just great

The Feiwel and Friends Fall 2010 catalog is accessible online here. You should give it a look. It's really a beautiful catalog and there are some terrific titles coming out (but, then again, I may be biased).

This is the back cover of the catalog, a no-text cover image from The Marbury Lens. I think it looks amazing. And I've seen some of the other art elements that are going into the jacket design, too... and I just have to say this is one of the overall coolest cover concepts ever.

in orbit

Something like 800 people have signed up to win a copy of The Marbury Lens on Goodreads. That's a good thing.

The other day, my editor sent me a note to let me know that the galleys are in orbit -- they've been sent out all over the country, along (here and there) with a letter I wrote about the origins of The Marbury Lens.

Because it's not just an oh-i'll-make-up-a-dystopic-science-fiction-story-because-people-seem-to-be-reading-them-now-and-most-of-the-ones-out-there-just-don't-have-balls books, The Marbury Lens actually came from somewhere. But that's all I'll say.

Anyway, my editor just wanted to give me the heads-up in case people started asking questions about it.

People seem to like asking questions about the book. Which is why, as we did with Ghost Medicine and In the Path of Falling Objects, we are making a discussion guide for The Marbury Lens, and plan on having it available when I go to Washington DC next month for the American Library Association's Annual Conference.

you owe it to the people

That is all.

moods for moderns

It's Tuesday. The third Tuesday in a row. Time to make myself tweet.

I got an email from someone last week saying that if I really wanted a psychopath to find me and kill me that I shouldn't put it on Twitter, I should put it on Craig's List, whatever that is. I tried LinkedIn, but -- go figure -- nobody on that site is honest about being a stalker/murderer, because I am certain there are plenty members who should include that on their profiles.

So, anyway, for my TweetPeeps, here are the final suggestions for ways to rob and murder me, if you are so inclined:

• I am allergic to bee stings.

• I will be wearing a hat today.

• Not to make this too easy, but on my next scheduled flight, I will be sitting in seat 25C.

• I never shake out my shoes to check for scorpions.

• I always sit with my back to the door at my favorite bar.

• You do the math: Gas grill. Back deck.

• Trash day is Thursday.
  

creativity crisis

We've brought this up before on here, and had some lively discussions about whether or not every story that can possibly be told has already been written. To restate my assertion, the answer is no, there are countless new, original stories out there just waiting for someone to tell them.

Believing everything has already been told (puhLEASE don't comment back with the old "there are only two stories..." bit) is kind of like believing that there will be no more innovative inventions dreamed up, no more architectural advances, no more discoveries in math or science.

Because creativity is the engine that drives those things, just as it is the force behind writing.

So, if you believe there are no more stories to be told, get out of the way and drop into the ranks of the followers, where you belong.

A couple days ago, I wrote about how the writing regimen we subject kids to in school saps them of their creativity and makes them hate writing. I've seen it happening first-hand for years.

Remember how exciting it was, when you were in school, and you first learned to read and write? If you have kids, as I do, remember how amazing it was for you and your children when they first began building little words and sentences from letters? So, why do so many kids hate words by the time they get into high school?

A couple days ago, I wrote that throughout their entire schooling, the emphasis in writing for kids has steered them only toward linear, highly structured, expository writing.

The evil, consciousness-destroying "chunk paragraph."

But, deep down, kids really want to write. They want to be creative. But there is no room for coaching those abilities along in the school day, and the formulaic, structured, anti-inventive kind of writing they're boxed into churning out at school not only weakens their creative impulse, it actually makes them hate writing.

It's almost like there's a plot afoot... a conspiracy against creativity in the new and improved, standardized world.

This probably explains why Hollywood is churning out remake after remake, or draining the life out of ideas by resuscitating the tired corpses of sequel upon sequel. And, sadly enough, even in writing, we see the increasing trendiness of the "modern retelling" or, worse yet, the "modern retelling with werewolves."

This is really very sad, and it's sadder, still, that the viewing/buying public puts up with it.

Because what would happen if people suddenly refused to spend a dime of their pocket money on seeing a remake of a movie, or purchasing a retold novel?

It would kind of be like what would happen if everyone suddenly refused to eat fast food.

There would still be plenty to eat.

And there are plenty of stories left to be told, too, but we need to help kids find their way back to that essential component of being a human they've been steered away from: the drive to create.

splitting pages

Last year, when I was speaking in San Francisco, I met a fellow author of Young Adult fiction, who told me that he liked to work on multiple projects -- three or more -- all at the same time.

And I was, like, Are you insane? How can you possibly do that?

He assured me that working on multiple projects simultaneously was the only way to go -- that he'd never have it any other way.

I mention this because I currently find myself well into writing two completely different things (and by "well into," I mean, like 100 pages) at the same time. As I suspected, it's making me insane, and I'm beginning to feel like writing two things at once -- combined -- is going to take more time overall than writing one thing first, and a second thing... um... second.

So I'm finding myself, in the mornings, opening up two files and skipping back and forth. Oh, and these two things couldn't possibly be more unlike one another if I tried. So it kind of feels like skipping back and forth between worlds, kind of like a certain character I know in a book that's coming out in November.

And it's making me crazy, so I am trying to decide which world to ignore for a while.

Now, since I am rambling, and it's Mother's Day, which means nobody is going to be sitting at home reading rambling blog posts, I have a couple random thoughts about writing YA.

A while ago I was talking to another writer and I mentioned that I wrote Young Adult fiction. Then the other writer asked me, Oh, what kind of YA? Vampires or Fantasy?

Not kidding.

My answer was that I write the kind of YA where girls get even with boys for being shallow and dumb.

Second random YA thought: It has to do with yesterday's post and comments, and these generalized boxes we often pack YA into. I was reading a review (I'm carefully going to avoid being too specific regarding titles, etc.) about a recent YA novel that is getting some good press about girls who try to get even with boys for dumping them (kind of like Fatal Attraction but without the psycho element). The reviewer lavished heaps of appreciation for books that portray teen girls as taking charge and being in control. Well... come on now, there aren't too many YA books that paint a contrary picture, are there? And, just for the fun of it, why don't we start listing all the YA titles that portray boys as being dumb, worthy of punishment for dumping or ignoring girls who think their futures are all clearly planned out at the age of seventeen, or boys who are just the mindless objects of girls' summertime obsessions?

kids who write, kids who read

I've been paying a lot of attention lately to statements made by librarians and teachers of early readers about what boys like to read, and a common thread I've been hearing is something like, when a boy comes into the library, or when it's reading time in my classroom, I guide the boy over to the nonfiction stacks so he can find a book about venomous animals and stuff like that. (Definitely not all librarians and teachers express this... but an awful lot of them do)

I think there's a prevailing misconception out there that boy reader equals reader of nonfiction. Actually, literacy studies have shown that boys have no higher a degree of preference for nonfiction than girls do. Why is there this common buy-in, then, this assumption, that boys want to only read nonfiction?

I have some ideas on this, and they aren't very encouraging as to the creative future of our society. I'd be interested in hearing what readers think about this, though: Why do so many of us "grownups" assume that boy reader equals nonfiction reader?

I'm currently working on a bit for another blog about creative writing and boys. Working with the young writers I've started coaching this year (and I am very happy to say that two of my boys who write have been honored for their short fiction in Mrs. Nelson's 2010 Young Writers Contest), I've found that throughout their entire schooling, the emphasis in writing has steered them only toward linear, highly structured, expository writing.

The evil, consciousness-destroying "chunk paragraph."

But, deep down, kids really want to write. They want to be creative. But there is no room for coaching those abilities along in the school day, and the formulaic, structured, anti-inventive kind of writing they're boxed into churning out at school not only weakens their creative impulse, it actually makes them hate writing.

You don't have to believe me. Go talk to a hundred kids. You'll hear it from them.

So the writing, the reading, the lack of boy-friendly books, the assumptions we make about boys and reading and boys and creative writing -- they're all tied together, and I think it's not too late to undo some knots we've wrapped around kids' futures.

But if you have any ideas on the nonfiction question I posed, then post away.