4/16/09 Word/Page Count

words: 1,204
pages: 2.5

So I went to see Libba Bray speak today and it was great. I must admit, I haven't read any of her books. I'm not really into historical fiction or like vampires or fantasy books... I am so narrow-minded. I need to push myself. So hey I have a signed free copy of the book. Okay, I'm going to read it. She said it was like Buffy in the Victorian Era.

She's such a creative person. Who can think of that? She was really funny. She opened with a Teenage Humiliation Story where she asked a guy out and he basically turned her down. Funny, the same thing happened to me! I was in ninth grade and I ask this guy and I will always remember his name but I won't post it and he turned me down. I looked up his address on mapquest and rode my bike there. It was like 4 miles away and across a highway-- literally. Why was I such a crazy kid? Nobody will ever, ever know.

Anyway, after that she started talking about writing the Gemma triology. It was fascinating. She used to be a ghostwriter for the Sweet 16 series. I don't know what it is really. I found something cryptic on Google but then I got sick of looking. But before that she was a playwright and I was like, wow! She's been doing this her whole life. That's crazy! She's very brave to always live the writing life.

So after ghostwriting she got the chance to do her own thing and the idea came to her because she's "creepy" as she said. And she did all this research. She was used to outlining from ghostwriting but for this book she just wrote and let it come organically, which is like what I'm doing. Screw outlines! And then she got to go to England to research and she had a lot of fun. The second book she really enjoyed writing. But the third book was the killer. She told us how she didn't know what to do and threw away her entire 540 page rough draft!

Her talk made me really dread revision process. Just throwing it all away. How do you do it? I still don't understand how you do it! So she started over. And it still wasn't right. And there was a deadline. How do they come up with these deadlines? Can't they just wait until the book is done. I don't understand.

So she wrote day and night and day and night and wrote and wrote. And she was describing writing 10-14 hours a day and writing all through the night and just the agony of it all and while she was saying that I was like GREAT. I thought it sounded fabulous. I was like, that's the life I want. I was all excited. You have to hear her tell the story. Is crazy. Basically, she pounded the book out and she finally figured it out and it's all good.

She also wrote another book that's coming out called Going Bovine. It's about Mad Cow Disease. It's really really really really really really really outrageous. She read like ten pages and I was like WHOA. Where did that come from. I wasn't sure what to think. At all. It's a bold move, very bold.

It was so funny to be around all those teen fangirls of the Gemma Doyle series! It was dorky. there's no better word. But it was fun, dorky fun and cool! I had Libba sign my book and we talked about Twitter cause she wrote about it in her blog recently. She complimented me on my handshake. I said my dad taught me. You have to have a good handshake. And now I have a bright shiny new signed book!

So you think after all this excitement and inspiration, I'd be pumped to write, right?

Wrong. I spent too much time writing this blog and chatting that I don't feel like writing at all. Boo. I busted some stuff out though.

Still working on The Perfect Shot. It's a long book. I have a lot to say about it I think. I'll finish by the weekend.