Senioritis and Panic Problems

I’ve realize that the difference between “writing friends” and “critique partners” is that the latter of the two are the ones  you call or email at four in the morning in a panic because you think your word count is off. Of course I’m not using this example because it’s actually HAPPENED or anything. No, really. Okay, so yes, I’ve sent weepy emails… on multiple occasions.

The closer I get to the end of my first draft the more regularly these panicked emails are happening. It’s been a strange feeling. I’ve been calling it “senioritis’ because it’s the closest thing I can relate it to. Almost being done is overwhelming, and I’m so ready to BE done that I’m fighting the urge to just skip through things to get there. Of course that’s the wrong choice. It’s always the wrong choice, but it’s SO tempting. Instead I just panic and email my friends at odd hours, then five minutes after I send it I feel like an idiot.

For your viewing pleasure I present you my my two biggest panic topics:

• GENRE!!

I’ve been worrying about genre since day one, but the closer I get to the querying process, the more worried I become. I feel like I’m going through the five stages of grief.

Denial—“I don’t even NEED a genre listing. I mean, they don’t REALLY expect me label something like this, right? It’s really more like a SUGGESTION.”

Anger—“This is stupid!! Agents shouldn’t make us pigeonhole ourselves like this! It isn’t fair!”

Bargaining—“What if I just list it as Speculative Fiction? That would work right? It’s super vague, so I won’t be pigeonholing myself but they’ll also get their stupid genre listing.”

Depression—“Who am I kidding? It doesn’t even matter if I put a genre on it or not. They’ll hate it anyway.”

Acceptance—“Fine. I’ll play their game. I’ll just tweek the genre a little bit for every agent I query.”

I still hate genre listings!!

• WORD COUNT!!

This is another one that I’ve been struggling with. Every writer has their own problem with word count. Some have a hard time building length and others spew words like (deleted expletive) from (deleted expletive). I’m the second type. So while there was once a time when I worried about meeting my 100k word goal I’m now sitting at about 136k with another 10k-20k left in me. Needless to say I’m panicking a little. Mostly because everyone has told me that teen books that go over 100k are harder to get signed.

Granted, I know my final draft will be smaller than my first because I’ll be going through and deleting the random word salad that I drop sometimes, but there’s no way I’m going to get this sucker down to 100k… and that horrifies me. I’m also scared that I’ll have to split it in two, which I don’t want to do. I’ve been comforting myself by looking up the word counts of other successful teen books. While The Hunger games came in at about 99k, Divergent was around 105k, Twilight was about 130k and The Mortal Instruments books get really hefty, getting up closer to the 150k range. I know this doesn’t mean that I’ll be able to do the same thing with my debut novel, but it keep the tears at bay. For now.

This has been a bit different from my previous entries since it’s really just been me rambling, but I’m probably going to be doing more of these (i.e. me yammering on about my progress). I’d love to hear what you guys think of the change, though!

Leave a comment to let me know!

Book Review: Divergent, by Veronica Roth

SPOILER FREE SECTION

 I know I’m late to the party, but I just finished Divergent, by Veronica Roth. I guess I like to be fashionably late, and by ‘fashionably late’ I mean, ‘I’m always the last person to read anything. Seriously.” The plus side to that is that all three books are out and I don’t have to suffer the way others may have while they waited for the next release. You see? I’m not lazy, I’m a strategist.

            As far as a spoiler-free review goes, I would give this book four out of five stars (based solely on personal taste) because while it wasn’t perfect or exceptionally deep, it was a really fun read. It dealt with the corrupting effects of power and with the multifaceted nature of human emotions. These aren’t new subject (particularly the corruption bit), but they’re handled in a way that felt fresh.

            It took me a few chapters to really get into the book. I found the five factions (Amity, Erudite, Candor, Abnegation, and Dauntless) hard to keep up with at first. I spent a lot of time flipping back pages to the explanations for each one so I knew what was going on. Eventually I got the hang of it though. The only two that continued to give me trouble were Candor and Erudite. For whatever reason I kept getting them mixed up. Probably because they’re both generally disliked.

            The main character, Beatrice, was a difficult character for me to identify with at first. I didn’t know what sort of person she was, and so at times she said or did things that made me dislike her. In the end, though, I appreciated the experience, because I feel like I got to know her as she got to know herself. When I was shocked by a cruel thought, she was shocked right along with me. It was an interesting character design, and many of the other characters followed suit. While there were plenty of villains who were just pure villains, most of the ‘good guys’ were never so straight forward. Lines between friends were blurred and the heroes sometimes did villainous things. It was refreshing.

 

            SPOILERS SECTION

             My first shock came almost immediately. It had nothing to do with the book, only with my preconceived notion of the book. I had been under the impression that the meat of the book would be her having to choose a faction and then finding out that she was divergent. I thought that her being divergent was going to be THE big secret. I could not have been more wrong.

 

Chapter one: There’s gonna be a test!

Chapter two: Test time! You divergent!

 

             I was really surprised. The plus side of this was that I no longer had any expectations for the book. I had no idea what to expect, and how often do we really get that opportunity. I don’t even think I read the back of the book, now that I think about it. It was like the longest surprise party of my life.

            Going back to what I said about having a hard time connecting with Beatrice, I had a hard time caring much about what was happening for the first half of the book. I found myself more interested in what was going down between Four and Eric. I wanted to know why the fence was locked from the outside. I didn’t really feel a connection to the main character and felt like I was sort of stuck following her around for a while. Then, suddenly, I found myself caring. I’m not sure when it happened, which may be a sign of good writing. One minute I didn’t care, the next I can’t wait to hear more. I’m still curious about that fence though. I hope there’s more to it in the next book. :3

            Let’s talk about romance. I’m not a fan of romance, but I found myself really liking Four and Beatrice as a couple. Of course, the moment Veronica Roth introduced him as a character I knew they would end up together, so I guess, really, this could have gone in the non-spoiler section. I’m not usually bothered by that because we can usually tell who the couple will be. What I did appreciate, though was the pacing of their romance. It wasn’t love at first sight. They didn’t share heated stares all the time. And on the flip side, they didn’t hate each other’s guts. They were very neutral toward each other. Another thing I liked about their romance was that they were drawn to each other’s strength. I appreciate that. I think it’s a good message. Neither of them coddled the other. They recognized that they could stand on their own, and I think that’s a great message to girls who are inundated with images of women being helpless without their love interest. That also meant that I understood why they liked each other. So often, a romance seems to be there only because the author wishes it. Here, I feel like the characters had decided to be together on their own.

            Now some more bad stuff. And I use “bad” very loosely here. Let’s talk about character death. I bawled my eyes out when her mother died. I liked her as a character and I was so sad to see her go, especially in such a heroic way. I was moved and when she then had to turn around and shoot her friend, I felt the overwhelming trauma she had felt. That being said, I felt absolutely nothing when her father died. Not because I’m heartless, I assure you, but because I think it was just handled poorly. Not only was it too soon after her mother’s major death, but it was like a sad parody of it. He died in a similar fashion but without the gusto of the first. I was still on an emotional high from the last death, so this one seemed very lackluster. I also think that she lost a good opportunity with him. They had such high tensions between them and they were never really resolved. Sure, he treated her like a peer, but they never sorted their relationship out. I think she could have kept him, let their relationship develop more, and then if she really wanted to kill him, I would have cared in the second book.

            The only other major complain I have is about the hard drive they steal from the computer at the end. I appreciate that she did more than just shoot the computer screen like a 90s action movie, but I just don’t buy the idea that the program was ONLY kept on that ONE hard drive. Something like that would be backed up for days! I mean, no one would keep it in one place. I had a hard time accepting that as a plot point. Who knows, though, maybe they’ll realize in the next book that it wasn’t the only place.

           

            All that being said, I still really enjoyed the book. I read for seven hours straight, and I know that many of my friends did something similar. The narrative was accessible and the writing style was very user friendly.  I would definitely classify this book as Action, though, because there are many fight scenes and dare-devil scenes. They may have seemed a little repetitive to me, but if you like that sort of thing then you’ll be swimming in gold.

 

RATING:        4/5