This week's question... or challenge, if you will: You're re-reading one of your favs when someone asks the dreaded question: "What's that book about?" Give us your best off-the-cuff blurb of any book, any genre, and have your readers try to guess the title in the comments!

Uh so yeah it's about this chick who gets hit on by some guy at a fair and then his ex is jealous so she puts a curse on her that turns her into an old woman and so then the old woman has to find a wizard to remove the curse but it's complicated because part of the curse is that she can't tell anyone she's cursed.


Will be totally obvious to some, mysterious to others! XD Comments are screened for now.

Edit: It's Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones! Congrats to those who figured it out. :D

My post on Paper Hangover today is on how to finish your book. Hope it proves useful!

Today's question is: Are you a plotter or a pantser?

I'm kind of both. For some reason I'm really bad at writing down outlines. I've managed to outline the first acts of some of my books, but then I totally abandon it and just write.

However, I do plot mentally. A huge part of my writing process is daydreaming, where I listen to music and do some mindless activity (such as commuting or data entry). In this way I come up with I'd say half to a majority of my scenes, and then I write until I get to them. So the in-between parts are usually made up while I write.

I also make a point of knowing my book's ending, or at least having a general idea of it, early on. Because I didn't do that with my first book, and I ended up agonizing for days about how to finish it. Not cool!

Okay, that was kind of jumbled. To sum up: I don't outline, I plan a lot mentally, I make some stuff up as I go, and I have an end point in mind. How do YOU do it, lovely readers?

OMG, I love this week's question at Road Trip Wednesday. What is the strangest/weirdest thing you've ever researched? I love research, even when I purport to hate it. I have a tag devoted to it, where I have sometimes listed specifics of the weird-ass things I research.

Put all together, a major eyebrow-raising theme is violence. I swear, taken out of context, my research trail makes me look like a psychopath.

How hard do you have to hit someone on the head to break their skull? (not very)

What's a poison that's odorless, tasteless, and mimics a natural death? (arsenic)

What's it feel like to be strangled? (it, uh, hurts)

What's the best way to entice a tiger to eat a human? (have them appear wounded, weak, sick)

How long will it take someone to recover, without the aid of modern medicine, after they get their legs cut off? (a few months)

Most violent book I've read for the sake of research: Children of the Troubles: Our Lives in the Crossfire of Northern Ireland, edited by Laurel Holliday.

Strangest thing I myself have done:
[me] *lies down on floor* Can you pretend to kick me?
[John] wha
[me] Just pretend you're wanting to kick the crap out of me, but don't like, actually kick me hard.
[John] *complies*
[me] Thanks, that answers my question! *back to writing*

All this looks mighty suspicious coming from someone who calls herself a pacifist. Just saying.

ZOMG look at all the books they're giving away on YA Highway. Happy two year anniversary, ladies!

Herp derp, forgot to link to my latest Paper Hangover post, which is about language construction. Enjoy!

Today's Road Trip Wednesday post asks: Who in your life has most inspired your writing?

That would be my mommy! I am so blessed to have a mother who's supportive of and excited about my writing. Before I knew how to read and write, but still liked coming up with stories, I'd tell them to her and she would write the words down so I could illustrate. So my mom was my first collab author. ;) She's by far my biggest fan, and although she insists she tells me if anything's wrong with my work, there never IS anything in her eyes. She's still trying to convince me to finish and submit a novel I started writing when I was 13. I keep telling her I don't have any interest in it right now, but she just thinks it's that good.

Everyone needs beta readers who will give them thorough and honest criticism, but it's also really nice to have someone who gets giddy to read my stuff and then gushes about it after. She even includes specifics so I know she's not just humoring me. I love my mom. <3


So, my other business today: I've more or less finished the first draft of my latest project. I say "more or less" because it's not really long enough to be a book right now, and there's stuff I want to add, but the bones are there anyway. I'm super excited about this book because it's a... drumroll please... CONTEMPORARY! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, whereas I have only completed fantasy novels until this point, I have made a daring genre shift.

Care for a summary? ( You got it. )

The more entertaining Better Than It Sounds summary I've given it is: A goth girl reads her dead father's diary and can't decide whether it makes her hate him more or less than she did before.

So yeah. Stay tuned for many revision complaints, I'm sure.

This week, Paper Hangover wants to know the five things you can't live without when writing/revising. We writers area a high-maintenance bunch, let's face it.

1. COFFEE! I haven't read anyone else's blog post yet, but I'm guessing this one will show up on many if not most of them. In my case I don't think it's actually the caffeine that's helping me write, since tea and cola (both of which I also enjoy) don't make any noticeable difference. Coffee must be a liquid security blanket or something.

2. A computer. I can't write longhand. My hand cramps up after like two minutes. It's a good thing I didn't live in an age before typewriters, eh?

3. A nutritious breakfast. Back when I was working on my first book, I observed that I wrote more productively on days when I had oatmeal for breakfast instead of some refined flour cereal. Whole grains fuel your brain!

4. Another one I'm guessing is popular: music. I don't have to listen to music while I write -- though I often do -- but I absolutely need music to zone out to when I'm planning. If there were no such thing as music, would I still be a storyteller? I honestly can't say, but I wouldn't want to risk it. :O If I were deaf I'd probably play some kind of heavy bass. Mmm delicious rhythm.

5. My moral support, receiver of rambling, idea bouncer offer, historian, fact checker, front-line beta reader, and boyfriend, John. <3 I'd probably have had ten nervous breakdowns and started writing a series about the secret life of fluorescent lights if it weren't for him.

So, what are your five writing dependencies? Add your link at the post!

Oh. My god. I never imagined myself writing historical fiction, since the level of research involved is like *whimper*. Well, the story I'm working on now, although it's contemporary, takes place partly in the mid-80s. Let me tell you Internet, for someone who was an egg/fetus/infant in the mid 80s, that counts as historical.

Some of the irritatingly tiny details about the years 1984 and 1985 I've had to try and hunt down...

If a person needed a visa to travel to South Korea.
If there was a McDonalds in Belfast, or an A&W restaurant in a specific small Washington town.
The exchange rate between British pounds and American dollars.
Whether a suicidal teenager would be prescribed antidepressants. (Since that's usually a big fat no these days.)
If school-sponsored pen pal programs existed in Northern Ireland and South Korea. (Surprisingly, this was the easiest to find out.)
About how much a twelve-pack of beer cost.
What day of the week various dates were.

In the past when I've heard about historical authors trying to research bits like this, my reaction was often, "Pfft, who cares." NOW I CARE. ;_; Somebody out there is going to know that May 18, 1984 was a Friday, goddamnit, and they will tell everyone I was WRONG.

My post today at Paper Hangover is a delightfully messy way to make maps.