~~~Lara Zielin~~~

My fave linkey-poo today is also the subject of my post. Dunkin Donuts is sponsoring a Create Your Own Donut contest! I think I’m going to enter (okay, who am I kidding — Rob will enter for us) to create the Donut Days donut. And when we win, we can blab about the book and use it as a platform for promotion. Mwwwahahahaha. Evil genius. Or maybe just genius because I really don’t want to hurt anyone. At least not right this second.

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: Pictures where you have to work really hard to figure out what’s going on. If you even do. Good luck is all I’m saying.

Hey, look what came in the mail today!

Really? OMG! I can write kid’s books? For rizzle? (Isn’t that what the kids are saying? Or is it “for drizzle” now? Gosh, I’ll have to upload the Google and look at that when I MyFace.) Golly gee, I can be a children’s book author! If the mail says it, it must be true!

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: A Star Wars dance-off! Star Wars meets Footloose! Star Wars meets Thriller! Total ruleage.

Many young artists’ works can be controversial. Can the mind of a babe truly unleash mature, thought-provoking content? The answer, dear friends, is yes … at least in some cases. Mine, sadly, was not one of them. I thusly present to you an early work once again in need of a strong editorial hand (including but not limited to a grammarian and a plain old copy editor) titled The Frog and the Bear.

Good to note I’m editing my own content here, lest readers think this was a story about a frog and the Brain-stem Auditory Evoked Response (BAER) hearing test.

Starts well. Books with animals tend to have strong sell-in numbers, so this is a promising beginning.

[Translation: It thought it could do anything.] Wait, is there a fish in the book now? What’s with the cod? And…why….are….there….so….many….commas…for….pauses? Still, the exhibited hubris sets us up for a big fall, and that’s a good thing.

[Translation: Well the bear thought they should have a race.] Good introduction of the bear, but is thy a holy grizzly? Also, should we have known about the race sooner? No matter. Let’s see how this plays out!

Right. Yes. Let’s get there, then. Chop chop.

[Translation: And  the bear thought that the frog could not do everything.] Gaaahh! When is the race already? And for pity sake, lay off the commas. When is the ever followed, by, a, comma? Ever?

Omg. Kill me now. They should have left on page two.

[Translation: The frog thought the bear was behind.] Behind what? A bush? Also, we should probably take stock of the drawings at this point, if you can call them that. Up top there, is that a map of the U.S. with an enlarged version of Hawaii on the left and a huuuuge Maine on the right? Stephen King’s house just got a lot bigger I guess. Anyway, maybe put the drawings aside in favor of keeping your characters straight, which obviously you’re having trouble doing (see scratched out text and arrow), even though there are only two of them. A frog and a bear. Unless you wanted to count the comma as a character, which, given its proclivity to appear, might just work.

Who? Who took a nap? The frog or the bear? Specific character notation would be helpful here.

[Translation: The bear went ahead!] Okay. Story gets exciting. Frog is asleep, bear is pulling ahead. Awesome.

Writing 101 here: Show don’t tell. And, again, not to belabor the point or anything, but you only have two (two!) characters to keep track of. Is it that hard? Why all the frog/bear scribbles? And, okay, speaking of scribbles, what is that thing in the upper right? It looks like your frog laid a clump of eggs and is hoping for another amphibian to come along and fertilize them.

[Translation: Because the bear had won the race.] Are there crows now? Who is cawing? Quoth the raven: this ending blows.

Two exclamation points? For this? Excuse me while I go read the tortoise and the hare (maybe you’ve heard of it, Inspiredy McPlagiarism?) for a real story.

I’m thinking my new author photo will either be this …

… or this:

Thoughts?

STATUS: Wishing I was as tan as I was in that James Earl Jones photo. Man, that was some deep skin tone right there.

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: Tiny baby animals that are so cute I want to scream my fool head off. Actually, don’t mind if I do. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagg!!!!

Goop.com is Gwyneth Paltrow’s perplexing website. On the surface, it seems like it wants to teach us fun “live your best life” secrets of the stars, but instead she just talks about how she’s friends with Mario Batalli and you’re not and how, while you were a kid getting marbles stuck up your nose, she was being carted of to Paris to stay at fancy schmancy hotels with her dad.

In explaining the site, Gwyneth recently told People magazine: “I think the people who are criticizing it or criticizing the idea of it, don’t really get it, because if they did, they would like it…”

Let me just say that if you are a writer, this is a really dangerous thought.

I fully admit I had this thought once. I will say that the entire time I had it, no publishers would go near my book.

Unless you’re gosh, lucky enough to be Gwyneth, you might want to harken to what the masses are saying about your work.

STATUS: One time? I met James Earl Jones (see pic, where I’m so clearly freaking out on the inside), and NOW, I’m going to be able to meet Top Chef Stephanie Izard, which makes me freak out even more. She’s coming to Ann Arbor to do a cooking demo, and I have a friend on the inside who’s going to let me attend the night-before dinner they’re having for her at a local restaurant. What is up. I’m so freaking pumped.

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: The subtitles in this link from Japan that Colleen sent are worth it alone, but the premise is genius too. Downright hilarious, this.

I had a really good time reading about and participating in the “Top 25 Things About Me” fad that swept Facebook a few weeks back. I learned so much about both people I knew well and folks I didn’t know that well at all. But in each case I got to know them a bit better.

I also decided lists aren’t so bad.

Which brings me to the point of this blog. I decided create another list, this time of three YA books that I lurve, that changed my life, that made me want to write YA and read YA and eat and breathe and sleep YA, because they showed me YA totally rules so hard. Whew — what a run-on!

Originally, I was going to do ten books. Then I pared it down to five. When I finally got started, I settled on three because this is pretty time-consuming stuff. I may continue this in a future blog, though.

And so, without further ado, here are the books:

The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot — Before it was a movie (well, two movies, actually) and a series spanning, I don’t know, ten books or something, the Princess Diaries was a sweet story by an author who asked a publisher friend what kind of book for young girls would get picked up by a publishing house. The answer was that the story either had to have a princess, or a talking animal. Meg obviously chose the former and the result was a book that, I think, changed the course of YA forever. If I were still in college, I’d write a thesis about how the Princess Diaries made it okay for YA heroines to be spastic, funny, foot-in-mouth-all-the-time girls that could point out the hilarious in the mundane and at same time be totally honest about how freaking hard things like, oh, high school are. This book gave YA a new voice and a fresh perspective. I will always, always adore it.

Goy Crazy by Melissa Schorr — I am not Jewish. Shocker. But still I found myself in total, relatable like with the Jewish heroine, Rachel, in Schorr’s delicious novel, who struggles with liking, and dating, a Christian boy. The thing I love is that Schorr showcases the ways that religious insensitivities are everywhere, not just in one religious community or another. She manages to do it in a smart, funny way that makes the book weighty, but yet there are still cute boys and kissing. This book was an inspiration for Donut Days because it showed that girls’ struggles with faith and relationships don’t have to be dry or dour. They can be hilarious. And have cute boys in them.

Good Girls by Laura Ruby — Um, okay. This is the kind of book I want to be able to write one day. Really. Ruby took a timely issue — intimate photos being passed around on cell phones — and made it up close and personal with her heroine, Audrey. When the whole school is mocking you, when your parents find out about the real life you live outside the house, what do you do? What is a good girl, anyway? The ways in which Audrey takes the power back in her life are poignant and powerful. The writing is sharp and funny and real. This book walloped me in the face with its holy-crap-this-is-amazing force, and I’ve never, ever lost sight of it. When I dream about growing up and becoming a writer, I aspire to write like this.