Keeping it Current for the YA Audience

I know, it’s been a long time since my last blog post. But, I’ve been slogging away to finish a draft of my YA manuscript and it has totally taken over my life. Recently, I received a critique commenting on my manuscript draft. The feedback was incredibly helpful because I’ve been over-thinking aspects of the plot for some time and the welcome outside thoughts have helped me move on to the next stage of editing.

One of the surprising comments I received, however, is worth noting here. Nowhere in my manuscript had I included much reference to the current social networking phenomena surrounding Facebook, Twitter, texting, etc. When I reviewed my manuscript, I realized that although I hadn’t thought of making my protagonist tech-savvy, there are lots of places I could insert references to social networking and make some changes within the narrative from phone calls to texting.

It turns out that it’s not even a matter of being particularly tech-savvy; but more often the norm for today’s tweens and teens to have an interest in these things. And I found this out through conversations I recently had with parents of tween-aged girls. In two separate instances, I spoke with mothers who mentioned their tween-aged daughters belong to Facebook. One of the girls had just joined and had made thirty-eight friends in a matter of days. The other girl is so taken with the social networking site, it’s easier for this mother to jump onto Facebook and to send an instant message to her daughter than it is to run down the stairs and tell her it’s dinner time.

With this new awareness, I’ve committed to update my writing now and in the future to include the tech-savvy habits so popular with today’s tweens and teens.

Recent Seminars I’ve Attended: CANSCAIP’s “Packaging Your Imagination,” and “Get Published! Seminar,” offered by the CCBC

I’ve been a friend of CANSCAIP and a member of the CCBC for about three years now, but until this month, I hadn’t attended any of the seminars for writers and for emerging writers.

Then, on November 6th, I was fortunate to attend CANSCAIP’s annual event in Toronto, called Packaging Your Imagination. It was held at beautiful Victoria College, U of T. The three seminars I chose to attend out of the twelve choices were Barbara Berson, Paul Kropp and Norah McClintock.

Barbara Berson, a former children’s publisher and editor, spoke on “Channelling Your Inner Teen: Publishing YA.” The second speaker was Paul Kropp who spoke about “Writing for Kids Who Don’t Wanna Read Nothin’.” The third speaker was Norah McClintock, who spoke on “Demystifying YA Mysteries: Your Questions Answered.” The Keynote speaker, Marthe Jocelyn, spoke at the end of the day to a large crowd of attendees. She gave an inspiring speech entitled, “Prophecies, Lies and Pearls of Wisdom.”

It was a busy day with a lot of valuable information offered and I came away with loads of notes and a feeling that I need to concentrate on my own fiction writing. Attending “PYI,” gave me the motivation to look at my YA manuscript in progress with a fresh perspective.

On November 20th, I made my way to Tinlids Inc., a children’s publishing wholesaler in Toronto, at 130 Martin Ross Avenue. This seminar, offered by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre brought together three panels of experts to discuss the subject, “So You Want to Get Published … Practical Pointers from Professionals.”

Sharon Jennings spoke first about writing fiction for young adults. She talked about her experience as a writer and a teacher of writing for the young adult market and gave some great advice to the audience, mostly emerging and want-to-be published writers and/or illustrators, about how to ensure our writing is filled with enough conflict. Elizabeth MacLeod spoke about her non-fiction writing career and how her experience as an editor in the industry opened doors for her. She offered advice on how to approach publishers with query letters and answered questions from the audience. Jim Zubkavich, a graphic novelist and artist spoke about his success and gave advice on breaking into this popular niche in the children’s publishing industry.

Next, we heard from Gail Winskill, the publisher of Dancing Cat Books who shared with us her experience in publishing and brought samples of books she has worked with to show us what she considers inspiring literature for children. Marie Campbell, an agent from Transatlantic Literary Agency told us her views: How agents benefit publishers and writers alike and she gave us helpful pointers on approaching agents with our work.

The third panel of speakers consisted of Itah Sadu, who owns “A Different Booklist,” an independent, community bookstore in Toronto and Maria Martella, who owns Tinlids Inc. Itah, a published children’s author and storyteller herself, spoke with great emotion on the connections to the industry that independent booksellers can offer to the aspiring writer. Maria showed us beautiful examples of some of the books she has chosen to offer the educational market she does wholesale business with at Tinlids Inc.

Again, I came away from this seminar with a feeling of invigoration towards my writing and the knowledge that the industry is tough to break into, especially in the current economy but, that good writing and professionalism can help make the difference for the persistent emergent author/illustrator.

on procrastination; the habit of wasting one’s valuable writing time

The other day I painted white lines on my son’s bathroom wall — I tried to convince myself how relaxing it was to measure out the spaces between each line and apply the painter’s tape in perfectly straight lines from the ceiling to the floor. What I really should have been doing was working on a writing assignment for a course I am taking.

But I haven’t been feeling well lately. Or creative. Or inspired. These are some of my excuses for not doing the work. Yet, even as I made pencil marks on the fresh bathroom paint and taped and painted my white lines, I couldn’t help but think of the many blogs and essays I’ve recently read about writing and how important it is for a writer to just sit down and write.

The idea of forcing creativity can feel like such a chore, as though there’s so many more exciting things to be doing in life. Then I realized that I had been avoiding working on my fiction to paint stupid white lines. Not because I had an exciting alternative that might change the course of my life or provide me with such an incredible life experience I’d be home writing about it before I could sleep that night.

Add to this how my son, now in the third grade, had amused me and frustrated me the night before. His math calendar homework for the day involved writing out numbers descending by 2′s from 100 to zero and then again beginning at 100 and writing all the numbers in descending order to zero.

He persevered and completed the first task with a minimum of complaining but when he should have started part two — writing all 101 numbers out — he told me, “I can’t do it. It’s too hard.” This, from a child who adds three digit numbers in his head.

It’s true that my son has issues with printing and that writing invariably appears to him to be a daunting and thankless task. But the shear number of excuses he offered for ditching his homework assignment nearly filled up his entire evening. He tried to use shortcuts like writing every tenth number from 100 to zero. I called him on this and he had to erase his work and start over. He ended up re-doing the work several times.

The idea that I might have to sit myself down accordingly and force myself to pull words out of my head to be put down on paper always makes me cringe. But each time I’ve managed this task lately, I’ve decided to limit my efforts to a short spurt of time or a small amount of text, kind of like my son was doing in cheating on writing out his numbers properly. In my case I never really accomplished much and my mind was more focussed on doing the least bit of work possible so I could tell myself I’d put some effort in — if minimal.

Then, my son did what he ought to have done from the beginning. He sat his bottom on the chair and started at 100. He complained and made a lot of noise along the way, but he kept writing. He tried to bargain with me and finagle me into doing the work for him. But when he’d completed writing out all the numbers starting at 100 and descending to zero he shocked himself even, and remained quiet afterwards. He didn’t argue much that he had no time left that evening to play. It took my son all evening to figure out it’s easier to do the work than to put it off and to try to invent new excuses.

Worse than that, it took me the same amount of time that evening and then my time the next day while I painted white lines on a bathroom wall (that I’ve since decided to paint over), to establish for myself that I’m a dreadfully slow learner. All the writers who have said it before are indeed, correct. The only way to get a piece of work written entirely is to sit down, tune out the rest of the world and do the work.

The Pros and Cons of Reading eBooks developed by Kobo

I recently purchased some Kobo eBooks because I needed to obtain the titles for a course I’m taking. I found that Kobo eBooks can be conveniently downloaded to the desktop of my Macbook. The three titles I purchased are WORD NERD by Susin Nielsen, THE SECRET OF GABI’S DRESSER by Kathy Kacer and THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME by Mark Haddon.

I also found that in making my first Kobo eBook purchases my eLibrary came stocked with some classic titles; all of which were supplied without a fee and from the genre of my purchases (YA fiction).

While I didn’t get to choose the titles, the following are the eBooks I was given (most likely due to a current marketing promotion):

ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain;
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND by Lewis Carroll;
DRACULA by Bram Stoker;
GRIMMS’ FAIRY TALES by The Brothers Grimm;
MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

In my review of the pros and cons of reading Kobo eBooks I’ve chosen the novel, WORD NERD by Susin Nielsen as the novel of reference. (The price comparisons are the stock prices listed on September 30, 2010 at Chapters.ca, not including iRewards prices.)

hardcover — $20.99 list price, but the price on offer is $16.79
While hardcover books tend to look better on a bookshelf than paperbacks do, I can’t remember ever choosing to pay the extra money for a hardcover when a softcover is available for much less money.

trade paperback — 264 pages
$14.99 list price, but the price on offer is $11.39

eBook — list price $18.99, but price on offer is $10.99
available for reading on desktop, eReaders, tablet, Smartphone

The Kobo eReader is selling at $149.00 CDN on offer at Chapters.ca currently. I personally can’t see any reason to purchase a devise like this since my laptop seems to function as conveniently as a tablet device, though I’ve not tried a Kobo eReader.

THE CONS of reading Kobo eBooks:

Con: I happen to like the feel of a new or used book and even the smell of the printed pages. This is obviously not a factor in an eBook. I missed this and realized that I couldn’t highlight passages for my own review at a later time and it’s impossible to take my laptop in the tub to read as I like to do when reading printed books.

Con: Using Kobo on my desktop, it’s not possible to see the back of the book jacket cover. The publication information is spread over several pages. Also, layout and design specializations can seem like typos on first reading. Such is the case in WORD NERD where the first letter of the first word of text in the first paragraph of each chapter is omitted. (I couldn’t find an excerpt online to see a printed page sample of the beginning of a chapter so I can only assume the book is published like this on purpose in all forms.)

Con: Pages are numbered by chapter starting back at page one each chapter, so it’s difficult to judge the length of the book. I happen to like to know how far along I am in reading a novel; I like to squish the pages together and see the thickness, how far I am from being halfway through or more. (As the pages have smaller amounts of text than printed pages it also makes it difficult to tell the length of the eBook). Note: When I was reviewing my experience reading Kobo eBooks I found the option to enter and/or exit full screen mode and text prompts to increase or decrease text size (thereby changing the number of pages in each chapter) and that I could view an in-text image via a link provided. These options didn’t sway my opinion that the pagination aspect of reading an eBook is a “con.”

THE PROS of reading Kobo eBooks:

Pro: In this particular purchase from Chapters.ca, the price for the eBook version of WORD NERD was slightly less money than the paperback version and no shipping payment is required to download an eBook.

Pro: It’s easy to make a quick purchase and have the text at my fingertips immediately when I’m looking to buy an eBook that is available on Kobo. (I don’t know about other eBook brands, not having purchased any of them). I like that buying a Kobo eBook online is a secure purchase. I’ve only used the desktop version of the download at purchase, but I don’t need to be online to read it as it’s stored neatly into my personal Kobo eLibrary right on my computer.

Pro: As I noted above, the ability to change the size of the text is a valuable option for someone requiring larger than normal text to be able to read easily. But this doesn’t affect my personal reading experience.

Pro: Kobo places bookmarks automatically when I close the Kobo eLibrary on my desktop.

In the end, although there are some good reasons for using electronic publishing and for purchasing eBooks, I prefer to have the choice of paperback or electronic format when I’m going to purchase a book and would not be happy to find any book only available in electronic format.

top ten reasons why I’m a writer

• I thrive on the frustration and mental anguish a career in writing offers.

• I like the flexible hours.

• I’m really bad at math.

• I have three supportive muses: my kid, my cat, my dog. None of them wants me to get a real job.

• My husband is supportive too and he’s the one with a real job.

• I didn’t pursue formal training in art or photography, the two other creative art forms I have an interest in.

• I did spend years studying English and I can make use of my English Literature degree!

• Some of my favourite authors have dealt with mental health issues — and I have dealt with obsessive-compulsive disorder extensively.

• Having OCD, I am really good with details, proof reading, spelling, etc.

• I have been a professional student, a restaurant hostess, a cashier, a shoe sales person, a receptionist, an administrative assistant, a theatre usher — a small sample of my varied work experiences — but continuing to improve my skills in the craft of writing is my chosen profession.