The 2nd Annual Jody-intz Awards

Back by popular demand! Okay, not really, but I need a blog topic, and since this is the day that the ALA announces the Printz Award for the best young adult book of the year, I realized it was time to release my own list of besties.

And now without further ado, the Jody-intz-es: 

1. Book That Made Me Laugh Out Loud (and also fight off tears). Daniel Handler's Why We Broke Up. Handler's the author of the Series of Unfortunate Events, so he's an expert in quirky humor, but this turn at YA proves that he's got heart too. This brilliant novel is one long kiss off letter--main character Min's rant against big time %&$* jerk Ed. Oh, I soooo wish a book like this existed when I was a teen.

2. Best Love Story. A 3-way tie between The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith (because I LOVE Oliver and LOVE the serendipitous moments that continually pull him into Hadley's life over a 24-hour period); Just One Day by Gayle Forman (even though the romance takes a back seat to the main character's journey of self-discovery); and John Green's The Fault in Our Stars (yeah, this book does not need anymore accolades--it's placed firmly in bestseller land as shown by its appearance on shelves at Walmart and Kroger--but I will praise it anyway: Great book on multiple levels by an awesome writer I bow down to.

3. Coolest Hook. Every Day by David Levithan. I could've stuck this one in the best love story category too. Thought-provoking and heartbreaking and probably contains the most noble sacrifice in the history of love stories as main character "A" fights to woo Rhiannon despite his curse of never remaining in one body for more than one day. Bonus points for being a fave of both of my kids, a rare feat for a picky teen girl and her hardly-ever-reads-fiction older brother.

4.  Book That Had Me Hearing Slasher Music in My Head Whilst Reading. Shift by Em Bailey. Riveting psychological horror/thriller about Olive, who may or may not be crazy, who's enemies with Miranda, who may or may not be evil, who may or may not be sucking the life out of Kate. Cue the freaky music...

4. Series I Wanted to Keep Reading (and Did). I read a lot of books and too many are first books in a series. Unless I am totally hooked, I rarely follow up on the sequel (there are so many other books to try....) but I did with Rae Carson's Girl of Fire and Thorns and the sequel (just finished this one a week ago) The Crown of Embers. I'm not typically a fantasy fan, but Carson's reluctant and very human princess Elisa is worth following through multiple novels. Major bonus points for unpredictable and complex plot. Eagerly awaiting book three!

5. Book that Transcends a Difficult Topic. Colleen Clayton's debut What Happens Next. The topic is date rape, which might turn some readers off, but Clayton never over-dramatizes or crosses the line into lurid. Her main character Sid's journey is heartbreaking and beautiful and somehow funny and romantic too. My only beef with the book is the kinda "meh" title. Something else might've worked better to capture the essence of this novel. Or maybe not. The whole time I was reading I had no idea what was going to happen next.

6. Books That Stuck with Me and Make Me Proud to Call Myself a Young Adult Writer. In addition to the ones listed above, a shout out to Adele Griffin for the horrifying and twisty/turny drama All You Never Wanted; E.M. Kokie's brilliant debut Personal Effects about a boy's search to understand his revered older brother's death (and life); Michelle Cooper's Brief History of Montmary because I rarely like historical fiction but totally fell into her quirky pre-WWII world; and last but not least, Meg Rosoff's There is No Dog, which made me laugh and think and question my belief in God.


UPDATE:  The official Printz Award was just announced: In Darkness by Nick Lake, a book I sadly have not read but will add to my TBR list asap!

And just for the heck of it, here's the entire list of books I read this year, in case anyone's wondering: (Reviews highlighted)

1. What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty, adult fiction
2. I Don't Know How She Does It by Allison Pearson, adult fiction
3. The Future of Us by Carolyn Mackler and Jay Asher, YA fiction
4. A Brief History of Montmaray by Michelle Cooper, YA historical fiction
5. The Fitzosbornes in Exile (sequel) by Michelle Cooper
6. The Vanishing Game by Katie Kae Myers, YA fiction
7. Ripper by Stefan Petrucha, YA historical/Steampunk
8. The Girls of No Return by Erin Saldin, YA fiction
9. The Fault in our Stars by John Green, YA fiction
10. Dead to You by Lisa McMann, YA fiction
11. Catch and Release by Blythe Woolston, YA fiction
12. Maze Runner by James Dashner, YA science fiction
13. Unraveling by Elizabeth Norris, YA science fiction
14. Bewitching by Alex Flinn, YA paranormal
15. Partials by Dan Wells, YA science fiction
16. Take a Bow by Elizabeth Eulberg, YA fiction
17. Slide by Jill Hathaway, YA paranormal
18. Glimmer by Phoebe Kitanidis, YA paranormal
19. There is No Dog by Meg Rosoff, YA fiction
20. Croak by Gina DaMico, YA paranormal
21. Where Men Find Glory by Jon Krakauer, adult non-fiction
22. The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith, YA fiction
23. The Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford, adult fiction
24. Shift by Em Bailey, YA paranormal
25. In the Woods by Tana French, adult mystery
26. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, adult "non" fiction/inspirational
27. Shipbreaker by Paolo Bacigalupi, YA dystopian
28. V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton, adult fiction
29. The Selection by Kiera Cass, YA romance/dystopian
30. A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, adult nonfiction/inspirational
31. Crazy by Amy Read, YA fiction
32. Grim by Anna Waggener, YA paranormal
33. Cat Girl's Day Off by Kimberly Pauley, YA fiction/fantasy
34. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, adult fiction
35. So Close to You by Rachel Carter, YA paranormal
36. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, adult fiction/dystopian
37. Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin, YA dystopian
38. Guitar Notes by Mary Amato, YA fiction
39. Look Again by Lisa Scottoline, adult mystery
40. Chime by Franny Billingsley, YA historical/paranormal
41. Sailing to Freedom by Martha Bennett Stiles, middle grade historical
42. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, YA historical
43. Ashen Winter by Mike Mullin, YA dystopian
44. Some Assembly Required by Anne Lamott, adult non-fiction
45. The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler, adult fiction
46. Breaking Night by Liz Murray, adult memoir
47. Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson, YA fantasy
48. Keep Holding On by Susane Colasanti, YA fiction
49. Thrill in the 'Ville by Patsi Trollinger, middle grade fiction
50. Safekeeping by Karen Hesse, YA dystopian
51. Every Day by David Levithan, YA fiction
52. Graceling by Kristin Cashore, YA fantasy (second time reading this and loved it all over again)
53. Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore, YA fantasy
54. Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler, YA fiction
55. Personal Effects by E.M. Kokie, YA fiction
56. Buried by Robin MacCready, YA fiction
57. What Happens Next by Colleen Clayton, YA fiction
58. Broken Harbor by Tana French, adult mystery
59. WIP by a friend, YA contemporary
60. Because it is my Blood by Gabrielle Zevin, YA fiction
61. Sacred by Elana K. Arnold, YA paranormal
62. A Blue So Dark by Holly Schindler, YA fiction
63. Leaving Fishers by Margaret Peterson Haddix, YA fiction
64. All You Never Wanted by Adele Griffin, YA fiction
65. Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald, adult historical fiction
66. Shadows by Ilsa Bick, YA dystopian
67. Wild by Cheryl Strayed, adult memoir
68. Tighter by Adele Griffin, YA fiction
69. Touching the Surface by Kimberly Sabatini, YA parnormal
70. The Invisible Thread by Laura Schroff, adult memoir
71. A Woman Called by Sara Gaston Barton, adult non-fiction
72. Just One Day by Gayle Forman, YA fiction

Surreal Moments (and Creeping Doubts)

The other day I got a box in the mail.


It wasn't a surprise. I knew it was coming. Still, to see it there on my front porch got my heart stuttering. It was my book. Specifically, it was 30 Advance Review Copies of my forthcoming book Thin Space. The next day I would mail most of the books out to librarians and booksellers, teachers and blog reviewers, but for a few hours I had a grand old time taking pictures of the box and its contents and sticking the photos on Instagram whilst singing the words to "Look at this Instagram," the favorite fun song around our house these days. (Please click here for a laugh.)

I also enjoyed fanning the book at my face so I could suck in the scent of its bookish perfume, lining it up on my bookshelf just to see how it looked up there, and carrying it in my purse out to a celebratory dinner and placing it on the table as a centerpiece so my husband, teen daughter, her friend, and the confused waiter could gaze upon it and bask in its glory.

Then it was back to work. I'm in the middle of a revision of a revision of a revision of another book, something I "finished" before Christmas, and this week was the week I planned to read that manuscript and figure out what to do with it next.

I could hardly concentrate.

I keep thinking about my book, my book, winging its way out into the world via the postal service, heading towards people I know and people I don't know who will read it and like it. Or not like it. Some of them will say nice things, and I will wonder if they are just being kind. Some won't tell me anything and I will imagine that they hate the book and are just being kind.

I see the book on Amazon and I freak out. OMG! It's on Amazon! Or I notice it on Goodreads, and I freak further out. It's on Goodreads! People are adding it to their to-be-read lists. Holy freaking cow. I'm amazed. I'm proud. But in the next moment I'm crashing. The book I'm working on now is a mess. I don't even know because I can hardly read it. What if it's too terrible to rework? What if I can't fix it?

But, hey, I wrote a book! It's going to be published! Of course I can fix it. The dream is coming true and all of the pieces are falling into place. Next stop: best seller list and awards and film rights.

Don't kid yourself. That book was a fluke. Who says you can do it again? Reality is that it sinks like a stone and disappears into oblivion. Two months after the release there'll be a forgotten stack on the remainder table: For sale. $2.99.

Yeah. So that's just a snippet of my loony rollercoastery thoughts. The funny thing is that it's only January and the book won't officially be out until September. I've got to nip this ridiculous, potentially paralyzing anxiety in the bud.

Anyway, why do I even have any anxiety? The me of last year would smack the Me Now upside the head. Be happy, you goofball, I imagine Last Year's Me saying. Fall down on your knees and praise the publishing gods. It wouldn't hurt to take a chill pill too, and enjoy the ride.

I worked toward this dream for a very long time, so why not prance around the house sniffing my book for like, two minutes?


(My favorite pic: It's me taking a picture of The Box with my iPad while my biggest fan looks on adoringly)

Interview with Jennifer Salvato Doktorski

I'm so excited to sit down today with Jennifer Salvato Doktorski, fellow Simon Pulse debut author and new writing friend.

Fun Fact: Jen was the first person to interview me, which I must say, was one of the highlights of my writing year. Fun fact #2: Jen has TWO books coming out this year. How My Summer Went Up in Flames with Simon Pulse (release date: May 7) and Famous Last Words with Henry Holt (release: July 2). I am in awe of this two book/two publisher deal and bow down to Jen's writing and promotional juggling skills.

I haven't read either book yet, but I am totally intrigued. Look at this cover:

And here's the enticing blurb:

Rosie’s always been impulsive. She didn’t intend to set her cheating ex-boyfriend’s car on fire. And she never thought her attempts to make amends could be considered stalking. So when she’s served with a temporary restraining order on the first day of summer vacation, she’s heartbroken—and furious....

But Jen confessed that she wrote Famous Last Words first. The cover hasn't been officially released yet, but I took a peek and it is gorgeous.

Sixteen-year-old Samantha D’Angelo has death on the brain. Her summer internship at the local newspaper has her writing obituaries instead of soaking up the sun at the beach. Between Shelby, Sam’s boy-crazy best friend; her boss Harry, a true-blue newspaper man; and AJ, her fellow “intern scum” (aka the cute drummer for a band called Love Gas), Sam has her hands full. But once she figures out what—or who—is the best part of her summer, will she mess it all up?
As Sam learns her way around both the news room and the real world, she starts to make some momentous realizations about politics, ethics, her family, romance, and most important—herself.

Jody: Jen, I love that these books are standalones, (Soooo many books these days are part of a series, and readers have to wait for the next installment.) and they are very different on the surface. Where do you get your ideas?

Jen: My ideas come from a variety of sources—things that have happened to me or people I know, things I’ve read or heard about, things I wish would happen to me, songs, TV, the news. Sometimes I feel writing is like quilting. You bring together bits and pieces and stitch them into one story. (I should mention that I’ve never made quilt, but it’s how I imagine the process would go.)

I usually get an idea for a concept or hook first and then take it from there. For my first novel, I knew I wanted to do a story about a teen obit writer and call it Dead Lines. Ultimately, the title was changed to Famous Last Words, but that’s where it started. For that book I drew on my experiences writing obituaries as well as the two years I spent as a reporter for a local newspaper. For my second novel the phrase “girl on the receiving end of a restraining order” popped into my head. I started to think about who that girl would be and why. That’s where How My Summer Went Up in Flames began. Once I come up with the concept, I have to find the right voice for my main character. That’s key for me. The conversations between my characters drive my scenes.

Jody: I like your quilt idea. For the record, I haven't made a quilt either but my mom and my mother-in-law both quilt and I know how much work goes into it--all the fabric you have to cut and then piece together, and that's before you even get to the actual quilting part. So many layers and so much time. It's a good metaphor for the writing-a-book-process.

You said that you come up with the concept first. What's next? Do you make an outline or do you just plunge in and start writing?

Jen: I would like to be an outline person, but I can’t seem to work that way with the first draft. After I get the first draft down and get feedback from my critique partners and agent, then I usually wind up going back and doing some sort of outline. With both novels I made outlines after I got notes back from my editors. There’s a book I love by Martha Alderson called Blockbuster Plots. In it she teaches this technique for tracking scenes. I love it. It’s been a huge help for me with revisions.

Jody: Hmm. We seem to share a similar process. I've never heard of the Martha Alderson book. I will have to check that out. I've been using Carolyn See's Making a Literary Life for help with my revisions and I attended an awesome lecture at a Highlights conference about revising in layers. Very helpful. Something I didn't know when I was just starting out was that logic and outlining are going to come into it at one point or another. And the journey to publication takes a looooong time. (At least it did for me!)

How many books did you write before you got your first book deal? How many rejections did you get along the way?

Jen: Let’s see. I wrote one middle grade and several picture books before writing the young adult novel (Famous Last Words) that landed me my agent and my first book deal. As it turns out, this book will be my second one published. My debut novel, How My Summer Went Up in Flames, was the second one sold but will be published first. As far as rejections go, I was well into the double-digits when my agent, Kerry Sparks, rescued me from the slush pile and signed me.

Jody: Double digits sound pretty good from where I'm standing!

Now, back to the nitty gritty: What kind of work schedule do you have every day?

Jen: When I’m working on new material, mornings are my favorite and most productive time of day to write. But if I’m on a deadline and revising a manuscript, I work whenever and wherever I can—early mornings, late nights, at the Dunkin Donuts next door to my daughter’s dancing school. I’ve recently discovered the benefits of jotting down notes on my iPhone.

Jody: This is why I love doing these interviews! I always come away with a new idea. Your iPhone method is much better than my "jotting stuff down on stray receipts crumpled up in my purse" method. Must remember that and must pick your brain about another of my issues: how to balance writing time with other obligations.

Jen: Well, it’s not always pretty. If only my family didn’t need clean clothes and home-cooked meals! Honestly, my husband and daughter are incredibly supportive. They ignore the dust bunnies, don’t mind take-out, and help me fold baskets and baskets of clean clothes on weekends. The dog still demands her daily walks, but it gives me time to clear my head and think about what I’m writing.

Jody: Thank goodness for the dog, right? (Otherwise, I wonder if I'd ever leave the house.) Okay, last question because I know you're amazingly busy:

How do you promote your books/use social media?

Jen: I have a website and I’m on Twitter. The latter has been an awesome way to connect with other writers as well as YA book bloggers. More recently, I signed up as an author on Goodreads and I may do a Facebook page sometime this year.

Jody: Jen, thanks so much for chatting. I can't wait for your books to come out and to follow you during your (double) debut year!

Attack the Stack 2013 Reading Challenge

Hi. My name is Jody and I have a book collecting problem.

I buy books at bookstores. I check books out of libraries. I buy used books from library book sales. Somehow I even attract free books--I win them in contests that I don't remember entering, and I get advanced copies of books that haven't been released yet from the most awesome bookstore in Columbus, Cover to Cover. Also, people like to give me books as presents. Thanks!

But I am having trouble reading all of these books. I pile them in teetering stacks on my bedside table, on the window sill in the bathroom, on the desk in my office. These teetering stacks taunt me daily, and yet, I cannot stop myself from buying/from borrowing/from accepting more.

Something must be done. And since I am all about goals and resolutions and rules, I have come up with an idea that just might solve my problem: what I shall call my Attack the Stack 2013 Reading Challenge. (If YOU, dear reader, suffer from the same problem, feel free to join me in this quest...)

THE RULES

1. Gather all of the to-be-read books from around the house and pile them into one fun giant stack.
2. Read the books (Resolution: read 4 books per month from the stack. Which allows a little wiggle room for new releases, cool stuff that comes along, etc.)
3. PUT A "MEH" BOOK DOWN. (A big issue for me as a former English teacher/English major/guilt-prone Catholic school girl.) I am thinking I will give a book a chance up to a third of the way through before quitting on it.

See pic below. Note that I had to make two piles and even that was a little precarious.

I actually enjoyed doing this part of my challenge--finally getting a good look at all of the books I've been collecting and meaning to read for the past few years. It's an interesting mix, maybe kinda weird too. YA stuff, of course, but also some adult fiction and classics.

The list TBR in no particular order

1. Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
2. Every Last One by Anna Quindlen
3. Trouble by Kate Christensen
4. The Fiction Class by Susan Breen
5. Soul of a Dog by Jon Katz
6. Any Place I Hang My Hat by Susan Isaacs
7. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
8. The Earth, My Butt, and Other Round Things by Carolyn Mackler
9. Honey, Baby, Sweetheart by Deb Caletti
10. The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison
11. Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
12. The Shadow Society by Marie Rutkoski
13. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
14. Promised by Caragh O'Brien
15. Crewel by Jennifer Albin
16. The Corrections by Jonathan Frazen
17. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
18. Return to Me by Justina Chen
19 Altered by Jennifer Rush
20. Ask the Passengers by A.S. King
21. Crown of Embers by Rae Carson
22. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
23. Okay for Now by Gary Schmidt
24. The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
25. Waiting for You by Susane Colasanti
26. Red Spikes by Margo Lanagan
27. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
28. Many Stones by Carolyn Coman
29. High Tide in Tucson by Barbara Kingsolver
30. Loserville by Peter Johnson
31. What I Was by Meg Rosoff
32. The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova
33. A Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burroughs
34. Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls
35. Waiting for Aphrodite by Sue Hubbell
36. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
37. Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
38. The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
39. Big Mouth & Ugly Girl by Joyce Carol Oates
40. The Third Angel by Alice Hoffman
41. Atonement by Ian McEwan
42. Liesl & Po by Lauren Olver
43. Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
44. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
45. Divergent by Veronica Roth
46. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audry Niffenegger
47. Where I Want to Be by Adele Griffin
48. Vegan, Virgin, Valentine by Carolyn Mackler
49. Diviners by Libba Bray

Tune in throughout the year as I blog about my progress...

Highs and Lows and Stuff in Between

There's a freaky quietness in my house, where I've found myself with like, one hour between the departure of Christmas guests and the arrival of New Year's guests. It's just me and the dog and a ton of dirty laundry. Plus, I've got to clean the bathrooms and figure out what I'm making for dinner (I'm leaning toward one of my favorite dishes called "Ordering Out for Pizza"), but instead I am sneaking off to write the world's fastest thrown together blog post, a wrap up of my year, inspired by one of my new writer friends from YA Outside the Lines, Stephanie Kuehnert--see here for her wrap up of her year.

Some people hate making New Year's Resolutions, but I am not one of those people. I'm all about goal setting and list making and crossing stuff off of lists. Also, I like to make new lists with the stuff I didn't cross off other lists. I've got broad yearly goals (last year I promised to earn money and to stop whining about potential book deals, which I am happy to say that I accomplished, for the most part). I've got weekly goals and daily goals and sometimes hourly goals. For example, "Turn off all social media and see how many words I can write in one hour. Go." When I don't meet my self-imposed goals, I feel antsy and annoyed and ticked off at myself. As self-disciplined as I am, there is always this worry in the back of my head: today I'm short on my word count goal, tomorrow I could be parked out on the couch watching a Bachelorette marathon.

At New Year's I like to take stock, see what I really did accomplish (and let fall through the cracks).

So here's my list.

On the writing front

Well, I got a book deal for my novel Thin Space! Which seems like the biggest accomplishment of all time, considering it was a goal I'd been working toward for as long as I can remember. The weird thing is that it felt kind of anti-climactic when it happened. I sort of knew it was going to come together last year around this time and it all got dragged out in a way that sometimes drove me insane. I got THE CALL in January but didn't sign the contract until the end of April, and then there were revisions to work on and other odds and ends, but the real making of that book felt long finished before 2012. Still. I am not complaining! I love this book and love the cool people (Beyond Words/Simon Schuster) who bought it, and have enjoyed participating in the whole publishing a book process.

But while all that was going on I was working on other things too. I wrote a first draft of a book that shall not be named here (yet). It's a raw, funny, painful, very personal and yet not personal, potentially cool YA--a giant mess of a first draft, probably the longest one I've every written, close to 100,000 words. I know this will be greatly trimmed and overhauled and revised some day. Not sure when. Haven't even looked at the thing since I finished it back in April. It's still, as Stephen King would say, marinating.

I revised Thin Space with an editor, my first working-with-an-editor experience and it was awesome. Here is one instance where I am grateful that it took me so long to sell one of my books. The old writerly me of fifteen years ago would've freaked out about the number of editorial suggestions and comments, wondering if I could even do what was needed. The me today is like, Bring it.

And after that, I plunged back into an old manuscript. This is my fourth time through it and probably won't be the last, but I think I am getting closer. I realized that my work this summer with my editor helped me as a writer too. I am almost embarrassed to say this, but the old writerly me used to look at a manuscript and know there was something off about it and think, let's see if an editor catches this, and if she does, she'll tell me what to do. Here's the thing: they don't really tell you what to do. They just point out what's not working. You're the one who has to figure out how to fix it. Sometimes it's going to take a lot of work. But what else am I going to do with my time? Watch Bachelorette reruns?

Kind of writer-related

I blogged fairly regularly and did some social media stuff: fixed up my website and made an author Facebook page and tweeted a bunch on Twitter (maybe too much?!) and compiled a mailing list and did some marketing/promotion research.

I set up a few school visits (my daughter's English class at the high school and a day with her old middle school language arts teacher) and had a blast dipping my rusty teacherly toes back into the classroom. I also dropped in on a creative writing club and a teen book club at a local library.

   

On the reader front

Here's where I feel kind of disappointed in myself. The year before I read 92 books and I thought that was on the low side. This past year I only read 72 (I keep track in a little notebook). My main problem (besides my obsession with my new iPad and the fun distraction of social media) is that I have such a hard time quitting on a book that I don't like. There were some weeks where I struggled through the same dumb book rather than flinging it across the room and picking up something I enjoyed. Lesson I must remember: when I love a book, it is no struggle at all to read it; in fact, it is the only thing I want to do. Books I loved loved loved this year in no particular order: Gayle Forman's Just One Day, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty, The Fault in our Stars by John Green, In the Woods by Tana French, State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, Every Day by David Levithan, All You Never Wanted by Adele Griffin.  

Not writer or reader related

Got my oldest child off to the college of his dreams and didn't fall completely apart. (It helped that we got a puppy.)

Took some cool trips--to NYC, to the beach in North Carolina, to a parents' weekend at my son's college, to a lake for a mother/daughter weekend trip.

But mostly I just lived my regular normal day to day life (besides a good 6 to 8 hours per day of writing) there's mothering my daughter and walking my dog and making meals and watching movies with my husband and visiting with neighbors and friends and putzing around in my garden. These are the things I don't write about and pretty much take for granted. Which is silly and sad, and I want to say something profound here about how those unexamined and non-reflected-upon moments ARE the moments that make up my life, and forget how many words I write or books I read or tweets I tweet, these are the moments that are truly important, especially when you think about how short life ultimately is or something horrible happens like what happened in Connecticut a few weeks ago and you know that those people would give anything--would give everything probably--just to have a mundane packing-a-lunch-for-their-kid moment back.

Oh! I want to write about this! But an hour has passed and my dog is barking and I still have toilets to clean and sheets to get on the beds and pizza to order for our wonderful dear amazing friends who will be here any moment...

(Choices part 4--from xkcd) 

Interview with Mt. Everest Climber Andy Politz

E.L Doctorow said writing a novel is like driving in the fog at night. Author Laraine Herring says it's like traveling through Texas. I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I once compared it to running a marathon. (full disclosure: I have never run a marathon.) But you get the point. Sitting down to write a book, writing it, finishing it, is a long and arduous process. I suppose it is like any difficult (yet ultimately exhilarating) endeavor. It continues to fascinate me--where the drive comes from to take the first step on a journey and where we find the motivation to keep going.

As promised I'm sitting down today with pretty much the most motivated guy I know, climbing guru Andy Politz, to pick his brain about what compels him to do what he does and some of the cool things he's learned along the way. Andy doesn't take metaphorical journeys, he goes on real ones. Specifically, he climbed Mt. Everest. He's also a climber of other mountains, a mountaineering guide, a teacher, a motivational speaker, and a writer. And, he was on the team that discovered George Mallory's body (another story all together that you can see more about here and here and here.)

Jody: Whenever I do an author interview the first thing I always ask is where do you get your ideas? So, let's start there: where did you get your desire to climb?

Andy: I'm convinced that if you tap into the arena you're meant to be in, it's a life-changing situation. That arena will provide the skeleton that much of the rest of your life will be built upon and hang from. For me, it was one thing leading to another--from camping with the folks, through backpacking, some local rock climbing and ice climbing. All through high school I spent a month every winter climbing in New Hampshire. Right after I graduated I started guiding on Mt Rainier; I realized I had to be a climber and adventurer. I'd seen that college was not a necessary thing for me, that I would be able to make my way through my wits and being creative about how I made a living, incorporating adventure into the working world.

Jody: I like that "incorporating adventure into the working world." How many people can say they do that? What do you think makes a person want to go on an adventure, or I guess, follow any dream?

Andy: Our adventures are a rite of passage through a transition in our lives-- moving out of our teenage years, getting married, raising children, preparing to enter our later years, even preparing for the greatest adventure, our death. I'm convinced that the adventures we choose are a customized lesson to help us get through these stages.

Jody: Whoa. You know that makes a lot of sense. I'm thinking about how I started writing seriously when my kids reached middle school and were tired of their helicoptery mom hanging over them. And now I know a lot of people who are at the stage where they are empty-nesters and wondering what's up next, maybe they've decided to try something new--start a business or write a book or...climb a mountain. But that's just the beginning of a quest--making the decision to do it.

Andy: Right. As you progress through your new found arena, realize that the beauty surrounding you is your battery charger and that the failure you'll experience is the only true way you're going to discover your real capabilities and capacities.

Many of the significant challenges along the path remind us that the journey, whatever it is, is essentially a solo experience, and the course we set is bound to change as we gain a greater sense of ourselves. The most significant outcome, the goal, of our adventures, is to gain an understanding of managing a hopeless cause.

Jody: I like that about the beauty battery charger. It sounds like you're saying "enjoy the ride." And you're right about a lot of this being a kind of mental exercise. If you're talking about something like writing, there are all kinds of internal things that can derail you--self doubt and perfectionism, etc. For something physical, like what you do, a lot of it seems to be mental too--believing you can keep walking on, even though you're freezing and tired. But what do you mean by a "hopeless cause"?

Andy: How I see it is the adventurer is a specialist in operating outside his comfort zone; he's up to facing more hardship than is unacceptable to most people; and for him, fear comes along as a valued companion. There's also a relentless insecurity. You're always short of some essential element: be it time, gear, skill, insight, strength, knowledge or a do-over to replay a costly mistake. But here's what happens: in time, with enough experience, this stuff all gets taken in stride. The experienced adventurer learns to manage I can't, never, and impossible. If it is something you, deep down, really want (need?) to do--all those labels that come with "hopeless" can be worked around.

Jody: I think you hit on what's at the core of all this, the mental attitude that you adopt when you've decided to go for something. But, okay, what happens if you do that, and you still fail?

Andy: Now were talking about some thing I know well. I am probably an expert on failure. But if I am out to increase my life experience, or the beauty I'm exposed to, or some such experience, I have to frame out a situation bigger than I am. In many of these situations, failure is more than we may care to bear.  I've learned to model hazardous situations as best I can: break them down into small bite-size chunks, gain some understanding of what the hazards are and when they are likely to show up, and decide how I will likely handle them.

Doing this helps me show up with the right toolbox and gives me a little mental insight into what I'm getting myself into. Stopping is simply a matter of recovering from the consequences of an inexperienced  decision. It's no different from the idea that you need to do something 10,000 times to really learn it. Taking a break should be expected. Many times, that "break," has my "tail tucked between my legs"--I'm shuddering in fear and vowing to never go back there again.

Jody: But you do.

Andy: Yeah. With a little space and time, I see the mistakes I made, the strengths I had that were available but unused  and how I could have used the momentum of the situation to better advantage.

Failure? That is when you give up on the Grand Vision for your life. I believe it is still sitting dormant, deep down, in your soul with the loss of the exuberance of youth. But along the way you have acquired a strength, vision and fortitude, that can resurface later in life. Your Mt. Everest can still be climbed, even now. How you approach it today will be a far different approach than you would have 10 years ago, with a denser vision and greater tenacity.

Jody: Why did I think we were talking about mountain climbing? This is Pursuing a Dream 101. You shoot for something big. You bring your tool box. You take a break when you need to. You learn from your mistakes. You risk failure.

Here's something that occurred to me along the way in my writing journey: one day it hit me that there was a very real sense that what I dreamed--to be a published author--might not ever come true. Did you ever reach a low point like that, and what did you do?

Andy: Of course! The adventure does not necessarily have to be about climbing mountains, or rowing oceans, or skiing unsupported across Antarctica. But back to your question about hitting a low point, the most significant action I have taken to insure success, ironically, was to vow to quit. If I didn't get up Mt. Everest on my 4th attempt, I was walking away forever. In essence, you've got to realize the value of your project. Realize life is short and will end. I only have so many 'projects' I'll be able to accomplish this time around. So, imagine what Not Doing This will mean to you. Back yourself into a corner and quit or finish. Every action needs to be so that I can climb my Mt. Everest-- every meal, rest, book I read, step I take, so I can get up and spend a few moments in that rarefied air.

Jody: So, you put a deadline on it and then you doubled down and moved forward. I sort of did something similar. I knew I was going to have to go back to work if I couldn't earn any money writing and I put a date on that, and then just wrote more than ever in the mean time. But it was hard.

Andy: Most of my failures have been because it was so much more monotonous than I was prepared for. I was ready for winds that would blow me off a ridge, avalanches, rockfall, frostbite, high altitude sickness, the risk of falling, etc. But I hadn't previously been prepared for the sheer boredom of taking 18 hours to traverse a mile of ridge, out and back, at 28-29,000 feet. Boredom does not require action packed decision making. It is monotonous. I would venture that any monotonous situation can be turned into meditation. That realization has been incredibly valuable along the way.

Jody: Do you think can motivation be learned? Taught?

Andy: If you're in the right activity, there is no question about motivation.

Jody: You make it sound so easy, but I know you're right. We all have to find that thing we're passionate about. What still intrigues me is how some people are able to climb mountains and other people struggle to do things like get out of bed, go to school or work, or take care of their kids.

Andy: But you know what? I think climbing Everest is easy compared to showing up day after day and doing stuff like that. Everest is an amazing place and when you make it to the top, you get to walk down! Compare that to dealing with little kids pushing your buttons!

Jody: That's true. I don't know if you're giving yourself enough credit here though. You've been awesome talking to me today. Before I let you go, what are you working on now?

Andy: Climbing, writing, teaching...
In the last year I've been working on a long-term project:  Ascents of Honor . The group encourages Americans to share a common passion with returning veterans--to help them reintegrate into the community. The idea is that for every passion that a veteran may have, there are people in the community who share that passion. We're encouraging the people to invite vets in and help these folks get back on their feet. It's about the activity-- be it: building engines, sailing, songwriting and music, walking the Appalachian Trail, art, whatever--and of course, what I'm bringing to it is mountaineering--but it's even more about the community. This is a hard, hard situation these people are going through. I'm not proposing we become therapists. Just friends. And, that's very important no matter what journey we find ourselves on.

Let me add, Jody, and to all you writers out there--you can play an essential role here--there may be a vet down the street who needs some help getting a story composed. Team up with that person, and it's very likely to be life changing, on both sides of the paper.

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop

The next big thing! This wonderful meme is allowing authors to write about their latest project in this fabulous blog hop.  I’ve been tagged by Patty Blount, my writing friend on YA Outside the Lines and author of Send, the new buzz-worthy YA novel about bullying.

Rules for The Next Big Thing Blog Hop if you’re tagged: 
1. Use this format for your post
2. Answer the ten questions about your current WIP (work in progress)
3. Tag five other writers/bloggers and add their links so we can hop over and meet them.

Ten Interview Questions for the Next Big Thing:

What is your working title of your book? 

Okay, I'm fudging the rules here because what I really want to talk about is my forthcoming novel Thin Space. 

Where did the idea come from for your book? 

A mix of two seemingly unrelated things. I saw an article in a magazine about Celtic thin places--places where the wall between this world and the world of the dead is "thinner." I misread the article and thought it said thin space, and the idea stuck with me. Around the same time I noticed this boy on my son's school bus who was always barefoot. It just bugged me--why didn't he wear shoes? How did he manage to walk around, in winter, barefoot? I mean, where were the kid's parents?

What genre does your book fall under? 

This should be an easy question. When I was writing it there were some days I thought it might be slipping into horror, but other days it felt like a mystery or a romance. This question is making me think I have no idea how to characterize what I write. I'll leave that up to other people. My publisher calls it a "reality-based paranormal" young adult novel.

Which actors would you choose to portray your characters in the movie version of your book?

I never thought about this before so I turned to an expert-- my teen daughter, who immediately said Josh Hutcherson should play my main guy Marsh Windsor. Hmm. I guess Josh Hutcherson might be able to pull off that brooding, tormented, yet sometimes jokey guy. For Maddie Rogers (the girl who helps Marsh on his finding a thin space quest), my daughter suggested Elle Fanning.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? 

I can never do this. I always want to just give my book to people and say, "Read it." So, cheating again--here's the blurb from my agency website: Thin Space is a paranormal YA mystery about a boy coming to terms with his twin brother's death.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? 

I am represented by the awesome Deborah Warren with East West Literary Agency. The book will be published by Beyond Words/Simon & Schuster on September 10, 2013.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? 

1 month. I signed up to do NaNoWriMo, where you pledge to write a novel in a month. But here's something interesting for those of you who think that you can write a novel in a month:

• It took me 3 months to revise that NaNo mess 
• another month after an agent looked at it (she rejected it anyway, but her critique helped)
• another month for a different agent who ended up taking the project on (this was the agent before Deborah) 
• 2 additional months after it sold and the editors highlighted some areas that needed work
• another 2 months with a different editor during a very intense round of back and forth revisions
• and 2 weeks with a copy editor who pointed stuff out like how many times I used the word "crap" in the manuscript (37. In case anyone is wondering) 

For a grand total of 10 months and 2 weeks.

What other books would you compare this story to in your genre? 

I can only dream of Thin Space being on the same level as these books, but--
Tighter, by Adele Griffin, a psychological horror story with a surprise ending
Twisted, Laurie Halse Anderson's coming of age novel about a struggling, angsty boy
Jennifer Castle's The Beginning of After, a contemporary YA about a girl grappling with her family's deaths in a car accident

Who or what inspired you to write this book? 

My daughter, who gave me a brilliant solution when I was floundering between draft one and draft two.

What else about your book might pique a reader's interest. 

You know that movie The Sixth Sense about the boy who can see dead people and how there's this really cool, unexpected twist at the end? Well, Thin Space has a few of those twists...

OK, time for me to tag some awesome writers!

(But first-- my disclaimer: Something that bugs me about chain lettery things is that icky sense of obligation you get when you feel like you've got to take part. So I took my cue from Patty and asked my writer friends first if they wanted me to tag them.) And here are the ones who've agreed so far:

Tracy Barrett my long time mentor and author of 19 books for children, and my new writer friend Jennifer Doktorski, (here's her post) a fellow Simon & Schuster debut author. (I've asked several other writers and will tag them officially after they agree) And thanks so much to Patty Blount for tagging me! Anyone else want to play along, let me know, and I will add you in.