Friday Five 05.16.2014

5 things I read this week ending 5/16/14, or since the last Friday Five...

• This truly fabulous post from Brigid Kemmerer (whose Elementals series I LOVE, btw) on expectations vs. reality for the published author. It's so honest and open and not blowing sunshine and rainbows. It's realistic. I wish she didn't have to repeat something along the lines of I'm not complaining! but I understand that she did--literally, she had to. Without the disclaimer (or even with) it's pretty much impossible to be published, even for super small time me, and talk about the non-magical aspects of publishing without hearing, either from real voices or the perfectly self-defeating ones in your head, how every single unpublished author ever would happily trade places with you and not complain at all. So often we shut ourselves up out of fear of sounding ungrateful. But you can discuss the realities, even the occasional negatives, of something without being ungrateful. Takeaway: "Regardless of whether you publish traditionally or on your own, it generally stands to reason that writing and self-editing the book is the easy part."

• On the more pep-talk side of the spectrum, Christa Desir's blog post on backing away slowly from the Amazon ranking. Takeaway: "But then, after that first day, that first month, those first six months, you wake up to the morning when your book is ranked 700,000 on Amazon. So basically the world wants to read 699,999 books more than yours. Perfect.... At the end of the day, writers need to remember that they created something and it is a thing that some people will love and some people will hate and some people will never know even existed and really that's okay. Go about the business of being you."
  
• One of a million "life-hacks" lists, which was not what I'd call genius overall, except that Imma try the popsicle trick. Takeaway: Gelatin in your popsicles will make them less melt-y.
  
• This TOTALLY GENIUS confirming-once-again-how-I-totally-adore-teenagers where a 16-year-old shows us mainstream/counter-culture styles through the decades. Takeaway: Just look at it.
  
• The WSJ article on John Green and this sort of rebuttal from Anne Ursu. For the record, I don't think John Green in any way asks to be elevated to this savior status, and I respect that he doesn't tend to comment after the fact on how the media portrays him. He seems like a genuinely good human. The takeaway, however, from Anne's piece: "Jacobs is talking with a lot of authority for someone who has no idea what he’s talking about. He’s not alone, though—lots of people who have no idea what they are talking about believe that YA is two genres: Twilight and its imitators and John Green and those he supposedly inspired. Guess which one they think is better?... These articles about YA are based entirely on accepted truths from people who live entirely outside the field; they keep getting perpetuated, and everyone nods sagely as someone else proclaims John Green is saving poor teenage girl readers from those silly silly vampire books." And much more.

What do you think? What have YOU been reading?