{"id":2841,"date":"2006-09-20T17:10:00","date_gmt":"2006-09-20T17:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2841"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:25:44","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:25:44","slug":"midweek-randomness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2841","title":{"rendered":"Midweek Randomness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Celebrity, shmebrity. <\/b>Okay, <i>OKAY<\/i>, Jamie Lee Curtis writes some decent children&#8217;s books. However, I still maintain that celebrity authors suck up all the air in the room. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/stories\/2006\/09\/20\/earlyshow\/leisure\/books\/main2024792.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">Book number seven&#8217;s<\/a> probably great. Probably fabulous. Look how quickly she heard from her editor. Look how fast the newest one hit the bookstores. It&#8217;s probably wonderful, marvelous. But <i>still<\/i>. Okay, I just read <a href=\"http:\/\/readersrants.blogspot.com\/2006\/09\/not-like-im-jealous-or-anything-nope.html\" target=\"_blank\">The Jealousy Book<\/a> last night. I&#8217;m over it. Ignore the <strong>green<\/strong> eyes.<\/p>\n<p><b>Sister Mary Wookie Explains It All.<\/b> Via <a href=\"http:\/\/bookshelvesofdoom.blogs.com\/bookshelves_of_doom\/2006\/09\/scary.html#comment-22665233\" target=\"_blank\">Bookshelves of Doom<\/a>, author Maureen Johnson, author of the upcoming YA novel, <a href=\"http:\/\/bookshelvesofdoom.blogs.com\/bookshelves_of_doom\/2006\/07\/devilish_mauree.html\" target=\"_blank\">Devilish<\/a>, has an hysterical piece on her blog that ties in to the book. From her Protestant-in-a-Catholic-school upbringing, Maureen Johnson learned so much. <a href=\"http:\/\/maureenjohnson.blogspot.com\/2006\/09\/sister-mary-wookie-explains-solar.html\" target=\"_blank\">About wasps. About&#8230; the solar system.<\/a>.. About life. Or some facsimile thereof. I imagine Sister Mary Wookie has a new illustration, now that Pluto isn&#8217;t even a <i>planet<\/i> anymore&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><b>Um, what, Chris?<\/b> From the cover blurbs from author Laura Ruby&#8217;s newly released novel <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lauraruby.com\/books\/good_girls\/about_the_book.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">Good Girls<\/a>, a quote: <strong>&#8220;You can&#8217;t write an authentic book about adolescence without including sex and sexuality, and Laura Ruby does a masterful job.&#8221;<\/strong> <i>\u2014Chris Crutcher, author of Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes.<\/i> Um. Really? You <i>can&#8217;t<\/i> write an authentic book about adolescence without including sex and sexuality? Honestly? I appreciate the sentiment praising the book, but is the rest of that statement really true? As I tend to be at this point, waiting to hear something from S.A.M. or the editor we&#8217;re working with, I am questioning the nature of the world and the unfolding of the universe&#8230; and I want to ask, &#8220;Oh, is <i>that<\/i> what&#8217;s wrong with my book? I just need to include sexuality and sex, and it&#8217;ll be <img decoding=\"async\" hspace=\"10\" src=\"http:\/\/www.crucialcreations.com\/crucialcreations\/prodphotos\/AUTHENTIC-thumb.jpg\" align=\"left\" \/><i>authentic<\/i>? Then editors will knock on my door and actually return my agent&#8217;s phone calls? Hm??? Forgive me, Mr. Crutcher. I&#8217;m being snarky. But if I include sex\/sexuality in my work, my books will be awkward, hackneyed and awful&#8230;much like the adolescent me, I&#8217;m afraid! Maybe I&#8217;m just not comfortable enough with my sexuality to be authentic. I admire authors like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chriscrutcher.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">you<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theboyfriendlist.com\" target=\"_blank\">e. lockhart<\/a>,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nickearls.com\/\" target=\"'_blank\"> Nick Earles<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tanyastone.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tanya Lee Stone<\/a>, and even <a href=\"http:\/\/www.megcabot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Meg Cabot<\/a> who can effortlessly segue first kisses and first flirts and first&#8230; other stuff into their work, but that&#8217;s just not me. Am I then doomed to a life of inauthenticity? Or, maybe, can I just be authentic for ME!? Can we agree that not everyone&#8217;s adolescence includes acknowledging sexuality? Maybe if we had a definition of the sexuality in adolescence with which we&#8217;re supposed to be conversant?<br \/><i>Sigh.<\/i><br \/><strong>Speaking of my books<\/strong>, I&#8217;m hoping that a friend won&#8217;t have the same J.K. Rowling experience&#8230; he&#8217;s printed out one of my manuscripts and is bringing it with him to read on a plane. As he has been bugging me and <i>bugging me<\/i> to read one of my novels, it would serve him right to be stopped by airport security! However, even if he is flying out of SFO&#8230; on the way to Nebraska? This is not going to happen. But still.<\/p>\n<p>All right, to work.<br \/>Happy Wednesday, people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Celebrity, shmebrity. Okay, OKAY, Jamie Lee Curtis writes some decent children&#8217;s books. However, I still maintain that celebrity authors suck up all the air&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-2841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-views"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2841"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3695,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2841\/revisions\/3695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}