It means it's Friday! So here are this week's fragments.
1) It's Autism Awareness Month! (Note the change in banner.)
And there's a book giveaway hop over at the I Am A Reader, Not A Writer blog.
Naturally, I am all over this. Erin at Quitting My Day Job is participating as well. You'll be able to see a full list of all the participating bloggers at the previous link. What book am I giving away? Not sure yet.
2) This makes me laugh. So much.
3) Script Frenzy starts today. I am not going to attempt it this year, and I'll tell you why.
2009 (by myself): 6 pages. Finals happened.
2010 (collaborated with Kassy): 25 pages. Finals happened.
So yeah. I can sense a pattern here. Any of you participating?
Erin at Quitting My Day Job asked in today's post what our high school experience was like and why we read/write YA books.
I went to high school in a relatively small town. Not the smallest by far, but small enough where people tend to remember your name. It was small enough that most everybody understood why it was hilarious that I screamed for five minutes at one of my best friends for a Senior Send-Off skit (I was the quiet one in school; she was the outspoken one).
Summarizing. Freshman year was alright, sophomore year was just OK, junior year was THE BEST EVER ZOMIGOSH!!!1one528@+42*!!~#%!!!one (you will never see me do this again, I promise), and senior year wasn't terrible.
My best friends were, and are, awesome. By the end of senior year, we had like a four-girl-band type of thing going. We even have this AMAZING graduating picture that Kirstin and I call Smartest to Dumbest. Kassy and Steph call it Least Common Sense to Most Common Sense. We're all very mean. :D I don't actually have a copy, so let me doodle it for you. Wow, this post is media-heavy.
Kirstin: Valedictorian, National Honors Society sash thing, Honors cords
Me: National Honors Society sash thing, Honors cords
Steph: Honors cords
Kassy: GRADUATED!
So yeah. But we actually spent most of high school writing this amazing series of short stories called EPSE. It's like if high school were an epic and had 13 main characters. Yeah, we didn't know what the heck we were doing.
I read YA because, well, it's fun to read. When I'm reading more age-appropriate books, I don't feel compelled to binge read them. I've never felt that sort of immediacy with an "adult" book, even Lord of the Rings, which I adore. And with YA, you can talk about a LOT of things. You know what I mean.
Why I write YA.
1) Force of habit. I've always written it. It's like my default setting. :D
2) I'd rather write about high school drama than college drama. (Sometimes I just sit in class and think, "I hate this place, I hate this place, I hate this place, I hate this place...") At least high school drama has hilarity potential.
3) Teenagers with their mood swings, dramatics, shenanigans, and hormones make for doggone entertaining characters. Real Life Example: At the beginning of senior year, my friend Kirstin had a crush on this boy she called the "Sun God". Or something like that. Well, she wasn't wearing makeup one day, and she thought she saw him pass by our cafeteria table. What did she do? She dove under the table and took Kassy with her. It was hilarious.
4) This.
"So, when you and Radar said you were going out to 'get slushies', was that your secret code for getting together and making out?"
Hydro/Radar is my OTP. (Yep. I ship characters I helped create.)
Too exhausted for a proper post. Here's something from the hundred theme challenge. The prompt was Sixth Sense.
--
“Do you have any recurring dreams?”
Evan Lin just wanted to know why Lily Hale painted him in one of her original pieces for their sixth grade art class. In the painting, Evan and Lily were piercing a giant shadow with two glowing swords. Rays of light ran through the shadow like cracks.
In real life, they didn’t really talk that much at all. Usually when they passed each other in the hallway, they just smiled and nodded. When he asked her why she painted him, she just told him to walk with her after school.
And that led to her completely off-the-wall comment about dreams.
Evan replied, “I can never remember my dreams in the first place.” He looked at Lily from the corner of his eye. “Is that what it is?” He frowned and crossed his arms. “…You’ve been dreaming about me?”
Lily shook her head. “It’s not like that. I’ve only had a one dream with you. And I don’t know why you were in it because real life people always stay out of my head at night.”
Evan scratched the side of his head. “What do you mean by that?”
Lily sighed and ran her hands through her curly brown hair. “It’s like when I go to sleep and start dreaming, it’s not quite a dream. It’s like I enter a whole different world that’s just as real as this one. And I know that in dreams, everything seems real until you wake up. But even after I wake up, it’s still incredibly… real. For lack of a better word.” She took a deep breath. “So that’s what makes me think it’s a different dimension.”
“You know you sound crazy, right?” Evan laughed in attempts to lighten the mood.
Lily smiled and nodded. “Yeah, but I think you’re gonna keep listening because you really want to know where you came into play.”
Evan had to admit she was right. “That’s true. So what was that thing we were killing? Was it like that world’s version of Sauron or something?”
Lily shrugged. “I dunno. Like you, it’s a recent development.” She paused to think, then added slowly, “But I don’t think we were killing it.”
Evan stopped on the sidewalk and grabbed Lily’s shoulder. “We had swords. Glowing swords. We were stabbing a huge shadow. How is that not killing a bad guy?” He waved his right hand side to side. “You know what, nevermind. It’s just a dream you had.” He continued walking, but Lily just stood there.
