Worth a shot!)

In August, I took a trip to the Finger Lakes and stopped by the Women’s Rights National Historic Park in Seneca Falls. I had just finished reading AVM and the book A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told Through Food, Recipes, and Remembrances caught my eye. I splurged on it and it was a fascinating read.

So, to continue the parade of food-related books this year, I am now embarking on Julie and Julia. I really like it. A lot of people have said that the character of Julie in the book is unsympathetic, annoying, etc. (Seriously, google “Julie Powell annoying” and you’ll get almost 13,000 results.) But I think she’s brash and unapologetic, two qualities I really admire. You don’t like her blog? I doubt she really cares. She’s doing it for the love of the thing, for the feeling she gets when she connects with Julia Child’s recipes.

She’s also hilarious and really messed up. I just read the scene in the book (spoiler alert! I guess!) where she’s pretending to be the killer from Silence of the Lambs with the pig skin. Let me tell you about the first time I watched Silence of the Lambs: I was about 14 years old, babysitting for three kids, the oldest of whom was maybe ten. After putting the two younger kids to bed, my charge suggested that we watch Silence of the Lambs because her parents said it was a really good movie. I didn’t know anything about it and it had been taped from television (remember when people did that?), so I couldn’t consult the tape cover for guidance. I didn’t even have an MPAA rating to go off of. (This was before the ubiquity of the Internet, when I could have typed “Silence of the Lambs” into imdb and known within five seconds that this was not a movie I should allow my ten-year-old babysitting charge to watch.)

So I agreed. And then she and I spent the rest of the night curled up on the couch under a ratty afghan, too terrified to move or speak. Somehow, I couldn’t turn it off. But I should never have turned it on in the first place.

Wow, how did I get to Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins? Anyway, all this is a longwinded way of saying: I like Julie and Julia, the book. When it hits the cheap theatres or Netflix, I’ll probably see and like Julie and Julia, the movie. Fin.

I’m torn between two ideas.

The first one, the one I started writing here, I find much easier to write. The words really just flow out when I’m working on it. It’s a contemporary YA, but turning out very different in tone than my first novel, despite having similarly heavy topics.

The second one is a fun idea I had for a superhero novel. Not a graphic novel, though that might be a mistake. I’ve tried to read a few graphic novels and really couldn’t get into them. Maybe I’m reading the wrong things? Anyway, I’ve been trying to put thoughts to paper with this one and I just can’t get it started. Maybe I just haven’t given the idea enough time to percolate in my brain, maybe I’m waiting for the perfect first line to come to me, but I just can’t seem to freaking do it already.

So…my goals for the week. Very funny. Figure out what I’m doing, I guess. Choose one of the projects to focus on and write at least 1000 more words.

I hope all my Muse Mondays aren’t as tortured as this week’s.

So, obviously, I have not really been keeping up with this blog. I have all the usual excuses: work, life, writing my WIP got in the way. But in today’s world, that really doesn’t cut it. I have to blog to connect with potential readers, fellow writers, and possibly agents and publishers.

I have always been a listmaker, so I’ve come up with a list of things to blog about on certain days (a schedule, if you will) to keep me motivated. So, without further ado:

• Muse Mondays: I’ll write a bit about what I’m currently working on, my goals for the week, and what I’ve accomplished since the last post.
• Transit Tuesdays: I do the majority of my reading on the bus to and from work, waiting in line (it’s really fabulous to “escape” from the post office with a book or magazine), or on my lunch break. So I’ll post about what I’m reading and what I think of it.
• Wayback Wednesdays: I think it’s important for YA writers to be able to connect with their youth, to have the images, feelings, and experience of high school/junior high/childhood fresh in their minds. On Wednesdays, I’ll write about something that reminds me of my youth, whether it’s a book, music video, TV show, movie, or anything else.
• Themeless Thursdays: I can’t think of a theme for Thursdays! Any suggestions? I’ll probably just end up writing about what I’m writing. How very meta.
• Friday Five: Courtesy of friday5.org, I’ll post a list of whatever five things they think up for the week. A fun little send-off for the weekend, which is when I do the majority of my writing (and cooking and cleaning and socializing…).

There you have it. Coming soon to a theater near you!

Well, here goes nothing. Or everything, really, depending on how you look at it. I am starting to query agents. I’ve polished le livre as much as I possibly can, I’ve gotten feedback from readers, I’ve researched more literary agencies than you can shake a stick at, and I’ve written about ten different drafts of my query letter.

I still don’t feel prepared.

I guess I never will. As of today, I’m taking the plunge and trying to get this thing out into the world. I know I’ll get rejected, and I know that will sting. But I’ve done the best I possibly can, and I’m moving onto my next work anyway.  We’ll see where it gets me.

Today I finished the last revisions on the second draft of le livre. The final three chapters were particularly hard to do, since I had never really felt that I got the climax and denouement just right in the story. But I feel really good about them today, and so happy to have reached a place of feeling like, once these edits are inputed (I worked on hard copy during this round of revisions), I can actually start querying agents.

I started writing this manuscript in the fall of 2007, when I was still living in DC. Even though I was a professional writer in my day job, I needed something more and le livre was a welcome release from the very dull writing I was doing from 9-5. I continued working on it all through 2008, finally finishing a first draft of it in July, just before buying a house and getting married. At the beginning of this year, I went back and started revising it. Plotlines were thrown out, new characters introduced, language changed. When I finished the second draft, I felt good, yes, but I knew there was still more to go. So I gave it to other people to read and they came back to me with very good ideas and criticism, and I set to work on this draft. Now, although I’m sure it will undergo more editing someday, I feel like it’s as good as I can get it.

And, just to show you how glamorous my life is, when I finally put my pen down, pumped my fist in the air (not unlike Bender in the final scene of The Breakfast Club), and grinned a goofy grin, I heard my cat heaving, a sure sign that something disgusting was about to happen. So I rushed over to him and put a blank sheet of paper underneath him and he puked up half-digested stalks of catnip all over it. I hope that’s not symbolic…