Announcement: A new book deal for me!

From Publisher's Marketplace:

Mindi Scott's LIVE THROUGH THIS, following a girl as she embarks on her first romantic relationship at the same time she is trying to come to terms with the sexual abuse she's endured at the hands of a family member, to Liesa Abrams at Simon Pulse, by Jim McCarthy at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management (World English).

I am thankful for my agent, editor, and everyone at Pulse for all the support and good vibes regarding this book so far. It has been amazing to have so many people who believe in this story as I do and who want to help me get it out there for readers!

The tentative publication date is "Fall 2012," I believe. It sounds like forever away, but I'm going to be so very busy getting it finished during these next few months that I know I'm going wish time would slow down.  :-)

Blog: My Holy Trinity

I do this thing where I watch movies and TV shows and then analyze the characters to decide which is most like . . . my cats.

No, really.

So, for Star Wars, we have Darth Neko, Princess Niña, Angelus Skywalker, and Oz Solo. For Arrested Development, Neko is Lucille (obvs), Niña is Lindsay, Angelus is Buster, and Oz is Gob.

When I do this, I have to base it on their personalities and not on their relationships to each other. Otherwise, Oz (the one Neko babies) would have had to be Buster even though Angelus acts more like Buster.  Also, it might bother me that Princess Niña and Oz Solo are supposed to be in love and all when they are biological sister and brother in real life. (All of our cats are related. Neko is the mother of the other three.)

I've sorted them into Hogwarts houses (and figured out that we have one cat in each house!). I once figured out which of the Four Elements they each would represent, but I've now forgotten. Sad for you, I know, because you were very curious.

Occasionally, this entertaining game extends to humans, too.  Last night, I was pondering a writing thang. Dwayne said to me, "You'll pull it off. It's going to be great."

I said, "How do you know?"

He said, "Because you're talented, that's how."

I thought about this a bit and said, "Well, you think so. And Liesa [my editor] and Jim [my agent] think so. That makes you all, like, my holy trinity."

At that point, of course (OF COURSE), I had to decide who was who.  Dwayne called dibs on being the holy ghost because he didn't care to be my father or my son. Which is silly because in the biblical trinity, the son wouldn't be MY son. But I heeded his concerns and let him be the ghost.

I then had to choose which role to assign the other two. After careful consideration, I decided that Liesa is the father simply because I've known her longer, which makes Jim the son.

It was a relief to get that settled.

Blog: Revisiting "gratuitous" and an anecdote.

If you've read certain blog entries and/or my debut novel, you know that I don't have a problem with using profanity in my writing. And, in fact, I find it offensive when I feel that a writer is censoring her/his characters by not having them use the words that they really would use. It's kind of a hot-button issue for me. Oh, yes.

I'm still struggling to understand people's use of the word "gratuitous" in the context of describing profanity in writing. Despite my efforts, I have yet to come across an expletive in any book where I found it to be gratuitous. And so far, no one has shared examples with me to steer me in that direction.  (Seriously, if you have examples, email me! I want to see this for myself!)

As I've said before, it seems to me that it all comes down to:

A) personal preference (e.g. "Certain words don't appeal to me, therefore, usage of them in any book is gratuitous")

or

B) poor writing (e.g. "It doesn't make sense that this character would use this word in this context, therefore, its inclusion is gratuitous").

Yesterday, I was revising a scene in My Current Manuscript. It's just past mid-point and the narrator, C, has been caught doing something that looks worse than it is. Instead of asking why she did it, her mother is just being all angry and accusatory. (Which totally makes sense in context since it appears that C deliberately did something that her mom didn't want her to do.) In frustration, C yells, "You aren't listening to me! We didn't do anything wrong, so get the f*ck over it."

I have to say, when I read that last line back to myself it was a very shocking moment. Tension galore! Oh, boy did it make me sit up straight and pay attention! But honestly? The eff word here? Totally gratuitous.

I think it's almost always a huge thing when a character in YA says "f*ck" to their mom. But with this particular narrator, it is in the realm of NOT EVER GOING TO HAPPEN.  You see, I've established that she has a very certain way about her. She's poised, she's always in control (or can fake it when she isn't), she doesn't use expletives. It isn't a thing where she has a problem with those words or that she deliberately avoids them and/or substitutes different ones in order to be "proper." She isn't even fazed by other characters who cuss in front of her--unless it's in a situation where it's supposed to be shocking, obviously. Using those words just aren't a part of who she is and that's that.

It's already enough in the scene that she's raised her voice to her mom. Readers are seeing something very important there. But if she also were to cuss at her mom, it wouldn't be true to the character I've created.

Is the inclusion of That One Word gratuitous? Perhaps. Quite definitely, though, it is an example of B above: poor writing. 

(FYI: I edited the sentence in the draft so that suckiness could be averted. Hooray!)

Blog: Ruining your own memories

Dwayne told me about a thing he heard on NPR several weeks ago about memories. Now, I haven't heard the interview/report in question, but from what I remember of what he told me about it, memories change every time you recall them. You forget details. You add details. You change details.
 
So the memories that you recall the most often (say, your wedding day or a particularly wonderful or terrible experience) are the most tainted.  Your memories of a person or an event that you haven't thought of in twenty years might be more pure and more accurate than those that are the most important to you!

Again, I haven't heard the NPR thing myself and this story has been on my mind, so I've recalled it many times already.  It's possible that my memories of what he told me aren't quite right.  Still, I think about it often now and wonder what I'm remembering incorrectly.

This morning while putting cream cheese in celery sticks, I was reminded of a book I read in middle school.  It had a bullying/trying to fit in theme. I remember that the girl's name was Melissa, but she went by Lissa. I remember that the most popular girl in her class had an exclusive lunch club called Funchies, which is a nickname for Fun Lunches. Funchies was invitation only and the girls took turns bringing something for all the girls in the group to share at lunch. Lissa was not cool enough to join, but when she FINALLY got the invitation, she brought celery with cream cheese.

All of these years, whenever I make celery with cream cheese, I think of this book.  (Annoyingly, I can't remember the title!) But did she really make that?  Was the group really called 'Funchies'? Wouldn't Funches make more sense?

Another thing. Every time I think of Justine Bateman, I am reminded of the phrase, "You're such a f***ing adult!"  In my memory, "adult" is pronounced like AD-ult.  (When I say "adult," I always pronounce it, uh-DULT.)

Dwayne was watching the movie SATISFACTION yesterday. I asked, "Hey, did she tell Liam Neeson, 'You're such a f***ing' AD-ult!' yet?"

He said, no!  What she actually said was, "For an AD-ult, you're really f***ing stupid!"

(At least, I think it's what he said that she said. That was yesterday, after all.)

That really blows me away. I remember being a young girl who admired Justine Bateman for her role on Family Ties.  I was very surprised that she said what she said and it's always stuck with me.  But, as it turns out, I only had part of it right. 

It's just so bizarre! 

Blog: The characters in our heads.

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia - E.L. Doctorow

Schizophrenia:  a psychotic disorder characterized by loss of contact with the environment, by noticeable deterioration in the level of functioning in everyday life, and by disintegration of personality expressed as disorder of feeling, thought (as delusions), perception (as hallucinations), and behavior  - Merriam-Webster


All right.  So the definition of schizophrenia gives me the idea that the quote above doesn't apply to me.   That fact is, though, that I am a writer and I do have imaginary people in my head all the time.  And it's extremely interesting to me, the way they evolve and have complex histories and motivations even though they don't really exist.

In the spring of 2009, I outlined and hand wrote the first draft of a novel.  One of the characters (I'll call him "R") was inspired by someone whom I've seen around and had a few conversations with, but I don't know at all.  I find this person inexplicably endearing and friendly, and I wanted to use some of his essence (as I imagine it to be) for R. 

Several months into that particular novel, I abandoned it (I have my reasons!!!!), but I took a character from it for the manuscript I'm working on now.  The character was R and I am still learning new things about him in every scene he appears.  His interactions with my main character are, by far, the most challenging for me to write, but I feel so accomplished whenever I'm able to pull them off simply because it is so hard. 

Today, for the first time in many months, I spoke to the person who inspired R.  He said something incredibly endearing as per usual (without suspecting that I would find it to be so, I imagine), and as he walked away, my first thought was, Never in a million years would R have said that. 

I don't know if this makes sense to anyone else, but it was a really cool moment for me, realizing that my character is not at all like the person who sort of, kind of was the very, very loose inspiration for him almost two years ago.   R is totally his own person!