As We Come to the End...

It's been a difficult week. I'm not going to tell you that all that's happened has left me unbothered or that I've somehow managed to let it not affect me personally, because that hasn't been the case at all. I started book blogging years ago, before it was established the way it is today, and I started because I loved books. I loved reading them, talking about them, analyzing them, and sharing my opinions with others. I wanted to talk about relatively unknown books, ones that were great, ones I loved, but that nobody else seemed to be reading. I wanted to share them with others. I thought that once I were published - if I were published - the rules would change for me in regards to reviewing and I fully intended to give up reviewing when/if that happened. 

I don't think I realized that the reviews I wrote now and the opinions I shared now, pre-agented, pre-publication, could hurt me later. To be perfectly honest when I jumped into book blogging I had no idea that anyone in the publishing industry would ever look at what I wrote. I was a reader and they were authors/agents/editors/publicists. We existed in different worlds that I didn't think would collide.

But they did. As it turns out, the world really is just as small as they say and the thought that I might have hurt someone by reviewing their book doesn't sit well with me. Part of what I love about running a YA book blog is the opportunity to support the community and the industry so much more vocally than I could by just being a reader. I want to continue doing this.

However, I also want to write. And I don't want my future relationships with those in the publishing industry to be sullied by things I may have said as an unpublished aspiring author, even if those things were said with the best of intentions. I love writing reviews. I love blogging. I love being a part of this world.

But I can't approach things from only the reader's perspective anymore. I want to be more than that. And I can't be a writer when it suits me and "just a reader" when it suits me -- it doesn't work and I know, especially now, how that could be hurting others. How it could end up hurting me.

So this week has been terrible and difficult and tear-inducing, but I have to make some changes. It's a personal decision about me and where I am in my writing life. 

• I've set my Goodreads account to private and deleted most of the friends I had there. I've also gotten rid of any Goodreads reviews (but not ratings). I mostly use the site for my own personal reading record anyway and don't really see a need to keep that public.
• I'm shutting the blog down. I haven't decided yet whether this will mean closing it altogether or just shutting off comments and not posting anymore while keeping up everything I've already done. 
• I'm starting a new blog, with a more personal and writing focus. I won't be reviewing books anymore and it won't be a book blog, but I will be talking about some of the books that I love, doing the more personal-style reading posts, and talking about writing.

I have loved running this blog and hope you'll follow me to my next blogging venture at the & Story blog. (It's not much yet, I know.)

Thank you for reading. This will be my last post on Ten Cent Notes.

Hiatus, Explained

Okay, for those who don't quite understand what's going on with the blog/why I'm on hiatus, here are some links for you. The author's original post (in which I'm the "asker" she talks about), her follow-up, and another post with some interesting comments. To sum up: the general consensus here seems to be that it falls somewhere between "maybe not the best idea" and "a really stupid move" for an author to write book reviews online, or in fact share negative opinions on books they've read at all. Yes, even aspiring writers. I'm not going to get into the reasons but if you want to read those posts they cover it pretty well.

(via weheartit)

During the last QueryChat on Twitter, I asked about book blogs - should an aspiring writer include them in the query letter, maybe in the signature? I wasn't surprised when one agent said she wouldn't work with a blogger who had dissed one of her client's books. I was surprised to find out that dissing could be something as seemingly innocent as a review or stating publicly (in places like Twitter, Goodreads, or a blog) that I didn't like a book.

This makes sense in a way. It also makes sense that, as Stacia Kane pointed out in her posts, an author who has received a negative review from another writer wouldn't want to help or blurb this person's book. And I can understand holding a grudge - I don't like it, wish it weren't something we have to deal with. But I can definitely understand it, knowing how deeply personal writing is and that often it's impossible to fully separate ourselves from that writing, from the book. A rejection of a novel must feel, no matter how well-meaning the reviewer means it, like a rejection of the writer.

Writing negative reviews, as an author or aspiring author, is taking a risk. Rating books on Goodreads is taking a risk. We don't always know how these risks might come back to haunt us - or not - until later on.

I see a world of difference, though, between a negative review where the reviewer honestly didn't enjoy the book and a positive review of a book that includes some negative elements. In writing a thorough review of a book, even one I love and want everyone to read, I often include the less-than-spectacular elements. It's not a negative review, but it might not be 100% glowy either. Now I wonder if it's risky, wrong, if I'm stepping on toes by even writing those reviews, by talking about books I find less than perfect and amazing. I've always believed that it is possible to be honest and genuine (not only in reviews, but also in discussing YA lit as a whole, in talking with others, in being) while also being positive and supportive. Am I wrong in thinking this?

I don't want to choose between being a public reader and pursuing writing. Being told that I must either give up the only foothold I currently have in the YA community (this blog) or give up my dream of someday joining the ranks of the authors whose books I love reading is... honestly, unfair is the word that springs to mind though I'm aware how that makes me sound like a child. But it is unfair. And even more confusing. There is a part of me that thinks I should close the blog (or at least abandon it), another part that sees nothing wrong in what I'm doing, and another part that keeps coming up with compromises, some of which I quite like. Mostly though, I feel like no answer is going to be the perfect right one.

I'm still working on figuring it out.

This Is A Hiatus

A good preface to this post (only if you're wanting more information and points of view) is a Twitter #querychat where I asked about aspiring authors posting book reviews online, and also this post.

I keep setting out to write this post as if I know what I'm going to say. I think I'm hoping that if I just start typing the answer will flow out of my fingertips without me actually having to give it any thought.

It doesn't work like that though, does it? And the thing is, I have been thinking about it. Almost nonstop for the past thirty or so hours and a handful of times before that. I've talked to those that I trust, made a pros vs. cons list, tried to go with my gut when all of that failed.

I've thought of the things I do want. An agent, an editor, a book deal. A writing career. Readers. I want to be a writer. I also want to be a reader though. I want to talk about the books I've read, have open discussions with fellow readers, write reviews. Run this blog. Mostly though, again, I want to be a writer.

And then I though of the things I don't want. For someone to look at my reviews, my opinions, and decide they don't want to work with me based on that. To sabotage the possibility of a future writing career by talking honestly and sometimes critically about the books I've read. I don't want to be the stubborn, stupid girl who doesn't listen and pays the price for it later on. I don't want to hurt the feelings of writers - people working at the very thing I hope to work at one day.


And I wonder if - with all the things I want and all the things I don't want - I can keep going with this blog. If I can continue to thoughtfully and critically review the books I read knowing that this might impact my professional life somewhere down the line.

I don't know. That's the answer I keep swinging back around to: I. Don't. Know. Because while it does seem silly to stop something I love so much (namely, reviewing YA books) for something that realistically may never happen (me having a writing career), it also seems foolish to keep going if it's going to negatively affect the writing career that I want so badly to have.

I just don't know. I'm trying to figure it out, weigh my options, make a decision. That decision may be to stop reviewing. It might be just to stop using a numbered rating system or only review books I know I can wholeheartedly recommend. It might be to take the blog down or take it in a different direction altogether.

I really don't know. For now - the next couple days or weeks - the blog is on hiatus.

What I Write

(via weheartit)

I write contemporary/realistic YA fiction.

Under that umbrella, I write books about girls and and family and secrets and sadness and happiness and love and hope and home and drinking coffee and riding in cars and standing on the outside of a party. I write about things falling apart and things clicking into place. I probably use the word "and" more than I should.

I try to write about spies.

Someday hopefully I'll write about robots. Spaceships.

Mostly I write about small places instead of big ones and I don't know if this is because I know small places better or I'm more comfortable with them of if I just like writing about them. Maybe all three.

And as much as I write about family (which is always a lot), my stories aren't about family, but about one particular relationship in a family. Sisters, cousins, siblings. Writing about an extended family as a whole would be complicated and messy and as much as I'd love to do it I'd want the family to be insanely messy and interesting and complicated and quite possibly crazy. But I can't ever come up with a family that beats my own real-life family in all of those categories and I probably won't ever be able to.

The secrets I write about aren't earth-shattering, but, as with most of my writing, a bit quieter. They're those secrets my characters are keeping from each other or from themselves, the ones that are buried deep not because they'd cause trouble but because they'd hurt the people these characters love and want to protect.

My stories are often sad, but they always end hopeful if not altogether happy.

If you're a writer of some sort -- what do you write? And as a reader, what sort of stories do you enjoy reading?

In My Mailbox - Writing

BOOKS.

Gifts: My mom got me these two writing books -- Donald Maass' Writing the Breakout Novel is hands-down the best writing book I've come across and I'm thrilled to finally have the workbook. And, of course, I've been recommended to read Stephen King's On Writing about a million times by fellow writing people.

Bought: It's true that I did once tell myself I would never read a Gone With the Wind sequel, but... this isn't a sequel. So it's okay, right? RIGHT? This is Rhett's story and it sounds potentially great.

Bookswap: Published by Bloomsbury, The Kid Table, which sounds most excellent despite me hearing some not-so-great things about it. I love that it's about a group of cousins, love the title, and love that the cover was featured on That Cover Girl (where I originally heard about it).

Also! T.H. Mafi is having a contest.

Review - Other Words for Love

OTHER WORDS FOR LOVE
Lorraine Zago Rosenthal

Though this book's summary makes it sound like a story of love and heartbreak, it's really more complicated than that. Set in the late 1980s, Other Words for Love is a coming-of-age story in the truest sense of the word and it follows Ariadne, a teenage girl who seems to be an observer in her own life. Intimidated by her beautiful, brilliant, and bold best friend and overshadowed by her married older sister who suffers from post-partum depression, Ari tries to be the best daughter she can for her mother, who expects her to make up for her older sister's mistake of getting pregnant and married as a teenager. Feeling guilty about her jealousies and the lustful crush she has on her sister's husband, Ari continually tries to uphold other's expectations of her, often at her own expense, a habit she only breaks (and then only somewhat) when she meets the Ellis family and falls for Blake, a guy who seems as trapped in his family as she is in hers.

This book surprised me in a lot of ways and I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it. There was much more sexual content than I was expecting and a lot of it felt unnecessary, especially as the romantic relationship didn't seem to be the primary focus of the novel. Additionally, having the story set in the 80s gives the whole novel a distant, almost blurry effect, as if it were a Polaroid snapshot. The feeling of distance works well in this slow-paced book but the time period is strange as there doesn't seem to be a lot of historical significance to anchor the reader and it's relatively recent, though not recent enough to be remembered by many YA readers. As a general rule I think that in order for a story to be told in a nontraditional way or set in a nontraditional place or time there should be a specific reason for it; the decision should be demanded by the story. In this case I didn't see that and felt that the story could have been told just as well and possibly better if it were set in the present day.

However, in spite of this distance there's a certain enchantment to Ari's story and Ari herself. She's a well-written, multi-dimensional protagonist that, though quiet and unassuming, completely pulls the reader in because she's just that real. The people in her world (her family and few friends) are also well-developed and realistic, from her overbearing mother to her hot-and-cold older sister, and the things Ari goes through at the hands of those she loves are both heart-wrenching and completely believable. Ari is in an odd place in her family of being taken for granted while at the same time expected to exceed and fulfill her mother's aspirations of her. Likewise in her friendships she's also in a precarious place as her best friend (who for a long time has been her only friend) has no trouble ditching her when other, more interesting people come around but expects Ari to always be around for her and gets jealous when she begins to develop other friendships. The paradoxes of Ari's situations are, to me, incredibly interesting and realistic, which gives weight to the story.

Honestly, at times this book feels tedious, especially when it comes to Ari and Blake's ill-fated relationship. Though the writing is good and had its moments of beauty, it isn't enough to carry through some of the more boring scenes and since the book is so slow-paced I sometimes found myself wishing there were more action. But then I got to the end. And though there was some boring bits in between, the ending of this book really pulls the whole thing together, tying the story up nicely and in the best possible way as some of the storylines that didn't even seem important are pulled to the forefront, making the entire novel better and ending it in both an incredibly realistic and hopeful way for this character who definitely deserves happiness. The slow pace and lack of excitement may put off some readers, but stick with it and you might find a story to love.

A Blog Week About Blogging

ETA: I've gotten some super-great suggestions for Stories & Screens week (keep them coming!) and hate to rely solely on my own blogging experience when writing these posts. I'd like to also know your experiences and opinions, so if you're a fellow blogger I'd love if you'd take the time to answer some questions.

When my ALA/bloggers post got such a good response I started to think that there are probably other issues and topics related to book blogging that might benefit from being brought to light and talked about. Because of this and the fact that I just love doing discussion posts (seriously.) I've decided to do a theme week dedicated to the issues, topics, and questions surrounding book blogging (and YA book blogging in particular).

In order for this to be a success I need your input. I want to know what topics you'd like to talk about and see addressed. What questions do you have about book blogging? Do you want to see posts about BEA, ARCs, follower counts, reviews, blogger-author relationships, ethics or etiquette of book blogging? Let me know.

Let me know also if you'd like to offer a guest post on a particular subject. I'm not sure how many guest posts I'll be able to have in a week, but we can always work something out even if it doesn't happen during the theme week.

So fill out the form, yes? Please?