Girls, diets, books, authors, and responsibility.

Something I will very rarely do, but this is a cross-posting from the Girl Museum Blog.

Let me preface this by saying that I am a writer myself, and I don't believe in censorship, but in the freedom to write what you wish.  Writers write for many reasons: because we're obsessed with it, because we want fame and notoriety, because we need a paycheck.  Every writer has their own reason.  And in this age of blogs and other forms of self-publishing, it's not that difficult to get your work out there (and even make some money or a name for yourself), even if none of the big publishing houses choose to pick up your work.  But Paul Kramer did get picked up by a publishing house, and it's caused quite a stir.

Kramer wrote Maggie Goes on a Diet, which is about a 14 year old "chubby" girl who is constantly being teased and bullied by her classmates for being overweight.  To try and make herself feel better, she raids the refrigerator, but ultimately goes on a diet and starts exercising.  As she becomes thin, she also becomes popular, and the star of the soccer team.  Maggie Goes on a Diet will be released in mid-October.

I believe that writers--as well as anyone else--have the right to say what they want.  However--to quote from Aaron Sorkin's screenplay, The American President

You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest.

In short, true freedom of speech means that not only do you have the right to say what you wish, but you also must allow others the right to say what they wish.  This includes their right to criticise your work.

When I write these blog posts, I try very hard to present a balanced viewpoint.  I try to see all sides of the argument, and present multiple sides; I know that very few issues are actually black and white.  To use the previous post (written by Junior Girl Miriam Musco), "Poledancing for fitness" as an example, I can absolutely see why people are outraged.  For better or for worse, pole dancing has become linked with strippers and sex, and we don't want to associate that with young girls.  On the other hand, though, it doesn't have to be associated with stripping/sex, but if I think that it is, I assume you think it is, and so  I assume everyone associates it, and everyone does.  Now they think that a girl who pole dances is a slut/stripper/tease/prostitute/daughter of irresponsible parents, because of the bandwagon effect that society has.  I think pole dancing can be an excellent fitness routine, and fun.  I think it's completely fine that girls be allowed to try it, but I also think that perhaps a) the studio shouldn't have posted pictures of the girls and b) maybe now is the time for the parents of those girls to explain why society thinks girls learning to pole dance is inappropriate.  And hey, maybe some minds can even be changed in the process.

I don't think controversy that surrounds Maggie Goes on a Diet is any different.  There is a good message in the book: eating healthy and getting exercise helps build self-esteem.  But it seems to be lost behind the message that if you're a girl,  being fat is bad because it makes you unpopular, while being thin makes you popular.  I think that girls should be encouraged to eat healthy and get exercise--I think all of society should be encouraged to do that!  But I can't sit back and watch a middle-aged man (who's a little "chubby" himself) essentially tell girls that fatties aren't cool.  Girls are so prone to eating disorders at his targeted reading age (grade and middle school), and it doesn't take much to push them over the edge, potentially causing life-long self-esteem, health, and body issues.  Additionally, there are some thoughts that restrictive pre-pubescent dieting can restrict normal growth.  But parents are responsible for teaching and setting healthy diets and activities for overall well-being, not for popularity's sake.

I won't argue that writers have a responsibility to society.  At best it's a disingenuous argument, and at worst, censorship gets involved.  While those in the limelight, be they politicians, actors, writers, or the generic "celebrity," are scrutinized, and often held to a higher standard simply because they're famous, I don't think it's fair.  I'd like to see everyone set a better example, and I'd love it if those in the limelight did adhere to the highest possible standards, but it's not going to happen.  Part of the peril of fame is that people scrutinize and criticize your actions.  And when unhealthy messages are being sent to the most vulnerable among us, I think we have every right to stand up and say something.

For a video about Paul Kramer's Maggie Goes on a Diet, which includes some of the text (which, as a writer, I think is hokey and not very good, but that's a different issue), click here.

-Katie Weidmann

Junior Girl

Girl Museum Inc.

Bits-O-News

Better than Bit-O-Honey.  Yuck.

First, I'm going to be an aunt.  Since I've never had an aunt, and my only uncle died when I was seven, I have no idea what this entails.  Come March, I guess I'll learn.  What it won't entail is diaper changing or babysitting, at least until such age as the child does not need diapers (and then it may still be debatable).  I say this because they tried to get me to hold another baby (seven weeks) on Sunday, and I ran for the hills.  Adam held him, however.  Twice.  Complained that the child was heavy.  The kid is under 14 pounds and is only seven weeks old.  Clearly Adam is just going to be a joy with a toddler.

Second, I am now published.  No, I have not suddenly finished my novel, sold it, and got it on the shelves--in fact, it's been about two weeks since I've even written because I was prepping for last week's interview most of the past two weeks (writing resumes today)--but the article I wrote with other members of Girl Museum over a year ago is finally online.  I'm thrilled that I'm legitimately published (yes, online journals are in fact legitimate nowadays), but more than a little peeved that it's taken so long for this to come out.  I completed the re-edit of it back in April, and they only gave us a few weeks then, so I want to know why it didn't come out until August.  Oh well.  Still, published is published, so now I have to find room for it on my CV.  If you care (trust me, you don't) the issue of "Rhizomes 22: Becoming-Girl" can be found here.  Our article is entitled BECOMING-GIRL-MUSEUM, and since I don't feel like linking twice, you can read down the table of contents to find it.  A word of warning, however: it's written from a Deleuzian philosophical standpoint.  If you don't understand what that means, don't worry.  We the authors were a bit lost as well (hence part of the need of the massive re-edit I did back in April).

Not really much else.  Mom and Dad are off to Portland (or there already, I think) for a couple of nights, and Barbara is a rockstar and house/dog-sitting.  Aven is apparently excited because that means he can play with Faith.  Faith is learning to warm-up to men faster now (she still takes some time), and Aven is a sweetie and wants to play with her, so I'm hoping he can run a couple of pounds off of her--provided he can get her to chase the ball or frisbee more than twice before she buggers off to go lay down.  If he can, that puts him head-and-shoulders above the rest of us.  If not, I hope he enjoys tromping across the yard to retrieve the ball/frisbee himself (or I suppose he can leave it there for later, which I've been known to do).

Come to think of it, I'm slightly worried as to the state of my bedroom if there are guests there (even old family friends such as Barbara and Aven).  The heavy coating of dust worries me less--since we don't live there keeping it dust free is not my responsibility--than whatever mess may or may not have been left there from last Thanksgiving.  Or whatever mess was placed there by not-me.  Hmm...yes, it's cramped, since there's still half-a-house's worth of furniture in there, but I worry about the clutter.  Enh.  I suppose the sheer amount of hippos will distract, as well as impress, amuse, or terrify, depending on individual temperament.

I shall leave you with this article to peruse, should you so desire.  It so perfectly sums up why I hate Sean Penn.  "Sean Penn Can’t Understand Why Terrence Malick Didn’t Let Him ACT! More"

Interview woes

Not actually woes, this time, or at least not as such.  I thought I had a great interview, with none of my usual obnoxious anxiety attacks that result in my starting to cry at inappropriate times (as in at any point in the interview).  Praise His Noodly Appendage for Xanax.  It may have been expired (and generic), but it worked nevertheless.

Sadly, I did not get the job.  I've asked for feedback, in part because I want to apply for another job there, and in part to try and land a job somewhere in the future if not there.  Without the feedback, my current guess is that my not being local to York was the biggest factor.  If two people are equal, the one who doesn't have to commute an hour plus to get there (and deal with the vagaries of public transit in a country prone to half-assed strikeage) is a better choice.

Though I didn't get the job, at least I got an interview, and I felt I did fairly well.  I was confident, and I knew what I wanted to say.  I even had questions to ask at the end!  So hopefully I'll be given some helpful feedback, and hopefully I'll be more successful with the next application there (no, I am not disclosing the place, because, well, I'm applying there again and it strikes me as being inappropriate).

In the meantime, back to my writing.  I've taken most of the last two weeks off, either due to interview preparation--I had to give a 10 minute talk as well--being lazy, or not being home because I was yelling at Virgin Media about our dead phone line (and internet, which does actually work, though our phone doesn't, which is a whole new level of special) and the fact that they still hadn't paid us the money we're owed.  But back to the writing.  It was so easy to slip out of the habit, so I must work hard to slip back in.

Procrastination Irony

They say that writers are the best procrastinators on the planet.  Who says?  I think it was an author doing a guest blog for Powell's.  Or maybe the quote was that writers have elevated procrastination to an art from.  Either way, it certainly seems to be true.

There are always things that I've hated doing.  Applying for jobs is one of those things.  You can never just send the same thing out, and many places use application forms instead, and it's just a royal pain in general.  Plus, it's usually--for me at least--a futile effort, so it's hard to work up any enthusiasm for the amount of work that needs to be done for no reward.  And I do mean no reward, since some places don't even send out an acknowledgement of your application.

Doing the dishes is another thing I procrastinate doing.  Now it's never really been my thing, but most of my life I've had a dishwasher.  Then we moved into this dump (sorry Richard and Sarah, but it kinda is).  I mostly don't mind not having the dishwasher (too much), but we don't have a garbage disposal either (welcome to Europe) and that sucks, especially when you need to peel a dozen hard-boiled eggs for your partner's egg mayo sandwich filler for the week.  Picking the fragments of 12 eggshells out of the sink is a whole new form of torture.

I also procrastinate on exercise until it's too late to do it.  Or I hurt too much.  Or something.  My reading list often serves as an excellent excuse to avoid a lot of things, and exercise is high on that list (it's my small penis truck: I've read more than you have, so in some vague way I'm superior to you.  somehow).

But writing.  Ahh, that's the easiest one of all to avoid, because I do it on the computer, so I can get sidetracked by Kingdom of Loathing, or GemCraft (no link because you don't need that kind of torment in your life), or my blog (the irony here being that I'm avoiding writing by writing), or "research."  Research--and legitimate research, I might add--derailed my writing last night.  Talking to Kristan for over two hours certainly didn't help, but after we stopped, I still had time to crank out my required amount of words,* or close to it, before Adam came home.  Except I needed to do some research.

This was, as I've already stressed, real research.  Nothing big, nothing major, but I needed a first name that could be either German or Scandinavian.  Didn't matter which Scandinavian--any or all would be fine--but it had to be used in at least one of those countries as well as Germany, and preferably not be completely unheard of in English.  That wasn't too difficult; I found a website that lists not only every name ever used in a Scandinavian country ever, but it also listed frequency of usage by men and women per country.  I settled on Frieda--I had a "Teacher Frieda" when I was in kindergarten (she was a war bride originally from Germany, and was completely awesome), and depending on the spelling, it met all my requirements nicely.

The bigger problem was finding a Scandinavian surname.  An uncommon one.  If I wanted a common one, I could have gone with Janssen or something (Scandinavian surnames are not rocket science, as they're mostly patronymic).  No, I needed an uncommon last name, because I needed a branch of a family tree that was presumed to have died out.  Unsurprisingly, finding uncommon names is far harder than finding common names.  And when you do find names considered to be uncommon, you have to question how uncommon they are, since you found them somewhere.  Sheesh.  Oh, and something that could be mistaken for German by someone who doesn't much know about language (or even someone who does), yeah, that'd be good too.  Eventually, I found a name, futzed with the spelling (Germanicized it off the transliterated pronunciation guide provided with my chosen name), and called it good.

Too bad all that took me about 40 minutes.  Still, I went out to meet Adam--an interesting feat these days, as the towpath along the canal is pitch black at 10:10pm--and managed to get myself to write even while he was home.  I usually start writing around 7 or 8pm, when I can't realistically justify putting it off any longer, and that gives me enough time to bang out about 1000 words.  They're not great, but right now, my goal is to get the bare bones, the framework of the story out there.  I can always go back and edit the everloving crap out of it (and I will do, many many times), but to edit you first need something to edit.

And because people have asked me how long a book is, or how many pages I've written, and so on, I shall provide a list of wordcounts for comparisons.  Authors and publishers think in terms of wordcount, not pages, because you can format a book to make it as many or few pages as you like.  That said, when you ask the internet how to format a book for publication and what publishers ask for, you'll get a million different responses, including the notion that authors think in pagecount, and only want estimated word counts with the assumption that the formatting is 250 words per page (this seems to be wildly outdated, however).

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: 76,944 (as provided by Scholastic Inc.)

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: 257,045 (as provided by Scholastic Inc.)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Approximately 144,000 (as posted on someone's blog)

The Hobbit: 95,022 (off of a blog that discusses word count, particularly for beginning writers)

Twilight:  118,501 (same blog)

War and Peace:  561, 304 (same blog)

That said, I'm not sure how accurate wordcounts are, because both OpenOffice and Word don't seem to count words with dashes attached to them, and that may go for other punctuation as well.  I haven't fully explored this, but as I use a lot of dashes in my writing, it has reduced my wordcount somewhat.  Right now, I don't worry about that, though.**  My only concern is keeping the finished (read: ready for submission) product to 100k or less.  More than that, and it's going to be a tough sell.  And since I figure I'm at best 1/3 of the way finished (probably closer to 1/4), I'm a bit iffy on the word count.  Here's hoping all my editing will cut stuff down.

I've written just shy of 24k words, or 33.5 pages of single-spaced, left/right justified, 12 point, Ariel font, on US standard letter (8.5in x 11in), with .79 inch margins all the way around.  I use Ariel because I prefer sans-serif fonts*** (I'm lazy on this blog, so it's the default serif font Times), 12 point because that's standard, US letter because I think that may be the default setting for OpenOffice, and I think the .79 inch margins came from a previous formatting thing--OO seems to use previous settings for new docs (which may also be why the page format is US letter and not A-4).  I keep it single spaced because when you need to scroll through a long document, double spacing is a royal pain, and it's justified (aligned) on both sides because I think left-side only is ugly.  I will reformat drastically when it comes time to submit.

*It's now 1000 per day, because 500 was way too easy and the story wasn't progressing, because I can write 500 words describing a blank wall if I don't know where I'm going and don't want to think.  I had to write more yesterday though, because I didn't write on Monday.  I made up most of it on Tuesday with 1700 words, meaning I only needed 300 extra yesterday.  I hit my mark, too.  Eventually.

**Most British universities work off of wordcount as well--I had to write 4000 word papers at Leicester, and my Master's dissertation (thesis in the US, but long-ass paper anywhere) had to be between 12k and 15k.

***  Thank you Wikipedia for clearly and concisely showing the difference.

Reading List: July 2011

Few days late on posting this.  Ooops.  Doesn't look like I'm on track for 100 books this year, but I can always try harder!  Of course I'm also reading and reviewing unpublished works over on Authonomy in an effort to boost myself so that when I post my novel people will read and review it.  And hopefully back it so that the editors at HarperCollins will read it (and maybe even publish it).  But that's still quite a ways down the road.

JULY

44.  Circle of Flight, by John Marsden (The Ellie Chronicles #3)
43.  Incurable, by John Marsden (The Ellie Chronicles #2)
42.  While I Live, by John Marsden (The Ellie Chronicles #1) (sequel series to The Tomorrow Series)
41.  *Anne's House of Dreams, by L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables Series #5) (I'm making the same assumption as below)
40.  *Anne of Windy Poplars, by L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables Series #4) (I'm assuming I've read this before; I don't remember it, but the corners of some pages are creased as markers.)
39.  Circus of the Damned, by Laurell K. Hamilton (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #3)

38.  The Laughing Corpse, by Laurell K. Hamilton (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #2)

JUNE

37.  Guilty Pleasures, by Laurell K. Hamilton (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #1)

36.  *Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter #3)

35.  *Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter #2)

34.  *Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Harry Potter #1)

33.  Ptolemy's Gate, by Jonathan Stroud (The Bartimaeus Trilogy Book 3)

32.  The Golem's Eye, by Jonathan Stroud (The Bartimaeus Trilogy Book 2)

31.  *The Amulet of Samarkand, by Jonathan Stroud (The Bartimaeus Trilogy Book 1)

MAY

30.  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith (I've read Pride and Prejudice before, but sans zombies)

29.  I Am Number Four, by Pittacus Lore (pseudonym for James Frey and Jobie Hughes) (Lorien Legacies #1)

28.  *Anne of the Island, by L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables Series #3)

27.  *Anne of Avonlea, by L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables Series #2)

26.  *Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables Series #1)

25.  The Red Queen, by Philippa Gregory (Cousins' War #2) 

24.  The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nests, by Stieg Larsson (Millennium Trilogy #3)

APRIL

23.  The Girl Who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larsson (Millennium Trilogy #2)

22.  Disappearing Ingenue Stories, by Melissa Pritchard

21.  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson (Millennium Trilogy #1)

20.  Resident Evil: Code: Veronica, by S. D. Perry (Resident Evil Novelizations #6)

MARCH

19.  Resident Evil: Nemesis, by S. D. Perry (Resident Evil Novelizations #5)

18.  Resident Evil: Underworld, by S. D. Perry (Resident Evil Novelizations #4)

17.  Resident Evil: City of the Dead, by S. D. Perry (Resident Evil Novelizations #3)

16.  Resident Evil: Caliban Cove, by S. D. Perry (Resident Evil Novelizations #2)

15.  Resident Evil: The Umbrella Conspiracy, by S. D. Perry (Resident Evil Novelizations #1)

14.  Nation, by Terry Pratchett (NOT a Discworld novel)

FEBRUARY

13.  *King of Shadows, by Susan Cooper

12.  Zombie Apocalypse!, created by Stephen Jones (compiled)

11.  The White Queen, by Philippa Gregory (Cousins' War #1)

JANUARY

10. * Mrs. Pollifax and the Golden Triangle, by Dorothy Gilman (Mrs. Pollifax Series #8)

 9.  The Other Side of Dawn, by John Marsden (The Tomorrow Series #7)

 8.  The Night is for Hunting, by John Marsden (The Tomorrow Series #6)

 7.  Burning for Revenge, by John Marsden (The Tomorrow Series #5)

 6.  Darkness, be My Friend, by John Marsden (The Tomorrow Series #4)

 5.  The Third Day, The Frost (aka The Killing Frost), by John Marsden (The Tomorrow Series #3)

 4.  The Dead of Night, by John Marsden (The Tomorrow Series #2)

 3.  Skin Trade, by Laurell K. Hamilton (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #17)

 2.  *Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter #7)

 1.  Tomorrow, When the War Began, by John Marsden (The Tomorrow Series #1)