...but not really, because I'm moving this blog to my new website! It's GORGEOUS and perfect and at amyzhangwrites.com/blog. But I won't be adding any new posts to A Story of a Dreaming, so... *pause for nostalgia*

*long sigh*

I was looking through my old posts the other day and I can't wrap my head around how much has changed. Thanks for sticking around, guys. I hope you'll visit the new site, but if not, it has been SO MUCH fun and I've so appreciated all of your comments and encouragement. *sniffles*

All right, come on. GROUP HUG.

Still dreaming, just at a new URL. <3

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This morning, my mom asked me why I hadn't updated my blog in a while, to which I responded, "YOU READ MY BLOG?!" But okay, she was right. I haven't updated in a while because ALL THE THINGS have been happening. Like:

My ARCs arrived! And I hugged them! And I took a billion and a half pictures of them! And I took selfies with them! And I cuddled them while I slept acted like a totally normal human being with them!

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Okay, let's face it--a lot of books and movies don't accurately address teenage life. Like, I, for one, have never hit my head on a chandelier while drunk-dancing, which unfortunately means that I haven't been caught by a conveniently-placed Heath Ledger, either (womp). So let's examine a few of the misconceptions, shall we?

• Bullying isn't as bad as it used to be.
• *DISCLAIMER: My concept of "used to be" is drawn almost exclusively from nineties chick flicks.* Bullying is different, sure. It's needling. In a lot of cases, it's subtle. Lots of passive-aggressiveness, gossping behind backs, snide remarks followed by "Ehmahgawd, I'm just kidding! Lighten up!" Honestly? I've seen two primary kinds of bullying:
• First: within cliques. You fall in with a group of people, and you let them step all over you and talk down to you. So that they'll like you. So that you'll have someone to sit by at lunch. You swallow their crap, you wake up the next morning and do it all over again, and eventually, you forget how to stand up for yourself. Or why you should.
• Second: there are certain kids that a grade or an entire school will mark as "okay" to bully. Maybe they're not good in social situations. Maybe they don't shower as often as everyone else. Maybe the committed some stupid faux pas in middle school and people still won't let go of it. Whatever the reason, these kids get bullied. Their classmates bully them, and the worst part is, they don't recognize it as bullying it. Once, I confronted one of my friends about her stupid comments to a kid in band, and she replied, "Oh, come on. Look at him. He brings it all upon himself." Hell, even the teachers do it.
• Example: there was this story a while ago about a group of kids that voted someone unpopular onto a dance court, and how the school/community wouldn't stand for it. It was a beautiful story, but why was that news? Because it's rare. At my school, they've voted someone unpopular onto basically every dance they've held since my freshman year, and our administration barely even addresses it. It's horrible and disgusting and people don't think twice about playing a prank like that, because your part is so small. One click on the computer next to someone's name. You laugh. They don't. You don't ever think of yourself as the antagonist in a story. We are not villains. We are not heroes. We are hormonal. Sometimes we make mistakes, and sometimes we don't. 

• Cliques aren't as bad as they used to be.
• I have a friend who puts it like this: "They tell us not to label, but we can't help it. We put people in categories--it's biological. We label and then everyone tells us that labeling is bad, so we lie and say that cliques don't exist." To be clear, it isn't like Mean Girls. It isn't like there are the cool Asians and the nerds and the jocks, and no one intermingles. But there are definitely friend groups, and since my school is a very athletic-oriented one, most of them were formed around the teams you were a part of. And there's definitely a social hierarchy.
• But then again, I've heard from friends at bigger schools that say that the social structures aren't as rigid as they used to be. It definitely depends on who you ask.

• Teens are lazy.
• Here is a typical day for me:
• 4:30 a.m. Wake up, write (this has been more sporadic this year, because damn, my bed is comfortable. And you could argue that most teens don't get up to meet a deadline. But a lot of sports teams have morning practices, and some classes are held during zero period. There's not a lot of sleeping in).
• 6:30 a.m. Start getting ready for school: last minute homework, morning routine, etc (this also varies. Like, at the beginning of this year, my morning routine was pretty standard: makeup, hair, and so on. I gave myself a break on No Makeup Mondays and Sweatpants Fridays. Now it's No Makeup Everyday and I'm lucky if I wear real pants twice a week).
• 7:45 a.m. Get to school, go to the coffee shop, etc.
• 7: 55 a.m. - 3:10 p.m. School. There might be a study hall in there if you're lucky.
• 3: 10 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. After-schools. Sports practices (though during tennis season, I rarely get home before seven. On game days, you get home anywhere between 8:30 and 11:30 or later. Games can be on Mondays, Tuesdays, or Thursdays. Except varsity football and boys' basketball, which have games on Fridays). When your sport isn't in season, you might be in the weight room, editing the newspaper, attending open gym, or doing some other extracurricular.
• ALTERNATE: 4:00 p.m. - 9 p.m. (ish): this seems to be a popular work slot for most teens.
• Whenever you get home, you finish everything else that needs to get done. I play piano, and I try to get in an hour or two of practice a day, but that's not always possible. We have two-three hours of Calculus homework 2-3 times a week. Three reading assignments for reading per reading. Spanish vocab tests, economics packets, and a lot of online work for science classes--all in all, anywhere from fifteen minutes to six hours of homework per night. Keep in mind that the six hours of homework could fall on a night on which we don't get home until ten or eleven.
• So you see why it's frustrating when the protagonists in YA literature have no homework to worry about and don't seem to care about anything but their love interests? Jesus. Obviously I'd rather be thinking about Benedict Cumberbatch's cheekbones than conic parametric equations, but I also don't want to fail Calc. So drop some stuff, you suggest. Don't take on more than you can chew. You don't need to be in so many extracurriculars. BS. You do whatever you think it'll take to get into college. You snatch as many leadership positions as you can. You take every AP course even though you don't need most of them for the career you have in mind. And you claw your way along while trying to keep your class rank, in order to get scholarships.

• Teens procrastinate.
• Okay, so the psychologist Roy Baumeister once did this experiment during which he had two groups of students, right? He put one group of students in front of an oven full of baking cookies and gave them a bowl of radishes, saying the could eat as many radishes as they wanted but weren’t allowed to touch the cookies, and left them alone. The second group was allowed to eat as many cookies as they wanted. After thirty minutes, he gave both groups the same math problem. The group that got to eat cookies solved the problem way faster because the first group had already used up their store of mental energy. Willpower is a real thing, guys. After four years with a schedule like the one outlined above, you don’t have a ton of it. You replenish it with a good night of sleep and a good meal, right? But have to skip dinner at least a few times a week and get maybe five hours of sleep. My sleep deck is the goddamn Titanic. And it isn’t just me, it isn’t just because of writing—most of my friends are stressed. Like. I’m sitting here trying to remember if there’s one of us who hasn’t burst into tears at some point during this last year.
• Another thing: all of our teachers, coaches, advisors, etc. tell us to prioritize. So we do. But prioritizing means that something has to come first, right? And everything else has to come after that, and that makes people mad. So prioritize really means this: Put my subject first. My sport. My club. And we’re in a stage of our lives where we really need to be liked, and when a teacher/coach/advisor is unhappy, we take it a lot harder than I think most people realize.

• Teens are shallow.
• So, I have a love affair with Buzzfeed. But this article pissed me off. At lunch on Friday, my friends and I talked about the gender gap, internalized misogyny, The Handmaid's Tale, and the tendency to fulfill expectations whether we want to or not. After school, we went out for coffee and talked about statutory rape, abortion, tried to figure out our political opinions, and acted out scenes from Frozen.

• And a personal peeve: High school dances are no longer a thing.
• A lot of schools have done away with them due to low attendance, but the low attendance is caused primarily by rules about physical contact. For example, a few of our local schools saw a sharp decline in dance attendance after forbidding grinding. People don't buy tickets because the high school dance becomes more of a middle school formal, wherein you stand in your stupid little gender-segregated circles and jump around in time to the music. Less attendance = fewer tickets sold = less money to hire a DJ and buy decorations = crappy music and crappy decorations = an even small attendance for the next dance. So if schools do away with dances, that's usually why, not because we're too busy snapchatting/Facebooking/Tweeting/etc. But on the other hand, schools that do allow grinding tend to have pretty high attendance numbers. So are high school dances dying out? Should they? Meh.
• Also: Jeez, CNN. Lighten up on the nostalgia. If you want, you can come to my school and relive your prom in our cafeteria, where on dance nights you walk in and smack into an almost-literal wall of heat slide around on the very literally sweat-soaked floors.

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Today is March 9th. Which means that there are:

6 months
184 days
4, 416 hours
264,960 seconds

...until FALLING INTO PLACE comes out and my head explodes. Wow. Like, I see the numbers and I have a vague concept that months/days/hours/seconds are divisions of time or something, but I can't actually wrap my head around the idea that this thing I made in my head is going to be...bound? On shelves? Available for purchase? In SIX MONTHS?!

I am terrified and excited and happy beyond words, and to celebrate, I'm going to do a love list, which is a non-exhaustive list of the things you love about a manuscript (inspired by my wonderful CP Mark O'Brien, who was inspired KK Hendin, who was inspired by Rachel, who was inspired by Stephanie Perkins). 

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MY COVER! IT'S MY COVER! ALSO A GIVEAWAY! AND MY COVER! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

http://www.yahighway.com/2014/02/cover-reveal-and-giveaway-falling-into.html?m=1

HUGE thanks to the wonderful people at YA Highway, who not only hosted my cover reveal, but managed to put it together in, like, two freaking hours. If that's not a superpower, I don't know what is. And also to the amazing, AMAZING team at Greenwillow who designed this breathtaking cover. Can we just sit here for a minute and marvel at how amazeballs they are? Because HOLY CRAP THAT COVER.

AND ALSO ginormous thanks to my agent, who played fairy godmother/therapist/shoulder-to-whine-on/superhero/buttsaver this week (and every other week).

NOW GO LOOK AT THAT COVER. GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO!!!!!!!!
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AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH IT'S SO PRETTY I'M GONNA DIE!!!!!

*deep breaths*

Seriously, though. I love everything about it. I love the physics equations in the background, even though I've spent the last few weeks staring at them and realizing that I forgot everything I learned in physics. I love the car falling and the road and the words. I love my name (DO YOU SEE MY NAME IN THE CORNER THERE BECAUSE OH MY GOD MY NAME IS ON A BOOK). And I love love love love LOVE the hand, because it's THE IMAGINARY FRIEND'S HAND!!!! AHHHHHHHH!!!!

Okay. Okay. So it's actually kind of funny that I'm having my reveal today, because it's exactly one day after the anniversary of my book. That's right. FALLING INTO PLACE sold on February 28, 2013. And in another one hundred and ninety-three days (that's ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY-THREE, 19FREAKING3) days, you'll be able to go to your bookstore and, like, TOUCH IT. AND HOLD IT. AND READ IT.

*brain implodes*

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HELLOOOO, INTERNET.

Yes, it's true--I am actually alive. I am actually blogging. I am (hopefully) here to stay this time. Because I've missed you, Internet.

(I just realized that this is my first post of 2014. *stares at calendar* *smacks self*)

Anyway, I'm going to try really super incredibly terribly hard to get back on a blogging schedule, but for today, I thought I'd compile a handy-dandy Here's-What-Amy-Has-Been-Doing-Instead-of-Blogging guide (also known as shameless self-promotion, but shhhhhhh).

I've done some new interviews and guest posts!

- Sometimes Books Don't Sell
- Interview at Brooke Reviews
- Interview at Rachel Russell Books

I have purchase links!

- Barnes & Noble
- Amazon
- Book Depository
- HarperCollins
- Books-A-Million

I have stuff for you to like/add/follow!

- Facebook page
- Goodreads

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Are we absolutely sure that there were 365 days in 2013? Maybe we skipped a month? I demand a recount. I don't want this year to end.

It has been a CRAZY AMAZING year. I can't believe how much has changed since this time last year. I have new interests! I have new friends! I have a friggin' BOOK DEAL with my dream publisher!!! And so first off, I want to thank all of the people without whom my year would have been very, very different: my editor and the rest the team at Greenwillow, my AMAZING agent, my critique partners, friends, family. Thank you, THANK YOU for indulging all of my writing neuroses (and all other neuroses).

The highlight of my year was probably that "Call me, I have good news" text I got from my agent back in February, but some other ones include meeting my agent and editor without looking too idiotic, seeing my cover and bursting into tears in the middle of class (it is SO BEAUTIFUL. I absolutely CANNOT WAIT to share it with you guys), deciding to go to BEA with one of my critique partners, joining the Class of 2K14 and getting to know so many wonderful ladies, and the crabcakes from G&M Restaurant and Lounge in Baltimore.

I think the best book I read this year has to be Wonder by R.J. Palacio. It's a fantastic example of so many things--characterization, POV, voice. It made me laugh and cry and stay up until 3:00 a.m, and I don't regret a minute of it. I also loved Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick, Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor, Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson, and Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen.

As for 2014...okay, I admit it--I'm terrified. Some of the most fundamental aspects of my life are going to change next year. Most likely, I'll move halfway across the country. I'll be on my own for the first time in my life. I'll have a book on shelves. But here's the thing--my life changes every year. It changes every day. And change is always terrifying, but I guess all you can do is roll out of bed and put on pants anyway, right? (Ew, pants.)

And lastly, some resolutions: I didn't complete any manuscripts this year, but I started a few and I'm almost done with one. For 2014, I hope to write and revise three novels: MEMENTO MORI, THIS IS WHERE THE WORLD ENDS, and THE STORYWEAVER. I hope to learn more about publicity and marketing. I hope to keep up this blog. I hope to not go completely insane.

Bring it on, 2014.

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On my wall, there is a tree filled with quotes. Last lines. Final words. Famous phrases. Love letters that weren't meant to be pasted all over the Internet. At the tip of one of the branches, the letters are scattered and bent to shape the vein-branches, but if you were to pull them together, they would spell out this: In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.

Robert Frost. Quoted too often, right? Cliche (side note: isn't that kind of sad? We erode words. We say them too often and they start to lose meaning: it goes on. It goes on. Itgoesonitgoesonitgoeson). But here's the thing: sometimes you don't want it to. You get another rejection letter. You get food poisoning from the peppermint frappuccino at your favorite coffee shop. Some dude predicts another apocalypse right after you finish disassembling your zombie shelter, and all you really want is for the world to stop spinning for a minute, two, so you can crumple in a dramatic heap and take a nap.

Disappointment--we try to ignore it. You know what? It's okay to cry over your zombie shelter. It's okay to sit among your missile-proof pieces and wallow and dread the idea of putting them back together again. Have some hot chocolate. Reread your comfort-food book (you know the one). Sit in that heap and take a nap. A long one.

Because here's the thing: disappointment is not a road block. It's not a dead end. It isn't even a speed bump, really. It happens and then it ends, and you hope for other things. You wake up from your nap and the world is still spinning.

It goes on.

(I mean, unless you're a zombie).

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Most of all, I’m thankful that though my parents often refused to buy me candy or clothes or movies, they never refused to buy me books.

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I touched one of the pies tonight. I ate some crumble topping, and it was fantastic. 

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As of 1:14 A.M. October 21st, I have finished my first round of revisions. I have met my first deadline, and it feels unbelievable.

Revising this book was the hardest thing I've ever done. Drafting it had been so simple--the story told itself, poured through my fingertips as if I were only a vessel for it. It is, as my publisher says, a "jigsaw puzzle," and while drafting, the pieces had fallen into place all by themselves, and I had expected revising it to be just as easily.

It didn't, of course. Because the book is told in a non-linear fashion, I couldn't move a scene without changing two scenes before it and three scenes that followed. I would try to make subtle revisions, a nudge here, a shift there, and everything would fall apart, and I would sit curled on my floor with my laptop cast among the circle of charts and revision plans and the pages of my edit letter, thinking about all that could go wrong, all that was going wrong. I thought about all that homework piling up and all of that college stuff I hadn't touched yet. I thought about the thirty, forty, fifty chapters of my book I had yet to edit. I thought about all of the chapters from contests that I had yet to critique and all those manuscripts from my internship that I had yet to read.

Basically, I sat there and whimpered. Cried. Sent panicky, all-caps emails to just about everyone--critique partners, non-writer friends, teachers, my agent. Cried some more, thinking about marketing and publicity and how I didn't know how to do any of it. A bit more, imagining all of the bad reviews I was sure to get. And then some more, because there was so much to do, and I would have more time to do if I would stop bawling.

Today, of all days, I should have had a breakdown. I had noticed a pattern--they usually came during the ungodly hours of Monday morning, surprise, start off the week strong! Today (well, yesterday, really) was the last day before my deadline, and I wasn't finished with my final read-through. It was a perfect opportunity to eat chocolate and cry, and I was ready to, when I was suddenly struck by what an incredible thing it was for me to be stressed at all.

I was stressing over turning in my manuscript on time to my dream publisher. My editor brought some of my favorite books, books that I've grown up with, into the world--she had made it possible for me to fall in love with these characters and peek into their distant lands and take them with me, between covers designed by people who were now working on my cover, copyedited by people who were combing my manuscript for mistakes, loved by a team that was now taking an enormous risk by loving my book as well.

It's two in the morning. I am exhausted, sleep-deprived, barely aware of what I'm typing, and I am the happiest person in the world.

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...to encourage her to revise, she'll eat it.

She'll eat it slowly because there is an art to eating chocolate bars. She'll try to revise while holding the chocolate bar in one hand, but realize that she can't revise without proper music.

If you let an author look for proper music, she'll decide that her normal revising playlist simply isn't good enough, and she will use up a good half an hour trying to develop a new one before finding the perfect one on 8tracks.

If you give an author a perfect playlist, she'll sit at her desk and gush about how ABSOLUTELY PERFECT it is to anyone who will listen (IT IS ABSOLUTELY PERFECT). Eventually, she'll try to revise, but she'll drop her chocolate bar and leave an awful little smear on her manuscript. So she'll go to the bathroom closet in search of Clorox wipes, and find a spider instead.

If you let an author find a spider, she will scream. Loudly.

Once she settles down, she'll want to kill the spider. It'll jump and disappear off to some secret spider lair in her house to plan her later demise, and she'll scream a bit more before she remembers that she's supposed to be revising. But she'll realize that she clearly can't revise while holding a chocolate bar in one hand, so she'll open up an internet browser and look for a Halloween costume.

If you let an author loose on the internet to look for a Halloween costume, she will certainly find herself looking at books instead within five minutes, and eventually she'll go downstairs in search of her credit card.

If you give an author a credit card, she will buy ALL THE BOOKS.

If you let an author buy ALL THE BOOKS, she'll soon realize that she has blown way, WAY too much money in one night, and freak out. But she really wants the books...and that reminds her that she has her own book to finish revising.

But she still hasn't finished her chocolate bar.

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Last Sunday, my local newspaper wrote a story about me...and my writing...and stuff. Those of you who have followed my blog for a while know that I used to be very, very secretive about writing. I never talked about it. So this week was WEIRD and awkward and generally hard for me, but on the bright side, I FINALLY get to write this post! I've always wanted to. :)

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The fabulous Lori M. Lee tagged me for this one! I'm going to cheat a bit and tell you about both my about-to-be-published book and my WIP, because ERMAHGERD, guys, I'm so excited for both of them. Okay? Okay.

(Side note: those of you who have added my book on Goodreads, THANK YOU, but that isn't the official Goodreads page. My publisher didn't make it. And whoever did mixed me up with another author, so...yeah. Not me. I'll let you guys know when there's a book to add--it'll be around the time that I get to share my title with all of you!)

As for MEMENTO....I don't know I'm just really bad with actors and stuff okay LEAVE ME ALONE

MEMENTO MORI is about a girl with half an immune system, a boy with half of his muscles, a cat named Schrödinger, and the road trip they take to solve the paradox of life.

MEMENTO: Hmmm....I'm not sure. My CP says it reminds him a bit of THE FAULT IN OUR STARS, except, you know, far less AMAZEBALLS.

Lori's answer, which I'm seconding. 

In MEMENTO, Mori has written letters to the dead for as long as she can remember, and the book is actually her last notebook of letters. Among the addressees: Maurice Sendak, Gregory Peck, Nannerl Mozart, Georgiana Cavendish, and, of course, Schrödinger. I really love playing around with narration (have you noticed?)

I'm tagging fellow Greenwillow author Chessie Zappia, whose book ASK AGAIN LATER sounds totally amazefrackingballs and Mark O'Brien, because he's working on this new MS that I want everyone to be excited about. Take it away, guys!

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It seems like all of my blog posts are prefaced by "ERMAHGERD SORRY I HAZ NOT POSTED IN FOREVER" now.

But yes, I'm back. Hopefully?

So why the hiatus this time? A lot has been happening. We've decided on a title for my BOOK (I still get this stupid little grin on my face every time I say it), so hopefully I can share it with you soon! With revisions forthcoming and my spectacular talent for procrastination, the end of summer has devolved into a mad rush of holy crap holy crap I don't even know where to start working and ugly crying.

Oh, yeah, and I forgot how to write.

I think, as writers, we tend to view a deal as a climax. It's when the prince defeats the dragon and demonstrates a fetish for unconscious women, and all that's left is the happily ever after. Which, on the other side of the climax, is kind of a horrifying idea, because it means that we've already peaked.

It's ridiculous, of course. And I told myself so as I sat, day after day, in front of a manuscript that, all of a sudden, was impossible to write. And not just the manuscript--blog posts, interviews, essays. I couldn't WORDS.

I tried taking a break. I watched all three seasons of Downton Abbey in a weekend and got to level fifty in Candy Crush Saga and devoted, like, twelve hours a day to Pinterest. And then I sat down and tried to write again and the words just wouldn't come.

So I'm (hopefully) on the tail end of the worst writing schlump of my life, and I'm still terrified that I've depleted my quota of reasonable writing ability, terrified that I've peaked, terrified that I will never write anything decent again, terrified about what this says about me as a writer, terrified about what this means about the future. I'm terrified that the book I've already written won't sell and everyone will hate it and I'll have to dye my hair purple and get a new nose and become an alpaca farmer to escape the shame.

I know it's silly. I know I'll get over this eventually. But right now I'm terrified, and that's okay. Because writing isn't easy and that's why we can't stop. Because sometimes we end a story and have to take a deep breath, because endings are frightening and transitions are hard. Because our characters can have happily ever afters and all of my friends are dead endings, but we can't. We have tomorrows. And it's okay to be afraid of them.

...but existential crises still suck.

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HELLO.

IT'S BEEN A WHILE.

Partly because I've been traveling the world (read: spending forty hours in a car while my brother sang "Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall"), and partly because life is more demanding than my nonexistent significant other. But I'm back! I promise! And I will be blogging regularly! Hopefully!

So, East Coast Adventures: It was HOT. Like, please-kill-me-before-I-melt-and-drown-in-my-sweat-and-tears kind of HOT. But it was also lovely and crab cake-y, and the history nerd in me exploded from giddiness.

We drove through Baltimore (and had THE BEST crab cakes in the history of crab cakes) and walked through Washington D.C. that afternoon. Unfortunately, we arrived just after most of the museums closed and it started raining halfway through, but then:

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More exciting news! I'm a part of the Class of 2K14, and today is the launch of our website! *throws confetti*

We're a group of twenty YA and MG debut authors with books that range from historical to contemporary to sci-fi. In particular, we target booksellers, librarians, and teachers (BLTs!), and we try to get some fantabulous books in the hands of readers. There are some CRAZY amazing people in this group, guys, so make sure you keep an eye out for the books.

The website features the authors, the books, opportunities for author visits, and information for BLTs, including fortchoming discussion guides and other curricular materials (the wonderful Addie Degenhardt is making mine! It's SO EXCITING because all of this seems so REAL now! I'm abusing exclamation points again!). There will be TONS of giveaways in coming months, including monthly ones of the Class of 2K13's books, but for the launch, we're giving away...a $100 gift card to the book retailer of your choice!

One. Hundred. Dollars. For. Books. You know you want it.

NOW GO CHECK IT OUT!!!

And make sure you also check out our Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Goodreads page!

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Part DOS:

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Hi, Internet. HI.

There are some important questions we must address today. Why hasn't Amy blogged in a month (actually, this has nothing to do with today, so IT CAN WAIT)? Why the faux-calm and creepy smile? Why is she acting even more freakish than normal?!

Well, Internet. Let me tell you.

MY BOOK, FOR EVERY LIFE, HAS SOLD TO VIRGINIA DUNCAN OF GREENWILLOW/HARPERCOLLINS!!!!!!!!!!

Here's the PM announcement:



And PW Children's Bookshelf (it's my deal! And my face! My deal! My face!)



AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What exactly happened, you ask? (Please ask). WELL...

A lot, actually. So, this is going to be the first of two blog posts about ZE BOOK DEAL (I'm beaming at my computer screen like an idiot), which means...TWO POSTS CRAMMED WITH .GIFS. TWO GIVEAWAYS. TWO TIMES THE EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!

Okay. Let's TALK.

Some of you might remember that for a while, I blogged constantly about FOR EVERY LIFE. And then I took like, a two month hiatus from blogging. What was happening? I revised. I felt good about this manuscript--I really did. I was so excited to start subbing it, and finally on February 25, the only acceptable Monday in the history of Mondays, my agent emailed me saying that my ickle-snugglykins baby manuscript was officially READY. She sent me the list of editors she was going to sub to, and basically I saw it and died.


And so I waited.


And then I waited some more.

And then there was still nothing and I was like, THEY HATE IT.


...Then it was the next day, and I had to get up and function like a normal human being, which was practically the definition of cosmic cruelty.


BUT THEN. I got an email from my agent saying that editors had requested the manuscript! And they were asking questions! And one of them wanted to know what my inspiration was! And I had to come up with something! Like, RTFN! There wasn't even time for fainting!

The next day, more editors asked for information about me (me! They wanted to know about me! Like I was interesting! And it was a snow day!), and my agent told me that she had given them my blog address. And I entered an obligatory panic attack because, hello, I don't inhibit my stupid on this blog.

So I sat around and bit my fingernails and ate my refrigerator.


And then it was Thursday. There I was, sitting in class, Decidedly Not Cheating on a Chem quiz, and...my phone started vibrating. But I figured it was the library calling again to ask where my overdue library books were (oops)...except then I got a text, and it was from my agent saying she had good news.

GOOD NEWS? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?! I had to wait a whole FIFTEEN MINUTES to go to my independent study and call her back.


Here's basically how that conversation went:

Agent Emily: So Greenwillow! Book deal!

Me: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Emily: Amy, breathe--

Me: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Emily: DO YOU NEED A PAPER BAG

Me: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I AM GOING TO BE AN AUTHOR! MY BOOK IS GOING TO BE PUBLISHED BY MY DREAM PUBLISHER. GUYS.

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There's one thing YA writers have to know when writing to and about teenagers:

Most of us don't know what the hell is going on. Like, ever.

Teenagerdom is a paradox. It's a series of life crises. It's a transition period and a conclusion, a journey and a destination, a time to be stupid and a time to grow up. One moment your life was made of happily-ever-afters; the next, everything is about is puberty and cynicism and sex ed, and in the middle of a world that's trying to fall back into place, you realize that

you

know

nothing.

Do you go to church because you want to, or because you always have? Do you know what it means to be a Republican or a Democrat or a Libertarian or a Bull Moose Partier, or do you call yourself one because that's what your parents are? Suddenly, you're realizing that life isn't simple at all, and the truth is about as hard to define as it is to find, and good and evil such stupid terms, because the world isn't black and white, or even gray--it's made of colors and differences and shifting.

And personalities? We have personalites--we just don't know what they are yet. Our likes and dislikes are so different from what they were a year, a month, a week ago. "Impressionable" is an understatement; sponge might be more fitting--we swallow information, habits, desires, and make them our own, unconsciously. We talk, dress, and act like our friends or our role models, but we never decided to do so. We're basically ruled by hormones. We want to fit in, but suddenly fitting in isn't cool anymore--but if hipster is mainstream, then isn't old-mainstream hipster? Conformity is out, but does originality exist? If we're defined by our interactions, and if everything we've ever created is no more than an enormous collage of our conversations and experiences and mistakes, then is there really such a thing as an original thought?

It's all very confusing, you see.

This. This is what it means to be a young adult. The thing is, we're afraid. We're uncertain. We doubt our abilites and our beliefs and our values and pretty much everything else, but we can't show it because we're teenagers, and society expects us to be careless and irresponsible and...young. And this is also why there are so many YA books out there. Teenagerdom is an incredibly dynamic time, brim-full of the angst that readers hunger for. But it's also a time that we desperately need to read books and realize that we're not alone. That we don't have to be alone.

And lastly, this is why well-developed characters are so vital to YA. We need to know that everyone else is struggling, too, and that they're wading through a tide of influences to try to find themselves. Those pretty, perfect, self-assured ones? They make us feel like misfits. Like failures.

We're not failures. We're wanderers. We're trying. Please remember that. And please write characters that help us remember, too.

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Remember that giveaway? If you haven't seen it in the comments of the last post...Deserae McGlothen, you won the giveaway! Yay! Would you please email me soon (or leave some other way for me to contact you in the comments), so I can send you a copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul: Inspiration for Writers? Thanks!

If I don't hear anything by Wednesday night, I'm going to have to pick another winner. So please reply! :)

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GUYS. Guess what arrived this week?

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And here's the Table of Contents (LOOK AT MY NAME :D)


And here's the first page of my essay (this is all from Amazon's Look Inside feature)...

(I know, the title kind of bothers me now. When I was writing it last summer, I wanted to show that I am both a teenager and a writer, but now I'm afraid that people will see it as another "teen author" thing. Ah, well. My name! Is on that page! Also, isn't the quote amazingorgeous?!)

And here's my bio!
(Such a lie. I text all the time. And tweet. And email. And play Fruit Ninja.

You can buy it here (B&N), or here (Amazon), or here (Chicken Soup). Also, Goodreads! I'll be doing a giveaway sometime in the next few months, so stay tuned!

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Hi, everyone!

So, you guys may or may not know that I'm the head editor of our school newspaper. Recently, I had this idea of interviewing the lovely Leigh Ann Kopans about her upcoming book, ONE (and yes, the hyperlink is a less-than-subtle hint to add it on Goodreads. DO IT! :) .....

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This morning on Twitter, I ranted about a book. This post is about that book. So if you know what book I'm talking about and don't want to see spoilers, please don't read on!

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I don't think I've ever felt as insulted as a reader than I did this morning.

Writing is hard, okay? It's part perspiration and part inspiration and part masochism and part sadism and part wasting time on the Internet (mostly the last one). It's hard because of a lot of things, but I'm only going to talk about two today. First: there is going to be suffering in your book. Your characters are going to miserable for the majority of the story, or you will have no conflict and therefore no plot. A part of you is going to enjoy tormenting these characters (because ANGST), and another part of you is going to be suffering just as much as they are. Do not DO NOT DO NOT chicken out, or your readers are going to close the book.

Second: at some point, you have to relinquish control. When you got that first flash of inspiration, you made a promise to your newborn characters: I will tell your story. You are documenting lives that, even though they're fictional, have backstories, secrets, whys. Plot twists have to make sense. Endings have to stay true to the journeys that led up to them.

When they don't, your readers will know.

Anyway. Back to the book. I'm not usually a big fan of love triangles, but last night, I was about halfway through this book and I found myself thinking, this love triangle is amazingly executed. The author didn't make either of the two boys the obvious choice, and the girl caught between them wasn't annoying, and she didn't spend her time staring out into the rain, picturing their two smexy faces. The triangle didn't hinder the plot or drive it, and the characterization of the protagonists wasn't dependent upon the romantic tension. And, most importantly, it seemed that the author was going to make everyone live with their choices. In fact, she could have written a fantastically happy/tragic/satisfying ending.

But then she introduced a loophole that nearly caused me to throw the book across the room. The very essence of a love triangle is that somebody has to choose and somebody has to lose, right? You don't get to believe that one boy is dead so you can get together with the other one, and then wait till that one is dead to get together with the first one.

As a reader, I felt completely bullshitted.

Please don't write to please people. Please don't try to please everybody. Please don't write an ending that betrays the themes in your book. Please don't force an ending on your characters that isn't theirs.

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