Saturday, January 29, 2011

YA Lit Labels. Anyone else confused????

Can someone please define a quantifiable difference between "YA" and "Teen" Literature???? -- For a writer (like, ahem, yours truly) to write a book for older teens (15+) through college age and then try to market it as "YA" seems weird.

The YA demographic seems way too wide, in my opinion. 11 year olds and 19 year olds do NOT (and sometimes should not) read the same books!!!!

Would love to hear comments. Thanks.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

"...stories help us to start believing the things we already know. " -Steven James

Steven James is one of my very favorite nonfiction writers. Don't get me wrong -- he writes engaging, sometimes frighteningly good fiction, too; but it's his nonfiction titles like, Sailing Between the Stars and Story that have really touched my heart and mind. These books inspire me to not only take my writing up a notch, but to take my LIFE up a notch. To live more poetically, you might say.

Steven has a great post up on his blog, Musings and Meanderings about story power... a quote from it rests above. Please go read Steven's post and, if you're not already a fan or follower of his, I encourage you to become so.

Because fiction mirrors truth.

And story matters.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Fiction Matters!!!!

Following a link from one of my favorite author's tweets, I ended up being inspired. So a big thank you goes out to the incomparable Tosca Lee (Havah, the Story of Eve, Demon: a memoir, etc.) for setting me up to get back to work on my editing.

Author Brad Meltzer has a terrific post up about why fiction matters. What a lovely call to action after all the time I've wasted this morning NOT writing. I have a story that must be attended to, so that is all for today. Go read Brad's post and then....

...go read a book or something. And make sure it's fiction, of course. Because Fiction Mirrors Truth.