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Title: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Author: Anne Lamott
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 5/5
Why I Read It: I read this book a few years ago, and I thought it would make a good re-read.

Summary: A writer reflects on the writing life. Hint: It must include writing.

Review: If you are a writer—published or not—and you haven’t read this book, get thee to a bookery forthwith! Or, to put it another way: go get this book and read it NOW.

It’ll crack you up, it’ll be the flint that sparks your next great burst of inspiration, it’ll warm the cockles of your poor heart made bitter by all the self-doubt and the rejection and the hard work.

I almost had a breakdown trying to choose a quote to post with this review. Because it’s all so good. I would quote the whole book here if I could. But I had to pick one, so here you go:

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

As I work on revising my most recent NaNoWriMo draft, I have to keep reminding myself of this. To really drive the message home, I think I’m going to tattoo one letter on each knuckle: B-I-R-D-B-Y-B-I-R-D.

Your Turn: What’s your favorite writing advice book?

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

Did You Like This Book? Try:

• Writing Down the Bones
• Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life
• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Title: Sophomore Switch
Author: Abby McDonald
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Why I Read It: Another impulse pick at the library.

Summary: California party-girl Tasha gets caught on video doing something embarrassing in a hot tub. So she agrees to a last-minute foreign-exchange swap with an Oxford student named Emily. But neither of them is prepared to live the life of their complete opposite.

Stopped on Page: 62
Why I Stopped: The curse of the alternating points of view strikes again! I have a hard time getting into novels that use that technique.

Tasha was the first character to have a go at telling her story. But her California-speak turned her into somewhat of a caricature, making it hard for me to connect to her. Here, she’s describing an “athletic blonde” student:

OK, so I’m being tactful here; by “athletic,” what I really mean is butch. Cropped hair, baggy sportswear, and if that doesn’t paint a clear-enough picture for you, she has a rainbow badge on her bulky backpack. Hey, I’m not judging. I just don’t see why a same-sex preference has to go hand in hand with complete fashion backwardness. I mean, look at Portia de Rossi: a hot wife and an Elle subscription. It can be done!

I wonder how I would have responded to this book if the straight-laced British girl Emily was the one to start talking first. I tend to like that style of voice more.

Your Turn: Should I have kept going? Or was I right to stop?

Note: As an aspiring author, I respect the extraordinary amount of effort that goes into writing a book. I did not write this review in order to be unfair or negative about the book. My goal is simply to articulate why the book wasn’t for me.

Peter at Flashlight Worthy Book Recommendations recently wrote to me about how the Unsung YA Heroes project inspired him to beef up the YA list offerings on his site.

From a girl who thinks everyone should give YA a chance, I say: Hooray for YA!

Peter would like to post one YA list a month, and to kick it all off he asked a few book bloggers to recommend their top 2009 YA picks. Guess who got to submit one of her own picks?! Check it out:

The Best Young Adult Books of 2009

Your Turn

What was the last flashlight-worthy book you read?

Photo by margolove.

On Saturday, I attended the annual conference put together by Austin’s chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. As with all the SCBWI conferences I’ve attended the last few years, this one gave me a much-needed jolt of inspiration.

But this time, something happened that’s never happened before.

I registered to get 6 critiques of my manuscript. That’s not the new part. I always try to snag a critique slot. But I should have submitted my NaNoWriMo 2008 manuscript—you know, the one that’s actually been edited. But I was still riding the high from my NaNoWriMo 2009 win and completely in love with it, even in its unedited rawness. So I chose the first 10 pages of that zero draft to submit for my critiques. All 6 of them.

Flash forward a month. I sat down across the reviewer for my first critique. And it quickly became clear that I made a grave mistake in submitting my newest manuscript. Duh, right? Lesson learned.

Still, the critiques—especially those from published authors—lit the foggy path of revision.

And then. I was in my last critique of the day with an author. An award-winning author. She showered me in encouragement. She had suggestions for improvement but also pointed out the parts she loved and the things I do well. She wanted to hear where the story was going.

Then she pulled out a sheet of paper and started writing on the back of it.

“I’m writing down my agent’s contact information,” she said. “I want you to do one revision and then submit this to her.”

It took all my strength to pry my jaw from the floor and force my mouth into a coherent “thank you.”

She saw enough goodness in my zero-draft writing to give me this gift. A gift of motivation, a gift of support, a gift of a DEADLINE. Because I know this opportunity will expire if I let it.

This is a small step, I know. But it’s the first glimmer of success I’ve had on my road to publication. So I’m going to bask a teensy bit before I get to work.

Your Turn

Do you have advice for how to revise a NaNoWriMo draft in, say, 8 weeks? Or for how to get my head out of the clouds and in the revision game?

Photos by RIPizzo and Saparevo.

Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Title: Girlfriend Material
Author: Melissa Kantor
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Why I Read It: An impulse pick at the library.

Summary: Kate’s parents are fighting again. This time, her mom decides to leave town to get some perspective. The only problem is, she’s dragging Kate along, shattering all of Kate’s summer plans.

Stopped on Page: 74
Why I Stopped: Part of it was I still felt a little bitter from getting stuck with my last book and finishing it when I should have stopped. But I also had trouble connecting to the main character in this book.

The entire first chapter is about how mad Kate is at her mom for dragging her away from home. But on the second to last page of that chapter, you find out Kate’s actually been excited about the trip all along.

After she’d worked me up into an empathetic state of outrage that her mom was forcing her to tag along and leave all her own summer plans behind, I felt a wee bit hoodwinked. So at that point, I found myself not really caring about Kate’s troubles. And I stopped reading.

Your Turn: Should I have kept going? Or was I right to stop?