Book Club Love

One thing I'm thankful for: A really vibrant, enthusiastic online community for young adult lit. Today, I'm thrilled to be the visiting author at one of the best all-around YA sites: TeensReadToo.com. Kudos to TRT founder Jen for asking delightfully original interview questions, designed to bring out the inner weird (admittedly, not too difficult to do with me.)

If you'd like a chance to win a signed paperback copy of Ten Cents a Dance, stop by and leave a comment. Or if you'd rather, just relish the weird.

Pilgrim's Progress

When I finished the first draft of my new novel back in September, I issued myself a challenge: Finish the second draft in 2 months.

As any of you who still follow this blog can attest--and as anyone who knows me in real life can certainly attest--the past 8 weeks have been spent either at the day job or writing that second draft. I have not blogged. I have barely emailed. Facebook has forgotten who I am, my Twitter account is adrift. Don't even start with me about letters. Go Fug Yourself has not been perused for fashion disasters, the cats of ICanHasCheezburger gambol in vain for my attention. New Yorker magazines pile up unread; yea, even unto the cartoons they are ignored. As far as the house goes...well, thankfully, none of us are allergic to dust. It's cozy here under my rock, is what I'm saying. And yet...

...I'm not done.

If writing this novel has a theme, it's me giving myself crap deadlines. Not that two months isn't a reasonable amount of time for a second draft. I picked two months because a) I finished the second draft of Ten Cents a Dance in that amount of time, and b) two months would make it exactly one year since I started the novel. What can I say? I like a nice round number.

What I didn't count on, this time around, was how much brand-new writing would be involved. All revision drafts include some new stuff. But thanks to an epiphany late in the first draft, the front end of the current novel needed some seriously heavy-duty overhauls. New scenes, new chapters. A whole new character. Not that I'm complaining, heaven forfend. On the contrary, I'm loving it. Loving the process, loving the results. Every writing day, I sit down at the computer with mug of white hot chocolate and am just stinkin' grateful that I get to do this.

So what's the new deadline, you ask? Ah, I won't say. I do have one. I'll let you know when I get there. One foot in front of the other, avoid the Slough of Despond, and I'll see you at the finish line. Oh, and here too, in the meantime. Cool stuff to tell you.