Title: The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself
Author: Susan Bell
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 3/5
Why I Read It: I found this book while browsing the writing section of the library.

Summary: An editor offers advice on how to edit your own writing.

Review: I loved the first half of this book for its practicality, but as it got less practical I lost interest. Example:

• Loved learning about how The Great Gatsby changed during the editing process
• Didn’t love reading about the entire history of book editing

One little gem was the author’s tips for gaining perspective on your work—techniques like editing in a different environment than where you wrote, changing the font when you read it back, hanging it up on a laundry line to look for big picture issues.

Even though I didn’t love the second half, the book was easy to get through, which isn’t always true of writing books. (As my shelf of 20+ unread writing books can attest.)

I’ll leave you with one of the practical tips that stuck with me:

Take care not to indiscriminately repeat a turn of phrase. Avoid, that is, overusing one particular sentence structure, such as, for example, a clause, then a colon, then a list. Single out the structure you unwittingly repeat, enter it in a notebook marked “patterns to break,” and make it the only thing you look for on one or two read-throughs. Hunt down your habit, and train your mind to flinch at it.

Have you ever tried looking for just one thing during a read-through?

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

Audience Pick!

Title: Ghost World
Author: Daniel Clowes
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3.5/5
Why I Read It: Because you told me to!

Summary: Enid and Becky have been best friends forever and do everything together. They’re graduating from high school, so Enid is thinking of moving away to college but Becky doesn’t want her to go.

Review: This has been my favorite graphic novel so far, although I haven’t read very many yet. In the movie adaptation, I wish they had stuck to the book a bit more because the book was (of course) much better.

I loved Enid’s snarky commentary, but the last couple of chapters were the most satisfying because you start to see what’s really going on with Enid. I wish there had been a couple more hints of that earlier on because the beginning chapters seemed to wander a bit. Or it could be that I just missed them.

If you haven’t read any graphic novels before, this would be a great one to start with.

How do you think the movie compares to the book?

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

As a judge for the first round of the Nerds Heart YA tournament, I had the tough task of deciding which of these two books advance to the next round. I’ll start with reviews of each one, but if you can’t bear the suspense any longer feel free to skip to the end of this post for the decision!

---

The Latent Powers of Dylan Fontaine

Author: April Lurie
Category: Fiction, Young Adult

Summary: After Dylan’s mom moved out, his dad threw himself into work and his older brother threw himself into pot. Dylan’s the glue holding the household together, but when his best friend Angie doesn’t see him that way and Dylan gets picked up by the cops, how much longer can the glue hold up?

What I Loved: The engrossing story made me immediately care about Dylan and what he was going through. This is how it starts:

I can tell you from experience that a jail cell is not a place you’d like to visit.

I loved the humor throughout. It was funny without trying too hard to be clever, so it felt like I was reading about a real kid and his problems. Here’s one part of a scene with Dylan’s older brother Randy and his stoner friends Headbone, Nick, and Moser. Moser has a bit of a hygiene issue and refuses to shower.

Suddenly Nick says, “Shut up, Headbone! Don’t you see what’s going on here?”

Headbone looks confused. “No…what? Ohhhh.”

Now Moser gets it too. He shakes his head, and I pray to God the white stuff in his hair is dandruff and not larvae.

I also genuinely thought a couple of the subplots could go either way, which made for a fun read.

What I Didn’t Love: As the story lines started to wrap up, that understated humor seemed to drop away when it was most needed. So the emotional scenes sometimes felt overly sentimental to me. Also with the ending, I thought the characters tended to be a little too forthcoming with how they really felt—not necessarily realistic.

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

---

Leftovers

Author: Laura Wiess
Category: Fiction, Young Adult

Summary: Best friends Blair and Ardith have done something wrong, something very wrong. After you hear their story, will you understand?

What I Loved: This book takes a chance, and I will always love a gutsy story that pushes the boundaries of what is “right” and acceptable. The main risk in my eyes was the prevalent use of second person voice. (More on that in a bit.)

The book also had a few gems that made me stop and think for a bit, like this one after one of the girls was teased at school:

So you…get busy writing your name in your notebook. Homeroom ends in seven minutes and if you drag it out, you can make your preoccupation with penmanship last just about that long. You stare at the page. Your name is a lone bottle floating on an ocean of blue-lined paper. You frown and erase the small, cramped letters. The words disappear but the impression remains and there’s nothing you can do about that.

What I Didn’t Love: The second person voice was off-putting. I guess it was intended to make you feel like you’re part of the story so you connect to the events and can understand the main characters’ actions. But for me, it was constantly jarring, throwing me out of the story and introducing a distance so I couldn’t fully connect with the main characters.

Here’s another snippet to help you decide if this is the book for you. I’m curious to know what you think after reading it.

When your mother finally makes partner in a prestigious law firm, she decides it’s time to buy one of the big, new McMansions across town. She says you need a new house because you’ve outgrown your current one, a cozy cape in a mostly blue-collar neighborhood, but that’s not really true, because besides you and your parents, the only other living thing in the house is your old golden retriever Wendy Darling, and she doesn’t take up much space. She’s slept in your room for the last fourteen years, first in your bed, but now on her orthopedic mattress next to your bed.

You don’t want to move and say so, but nobody cares.

Probably because of this distance, a little ways in, the girls’ stories started to feel melodramatic and even a bit whiny.

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

---

The Decision

The book that will continue to the next round is…

.
.
.

The Latent Powers of Dylan Fontaine!

If you’re a numbers sort of person, here’s the ratings breakdown:

Dylan: 3.5/5
Leftovers: 3/5

To see how Dylan fares in the next round of the tournament, keep an eye on Stephanie’s Confessions of a Book-a-holic for her decision.

Thank you to everyone who entered the Nerds Heart YA Giveaway, especially those of you who helped spread the word about this wonderful competition!

The 5 lucky winners are…

• Cathe at Cathe’s Blog
• Chris at Stuff As Dreams Are Made On
• Debbie at Debbie’s World of Books
• Lauren at Shooting Stars Mag
• Jill & Jim at Rhapsody in Books

Congratulations, all! Each winner gets one book, and I’ll try to accommodate any preferences for which one:

• Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers
• The Latent Powers of Dylan Fontaine by April Lurie
• Leftovers by Laura Wiess

Winners, you’ll be hearing from me shortly. (And thanks to random.org for picking the winners.)

Next up: I’ll be posting reviews for my Nerds Heart YA bracket. Any guesses which book will win this round?

Photo by benrybobenry.

A friend of mine who’s a published writer gave me this trick for writing a first draft. NaNoWriMo aside, this is the only trick that’s helped me make progress on a first draft.

Curious to try it for yourself? This is what you do:

1. Get a kitchen timer. You’ll need the kind you can set right in front of you. New ones go for about $5 at the grocery store.
2. Find 15 minutes. Turn your phone off, close your browser, lock your kids in the closet—do whatever it takes to get yourself ready to sit down for 15 consecutive minutes.
3. Open your draft file. Whether you’re using Google Docs or a plain ol’ text file, open it up and put your cursor at the end.
4. Set the timer to 15 minutes. It’s possible to write one page in 15 minutes. But only if you keep moving forward. This is where your new little buddy the timer will help.
5. Press the start button and WRITE. Write one page, that’s all you have to do. No re-reading what you’ve just written. No racking your brain for just the right word. No going back and rewriting what’s already there. Push yourself past those temptations and just WRITE.

Do these steps for enough days in a row, and you’ll have yourself a completed first draft.

You’re skeptical, I can tell. So let me tell you what will happen as the timer ticks away:

• 14:50: You wasted 10 seconds staring at the blank page. Time to start your first sentence.
• 13:45: Holy crap, where did that minute go? You realize you got stuck on one measly phrase in your first sentence.
• 13:39: Ack! You have to write something, but what?
• 12:45: Whew, first sentence done, second sentence started.
• 10:32: Two new paragraphs magically appeared on your screen. Sweet!
• You finally finish your first page, but you realize the timer never went off. Stupid timer. Now you’ll have to return it to the store. You glance down at the dysfunctional machine and it says:
• 2:19: You finished a page with TWO WHOLE MINUTES LEFT! Go, go, GO, don’t look back!
• BEEP! You throw the timer across the room to shut it up and keep writing.

The worst that could happen is you won’t quite make one page. But only if you’re not following the rules. No re-reading, no rewriting, remember?

Every single time I’ve used this trick, I end up writing closer to 2 pages in 15 minutes, or I get on such a roll that I end up writing for longer than the original 15 minutes. I am not a terribly fast typist. My brain does not work faster than yours. It has nothing to do with me and everything to do with your new little buddy.

So don’t go sticking him in a dark drawer where he’ll have to fend for himself against spiders and sit helpless as his batteries die. Your buddy loves nothing more than to sit in front of you, gazing into your genius writerly eyes for 15 minutes at a time. Don’t deny him his little ducky heart’s desire.

Do you have any little tricks like this to help you finish your first draft?

Photo by tanakawho.