Saturday, April 12, 2014

Writing Process Blog Hop!

I was tagged for this blog hop by Faith McKay. Hey there!

1.) What am I working on?
I'm working on a YA contemp called Goodbye Good-Goody Girl (aka G4). It's the story of Mirella, a theatre nerd trying to make the most of her senior year. She lands the leading role in Thoroughly Modern Millie and starts acting a little more "modern" in real life, too. It's a story of friendships and firsts with a hearty dose of musical theatre.

2.) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
 This question was really hard for me but the always wonderful Jenny Adams Perinovic told me G4 is different from other YA contemps because of it's lady-mances, her new term for female bromances. There have been a few posts floating around the web lately about female friendship (http://www.bustle.com/articles/18771-we-need-more-female-friendships-like-these-8-ya-bffs and http://www.stackedbooks.org/2014/03/positive-girl-friendships-in-ya-guest.html) and a huge part of my story is about friendship, positive, deep, female friendship. There is a little romance, too. And a dash of drama.
I also think G4 is different because of the role the musical plays in it. I read (and loved) Maria Boyd's Will but the role of the musical show itself was so much smaller than I imagined. I just had to stop for a moment to think what the show was (The Boyfriend). In G4, Thoroughly Modern Millie is not only important because Mirella is a theatre nerd, the content and story of the show is important, too.

3.) Why do I write what I do?
 I write because I want to share stories. I write YA contemp with musicals and lady-mances because that is what I know and what I think is missing from a bunch of YA. I had a wonderful, if at times emotional, high school experience complete with weirdness and great girl friends. I want to share that with teens who have it rough. We talk about fiction as a safe way to explore difficult and diverse situations, and it is which is awesome. However, I also love fiction because it's an escape and a comfort. I want my readers to relate to the quirkiness of my characters and know that being "weird" or "abnormal" is ok. Actually, it's awesome. Jenny Kaczorowski has talked about this on her blog as well (http://jennykaczorowski.blogspot.com/2014/03/girls-like-me.html?m=1 )
At the end of the day, I write what I do because of memories like this photo of me and my girls during spirit week junior year (2005) which actually made it into our yearbook in hopes of inspiring and supporting those kinds of memories for others.


4.) How does my writing process work?
 Before I officially joined The Great Noveling Adventure, I wrote a guest post about my process of writing longhand first. You can find it here: Why I Love Longhand And that is still true. I write most scenes longhand first then type them up where I flesh out and do a quick edit. My hand on the page helps ground me to the words I'm writing. To be honest, as much as I love writing longhand and I think the process works for me, sometimes I really hate the typing. But nothing is perfect, right?
As far as the planning and organizing part, that's my writing notebook (a front shot and the inside cover). In case you couldn't tell, I like sticky notes. I normally start writing linearly but now I'm writing by scene so I have sticky notes for each separate scene I've written that hasn't been typed yet. Then the inside front cover is a list of finished scenes/chapters, scenes I still need/want, and a rough word count list. I'm very tactile and love to physically organized things. I often rewrite my sticky notes and relay them and it helps me somehow. I'm a quirky writer, I know.


I'm tagging Alex Yuschik
and Angel Cruz 
:)

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