YA Highway

I know all you highwayers are giving out (or raking in) candy, dressing up the kiddos, or perhaps partying at an Irish bar in Germany. Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Halloween, and share this uber-cute bookworm costume I stumbled across!

Happy Halloween!

Third person: don't be scared

It begins with a girl. Her eyes are too dark, overly shadowed with black liner. Her lips are too big, the lipstick forging a fake line beyond the natural boundaries of her mouth. She looks at you hard.

Book Review: Beautiful by Amy Reed

Welcome to our fourth Road Trip Wednesday!


Road Trip Wednesday is a "Blog Carnival", where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing or reading-related question and answer it in on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.

You're more than welcome to participate! Just answer the question/topic on your own blog, and leave a link to it in the comments.

Road Trip Wednesday #4 Naming Your Characters

Grammar Groupie understands the desire to be on intimate terms with the stars. Actors, musicians, agents . . . we love ‘em. But just because you’ve spent hours researching your favorite band or movie star doesn’t mean you should assume the two of you are on a first name basis.

Dear Agent:

Grammar Groupie Says: Be Professional

I like anagrams. Maybe a little too much. This isn't a real contest, but just for grins, lets see if you can figure out which yaHighway bloggers I'm listing, and better yet – the real name of her finished novel and/or WIP.

1. Name Anagram: Trim in Killers

Novel: Lovingly Wonder – Doze in Wall (WIP) – Vilest Coat (WIP)


2. Name Anagram: Dark Tail Win (but her full name is Wreak in Hatred)

Novel: What, Nude? – Dine, Git (WIP)


3. Name Anagram: I'm the Charmless Uncle

Novel: Peculiar as Dogs – So Frosty Fetish (WIP)


4. Name Anagram: An Ha Ha! And Man...

Novel: Wall or Clashing


5. Name Anagram: Kind, Brash Brute

Novel: Man-Like Drain – Reveal Down (WIP) – Crudest Fool (WIP)



You know, some of those titles are books begging to be written. Who wouldn't pick up What, Nude at Borders?

Feel like having some fun with your name (or WIP, or characters)? This anagram generator is a fabulous procrastination tool. Post yours in the comments section!

Anagram fun...or, Saturday night boredom

Welcome to our third Road Trip Wednesday!


Road Trip Wednesday is a "Blog Carnival", where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing or reading-related question and answer it in on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.

You're more than welcome to participate! Just answer the question/topic on your own blog, and leave a link to it in the comments.

Road Trip Wednesday #3: Your WIPs as Haiku

I love settings. I love inventing settings, usually based on places I've been, thinly disguised. In my debut Like Mandarin, the town of Washokey is an amalgamation of several small Wyoming towns, flexed and shaped the way I wanted it.

Building a town, a city or any setting is much like building a character--both require three dimensions to be believable. So when I ran across fellow 2011 debut author Scott Tracey's blog post,"How to Create Your Own Fake Town," I was thrilled. Scott offer great tips on constructing those imaginary towns and cities, from names to histories, haunted landmarks to town drunks (Washokey's got both!). Definitely check it out.

Fake Towns, Fake Cities, Fake Universes

Dorothy Sayers said,

“A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.”

There is a tiny bit of truth to that, and not a little bit of irony. I, however, have a different view of quotes; they are a source of inspiration, a reminder of what I do and why at times when I lose motivation. They encourage me and challenge me and show me that so many before me have gone through the same trials, challenges and heartbreak that inhabit the world of writing.

Some quotes make me laugh and lighten my mood when writing gets dreary. This one cracks me up:

“Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman's name out of a satire then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to a writer--and if so, why?”

- Bennett Cerf

Yup, we writers are crazy, lol. But we still do it because anything else would be a fail.

This one makes me laugh, too, but it’s more a sinister laugh than a shaking my head laugh:

“Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.”

- Flannery O'Connor

This is the one that flashes through my mind when every last person I tell I’m a writer says, “Ah, yes. I’d like to write a book one of these days.” As though it were a walk in the park.

Others allow me to identify this strange, creative part of me with other writers. Like this one by Orson Scott Card:

“Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.”

Reading this relieves my frustrations when I find myself inundated with SNIs. Instead, I feel grateful to have so many ideas, lucky to be blessed with my talents, and happy to have a special creativity.

If I’m stuck on a particular passage I recall this quote by Terry Pratchett, smile a little, and move on:

“There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.”

The perfect illustration of the editing process:

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning and took out a comma. In the afternoon, I put it back in."

- Oscar Wilde

The path to perfection is fraught with commas. It's also fraught with people who smile condesceningly when I tell them I write Young Adult and Children's lit. To them I say,

"You must write for children in the same way you write for adults, only better."

- Maxim Gorky

After all, teens can see through anything. And they are far more discerning when it comes to what they'll spend their precious time on.

My favorite quote to read as I embark on a new project:

“The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.”

- Nabakov

Reading this, I feel empowered to put pen to paper and fill the sheet with writing.

My favorite quote of all time is the pinnacle of inspiration for me. It teaches me how to write and forces me to put down words and thoughts that are beautiful. Chekov said:

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

Gorgeous. Not only is he practicing what he’s preaching (show, don’t tell), he does it in such a lovely way that inspires my own writing.

It’s easy enough to find quotes to inspire your work. Check out Brainyquote, QuotationsPage, The Quote Garden or Great-Quotes on the internet. Also, Bartlett’s is a print resource (i.e. book) that compiles quotes that you can find at your local library. They're not a substitute for original thought, but quotes can be a motivation when you feel your brain has been wrung dry.

What are your favorite quotes for writing, inspiration, laughs, motivation, etc.?

Quotables

I have a confession to make. A deeply nerdy confession.

I’m obsessed with sentences.

I spend a great deal of my life thinking about sentences, about what makes them good and what makes them bad, and why it is that some of them sing and some of them make you feel like you’re listening to someone grinding their teeth and cracking their knuckles simultaneously.

When I first learnt creative writing at school, teachers always had all this stuff to impart about how to write sentences. I’m not blaming them; it was probably part of the curriculum. There were all these things to remember, like ‘There should ALWAYS be a verb’, and ‘Don’t make sentences too long but don’t make them too short either’ and ‘DON’T ever start anything with ‘And then’.

And then there was that particularly glorious one, ‘Replace everything with the strongest word possible’. Remember that one, the one where you had to load up your sentences like little packhorses? Why use ‘said’ where you could use ‘cried’? And why leave it at that? Throw in an adverb too! ‘My heart is broken!’ he cried desperately. But you don’t even have to stop there! You should put more of those striking words in, those words that go wham, right? As I wrote these sentences full of wham words, I felt that something was wrong. But I couldn’t quite work out what it was. It was almost like a noise at the back of my head. ‘My longing filled heart is broken,’ he cried desperately, and imploringly turned his golden head to the savagely stormy grey sky.

Yup. I’ve broken something alright. But it’s not someone’s heart, it’s the sentence. The poor little horse fell over only a few words in. That noise at the back of my head? That was the sound of dying horses.

Why?

They were carrying too much.

A few years after my first creative writing classes, someone leant me Everything I Know About Writing, by John Marsden. And at some point quite early on, he points out that it’s really not a good idea to write sentences like that. Even if your teacher encourages it. And Eureka. I was thirteen years old, and I'd just had the biggest writing revolution of my whole life. I had to teach myself how to write all over again.

I started thinking about words in terms of weight. Some words are always going to be far heavier than others. Let’s look at the sentence from before. There are a few lightweight words, words the horse isn’t going to notice all that much: my, is, he, and, his, to, the. Then there are a couple which are sort of middling: turned, head, grey, sky. And then there are a bunch that weigh an absolute tonne: longing filled, heart, broken, cried, desperately, imploringly, golden, savagely, stormy. I’m going to count longing filled as one word, because the two are acting as a kind of compound. (A horrible Jeff-Goldblum-turning-into-a-fly kind of compound, but anyway.) Even then, that’s nine. Nine words heavy enough to potentially upset an Olympic weightlifter.
Especially heart*.

In short, no wonder my horses were suffering.

After I learnt that, I tried keeping all the heavy words out. I went from one extreme to the other; I didn’t want my long suffering horses to have to carry anything heavy at all. And for some writers, that works, and works stunningly. There are writers who write swift, invisible sentences, sentences which move at shotgun speed. There are great books which are almost entirely made up of light sentences. You might get the odd heavy word, but it flicks past so fast that you barely see it, surrounded by so much lightness and speed.

Unfortunately for me, I’m not really that sort of writer.

The more I wrote, the more heavy words started trying to sneak out. I remember writing stories and poetry and thinking to myself, heart, Leila? What are you doing with that word? Put it away before it hurts someone. But the more I read, the more writers I discovered who not only used heavy words, but used them in sentences which worked beautifully. It wasn’t necessarily about avoiding weight at all. It was often how writers distributed it that made the difference.

A packhorse is a dignified creature, as is a sentence. Both can carry a lot. The question isn’t necessarily what, but how. For a start, it pays not to look at sentences by themselves. They work in harmony with the sentences around them. Together, they can create rhythm and build up to things, or slide down again. If you surround a heavy word by the right things, it balances. There isn’t a magic trick to learning it. It’s just a matter of reading as many good sentences as you can find, and thinking of the noise that each sentence makes, of the weight that comes with each word and whether it’s falling in the right place.

Sometimes, in finding their balance, good sentences can slap you in the face with their power.

This is the beginning of Teach Me, by R. A. Nelson:

Welcome to my head.

Let’s hit the ground running. I will get you up to speed. We need a short learning curve here. Those are things my dad likes to say. He works for NASA. He spends his days figuring out problems like this:

If an object weighing 8.75 ounces travelling ten thousand miles per hours strikes the earth, how big a whole does it create?

One exactly the size of my heart.

Call me Nine.

Everybody does. (Razor Bill, 2005, p.1)

Bang. And with that, I could hardly put the book down until I was finished.

And I can’t blog about sentences without quoting Janet Frame at least once, because she wrote some of the best sentences I’ve ever come across. She was definitely not a YA writer, and her writing is about as literary as it gets. I find that when I first read her, it often pays not to worry too much about what she’s trying to say. There’s plenty of time for that later. For now, just enjoy the ride.

... a prose sentence which touches like a branding iron is good. A sentence, which, travelling, looks out of portholes as far as horizons and beyond is good. A sentence which goes to sleep is good, if the season is winter; bad, if it is early spring. A sentence which stumbles on useless objects instead of on buried treasure is bad, and worse if it illuminates useless objects with artificial light, but good if it casts a unique radiance upon them.

A word which is exciting to look at and say and which doesn’t slop its meaning over the side is good; a word which comes up sparkling from the well is good; a word which clusters like last year’s bee around last year’s flower is bad if the flower is already dead, but good if the flower is surviving, beautiful, and alone in a place where flowers have not been known to grow and where bees never swarmed before nor gathered nectar. (Living in the Maniototo, Vintage, reprinted 2006, p.69)

Who writes your favourite sentences?


*Heart is possibly the heaviest word in the entire English language. Love is heavy too, but it can sometimes be light, depending on context. Love in ‘I love boysenberry ice cream’ doesn’t weigh all that much. But heart is heavy almost every time. The only word I can think of which is possibly heavier is death.

On being kind to horses

You don't have to be lonely

Welcome to our second Road Trip Wednesday!

Road Trip Wednesday is a "Blog Carnival", where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing or reading-related question and answer it in on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.

You're more than welcome to participate! Just answer the question on your own blog, and leave a link to it in the comments.

• Michelle Shusterman: "Embrace the suckage. Finish your sucky draft and be proud of its suckitude...."

• Kirsten Hubbard: "I attempt to write chronologically, but if I'm excited about a scene further down the line, I write it..."

• Kristin Miller: "A lovely, mostly clean draft inspires me to be more careful, more thoughtful about what comes next..."

• Amanda Hannah: "Instead of constantly adjusting, I'm keeping a notebook with reminders about what to go back and change..."

• Kaitlin Ward: "It helps me to remember that I can always take away or add things in second drafts..."

• Lee Bross: "My rough draft is simply getting the story in all its unedited glory onto the page. The second round is the magical one..."

• Leila Austin: "It's far better to have a deeply flawed first draft than not to have one..."

Road Trip Wednesday #2: Rough Drafts!

I was beyond honored to interview the brilliant Melina Marchetta, whose Printz-winning young adult novel, Jellicoe Road, I've recommended (and purchased) more than any other.

It's difficult to give a summary of Jellicoe Road that makes sense, without unveiling any spoilers. The first few chapters are widely heralded as difficult to follow – though intriguing, they contain numerous plot threads that seem unrelated, at first. You'll have to take my word that everything comes together. Not abruptly, but in a series of gradually deepening revelations, each more gasp-inducing than the last. The result: not only one of the best young adult books I've read so far, but one of the best books, period.

As a follow-up to Jellicoe Road, Melina has switched genres with the high fantasy epic, Finnikin of the Rock (Candlewick, Feb. 2010), already the recipient of massive accolades in Australia. Stay tuned for a review of Finnikin here on the Highway!

1) Finnikin of the Rock is fantasy. What challenges did you find in making the transition from contemporary to fantasy? Which do you prefer?

I think the biggest challenge in writing fantasy is creating a world that doesn’t exist. I had a taste of that with Jellicoe because most of that setting was fictitious except for the Sydney scenes. When I write fantasy I have to study a landscape that fascinates me and go with it. I wrote some of Finnikin in the Dordogne area of France and in Umbria Italy.

The other big challenge may sound crazy and simple, but I find it very difficult writing descriptive language and bringing scenes to life which don’t incorporate dialogue and character as much. Describing the natural world without clichés and writing a fight scene in a medieval type prison or a sword fights and battles is very difficult for me, so there’s a whole lot of constructing and playing with sound devices.

I don’t prefer one to the other (contemporary v fantasy) but I did love having a break between writing Finnikin and the sequel I’m writing at the moment. In between is Tom Mackee in The Piper’s Son. He’s a long way from Lumatere and Finnikin.

2) You've won numerous awards, including the Printz, which is essentially the Pultizer of the young adult genre. What was your reaction when you heard you'd won?

Well, I didn’t know I was in the running for it. I found out that some of the other writers had suspicions they could be on the list, but my editor didn’t want to stress me out so she didn’t tell me the committee had rung her for a few extra copies of the novel. That’s an indication that they’re serious. It was 100% surprise. It was one of the few times that I thought I imagined something so I had to wait until 1.45 in the morning to watch it live on the net. I love that it happened for Jellicoe. It’s a hard novel to sell to the world and I remember being so proud when I finished writing it.

3) One of the most striking parts of Jellicoe Road is its layered narrative; the book follows multiple storylines, and at first, the reader is uncertain how they relate. Did you intertwine separate stories, or did they grow together organically?

No, the original story I wrote years ago was set only in the present. There were no cadets and no townies and no territory war. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a Griggs or Santangelo or Webb. Most of the original story was set in the boarding school where Taylor and Webb were best friends and they were the ones involved in the car accident on the first page. There was a different type of war where all the houses were enemies and Taylor was the negotiator for her house and Santangelo was the negotiator for his. Griggs was the wild outsider aligned to no one and Webb was the one who kept things together between them all. And then he disappears.

But the problem with that story line was that something seemed to be missing and I figured it was Taylor’s great need to trust. I had to work out what her problem was and I realized it all came down to her mother deserting her and then Griggs betraying her. It wasn’t until years later when I read Holes by Louis Sachar that I realized I could juggle around a dual storyline and it just took off from there.

(Hearing that just amazed me, because I've always though of Jellicoe Road as a richer, more mature version of Holes. –KH)

4) What elements in your books reflect your own life? Do you have a Jellicoe Road?

I think the search for identity comes through in all my novels, whether it’s Finnikin and Evanjalin, exiled from their homeland, trying to work out who they are, or Frankie Spinelli trying to work out who she is without her past friends and mother defining her. I’m a daughter and granddaughter of migrants. When a parent isn’t born in your country, identity is going to play a big part in your life regardless of how much you love it.

Setting tends to reflect my own life. In writing my contemporary urban novels (Alibrandi, Francesca and The Piper’s Son) I always set them in the same area. It’s a part of Sydney I know well. I love when a city becomes another character in a novel. I use real street names and real parks and real landmarks. I remember reading Nick and Norah when I was in New York and I was so excited because I was staying a block up from Veselka’s. There’s a strange type of ownership to a story when the place is real.

5) The romances in both Jellicoe Road and your earlier novel, Saving Francesca, absolutely killed me—talk about slow-smoldering. What are some of your favorite literary pairings?

Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe (Anne of Green Gables)
Eugenides and Irene (Attolia series)
Ann and Captain Wentworth (Persuasion)

6) Why YA?

When I write, I don’t think of audience except for myself. I’m my audience. But in saying that I love that young people read my books. I didn’t realize how important it was to me until adults went around saying that Jellicoe was too complex for young people. It’s not complex at all. You just can’t skim read it.

I’ve said before that there is such a lack of pretension in novels written about young people and I love the community of writers and publishers. I’m not sure where The Piper’s Son will fit in, because it’s a sequel to Francesca, but they’re older and it’s about the next generation as well. But I think my YA readership is aged between 13 and 80 something so I have the generations well covered.

7) Do you believe your publishing journey has been more challenging as an Australian author?

I think all publishing journeys are challenging. Of course it takes long to have recognition overseas. I received a bit of notice with Francesca in the US and have a bit more with Jellicoe, and there is a small fan base in Germany, Italy and Indonesia, but my readership is very different here in Australia. My first novel, published seventeen years ago (Looking for Aibrandi) was studied by senior school students as part of the school curriculum and became an award winning film so I’ve always had a profile in Australia.

8) What are some of your favorite books, YA and otherwise? What about when you were a teen?

I do love the Attolia series (If I don’t get an ARC of Conspiracy of Kings I will have to kill someone) and I am a fan of Jane Austen. I think she’s underrated by the critics, despite the popularity of her books and she’s criticised for only concentrating on the middle class, but who says a writer has to cover all the classes. Austen wrote the world she knew and I think few others really explored the primogeniture laws as well as she did. When I was a teen I loved Paul Zindell books. I’m currently reading an Australian novel called Raw Blue which is blowing me away with great authentic dialogue and strong characterisation.

9) What's the best advice you can offer fledgling authors?

Someone told me they went on a two day writing course and the instructor said that on the next day she’d give them the secret to being a writer and they all waited with great anticipation and the advice was write! I totally agree. I think so many people talk about writing but are too scared to do any writing. There’s nothing more frightening than putting the first line on the page. You think it will never sound as good as when it lived in your brain, but I still believe you have to write every day.

The other part is obvious. You can’t give up after one rejection or even two or three or four. But at the same time, you do have to listen to what people are saying to you. You also can’t be shattered after negative feedback. Writers deal with it every day. I’ve read pretty awful things about my work, especially Jellicoe. The whole world doesn’t have to love what you do.

10) Can you tell us anything about your fifth book, The Piper's Son, which will be released in the U.S. in early 2011 (Australia in 2010)?

Well, The Piper’s Son is what I call the kind of sequel to Francesca. It’s five years on when they are almost 22 years old and it’s Tom Mackee’s story rather than Francesca’s. Frankie, though, is very important and Tara Finke is Tom’s love interest. I had fun writing the Tom/Tara love story but it was difficult because they’ve been estranged for two years and she’s in Timor so the whole relationship has to be conducted through email, phone calls and texts messages. Their letters to each other were really hard to write because they had to be funny, smart, angry, sexy and fragile at the same time and I wanted the reader to be in a constant state of yearning for both of them.

It’s also the story of Tom’s family coming back together after a tragedy two years prior. It was really important for me to give the next generation a story, even more than I did with Mia and Robert in Saving Francesca and Hannah and the Brigadier in Jellicoe. I think the relationship between Georgie, Tom’s single pregnant Aunt, and her ex partner Sam is very powerful and flawed and beautiful at the same time. Strangely, I think it’s my most romantic work.

It broke me a bit inside writing about the Mackee family, but the wonderful part is that each time someone’s read the manuscript they’ve told me how sad they are that Tom and his world aren’t in their lives anymore. That they want it to go beyond the last page and read about them forever. I think it’s a wonderful compliment for a writer to receive.

Thank you so much, Melina!
~Kirsten

Interview with Melina Marchetta, Printz-Winning Author of Jellicoe Road

YA Highway contributor Kody Keplinger joins us from Teens Writing for Teens, a spectacular blog crafted by talented teenage writers. For more about Kody, visit our Who We Are page.

So, I’m a query junkie. In a strange way, now that I have an agent, I miss writing queries. They were fun (to me at least), and I still love working with them. I love everything about the query-process because it truly did wonders for me.

So, to help out my fellow writers, I’ve composed a list of 7 No-Nos in querying. Some come from personal experience. Some come from the experiences of others. Some are just things I’ve picked up from industry blogs and such. Either way, they might help you out a bit, so take a look.

Sin #1: Mass Querying

I won’t lie. This has worked for some, but I know a number of people who have found mass querying (i.e. querying EVERYONE in the biz at once) to be their down fall. When you send out 50 queries at once, you run the risk of having 50 agents reject you. That’s 50 agents you can’t resubmit to. That’s 50 agents who could have LOVED your work if you’d just taken the time to get advice along the way.

Better solution: Send out like 5 or 10 letters. Once you get some feedback on a few of those, take the advice and work on the book or query letter a bit. Then try 5 or so more agents. This gives you a chance to improve as you go rather than messing up your chances with 50 agents at the same time. I know it’s hard to be patient, but slow and steady wins the race, baby!

Sin #2: Sending Out Your First Draft Query

Okay, I’m going to tell you the truth, and it might hurt. Chances are, the first draft of your query letter kind of sucks. There are a few miracle exceptions out there, but I, for one, most certainly wasn’t in that category. My first draft was horrible.

So, once you have a draft you feel decent about, I’d suggest showing it to people. Getting feedback. Revise, revise, revise!!! Remember, this letter is an agent’s first impression of you. You might have an amazing book, but if your letter doesn’t convey this, you’re kind of screwed. So get tons of advice on the letter first, and THEN send it out. Make sure it is pretty and shiny! I think mine went through 5 major rewrites before I started mailing it off.

Sin #3: Querying Unfinished Work

I’ve faced this temptation in the past. You have a pretty query letter and you’re almost done with the book, and you just want to test the waters, right? See if you get responses. No biggie…
BAD IDEA!

I know it is tempting, but trust me, this is a no-no. First of all, agents don’t particularly like it when you query them for a work-in-progress. Second, doing this will not give you a chance to fix your book up! What if the agent wants the full manuscript right from the query? Well, then you have to scramble to finish your novel in a timely manner, leaving no time to revise. Eek!
It’s tempting, but don’t do it. Just don’t.

Sin #4: Querying At Random

Do your research, kids. Don’t just send letters to agents without studying them a bit. Now, this is not to say you need to have read every book they’ve ever represented. That’s not necessary, but check their genres. Check their submission requirements. Know what they want and make a good impression.

I found my agent randomly. She was on a list of agents a friend of mine sent me. I knew very little about her, but I googled. Good reputation—check. Represents YA—check. Takes email queries—check. Then I looked up her submission requirements. Hey! Look there! No sample pages. Good thing I took a look, huh? You want the agent to know you know what you’re doing. Don’t send them at random, kids. Bad idea.

Sin #5: Singing Your Own Praises

While it might help to compare your book to others in your genre to give an agent a sense of your style, don’t tell them that you’re book is “the next Catcher in the Rye.” Don’t pull the, “Oh, I’m awesome and will make you tons of money!!” trick. It fails. I promise. Agents hear that stuff all the time, and it isn’t often that it is true. Confidence is good, but singing your own praises kind of makes you sound like a jerk. You aren’t a jerk, I assume, so don’t give off that impression. You want the agent to think, “Oh, this person has a cool book and seems really cool.” Not, “Oh, this person is arrogant. No thanks.”

Think about what you say in queries. Another good reason to REVISE them!

Sin #6: Lack of Personalization

Every agent I’ve ever read about has stated that they don’t even look at queries that aren’t personalized. This means, don’t write “Dear Agent” or “To Whom It May Concern” on your query. This makes the agent think you’ve committed Sin #1 (see above) in conjunction with Sin #4 (also above.) Agents want to know you did research. The best way to demonstrate this is by personalizing your query letter. Get their name—and spell it correctly! This will be a big help, I assure you.

Sin #7: Asking for Recommendations

I know this process is tough. I know it can get really tiring. I know that when you have agented friends, you just wish they could help you out. But don’t ask them to recommend you to their agent. Please, please don’t.

I’ve had 2 people do this to me. It is incredibly uncomfortable for the writer, and I promise that it probably won’t help you anyway. If an agent ASKS their client for recommendations, then that’s one thing, but I, personally, don’t feel comfortable just saying, “Oh, hey, I have a friend….” It isn’t very professional. And asking a writer—even if they are your friend—is very insensitive.

This also applies in smaller situations. If you have a query out with your friend’s agent, don’t ask your friend to “put in a good word.” It not only makes your writer friend feel used, but it also comes off a bit desperate. You can get an amazing agent on your own! You don’t need to rely on others because you can do it! It takes time, I know, but knowing you did it on your own merit is worth the stress in the end.

No one recommended me.

And, hey, even if they did, it still takes work. A good friend of mine got a request from an agent through a fellow author who had recommended them. This girl didn’t ASK for a recommendation, but was, of course, flattered. Even with that recommendation, though, she had to go through the submission process for her material. It wasn’t an automatic contract. It just doesn’t work that way. You still need to put in the effort, even if someone does decide to recommend you.


I think that is all, kiddos. The Seven Deadly Sins of querying. Hope you found this a tad bit helpful!

--Kody Keplinger

The Seven Deadly Sins of Querying

The Hot and The Overdone: Suzie Townsend Reveals All

Welcome to our first Road Trip Wednesday!

Road Trip Wednesday is a "Blog Carnival": starting today, YA Highway's contributors will post a weekly writing or reading-related question and answer it in on our own blogs. We'll link to the answers here, so you can hop from destination to destination (hence the road trip theme) and get everybody's unique take on the topic.

You're more than welcome to participate! Just answer the question on your own blog, and leave a link to it in the comments. We'll definitely check it out.

So for our inaugural topic, we went for the question most frequently asked of writers...

• Kaitlin Ward: "My mind is a strange place. You just never know what you might find there..."

• Amanda Hannah: "Instead of thinking about what did happen, I start to think about what could happen..."

• Kristin Miller: "Ideas come surprisingly, at inopportune times, unbidden, as whispers, as shouts..."

• Michelle Shusterman: "When you write a story, your characters talk. A lot. And if you want to figure them and their tale out, you’ve got to talk back..."

• Kirsten Hubbard: "We're always pulling from that vast database in our heads, filled with books and movies and memories..."

• Kristin Briana Otts: "I dig them up in my backyard and hear them whispered on the wind..."

Road Trip Wednesday #1: Ideas!

Young Adult novels have been steadily gaining in popularity (and of course, we couldn't be more thrilled). Lately, several well known titles have made headlines with film options being bought. A few YA novels optioned for film:

Rule 3: Don't stare at invisible fairies.

Rule 2: Don't speak to invisible fairies.

Rule 1: Don't ever attract their attention.


Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

On September 16th it was announced that the film rights had been purchased by Universal Studios.



The story of life and everything that came after.*


Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.

Scheduled for release on December 11, 2009 starring Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon, and Saoirse Ronan. Trailer available here.



An ordinary girl, Laurel, thrust into a magical world with a centuries-old battle between fairies and trolls.

Wings by Aprilynne Pike

Film right have been optioned by Disney, with rumors of Miley Cyrus starring as Laurel.



Grace is inexplicably drawn to a yellow-eyed wolf that roams the woods behind her house. Then during the summer she meets a yellow-eyed boy, Sam, who is all too familiar. But can Sam learn the secret to staying human?

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

On September 30th, Stiefvater announced on her blog that the film rights had been acquired by Unique Features (associated with Warner Brothers).



In Mary's world, there are simple truths.
The Sisterhood always knows best.
The Guardians will protect and serve.
The Unconsecrated will never relent.
And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village....

Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

On May 7th, the film rights were picked up by Seven Star Pictures.


Clary's journey into a world of vampires, werewolves, Shadowhunters, and the truth of her own family history.

The film rights for The Mortal Instruments series were optioned by Unique Features in August.



A televised fight to the death for selected children ages 12-18 from each district in Panem.

Scheduled for release in 2011.*



A young boy discovers he's the descendant of a Greek god and finds himself in the middle of a battle between the gods.


Scheduled for release February 12, 2010.



Following an accident, Mia only has one choice to make, but it's the most difficult one.

Scheduled for release in 2011.


What do you think about all of the YA books being optioned for films?

Are there ones you're dying to see make it to the big screen?

*One of several taglines for movie.
*www.hungergamestrilogy.com an unofficial fansite

YA Books Coming to the Big Screen

Beta reading and why you should do it