My Writing Process Blog Tour

Check out this video if you want to hear me reading some of FOR THOSE WHO LISTEN, the manuscript I'm about to talk about in this blog post! I start reading at the 1:55 mark, but I make some terrible jokes before that and generally am awkward in every way, so I recommend watching the whole thing.

Oh hi guys. Katherine Locke, a good Twitter buddy, tagged me in the My Writing Process blog tour! Here we go:

What am I working on?

My next YA contemporary, FOR THOSE WHO LISTEN. FTWL is about three strangers who, after trying (and failing) to die by jumping off the Ben Franklin Bridge, find themselves stuck in a supermarket overnight with only one another for company. Hijinks, kissing, personal revelations, food fights, makeshift therapy, and lobsters in baby clothes ensue, but all is not well, and one of them secretly isn't convinced about wanting to live.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

FOR THOSE WHO LISTEN could be considered a "dark contemporary" based on its premise, but most of those are...well, darker than this one. There's nothing wrong with that, and my manuscript is not inherently better because it's different in that way. That said, my book, unlike most other dark contemporaries, includes a fair bit of humor, which is admittedly a first for me as a writer as is thusly nerve-wracking. FOR THOSE WHO LISTEN is different because it's not strictly dark and sad, but it's also not strictly happy and light.


Why do I write what I do?

I tried to die in early 2012, so I know, in broad terms, what it's like. Of course, I don't know what it's like to want to commit suicide from the perspective of everyone who does. But I know the foundation of that experience, and I know some of the thoughts and feelings people might have. But I don't believe in "Write what you know," and I don't write about this because I know about it. I write about suicide, mental illness, sexual orientation, gender identity, and everything else I write about for a million reasons, but the main one is because I have something to say about them. I want to contribute to a culture in which having something to say about suicide, mental illness, sexual orientation, gender identity is not taboo, because then maybe being suicidal, mentally ill, LGBQIA, or trans*/gender nonconforming won't be taboo.


How does my writing process work?

I write almost exclusively on my iPhone. I used to write almost exclusively on an (even smaller!) iPod. But I don't really require anything special; just a quiet room and kinda loud music and blaring thoughts. Preferably I'll be emotional and riding a caffeine high, but I'm a high school student. I write when I can, where I can, and almost always when I'm supposed to be doing homework.

After the first draft is done, I'll revise on my crappy free word processor, which I've recently ditched in favor of Scrivener. While I'm writing, I keep a file entitled "THINGS TO CHANGE IN REVISIONS," and I use this to iron out everything I see that's wrong with it. I'll do one major edit, anywhere from two to four passes after that, and then it's off to my critique partners.


Next week on the blog tour:

Allison Mulder can often be found stealing taller bookshelves from family members, scouring Iowa’s wilderness for fellow writerly types, or pursuing an English degree at college. With all this stealing, scouring, and pursuing to do, she sometimes forgets to blog. But she is steadily filling her laptop with YA fantasy novels and also tweets a lot. Check out her blog at http://thesilentpages.blogspot.com/ or yell at @silent_pages for not remembering to blog.

How to Twitter Good

•Don't be in it for the followers.
Look, everyone wants a big number in the "followers" rectangle—but it doesn't mean anything. I currently have 530 followers, but that doesn't tell you anything. I could be following two million people. I could have gotten them all from being the first to reply to John Green that one time. What matters is not how many followers you have; what matters is how engaging and personable you are with them.

•Put a picture of yourself as your profile picture.
I used to have a really weird picture I found online as mine, and I had maybe -1 followers. When I changed it to a crappy headshot I took on my Mac with no filter and my dog looking potentially dead in the background, I gained a buuunch, and people started interacting with me much more. Of course, this could be due to reasons unrelated to my profile picture, but it's still pretty universally true that people like to see pictures of other people. (Also, everyone hates the eggs that are the default pictures. Everyone.) Trust me when I tell you no one cares if you have pimples or big teeth or whatever. We're book people. Let's be real.

•Be interesting.
Don't tweet "I just found a penny" or whatever. If it doesn't make for a good story, or if it isn't funny, engaging, or smart, I generally don't tweet it. There are, of course, exceptions, and also I don't claim every one of my tweets falls into these categories. But try to make it worthwhile for your followers.

•Grammar.
Not that hard. No one likes the people who abbreviate every word.

•Strike up conversations.

If you want someone to follow you, the best way is not to follow them for two years without ever speaking to them. It's to see where your common interests lie and to discuss them with that person. Of course, don't go overboard. There's actually a pretty bold line between replying to everything someone tweets and engaging with them in a mutually enjoyable conversation.

•Be relatable.
People will retweet things that apply to them, or otherwise things that make them laugh, think, or cry. (Also, if you can make someone cry in 140 characters or less, you are a wizard.)

•Be different—from others, and from yourself.
No one likes people who steal other people's jokes. Similarly, no one likes people who repeat the same jokes (or general joke format) over and over ad nauseam. If people wanted to read someone else's joke, they'd follow that person.

•Try to make friends.
If you go into Twitter thinking "I'm not here to make friends," you will almost certainly fail at Twitter. The whole point is to establish relationships with people! There's a reason it's called social networking.

•Realize that no one really knows what they're doing.
Social media is new. So new, in fact, that this is a pretty universal truth: there are no rules. There are guidelines, sure, but you can absolutely break them. Generally you won't do so well if you do break them, but who knows? (No one.) You could well become famous and secure an agent and a book deal and a million dollars through Twitter. Just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it won't, and I think it's important to remember that.

Dear Me

Dear Me,

Someday we will title this post what we originally intended it to be called: "Dear Gay Kid." Someday we won't care what the people following us on Twitter who might disagree with this post's content—or, in fact, its premise—think.

Because someday we will be happy. We won't be happy always, but we will be happy more, and that's all we can ask for.

Because we won't care that we're gay. Well, we will care—it's a part of us. But we won't wake up in the morning and go, "Shit, I'm still gay?" We'll wake up in the morning and go, "Shit, it's 7:30? I'm going to be late for my job as an editor at a Big Fancy Publishing House." Then we'll kiss our boyfriend—husband?—and the fact that you were scared to come out will not matter. You will swim in his eyes, and do you really think you'll be worrying about instilled hate in the presence of unfiltered, raw love?

You won't—we won't. Here's a secret: love always wins against hate. Always. Sometimes in a roundabout, almost confusing way, but it wins in the end. Like that Dr. Seuss quote: "Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end."

Someday it won't matter what even your family thinks about your sexual orientation. Your brother won't like it. He'll change his mind. The world is changing rapidly; we change with it or we get left behind. Your mom will cry—tears of relief that you finally told her; tears of trust and unity.

But that hasn't happened yet. Guess what, though? You told your sister. You said, "I hope you don't hate me," and then a thousand other things, and then "I'm gay." She said, "You think I'd hate you for that? I'm a little offended." You remember the exact words. They were through a Facebook message. You remember the sheer, almost crushing terror beforehand. Afterwards everything is a tear-stained blur.

Remember how you were growing up and "f—ot" was the only word you knew to describe yourself? Remember when you'd rock back and forth in the bottom of your shower, crying your eyes out because only the positively torrential streams of water would drown out your wailing? You don't know this yet, but you'll want to die—twice. You'll be within days of doing it before you tell someone.

But people's minds are changing, even now, as you sit there crying. Soon more people will support marriage equality than not. Soon it won't even matter who supports you or not because you will be able to support yourself.

Someday—May 13th, 2014—a presumably straight girl in your Physics class will get all her nearby classmates nodding along when she declares, "Love is fucking beautiful." That day, you will come home, and you will cry. You will cry and you won't know exactly why but you'll deduce later that it's because people with no horse in this race support you. People will be fucking beautiful.

You will be fucking beautiful.

Just stay around to see it.

50 Excuses Better Than "I Don't Have Time To Read"

1. I can't; I was harpooned in the eye.

2. Sorry, I'm busy reorganizing the dust particles in my attic.

3. No, I'm recording my debut ska studio album.

4. I would love to, but I'm planning on being abducted tonight. Aliens or kidnappers. Whatever.

5. Nope—too busy reinventing a television set with two copper wires and a cantaloupe.

6. Ugh, sorry, I really can't—I'm starring in a reboot of Seinfeld. I play Jerry Seinfeld. It's a show about nothing! (That was good, right?)

7. I was thinking about reading, but I decided I'd prefer trying to develop several superpowers.

8. Nah, I'm busy willing SpongeBob SquarePants into existence.

9. I would, but I just found a Slinky, so I'm booked for three weeks at least.

10. I...um, well, I was actually going to reenact the entirety of Britney's "Oops! I Did It Again" tonight.

11. I'm going to be perfecting the one-handed clap today, so I really can't in good conscience.

12. I've actually contracted smallpox. Sorry!

13. I was planning on crying over missing the Mean Girls tenth anniversary tonight.

14. Actually I was going to build a life-sized diorama of the sun.

15. I would, but I'm going hot air-ballooning.

16. Maybe tomorrow? I wanted to try becoming a tree.

17. Sorry, man—I'm actually going to be in outer space.

18. Rain check? Blink-182 released a studio album ten years ago.

19. No, I've had these plans to be cryogenically frozen for, like, a month.

20. But I wanted to snort coupons today.

21. The universe is unfathomable, so I'm taking the day off.

22. Dude, you know I'm trying to train that peregrine falcon.

23. Nah, I have to think of a solution to the riddle "What gets wetter as it dries?"

24. I would, but I DVRed Lion King like five years ago and still haven't gotten around to watching it.

25. No. Learning Mandarin Chinese.

26. But I was gonna brainstorm names for my new chair!

27. These petunias aren't going to water themselves! So what if they're not my petunias?

28. Switch with me? I have to star in a home shopping commercial today, and ughhh.

29. Totally! Riiiight after I singlehandedly construct this man-made ocean.

30. Um, no...sorry, it's just that watermelons seem particularly fascinating right now.

31. I was considering being hit by a winged bicycle.

32. Sorry, dude—I'm on the brink of discovering the mythical pegasus. I knew you'd understand.

33. Do you really think I'll have time to read after marathoning every episode of Jersey Shore?

34. No, I was gonna time travel back to before the printing press was invented.

35. Sure! Wait, you said "breed?"

36. I was actually going to exterminate cockroaches once and for all.

37. But...this documentary on the splendors of paint is just so interesting...

38. I was actually just going to tell you; I was planning on aging five years in the next two days, so can it wait?

39. Well...I was actually gonna consider the physics of doorjambs...

40. Ugh, don't hate me, but I totally wanted to try the vampire thing today.

41. No. I have to find out who exactly that person on the other side of the mirror is. They seem sinister.

42. Lemons sound more fun, though!

43. Nah, don't you just wanna go nightclubbing in Uzbekistan?

44. I was going to trace the history of the Venetian blind, though!

45. Sometimes you just have to construct a thousand paper airplanes. This is one of those times.

46. Lame. Wouldn't you rather try to shrink our body sizes to four times smaller than they are currently?

47. Naaaah. Going tubing in the Arctic.

48. I would love to, but I've had these cardboard-eating plans for quite a while.

49. No. It's not that I don't have time to—I actually don't want to. I don't like stories. I don't like having the power to control how people look, smell, act. I don't have the imagination required to build worlds, to destroy them. I stopped dreaming long ago.

50. Nope—Game of Thrones is on in twenty minutes, dude.

FALLING INTO PLACE Review and Story

This post will probably get very pretentious very quickly, but I really hope you'll stick it out. It's worth it.

This isn't a review blog. I have a review blog already (markmyreviews.com), and I'm not a double-dipper.

But. My critique partner wrote this book. My first critique partner, actually, not to mention a close friend of mine.

So: I'm going to review her book now, in three parts. This is a weird, unique experience, and I'm 1000% sure I'm going to start crying at some point, but hey.

THE BEGINNING

FALLING INTO PLACE used to be called something else that I'm not sure I'm allowed to disclose, so I won't. Amy sent me the first page (literally a picture of one handwritten page) in an email that looked CONSPICUOUSLY LIKE THIS:

Then I gave her notes, the majority of which were "I'm going to cry during this book, aren't I?"

She wrote it in 2012. I got it in installments—a chapter here, fifty pages there, and eventually I had a book in my inbox. Amy sent me an email titled "For Your Aerial Perusal" with the full manuscript attached because I was going to read it on a plane (I was going to Texas), but I actually didn't read it until after I got off the plane. Relatedly: I'm stupid.

I gave her notes on the book. Honestly, this was the second complete book I'd critiqued ever—the first was also by Amy—and so I basically did line edits for her instead of big picture ones. I cried four times; I remember that for some reason I can't articulate.

I don't want to say "I knew this was special" or whatever because it's so cliche you wouldn't believe me if I said it. As Amy puts it, "We erode words," and I don't want to erode them further. But this book...I don't know. It was different. It had some quality to it I couldn't identify, but one I knew made it unique.

I loved it. And it made me fall in further (wonderfully platonic) love with Amy.

THE AFTER

Amy edited her book like holy hell—although honestly, it was the best first draft I'd ever read. She sent it to her agent (tangentially: her agent is amazing), who put it on submission, yadda yadda yadda, stuff I'm not sure I could say if I wanted to—

Greenwillow wanted to buy it. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. The publisher, in fact, of Greenwillow/HarperCollins wanted to buy it.

Amy sent me a text I no longer have—boo, stupid phone—that basically said "YOU NEED TO CALL ME IMMEDIATELY." I was at school with my phone turned off, though, so I didn't see it until mid-afternoon.

When I got out, I turned my phone on, read her text, and walked home shaking. Physically shaking because I was so excited, and I didn't know what was going on but it didn't matter because Amy was excited and therefore so was I.

I got home. She'd emailed our critique group forty-five minutes earlier, saying that Greenwillow had offered on her book.

THE REVIEW

FALLING INTO PLACE is about Liz Emerson. It is about her actions and her reactions, and the actions and reactions of those around her. It is about physics, and it is about math and science and empirical things.

It is about disastrous love. It is about hate, shame, humiliation, lies. It is about pretending the world is younger, about imagination and friends and mothers and perfection. It is about crying and silly things and how sometimes the world fails you.

It is about love that binds you, love that fills you up until you've forgotten you were empty; love that tries to kill you.

It is about yes.

And I can't wait for you to read it.