Well, it only took about another month, but I’m finally working. I had forgotten how much I love public library reference, but last week reminded me. I got to help a woman apply for a job, copy edit a Kenyan gentleman’s description of the community school he runs that is in need of donations, find a store selling orthopedic shoes for children, locate a book on how submarines work for an older man, and hand a copy of Roald Dahl’s Matilda to a couple kids who were very excited to read it. I can’t wait for my next shift, and I especially can’t wait to find a job where I get to do this every day instead of just a few shifts per week.

I’m also making progress on the writing front, as last night I finished what I am hoping is the final draft of a story I’ve been picking away at for over two years. I love this story, but it has given me more trouble than any story I’ve ever written before. It’s gone through about six different endings, and nothing ever seemed quite right…until now. I think I’ve finally got it, and that feeling makes two years of work worth it. I so hope this story finds a good home.

Hey, internet. Sorry for the obscenely long time in between updates. I haven’t exactly been busy lately, but searching for a job is sort of soul-crushing, and as those who’ve been forced to interact with me within the past few months know, it’s become rather difficult for me to talk about anything else. I didn’t want to inflict that on you, so I thought silence would be the better option.

Luckily, I’m going to begin work as a substitute librarian soon, so hopefully I’ll bounce back and have lots to share. This will be my first job as a degreed librarian, and it should be an adventure. I’m still looking for full time positions in the meantime, since I’d rather not try to live for very long on a few shifts a week (if I’m lucky), but I’m excited to finally be employed in my field, getting more experience and putting my skills to use.

If I don’t update again within a few weeks, poke me. Seriously, I need to become a better blogger.

Nine days ago, I officially became a master of the art of library and information studies. Yay! Now I am searching for a job (anyone know a public library that’s hiring?) and finding plenty of ways to keep busy in the meantime. One of those ways will hopefully be updating this blog more often, especially with book-related posts. I like books, I read a lot of them, and I really should post about them here and not just on Goodreads.

This is old news but new to this blog: Last month my story “Whisper’s Voice” was named one of the storySouth Million Writers Award’s notable stories of 2010! I was incredibly surprised and honored, first that my editor nominated the story (they can only nominate three) and then that the story was actually chosen (the two other nominees weren’t!). “Whisper’s Voice” didn’t get nearly the amount of attention as my first story, “Erased,” which made the 2008 list, so I was happy to see it get some recognition.

Another thing I never posted here is the web tool I made for my final project in one of my classes this semester: the Urban Fantasy Road Trip reading map. I think it’s a really nifty tool for fans of urban fantasy and/or the supernatural and one or more of the seven U.S. cities featured on the map–a great way to discover the unusual underbelly, fictional or non-, of urban fantasy cities. There are things I think could be improved, and I’m hoping to make some additions to the map this summer. Let me know if there’s something you’d like to see, or something you’d like to see done differently!

I will be attending my second WisCon later this week, and I am so excited! Also a little nervous, because I will be on my own this year. But WisCon folk are friendly, and there will be at least one or two familiar faces. And WisCon is pretty much the best con ever. I’ve been drooling over the schedule and wishing for a time-turner, just like last year. And Seanan McGuire will be there, so I can get my copy of Feed signed! I only wish Deadline were coming out just a day earlier so I could have her sign that one too… Ah well. One signed book will have to be good enough.

So, friends: What have you been up to? How is your summer shaping up? What exciting news do you have to share? What awesome books have you read lately, and what new releases are you most looking forward to?

There are a lot of people out there in the world who have grown up without one or both parents. Naturally, these people crop up in fiction on a reasonably regular basis. Children’s and young adult literature seems especially fond of the orphan, but people with deadbeat or otherwise absent parents show up every so often too. Today I would like to discuss in particular characters who are fatherless, and the fact that they are almost always depicted abysmally.

I grew up without a father myself. In my case, the reason is that my father didn’t react well to the news of my mother’s accidental pregnancy and fled for the hills before I was even born. I’ve never met the man, and aside from a one-year period where my mom had a boyfriend who lived with us, I never had any sort of adult male presence in my life on a daily basis (I never even had a male classroom teacher in elementary school).

Coming from that standpoint, there is little in this world that infuriates me like the premise of Disney’s third Aladdin movie, Aladdin and the King of Thieves (shut up–I was an Aladdin fanatic as a kid, and no one can tell me it isn’t amazing…sans sequels). In the movie, Aladdin and Jasmine are about to get married, but suddenly Aladdin realizes that he can’t marry and start a family of his own because he won’t be a whole person until he gets to know his dad, whom he has never met, and obtains his blessing for the wedding. His attitude is summed up in this, the first musical number of the film:

Here is what I would like to make perfectly clear to the creators of this film and everyone who has ever written or thinks they might write a character without a dad (and also, just to be thorough, everyone who says “I’m sorry” when I tell them I don’t have a dad): I AM OKAY. I am not emotionally crippled. I do not stay awake at night contemplating the GIANT GAPING HOLE in my sense of self that will only be filled when I track down my father and have a heart-to-heart conversation that results in tears, hugs, and touching character growth on both our parts. Am I curious? Yeah, okay, a little. But mostly I’m just disgusted and honestly kind of thankful that I dodged that bullet. About the only time I regret not having a dad is when a doctor asks about my family medical history and I have to tell her that I can’t rule anything out because I can only account for half my genes.

When I was a toddler, my friends at daycare couldn’t understand the concept of not having a dad, so I told them that the homeless man who walked past the house every day was my dad, and every day we would gather at the screen door and wave at him as he passed by (or so I’m told–I have no actual memories of this). If this were the typical representation of fatherless children in fiction, this would be symptomatic of some deep inner turmoil, an indication that I was desperately searching to fill the fatherless void of my tragic childhood with the nearest male. But, you know, I’m pretty sure I just wanted my friends to shut up about the whole dad thing. Or maybe I wanted to fit in, since they all had dads. I doubt I even really understood the concept of fatherhood, since it’s not something I had ever experienced.

Maybe it would be different if I had started out life with two parents and then lost one, but I have never felt like my home life was lacking. Indeed, the most wretched part of my childhood was the time my mom had a serious boyfriend, because suddenly there was some strange man monopolizing the time and attention that had previously belonged solely to me. I felt that my relationship with my mother suffered, and life for my pre-adolescent self didn’t feel right again until they broke up and I had her to myself again. This brings me to a second point: Families with one parent are not inherently inferior to families with two parents. They are different, yes, but not lesser. Indeed, to this day I can hardly imagine a better home life than the one I had. There is pretty much nothing about the way I was raised that I would change, and that includes the fact that I only had one parent. Our whole family dynamic would have been different if I’d had two parents, and I like my family dynamic the way it is, thanks.

Okay, sure, I was interested in meeting my father when I was younger, mostly so I could ask him why he abandoned my mom when she was pregnant. I found this behavior puzzling, and wanted to get his take on it. Point number three: I never, EVER blamed myself for my father not sticking around. I didn’t once entertain the thought that I was somehow responsible for breaking up some great love affair that would have ended in happily ever after if I hadn’t come along to ruin the party. I never thought that if only I had been a better fetus, he would have hung around to meet me. (This particular part of the rant brought to you by this scene in CW drama Hellcats. Start at 2:10 for the infuriating part.)

So the next time you’re thinking about creating character conflict by having your fatherless character set out to discover her long-lost dad, don’t have her reasoning be just that she just won’t be a whole person until she has a dad. You can do so much better. Examples of good reasons: She needs a kidney or some bone marrow. She thinks she might be the long-lost heir to a vast fortune. She has just discovered that she has the power to move through space and time, and she certainly didn’t inherit it from her mother. You can write totally awesome fatherless characters, and even write about their fatherless state without turning it into some kind of self-worth thing. While I can’t speak for every fatherless child to ever walk the earth, I can tell you that I, for one, have absolutely zero percent of my self-worth tied up in the fact that my father didn’t feel like raising me.

And just for the record, creators of Aladdin and the King of Thieves? If I ever get married, my father totally isn’t invited to the wedding.

(P.S. If you’re doing research, the only really acceptable work of fiction I’ve encountered that deals directly with the issue of absentee fathers is Paul Fleischman’s YA novel Seek. It’s quite an odd novel in other respects, but the representation of the main character’s inner relationship with his absent father rang true for me, and the resolution was also very well done.)

I can’t imagine anyone who reads this blog doesn’t already know it, but the Alpha SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers (ages 14-19) is accepting applications for the 2011 workshop through March 1. The 10-day workshop will be held at the University of Pittsburgh’s Greensburg campus July 13-22, culminating in Confluence, Pittsburgh’s science fiction convention, July 22-24. At the workshop, teens will learn from such genre greats as Tamora Pierce, David Levine, and Ellen Kushner, along with the wonderful full-time staff that consists primarily of even more writers. The workshop costs $995, but some partial need-based scholarships are available.

Most of you know this already, but I attended Alpha in 2005 and 2006, when I was 18 and 19, respectively. Alpha changed my life. A dramatic statement, but true. I applied and was accepted to Alpha in 2005 on the merit of a three-year-old science fiction story. I hadn’t finished anything long enough to serve as an application story in the intervening years. I was operating on the assumption that in order to be a writer, one had to be a novelist, so my computer was filled with pitifully short novel beginnings and not much else. I desperately wanted to go to Alpha because a) Tamora Pierce was my favorite author, b) the only other writers my age I knew were writing angsty teen poetry and prefaced bland and wishy-washy comments on my own writing with the always popular and very frustrating phrase, “I don’t read this sort of thing, but…” and c) did I mention Tamora Pierce?

I flew into Pittsburgh in the afternoon, and after dinner that evening the twenty Alphans of 2005 filed into a classroom for our first lecture. It was on proper manuscript format. I was stunned. I had expected to study works of fiction and hear lectures on craft, and to give and receive critiques, but suddenly I was plunged headfirst into the implicit assumption that I was going to try to publish my writing. I hadn’t even considered it before. I had figured out by this time that I probably would never be a novelist, that writing full time would drive me insane, so I assumed I’d just write the occasional story as a hobby, sharing it with friends and family. Heck, I didn’t know such a thing as short fiction markets existed. By the end of the next morning’s lecture, when guest author Tobias Buckell taught us about some of the administrative aspects of writing–finding markets, creating cover letters, setting submission goals, etc.–my entire writing worldview had been shaken. I actually felt somewhat lost and out of place, a hobbyist among future professionals who obviously took writing Very Seriously. I hadn’t even finished a story longer than 1000 words since I was fifteen.

Some of Alpha’s guest speakers did lecture on craft and literature and the more abstract aspects of writing I had expected, but after the first few lectures, I approached these with a completely different outlook. My fellow writers and I had silly fun times, playing Mafia and reading “The Eye of Argon,” but we also stayed up obscenely late clacking away on our computers, groaning in frustration and asking each other questions that were hilarious out of context and yet dead serious to us as speculative fiction writers (e.g., “What’s a really useful superpower that you wouldn’t think would be useful?”). We amassed enormous quote lists, many of the quotes born of a sort of exhausted hysteria. The atmosphere was intense, to the point that even uncertain writers like me were infected with the idea that writing was vitally important, something worth considerable effort.

After ten days of intense fun and intense stress and critiques from fellow teen writers and published staff that weren’t precisely harsh but definitely didn’t allow one to pat oneself on the back for a job well done (and that never started with the words, “I don’t read this sort of thing, but…”), we went to sci-fi convention Confluence, where we maniacally raced through the hotel’s halls, destressing and probably causing considerable annoyance to some of the convention’s attendees (and definitely not catching up on sleep). At the end of the convention, no one wanted Alpha to end.

And you know what the best part is? For many of us, it didn’t, not really. We all flew/drove back to our respective homes scattered across the country (there are even a few non-American Alpha alumni), but many of us kept in touch via e-mail, instant message, Livejournal, and Facebook. There is an active online community of Alpha alumni, continuing to support each other and each year’s new Alphans. We critique each other’s work, celebrate fiction sales and contest wins, and commiserate about rejections. We recommend books to each other, help raise funds and spread the word about the workshop so that more teenagers can have the same experience we did, and even maintain a blog to share our collective learning with the internet at large. On its surface, Alpha could be seen as a semi-costly week and a half long chunk of summer that yields one short story and some critiques. But for those who attend, it can result in a lifelong support network of fellow writers, which is worth a lot more than $1000, in my opinion. If you know any teen writers of science fiction, fantasy, or horror, please encourage them to apply and, equally importantly, help make sure they’re able to attend.

Someday, I am going to combine all my favorite literary tropes and write a YA novel about a snarky British Regency-era spy werewolf rogue fighter girl and a pair of resourceful and practical-to-the-point-of-near-ruthlessness human bad boy with a heart of gold pirate fighter brothers who engage in endless witty banter and combat a villain who has relateable motives and is no less terrifying for it. There will also be a precocious child. At some point, there will be a fight wherein one or more of them sustain a somewhat serious injury that they will have to heal frustratingly slowly and naturally. Some people will fall in love. Some people will not fall in love and be okay with that. The ending will be happy.

(I reserve the right to add–but not subtract–things from this description at will as I think of even more things that make me happy when I read books.)

Now it’s your turn. Describe your “perfect” novel!

Just a drive-by post (I have an extremely belated post on my favorite reads of 2010 to get up eventually!) to toss out a couple links:

First, my flash fiction piece “Family Photo” is up at the Daily Science Fiction website! (It went out to subscribers by e-mail last week.)

Also, there is a blog post of mine up on the Alpha SF/F/H Workshop blog on “Learning to Love Your Rejection Letters.” I know I’m weird to find joy in rejection, but I’m hoping that reading this article will help it to rub off on other writers.

My final semester of library school is in full swing, and I’m struggling to find time just to keep up with my schoolwork, but I also need to apply for jobs (erk!) and follow through on some other commitments. So I apologize for being absent!

It’s finals time here at library school. I have one giant final project due Monday and another giant final project due after that, but all I want to do is write write write. I rarely want to write when I actually have the time to do it, but for the past week (during which time I was also working on a third final project, completed on Wednesday) I have been feeling the writing itch as I rarely have in the past. I want to finish revising a story that’s been bothering me (and that I think I finally figured out how to fix!), I have a brand new story idea that I’m quite excited about, and I keep being bombarded with novel ideas. How perverse is that? I’ve never really wanted to write a novel before–the idea of all the necessary research and planning fills me with horror. This is a very bad time for me to want to write anything other than final project write-ups, really. But I keep having ideas for characters and premises and little details like an embroidered white leather eye patch worn by a one-eyed woman. (I never have ideas for plots. Never ever. Plot is always the most agonizing part of writing for me. Even more so than endings.)

Hopefully this overabundance of inspiration will stick around for another few weeks so I can utilize it over my all-too-brief winter break.

How weird would it be if I actually started working on a novel? (Answer: Really, really weird.)

The world is full of writing advice. There are probably hundreds of books on the topic and innumerable websites and blog posts full of rules, tips, tricks, and hints. Some of these are helpful. Some of them are not. Whether they are helpful or not doesn’t really have much, if anything, to do with the actual content of the advice. It’s all about the writer and what works for her/him. I’ve never been real big on seeking out advice on how to write. This is because nine times out of ten, the advice is wrong. Wrong, that is, for me. Either that, or it makes me feel inadequate, like I’m not a writer because I don’t adhere six out of ten of so-and-so’s rules that every writer must obey.

I’m a published writer. I’ve had two stories appear in a well-respected magazine, and one more is forthcoming in another venue that’s well regarded. Most people would consider three publication credits to be enough credentials for me to be able to legitimately call myself a writer. So, to put things into perspective for writers and writer-hopefuls out there, here are a few of the most frequently repeated rules for writing, none of which I adhere to in my own writing process.

1. Writers must write every day. For x amount of time. Preferably on some sort of schedule.
An admission that still sometimes makes me come down with a strong case of impostor syndrome: I rarely write. Life is busy, writing is work, and I find that it only makes me irritable if I try to force myself to go to class/work all day, come home and do homework, then round out my day with an hour of writing. If I stuck to that schedule, I would rarely have any true free time. And I need free time to maintain my sanity. Furthermore, I find that I’m only really productive when I give myself at least two hours in which to write. I can’t do it over my morning coffee (if I drank coffee) or on my lunch break, or even for an hour before bed. When I’m on a good writing streak, I write for a couple hours every weekend. Writing is not my life, it’s merely one (small in comparison to school and work) aspect of it. And that doesn’t mean I’m not a real writer, no matter what the creators of writing “rules” have to say about it.

2. In your first draft, just get the words out. Editing is step two. Step one is to pour your story onto the page without getting hung up on the details.
I drive myself crazy when I try to write this way. I finish what is sometimes referred to as a “shitty first draft,” then reread it with a growing sense of dread. “This is crap,” I think. “I would have to rewrite it from scratch in order to make it even salvageable.” I hate rewriting. I become so overwhelmed at the task I would need to take on to save this story that really doesn’t seem worth it, and I just abandon the story. When I write in the way that actually works for me, I edit obsessively as I go along. When my story shifts direction partway through, I go back to the beginning in order to make the rest of the story make sense with the change. I have a tendency to rewrite every paragraph multiple times immediately after I write it. By the time I finish what is supposedly a first draft, most of the story has been reworked several times throughout the writing process. And guess what? That doesn’t make me any less of a writer.

3. When you write, you should be doing nothing else. Close your e-mail, don’t allow yourself to open a web browser. Make sure your family knows that you are not to be disturbed except in an emergency. Tolerate no distractions.
Sometimes I get lost in my writing and forget that the internet exists for an hour or more as I happily churn out the words and wrestle plot into submission. Other times finding the words is like pulling teeth, I want to (and sometimes do) smash my face into the keyboard, and the only way I can get myself to go on is by allowing myself to write a sentence or two, then check Facebook, Twitter, or Livejournal. For me, a computer with only a lone Word document open on the desktop is terrifying and intimidating. I become so overwhelmed by the looming task of writing that I panic, close the document, and…don’t write at all. I am a much more productive writer when I allow myself to have mini-breaks and don’t hold myself to a rigid time limit for them or for how long I have to write before I am allowed one. A lot of people write best with no distractions. I’m not one of them. I’m still a writer.

There are a lot more rules out there, but these three are some of the biggest, so I thought they were good myths about writing to dispel. Given any sort of “how to write” list, I rarely adhere to more than half of the items on the list. If you want to be a writer, and you occasionally sit down and write things, then you are a writer. That’s all there is to it. The rest is just individual process.

Last night I had what I believe was my first library work-related dream. I dreamed I volunteered on a school field trip to a science museum, and I saw a 9-year-old boy carrying a book and started talking to him about it. He liked the book, but it was really depressing and was making him sad (I think it may have been a non-fiction book about slavery?). I told him that for his next book he should read something silly and fun, and I offered to help him find a good one. He gratefully accepted, and we went into the science museum’s library, which was a children’s library featuring all types of books, not just science-related ones. I sat down at the unstaffed reference desk to find something, but when I did all the parents of the other kids realized that I was a librarian and started bombarding me with their own requests for books for their kids, and somehow I never got around to locating a fun book for that kid. Throughout the dream, I kept racking my brain to think up a recommendation, and the only thing I came up with for his age group was Bunnicula, and I wasn’t sure if that was quite right.

When I arrived to work at my practicum, which is at a public library, this morning, I was directed to the kids’ reference desk. The first thing I did was boot up NoveList Plus to find a list of humorous books for kids ages 9-12, and kicked myself for not remembering Sideways Stories from Wayside School and M.T. Anderson’s Whales on Stilts! (and felt vindicated that Bunnicula was on their list as well). Too bad that kid was just an aspect of my subconscious, because I finally have the perfect books for him.