Cover Love: With a Name Like Love

I'm finally sitting down to read Tess Hilmo's WITH A NAME LIKE LOVE.

It's taken me way too long to get to this book. I'm utterly ashamed.

But I wanted to pause before I start reading and give some cover love, because having this book in my hot little hands made me appreciate the beauty of the cover even more.

Isn't it lovely? I love the colors so much. The clouds are cool. The RV in the background gives us a hint as to the book's era. Just all around great middle grade cover.

Have you read a book with a pretty cover lately?

The Problem with Pontification

Being a writer is a curse, I tell you.

Half the published books I read, I can't completely enjoy BECAUSE I ANALYZE THEM.

You see, we writers have little rules-of-thumb and tips-for-cleaner-writing floating around in our heads at all times. Which is usually great, because they help us become better writers (in theory). The problem is, they nag even when we're reading. Which is annoying. They make us want to take perfectly good published books and go at them with our red pens flourished.

For instance, I've been reading a book that is filled with creative tags.

I'm sure the writer thought she was very clever using lots and lots of big words to describe how her characters were saying certain things. Words like "pontificated" and "enthused" were thrown around freely, as if they could improve the dialog.

But all they made me want to do was throw the book across the room. 

They distracted me. I realized after I finished a page that I had no idea what the characters had been talking about, because I'd been too busy counting the author's creative alternatives to "said."

Please put me out of my misery!

If you've ever received a critique from me and you are a creative-tag-user, you probably listened to my spiel about simple tags (only "said" and "cried" allowed, and maybe "shouted"). My argument always is, if your dialog is strong, you don't need fancy tags.

I know some people choose to take my advice and some don't. Which is totally fine. It's one of those rules we throw around in the writing community, but outside the writing community? Let's face it, normal readers probably DON'T CARE.

But "pontificate?"

Please don't use "pontificate." For the love of all things tidy, if your character is pontificating, please show us they're pontificating instead of telling us the sentence they just said is a pontification. This is all I ask!

*weeps hysterically*

How about you? Do you use creative tags? Do you have other writing rules ping-ponging in your head that make you a fault-finding reader?

Photo credit: Andalusia from morguefile.com 

Wordless Wednesday: Best Way to Spend a Sick Day

10,000 Hours

At dinner, the dashingly handsome sidekick told me about a conversation he'd had with a co-worker about a concept in a book.

The co-worker explained that, in order to master something, you have to work at it diligently for 10,000 hours.

This can apply to anything in life: teaching, dance, golf, cleaning the bathtub and ... WRITING, of course!

This is so applicable to writers, I almost jumped out of my skin with excitement. Because it puts all our hard work in perspective -- why we can't just pick up a pen and write the next, great international best seller (or most of us can't, anyway ... and even if we do, it doesn't mean we mastered writing, it just means we stumbled upon some crazy good luck).

I tried to figure out how long I'd been writing. I really have no idea, of course, but I've been consistent about it over the last five/six years. And of course there were all the books I wrote as a teenager (*cough*), which have to count for something (even if they were crap). I don't have those hours logged, but in high school I regularly stayed home from hanging out with my friends so I could write. (I know. Geek alert.)

To get a handle on this, if you write every single day of the year for two hours a day, you will log your 10,000th hour in about thirteen years. THIRTEEN YEARS!

This illustrates perfectly that, even with talent, there's no replacement for butt-in-chair, good, hard work.

A quick Google search led me to this article on the National Geographic website, which describes Malcolm Gladwell's book OUTLIERS, the source of this theory. There's a really cool visual on that page, too, with graphs, which you won't want to miss. Believe me. (Plus, some tips on cheating the rule!)

So the next time you're feeling discouraged, keep plugging away, because every hour you write brings you that much closer to MASTERY.

Have you mastered something? How many hours do you estimate you've spent writing?

Wordless Wednesday: Books & Boys*

*my son and nephew poring over a Wimpy Kid book

Super Bowl Wrap Up (Mostly Commercials)

My Niners lost, which was a tragedy.

Especially because we didn't get to see them lose. We had DVRed the game and the dashingly handsome sidekick had scheduled a half hour of cushion time at the end. Which usually would have been enough. However, with the lights fiasco, we missed the last four minutes. *sobs uncontrollably*

But at least we got to see all the COMMERCIALS. Here are my faves:

• Leon Sandcastle made me laugh out loud 

• Budweiser Clydesdale made me cry (real tears)

• And I wonder how many future YA novels will be inspired by the Audi commercial 

Honorable Mentions go to:

• M & Ms

• And every librarian's favorite

Did you watch the Super Bowl? Which commercial did you like best? ... And which do you prefer, cookie or cream? (I'm definitely a cream girl.)