Superbook

Posted on by Beth Hull

It’s a good time to think about what makes me love a book. This week I’ve been outlining Books 2 and 3. And rather than flounder around with a weak story and later have to mold it into something respectable, I’d rather create a solid outline, with a solid, surprising, wonderful story. Then when I revise, all I’ll have to tackle are line edits.

Because it’s that easy!

Okay, not really. But I’d like it to be slightly easier, so I’m working on a wish list of what I’d like to see in these books. As I outline, I refer to the wish list. Some parts of the wish list are specific: “A. worried that R. loves someone else.” Others are less specific: “Major supporting character dies here in valiant act.” And others are even less specific (that is, general): “Need cool setting.”

But, just in working with the general, here’s what I like to see in books (with select YA titles as examples):

  • humor (The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, Flash Burnout by L. K. Madigan,Wisdom’s Kiss by Catherine Gilbert Murdock)
  • gorgeous prose (The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan, Gilt by Katherine Longshore, If I Stay by Gayle Forman)
  • strong voice (Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher, Blood Red Road by Moira Young, Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly)
  • tension (The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams, Skin Hunger by Kathleen Duey, Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins)
  • intriguing premise (The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi, Beauty Queens by Libba Bray)
  • unique setting (Feed by M. T. Anderson, Cinder by Marissa Meyer, Incarceron by Catherine Fisher)

How about I just buy extra copies of all those books, tear out the pages, turn the ceiling fan on really really high, then collect the pages and staple them together into a new book?

Because it’s that easy!

Migraines: So Much Fun

Posted on by Beth Hull

Now that I’ve had five or so, I guess I belong to the Migraine Club. For awhile there, I worried about how much I was missing out on migraines. Great excuse to lie around in bed all day with the blinds drawn, possibly weeping on a fainting couch and moaning, “Oh woe.”

Actually, I didn’t think about migraines. At all. If someone told me they had a migraine, I’d make sympathetic noises and promptly forget about him or her (ask Homes – I’ve never been a good sympathizer with the sick).

Shortly after I turned thirty, I had this fantastic visual disturbance. It looked like a ferris wheel – but only half the ferris wheel, going around at night, with little green and red and yellow lights. And I could only see it on the left, and only with my left eye.

Intrigued, I went onto my health insurance member’s page and followed the little symptom checker until I discovered I was probably having a stroke.

So then I called them to ask if I was really having a stroke, and the advice nurse asked me all kinds of inane questions, like, “Are you breathing right now?” “Do you know your name?” (Okay not really, but when I’ve called in about a minor rash for Z, they have asked, “Is she turning blue? Has her tongue swelled to fill up her mouth?” and really? I’d be calling 911, not the advice nurse. But I guess sometimes the answer must be, “Yes, my child is blue,” otherwise why would they ask and then my hope and faith in the world just plummets. I’m a little depressed as I write this, can you tell?)

After making sure I still had a pulse, the advice nurse asked if I had a headache. I thought about it for a minute. “Yeah, a little one.”

“Oh,” she said. “You could be experiencing an ocular migraine.”

Well, that sounded fancy. And it didn’t really hurt. Thus reinforcing my belief that migraine sufferers were a bunch of whiners, on par with Frodo:

I got my eyes checked and got some rockin’ reading glasses, while Homes made jokes about me getting old & gray & needing glasses (because I’d just turned thirty, see. No, I didn’t find it funny either).

Fast forward to my latest migraine. Probably my fifth or so, but I’m not exactly keeping tally with hash marks on my fainting couch. And I couldn’t keep tally because…

I WAS INCAPACITATED.

I’m sure I could purple-prose us all to tears with my vivid and melodramatic description of the pain I suffered, and my martyrdom that I still sat up to breastfeed Maverick, tears splashing down my face to land on his little fuzzy head. The valiant Homes, making our bedroom as dark as possible (it can get damn dark, and it wasn’t dark enough), and darling Z, whispering on the phone to her Gran,  “Mommy has a really bad headache.” And the doting Gran, distracting Z as long as possible so I could rest.

But the truth is, lots of people get migraines. And they’re horrible. And if I could go back in time and slap 29-year-old, pre-migraine me, I totally would. Actually, I wouldn’t slap her. I’d just wish a migraine on her.

Oh my gosh. That’s totally what happened.

I brought this on myself.

Allegory of the Revision Cave*

Posted on by Beth Hull

You know it’s bad when you’re dreaming about revisions. Here’s the dream I had the other night, in comic format – although there was nothing comic about it. Har har.

Nothing comic about that, either.

Okay, the dream already:

Yeah, kind of a bummer.

The good news is that my agent didn’t hate my revisions. No, she wasn’t thrilled with the new ending, but that’s fixable. Hardly throwing the whole thing in the garbage.

Some days this week I was like this:

On those days I felt pretty good, type-type-typing away. (Actually, for all this, substitute “days” for “nights” because I’m momming it during the day and revising at night, often taking breaks to flip over my little stomach-sleeper.) I tackled new ideas, brainstormed, wasted spent a lot of time doing the Scrivener tutorial (LOVE Scrivener), and generally felt like a winner.

But there were a couple of days that looked like this:

I think the drawing says enough.

*Plato did not endorse this blog post. He wants absolutely nothing to do with it. He scoffs at my amateur drawings.

The Eye of Sauron

Posted on by Beth Hull

I feel like such a cheater, making Lord of the Rings references when I haven’t even read the books. But I’ve totally watched the movies – the extended versions, even! – multiple times. So that sort of counts, right? (Even though I fast-forward through the Frodo scenes?) (Sorry, but he’s such a whiner he makes Z look good.)

My pal Kristen…wait, my fabulous pal Kristen gave us her video baby monitor. The first night we used it I hated the thing, because Maverick kept spinning around and we’d have to go in there and flip him over, and I was trying to watch a movie, damnit. But now he doesn’t spin quite as much, because he’s in his funny sleep sack thing. Whoops, he’s on his tummy now….

I straightened that out.

Also, I investigated the advice online (stick them on their backs to start, then shrug your shoulders because if they’re going to turn, you can’t stop them…without Velcro or no-longer-recommended stay-put devices). I also Googled “life monitors for sleeping babies,” not sure if they actually exist. They do. They’re expensive. Besides which, I’d probably buy one, and then I’d be trusting it to work instead of doing my job as a parent and checking on my kid.

The Eye of Sauron looks like this. I’m not joking.

So one time I was watching him flail and fuss through the Eye of Sauron, and all of a sudden he levitated. “Whoa!” I said to my friend BDawg. “Maverick just levitated! Now he’s disappeared!”

I wish I could stop there, because it’s so X-Men, having a baby who levitates before vanishing. But what really happened was Homes went in and picked him up to comfort him. I, of course, had been content to watch him suffer, like the mean lazy independence-promoting mommy that I am. Besides, it makes me hurt to see him hurt, so our mutual hurting was, in some twisted way, acceptable to me.

Besides, I was talking on the phone with BDawg and we didn’t have much time because her three-month-old was busy creating the kind of diaper blowout that makes legends.

Not to get competitive or anything, but my kid was levitating. Ish.

Yeah, he totally looks like he’s flipping me off.