If you’ve seen less of me online the latley, that’s because the internet stopped working at my place for a few days. It’s back now and I am scrambling to keep up with everything I missed and fell behind on. I feel like I am just about caught up, but it makes me wonder what we did before the internet.
I’m thinking the life of a pre-internet writer pretty much consisted of sitting at a desk and writing. If they needed to look something up there was probably a dictionary close at hand. Something requiring more research might have involved a short note and a trip to the library at some point.
Modern writers have a wealth of information at their fingertips. Unfortunately, all that information can be a bit distracting. When I need to look something up, I just pop open my web browser (Who am I kidding? It’s probably already opened.) it can be anything from a complex research question to a very basic spelling question. Even though I have a dictionary within reach, it’s still easier to go to Google and let the search engine correct me on my misspelling.
Of course, once I have my answer all I need to do is head back over to the old work in progress, but usually I don’t. I remind myself that’s it’s been awhile since I’m visited those great lands of timesuck known as Twitter and Facebook. Also, I should check my email. I then waste three and half minutes watching the funny video someone sent me. Then I remember to read that blog I like, but there’s a link to another blog, and another. I discover a blog I’ve never read before and am instantly hooked, and oh look she’s soliciting captions or inspired stories for a funny photo so I have to use some of that creativity I should be using on the WIP.
By the time I get back to work, my stomach’s telling me it’s time to take a meal break. The illusion is that computers let us write so much faster than having to write things out by longhand or fighting with a typewriter, but I have a feeling that only computers without web access really let us work faster.
Well, now that I’ve caught up from my internet hiatus, it’s time to get back to work. Well, just as soon as I figure out how to fix my busted iPod. I should probably look that up on Google.
According to this Media Bistro article, Mr. Popper’s Penguins is finally coming to the big screen and Jim Carrey is going to star in it. How cool is that?
Still, I’m a little bit confused. Perhaps the movie’s producers missed out on this post from last year. Surely, if they were aware of the fact that my friend and I used to spend hours in her basement emulating penguins, jumping from the ping-pong table to a chair to an improvised penguin slide, they would certainly want to bring me in to help with all those penguin stunts. Hollywood, I know everything there is to know about penguin stunts, well as long as those stunts are being performed by kids with overactive imaginations and not actual penguins. Who am I kidding? It will probably be all CGI anyway.
Well, perhaps I just have to be content that a new generation will discover the magic of Mr. Popper’s Penguins and parents everywhere will find the furniture in their basements shoved into odd configurations while their children inexplicably waddle all over the place.
A fellow Elevensie, author Beth Revis just got a nice and well-deserved plug from Publisher’s Weekly on her debut novel, Across the Universe. Now that I’ve had a first chance to read the first chapter, I agree with Publisher’s Weekly’s assessment that this is a killer first chapter. I can’t wait to read Beth’s novel.
You can read the first chapter here, but I should warn you that the book will not be available until January. After reading this chapter, you’re going to wish you could get your hands on the book right away!
What books are on your to-read list?
A little while back Kelsey who runs the fabulous blog The Book Scout interviewed me for an ongoing series of blog posts, and I’m excited to report that my interview is now up.
So, if you’d like to learn a little bit more about me and find a great new blog head on over to The Book Scout.
Last week I accidentally created a new creature by typing the word “alligator” instead of “octopus” and creating a sort of alligator octopus hybrid, which isn’t quite as scary as this picture of a bearsharktopus found on RationalSkepticism.org but still isn’t something I’d like to run into the next time I’m out for a swim. Thankfully, Sarah and her sharp eyes caught my mistake and I was able to make the needed correction.
That was nearly as bad as the time I sent my cousin an email about how I had won a writing contest. The only problem was that I had typed it as “one a writing contest.” I don’t know what was worse, the ironic typo or the fact that it was pointed out to me by my art major cousin.
Thankfully WordPress has a built in spellchecker or my most inadvertently funny typo would have been misspelling the word “inadvertently” in the title of this post. It took me three times to get it right.
So, be honest what’s the funniest typo you ever made?
I’ve done a bit more sleeping this weekend than I normally do, but that’s because I’ve been playing catch-up. From 8:30 Friday night until 8:30 Saturday morning, I was locked in the library with 18 teenagers and my fellow able, willing and slightly crazy chaperons at the library’s annual teen lock-in. There were games, a graduation ceremony and lots of junk food but very little sleep. It’s an exhausting event but a fun one as well. As a young adult author it’s nice to spend some time hanging around with teenagers and it’s refreshing to see that the library has such an active program for teenagers.
Teenagers of today, if you will permit me a moment of geezerness, you don’t know how lucky you are. Not only do you have a huge collection of great books to read, you also have great library programs to take part in. I hope you make good use of booth! OK, my geezer moment is done.
Oh, and despite all that sleep deprivation, I still managed to get my first newsletter out by today’s deadline. I want to send out a quick congratulations to June at Writing Is a Blessing, who was the winner of the $50 gift certificate. And if you didn’t win this month, don’t worry next month could be your lucky month. I’m still figuring out next month’s prize, but I promise it will be good.
And now, in case you were wondering, I’m off to catch up on some more of that sleep!
The theme for tonight’s storytime is creatures that live in or spend a lot of time in the water. It’s in keeping with the Make A Splash at Your Library Summer Reading theme and by expanding it to other water-loving creatures I can include things like whales, penguins and, as I pointed out on Facebook earlier today, my mother, who are not technically fish. Well, so the book about my Mom has not yet been written, but I did include some other water types in my selections.
I’m bringing along a nice stack of stories and depending on the patience of my attendees I’ll be reading some fish tales: The Pout-Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen and Shark in the Dark by Peter Bentley. Then there’s a story about a snail and a whale called appropriately enough The Snail and the Whale by Julia Donaldson. Penguins love the water too so I’ll be reading the classic Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester and one that’s new to me, Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers. You can never go wrong with a Froggy book so on tonight’s agenda is Froggy Learns to Swim by Jonathan London. I found a fun and slightly more challenging counting book about a backyard pond called Splash! by Ann Jonas. Finally, I saved the gators for later with A Girl and Her Gator by Sean Bryan and Egad Alligator by Harriet Ziefert.
We’ll be tracing our hands to make our own octopi, and since some smart aleck will likely point out that alligators (update: thank you, Sarah, for picking up on this goof. I have yet to meet any 8-tentacled alligators, and I don’t want to either!) octopi have 8 tentacles and not 5, I will explain that our pictures will be all a matter of perspective. Those other 3 tentacles are simply hiding behind the other 5.
I hope that tonight’s storytime as well as your day goes swimmingly!
Blogger and YA author Medeia Sharif is celebrating her one year blogging anniversary by giving away a big box of paranormal books. So, if you’re a paranormal fan, why not head over there and enter. Even if paranormal isn’t your thing Medeia’s blog is definitely worth checking out since it is always filled with great book recommendations from all different genres.
Oh, and just a reminder that you’ve still got time to get in on my own giveaway by signing up for my monthly email newsletter.
Just a quick update to let you know that I now have a literary agent. I’m excited to be represented by Jim McCarthy of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. For those keeping score, I have gone about things a little bit backwards. Most folks get an agent first, and then sell their book. What can I say? I just have to be different. Hey, the world would be a boring place without rebels and weirdos!
I know there are way more important things in the world to get upset about, but sometimes little things can really get under my skin. My latest pet peeve is the term “hen lit”. Have you heard this term? It’s used to describe books aimed at older women. Here’s a nice description by someone who does a better job at explaining these sort of things.
It comes from the term chick lit, which to tell you the truth I was never crazy about anyway. Chick Lit, in case you’ve spent the past decade or so living in a cave is fiction that centers on young women of which Sex in the City is a pretty good example. No not all chick lit is Sex in the City, some of it’s way more complex and some of it’s way more vapid. Generally, though, these are light-hearted fun books. They’re not really my cup of tea and for some reason whenever I heart the term Chick Lit I translate it to Chiclet which makes me think of that gum my grandmother always had at her house.
Still, there was always something cute and fun about the term Chick Lit. Plus Chick sounds like Chic which is a good thing, and since most of the characters in Chick Lit books are all about being Chic it sort of works. There is something slightly demeaning about the term if you think about it too much, but these aren’t books you are supposed to think about too much anyway.
But now I am seeing the term Hen Lit all over the place and it is really, really annoying me. It’s a stupid term. It doesn’t really fit the type of books, and when I hear the term all I can think of are, well, hens.
The term Hen Lit doesn’t make me think of gum. It doesn’t make me think of French words that describe the act of being stylish and trendy. The term only makes me think of a bunch of not very intelligent birds ambling about in some farmyard. It’s hard for me to not see the term as demeaning and a put down to the books that it describes, which again, for the record, I don’t usually read, but still it seems like these books deserve better.
So, here’s a challenge to you, if not the dreaded Hen Lit, what should we call these books?
Thoughts on writing | Alissa | 
September 1, 2010 6:18 pm | 
Comments (6) 
Subscribe