Happy belated Typing Tuesday, Gentle Readers! First thing’s first, news (in an unordered list!):

• I had a short story accepted with Aoife’s Kiss! Yay! The story is “Ageveline,” and it’s a sci-fi retelling of James Joyce’s “Eveline.” It was, in many ways, the source material for Daughter of Earth (though it’s so, so different from it; different girl, different generation ship). I’m psyched to share it with you. It’ll be appearing in the March 2012 issue.
• I’ve accepted an Articles Editor position with Strange Horizons . . . double yay! I’ve been proofreading for SH for over a year now, and I’m so excited to take on a more active role.
• I have a vlog up at the Interroblog! Listen to me babble about Pamela Sargent’s Seed series, and look at my adorable mug!

Now that that’s out of the way . . .

I’ve read some terrific books over the past year, as evidenced by the recommended reads visible over on my sidebar. A lot of them were entertaining, juicy stuff–fun SF like Across the Universe or exciting feminist fantasy like Diana Peterfreund’s Ascendant. But while these books entertained me–while they were fun and enveloping and exciting–four stand out in my mind as challenging me. When I talk to people about my genre, and why young adult is awesome, thankyouverymuch, and why it’s just as exciting, deep and artistic as anything you’ll find on the adult shelves, it’s these books that I recommend, again and again.

These books are Feed by M. T. Anderson, The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff, and Liar by Justine Larbalestier. These four volumes are as different as they are similar. But they all challenged my own notions of what YA can, and should, be, pushing the boundaries of both kids’ fiction specifically and all fiction, generally.

It’s interesting: the one thing they all share is that they’re voicey YA. I don’t always like voicey stuff. I’m a hard sell when it comes to adults mimicking the voice of kids. Part of this is my own artistic sensibility (and, probably, my tendency to overwrite and go all flowery). But none of these books would work if they weren’t voicey–if they weren’t utterly immersive and framed within the limited world view of the narrators. And it’s fascinating to see how, rather than limiting the creations of these authors, the voicey perspectives allow them instead to do some daring, avant garde, and utterly exciting stuff.

Feed plays with form, and slang, and traps us within the uncomfortable perspective of a teenage boy who makes choices that few readers are likely to agree with. The Knife of Never Letting Go, while in some ways a traditional picaresque or boys’ adventure story, plays with language and font in a way that so utterly submerges you that you practically begin to feel you can read minds (and hear talking dogs) yourself. How I Live Now plays with form, too, and is recounted to us in such an honest adolescent voice that we find ourselves accepting the fantastic, terrible, frightening, and magical things that happen within its pages without even hesitating. And perhaps most impressively, Liar pulls the narrative rug out from beneath us completely. By making us a captive audience for a self-described liar, Larbalestier raises questions about the nature of storytelling itself.

All of these are genre novels. Now, if you know me, you know that that’s no pejorative. I’m a genre girl through-and-through, cut my teeth on McCaffrey and Lackey. I think there’s nothing easily dismissed about either science fiction or fantasy. But these books are so much more than what most people imagine when you say “science fiction” or “dystopian” or “magical realism” or “pseudo-contemporary-maybe-paranormal-I-think.”

By recounting these stories in accurate voices of real-sounding teenagers, these four authors create genre stories that you believe almost instinctively. The voice, grit, detail, and honesty make the unbelievable seem undeniable real.

If I sound slightly fangirlish as I say all of this, it’s because I am. This is the kind of writing that’s made me say that fiction is the closest thing we have to magic. There’s something amazing about an author that can make you believe in telepathy, among other things.

I said at the beginning of this entry that these books challenged me. That’s not to say that they were difficult to read–in fact, all four of these novels were insanely readable. Instead, they pushed the boundaries of what I thought is possible to achieve in either YA or fiction. It’s strange–I’ve read experimental novels before. And I used to write poetry, even dense, playful, speculative prose poetry. But I never really considered writing a novel this way.

And now I really, really want to.

I’m finishing up writing Daughter of Earth right now, editing and tightening and trying to make it the best book it can be. But I have to do that on its own terms, and I know it’s not a sprawling, messy, kooky, challenging, magical novel like one of these. But my next project? I think it’s going to be something special. I think it has to be.

This is why I think it’s important to read widely, to make sure that your reading pushes boundaries, to seek out books that make you feel freakin’ enthusiastic. Challenging writing makes us better. It pushes us to improve. It keeps us from getting complacent.

Time to step up my game.

Long-time Phoebe-readers might remember that I participated in–and won!–NaNoWriMo last November. Those who are generally familiar with me might know that I attempted it other years, too, in 2002, 2003, and 2006. With each passing year, the contest becomes more and more ubiquitous. It seems that now, in 2010, it’s pretty much requisite that any professional and blogging author must have a publicly-stated position on the whole thing. While I’m not quite a professional myself, I thought that I’d throw my two cents in.

Having won NaNoWriMo, I hope to never participate, ever again.

A brief history of my interaction with the program: I learned about it in 2002, from future-hubs Jordan. We were knee-deep in the process of falling in love, and he thought he might participate. I thought it sounded romantic and fun, and being a romantic and fun person, joined in. It went well–for about ten days, while the future-husband was sick. I worked dutifully on my story, semi-autobiographical fiction about teenage girls at summer camp. Then he got better and I got distracted by making out.

The next year, I was a college student, but decided to try again. Novel died on the first day.

In 2006, I was preparing to go to graduate school and starting to Take Myself Seriously as a Writer (note the capitals; they denote gravity). I tried again, using DarkRoom to pound out about 42,000 green-on-black words of almost completely autobiographical fiction. But the thing was, even though I read the NaNo message boards about increasing one’s word count, I had no idea how to write a novel. Mine was a mish mash of flashbacks and angst and it was really terrible. I had no idea where my story was going. About a week before November’s end, I realized how much I hated writing it. It was making me unhappy. This is what I wrote about the experience, on the day that I gave up:

According to the website there are already 2,400 winners of 2006′s National Novel Writing Month. I won’t be one of them.

It isn’t for lack of writing: in the sixteen work days I spent working on my novel, I produced 41,501 of the 50,000 words required to be consider a winner. I typed, handwrote, took notes, laboured, sweated, whined. I consider November to be a successfully productive month, even if I’m only four fifths of a winner.

(Generally, I have realized that part of my dissatisfaction of NaNoWriMo is that it’s a quantitative goal, rather than a qualitative one; on the forums of their website, participants harp about the rules–like when they call people who include sentences from their own previously-penned notes “cheaters”–and trade word-count inflating secrets like including the lyrics to songs and detailing every item in their characters’ grocery carts. The goal isn’t to produce a novel, and it’s definitely not to produce a good novel, but rather to produce a single cohesive work of no particular quality that’s at least 50,000 words long. I’m not entirely convinced that doing this, alone, is a really good use of time, just as I gave up on my systematic reading of the Modern Library’s One Hundred Greatest Novels of the Twentieth Century when I realized that I wasn’t enjoying a good chunk of the books I was reading. Although doing these things might seem impressive, in a sense, they’re not qualitative goals. They won’t make you more intelligent or happier, even if the numbers might look impressive.)

My novel’s not finished though; I haven’t even reached the climax. And the problem I increasingly saw as the month drew to a close was that there was no progress towards the summit of the story. In fact, there was hardly even an incline. The only action driving the story was the relationship between the Main Character and her Love Object, a repetitive, obsessive interaction with no real motivation other than sex and assumed cuteness. There’s no depth to the story, only teen angst. For me, as the writer, teen angst got old really fast. I can only imagine how it would feel to a reader.

All that was true, or seemed mostly true. But I’m a Capricorn, and a particularly stubborn Capricorn, at that. I. Hate. To. Fail. And so my near-win on NaNo kind of bothered me, deep down, even though I still wasn’t sure it was worth doing.

Anyway, I went to grad school, wrote poetry, read YA novels with amazing children’s lit professors, and somehow in there figured out how to write a book without writing one at all. I wrote my first in the summer and fall of 2008, my second in the spring of 2009. I edited neither, but I found that simple quantitative goals–usually between 500 and 1000 words a day, though sometimes more–actually worked for me. Of course, I also figured out other things about writing–that, to use NaNo terminology, I’m neither a plotter nor a pantser. I’d call myself a resolute day dreamer. My novel’s ending, basic plot, and key scenes are always all planned out in my head, and as I write, I figure out how these pieces fit together so that, by the time I’m about halfway in, I know how the entire book should go. I don’t write down any of this, but kind of shimmy the plot around one of those slider-puzzle things. I brainstorm on long walks or car rides or during conversations while writing, and while writing regularly and fairly steadily.

So. Last year. 2009. I figure, I already know how to write a novel. Why not NaNo?

You know the end of this story: I won last year. I ended up editing my novel and querying it, and while it didn’t sell, I learned a lot and liked it okay. However, you don’t know the middle of the story, which was sobbing to my husband–for no particular reason–about how stressed out and exhausted I was sometime around Thanksgiving. Writing The Stone Sorter was sort of a miserable experience for me.

Having written other books, before and since, I know that it’s sometimes annoying and sometimes drab and sometimes a pain. But it’s never otherwise been miserable.

Now, editing? That’s miserable. Inevitably, I reach a point in editing where a beta says something completely valid and I’m overwhelmed by my own feelings of inadequacy–mostly related to my ability to do the work necessary to implement changes I know are needed–and become Sobby Stupid Phoebe.

But writing? Writing’s supposed to be fun, mostly, and certainly not miserable! I’m supposed to be allowed to watch my characters live and breathe and, if necessary, take a break from the daily grind to figure out whatever is necessary to make that happen.

And there’s just not room for that in NaNoWriMo for me. It’s an unforgiving, unrelenting pace, and it’s not natural for me. That’s not to say that I’m a particularly slow writer. This past year alone, I’ve written somewhere in the ballpark of 130,000 words. I’ve discovered that I can finish a novel and get it edited in approximately four months, if I hurry. That’s incredibly fast! Faster, certainly, than what some publishing contracts dictate.

The other night, I asked some of my writer friends on twitter if they were NaNoing, and if not, why. A lot of them seemed sad not to participate–they noted that they had revisions to do, or were knee-deep in another project, or had too many family commitments in November, and then appended frowny faces to their tweets. I empathize. Not playing along does feel, in a way, like you’re being left out of this cool club of hypercreativity. All these people doing word wars and word races and talking about their plot points on facebook and elsewhere.

But I don’t really think we need to feel sad. Having won–and finally gotten the NaNo albatross of loser guilt off my back–I can’t help but think that writers should know, and honor, their own processes, and their commitments to their other books or to their real, non-writerly, lives. And so that’s why I’m not NaNoWriMoing this year–and why I probably won’t, ever again.

I still might use those of you that are as an excuse to word race, though. NaNo or no, I do have a book to write!

If I look tired in this picture (where I am both side-talkin’ and gazing into the future with the Brontes), it’s because I stayed up until 3 a.m. last night, reading Diana Peterfreund’s Ascendant.

You can blame the device pictured for that–and for the fact that I haven’t been updating much lately. You see, the husband bought me a nook as an early anniversary gift. And it’s amazing. I’ve been pretty much immersed in reading for the past several days (first, The DUFF–awesome! and now this. Reviews soon, promise!). I’ve always been somewhat of a romantic about the feel of books, but actually owning a nook may have converted me. I never thought something like a book could be improved on, but it’s so easy to read! You can hold it in one hand and turn pages! My arms don’t go all tingly when I hold it up in bed for a long time!

I’ve also been busy with writing, and a few group projects. I’ve started up a critique group with some incredibly smart, talented people I met through various online venues. We’re calling ourselves the Interrobangs; if you want to go stalk these beautiful, sexy, wonderful peeps, check out their links in the sidebar. I also have a secret project going on right now with some friends from metafilter, and I’m knee-deep in writing and editing.

I have a tendency to get obsessive about things. In first grade, it was the Super Mario Bros. Super Show. In seventh, it was Alien Nation. I’ve always loved to write, but I don’t know that I was ever obsessed with writing before. Pern role-playing? Sure. But even when I was writing massive numbers of poems, I never felt so knee-deep in words. Now, I can say without a doubt that I am currently obsessed with writing.

This is pretty accurate.

My poor husband!

This is the first time a book trailer has ever given me (heh) shivers.