The Telltale Laptop

It's sitting there.

I can feel it looking at me. Accusing me of the darkest misdeeds, the foulest of sins. Staring through me with its dead, soulless eyes, the light on the edge pulsing rhythmically...

ONoff.

ONoff.

ONoff.

DEAR GOD, WILL I LIVE THROUGH THE MADNESS I'VE CREATED BY CLOSING THIS LAPTOP?????

Stories vs. "It's a Great Story"

I've been in the middle of a massive edit on my YA novel, which involves reshaping, building things out, finding better motivations...

...and, of course, cutting things. Loads of things. Big chunks of text that I look at longingly because DAMMIT so much of that was GOOD WRITING!

Some of those things are particularly strange for me this time, though, because this book is based heavily on events I went through, on things that, well, happened.

The Liebster Award Blog Hop

One of the best reasons to go to writing conferences: you meet AWESOME people there, people like the truly spectacular Julie Artz. I'm excited to say she nominated me for a sort of "writer's chain letter" blog tour where we get to learn about how we all work (or fail to). With no further ado, let me tell YOU about ME...and the people that come out of my head: 

Can you share one example of how you came up with the idea for a story? 
Well usually I come up with just the tiniest hint of a character. All my stories spin from characters.

One book (that's in a drawer right now) started with "what about a really dorky social misfit who's actually quietly picking off the people she got too obsessed with and who failed to live up to her idea of their 'friendship?'" Teasing out the two girls who wound up as the central characters in the story, and what they loved and hated, and how they got along, and what was actually going to HAPPEN was much more involved, but the story IDEA sort of came to me like a character logline.

Sometimes. Other times I go through something funny or sad or awful in life and I say "some day, when I'm ready, THIS is becoming a book."

What Did You Call Me? On Labels.

A while back, I wrote a piece called "Reasons Women Aren't Funny." The day after it came out, I was sitting in a coffee shop with a writing friend, and because I'm a compulsive spaz and/or JUST LIKE EVERY WRITER EVER, tracking its progress.

"You should write something else about feminism," she said. "I could maybe help you get it into Slate."

Slate was fantastic, of course. I'd burn as many bras as Slate wanted me to burn if it meant they'd take my stuff. But still, what my friend was saying didn't make much sense to me.

"Yeah, but I'm no expert on feminism. I don't even think of myself that way."

"Seriously, Jilly? Your name is basically synonymous with feminism right now."

Really? Because of one humor piece?

The Other Side of the Coin: Listening

Thanks in large part to a piece I published on ELLE last week--about speaking up on hard topics but also listening to them in the right way--I've been thinking a lot about listening, lately.

There's a reason I chose writing as my medium, forever ago: it allows me to be certain that I'm expressing things the way I want to, and that I then get to be "heard" from a safe distance.

"Safe" in this context means "anywhere further away than in person, at which range I have to react appropriately in real time."

I'm really well-adjusted that way.