the royal wedding

Yes, I did stay up until 4:45 a.m. to watch Will and Kate get married. It was a fairytale! The British really know how to throw a royal party. Some of the guests' hats were quite ridiculous, and I thought the crowd in Westminster could have been a little more STOKED about the whole affair, but Kate's dress and the horse-drawn carriages were lovely. As was John Rutter's anthem, "This is the Day", commissioned specifically for the royal wedding! I love choirs.

Least favorite part: Did William ever smile during the service?? Um, no. My friend reminded me that he was probably trying not to pass out, but still.

Favorite part: the 9-month-old baby girl in Hyde Park with a sign on her stroller that said Will and Kate's future daughter-in-law.

Then I got up at 9:30 to study at a coffee shop. C'est la vie of finals week.

here comes the bride

Is anyone staying up for the royal wedding tonight?

I was in London when the engagement was announced (I have souvenir newspapers) so I feel like I'm a part of the whole thing, and need to fly to England to go to the ceremony at Westminster. But since I need to hang around here for finals week (and my last college class!), I'm going to stay up until 3 or whatever crazy hour the time difference makes, and watch the royal couple get hitched.

So. Excited.

reposting

I cannot recommend this post strongly enough. (Linked from Alexis Bass's blog, which you all should read!). I've heard Sarah Zarr's name before, haven't read any of her books but definitely will now. In this keynote address (notes by Candy Gourlay), Sarah Zarr talks about waiting and the creative life. Favorite quotes below, full post here.

"It's not about a book deal, a good review, a big advance. It's about a life."

"A creative life is engaging"

"Your creative work expands your world. It does not reduce you down to your screens and word counts."

And I think, reflecting back on my study abroad experience and the break I took from writing and the break I'm still kind of taking from blogging (I'm trying to come back, I promise!), that this is what I learned.

A creative life does not happen solely on the computer or in a work-in-progress. It happens in the world, living. And when that creative life explores the world and grows, writing becomes way more than book-deal-book-deal-book-deal. Which was the trap mindset I'd fallen into. Writing becomes something deeply personal, something that persists beyond rejection or restructuring: because writing is the way you see and experience the world, not the way you want the world to see you.

rtw: best scar stories

rtw:

what is your best scar story? 

Here's an interesting fact about me: I don't have any scars. I've always been kinda bummed about it, cause it makes me sound like I've spent my life inside a glass bubble. On the contrary, I've broken my leg and my arm, sprained my ankle badly enough to get a golf cart to drive around campus (rock climbing), twisted my elbow (backpacking), and dislocated my right shoulder twice (inner-tubing). Those all probably left internal scars...and I'm pretty sure my shoulder is still messed up, because the last time I dislocated it, I was putting on my coat. Pathetic.

But back to scars. I guess the weirdest "scar" I got was a bruise that lasted for almost a year and a half in high school: I was playing soccer in Slovakia with a bunch of hardcore Slovakian kids, and got kicked so hard in the shins (no shin guards) that I almost fainted. But the bruise is gone now...

An interesting side-note: we were talking about scars in my Steinbeck seminar the other day. Charles in East of Eden has a scar on his forehead from a crowbar -- a gnarly black mark from his hairline to his eyebrow. Apparently the literary significance of a forehead scar implies a fierce inner battle: think Ethan Fromm -- and Harry Potter of course.

Anyway, what about your best scar story?

moonglass book tour launch!

My good friend Jessi Kirby's debut novel is coming out in less than a month!!

To launch her book tour, YA Highway posted a great interview with details about Jessi's writing process, about Moonglass's setting, and about her favorite YA novels. Check it out!

I've read this novel several times, first as a draft, then as an ARC -- and sooooooon as a beautiful hardcover novel. I can't wait.

Here's a link to the schedule for the rest of Jessi's book tour: http://theteenbookscene.weebly.com/moonglass-tour-details.html.

book news

After over a year, my agent and I decided to take my first novel off submission.

I could say a lot of things in this post, about why and what and everything we plan to do next. But mostly, I want to talk about failure.

After the news, a final no from an editor we worked with on revisions for about two months, I called home to tell my parents. I felt ... weighed down ... even though it was sunny and springy outside, like my heart had fallen past my toes into the ground. And not just because I was sad. I was sad, but I mostly just felt like a failure.

But my parents are the most supportive people I know -- they sit with me on the phone when I cry, and share the heaviness of failure, and tell me that they believe I can do this -- which is more than I can say for myself sometimes. My dad wrote me an email, and this line lifted my heart back out of the ground:

"No one can argue that it wouldn't have been nice to have all your work recognized by an offer to publish.  But since it wasn't, the recognition will come from the fact that you persevered."

Then I told a couple friends at dinner. It was hard to get the words out, because I'm such a perfectionist and I don't like saying that something didn't go the way I planned. But my friends shared the heaviness, too, with a moment or two of quiet and a general agreement that that sucks. And then, the best part: they went around the table and shared the things they've failed at this week, too, so we could be uplifted by the knowledge that we all fail. It's a people thing.

So even though I'm disappointed, I'm also encouraged by the people who know I've failed and say, well, we think you're awesome anyway. Like another one of my friends, who basically said you are twenty years old. you wrote a novel. that's probably enough for now.

And then I was thinking about failure, and the connotations of that word, and I realized that actual failure would be giving up. I'm not giving up. I'm going to write another book and try again. And there's so much hope in that.