Fresh New Voice of YA- Katie Alender Guest Blog

News
1) I sincerely apologize for the lateness in this post and my reviews. These past two days have been much busier than I thought they would be. The reviews will be up on the myspace blog tonight.

2) Since I'm going to be really busy the rest of today (driving back home, preparing myself for my first day of work tomorrow, writing the reviews, getting to bed early), I can't do my In My Mailbox vlog today. I will try and do it on Tuesday and post it then too.

Guest Blog
There are days when I tell my husband, “You go hang out with your friends… I have SO much to do today!” And he obediently packs up and goes, and then suddenly I blink and he’s home and asking, “So did you get a lot done?”


And I’m like, “Uh.”


The real answer is, YES, I did get a lot done. I probably did several loads of laundry and tidied up the house and maybe even made the bed. I might have gone to the store and dropped off the dry-cleaning and returned some overdue emails and gone through the junk mail. Chances are good I didn’t even get a chance to sit down ALL DAY. (Except maybe my “America’s Next Top Model”-slash-lunch break.)


But the REAL real answer is, NO. Because in spite of all the stuff I did, did I actually manage to accomplish the “so much” I was referring to when I sent him off? No. What I meant was that I have so much writing to do. And did I do it? Probably not.


I am the queen of procrastinators. I will scrub my whole house top to bottom before sitting down to write 200 words, if I’m not feeling completely confident about those words. But here’s the great thing… I’m not alone! There are tons and tons of writers out there who totally seem all buttoned up, but then when you actually ask them what they did that day, they’re like, “Oh, I repotted the violets and I finally changed the sheets in the guest room so Aunt Maude has fresh ones when she comes… whenever that will be… and I bought a book on home canning and I browsed Halloween costumes online, because you know how that holiday sneaks up on you!”


The thing is, a typical YA book is about 60,000 words. (Mine are much longer because I can’t stop once I get started.) If an author wrote 2,000 words a day, that would be 30 days to a complete novel. Instead, when you ask people how long it took to write their book, the answers are usually like, “Three months…” or “Six months…” or “A year.”


And the thing is, I think that’s okay. Because even though writing is a creative activity, once you start feeling like it’s a job, it gets that much harder. And for most writers, writing is something they use to unwind and chill out… that is, until there’s a deadline and pressure and all of that stuff.


So all of my wanderings and cleanings and miscellaneous runs to Bed, Bath, and Beyond (because I NEED pants hangers!)… I like to think of those as part of the creative process. Like writing is the clothes, but all of that other stuff is the detergent, and the machine, and the ironing board…


…Which totally reminds me, I have tons of laundry to do! Guess I’ll have to put off those revisions for one more day. ;-)


Thanks, BC, for welcoming me as your guest this week!