Currently reading: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

Wrestling the whale is my term for revision.

Because that is what it is.

It is so big. You can’t get your arms around it. But you jump in the pool anyway and try to dodge the slaps from its flippy flippers.

I think the inspiration from this phrase likely came from a time years ago when we were eighteen and graduated from high school and all went on a long, overnight bus trip to Disneyland/Sea World and my friend Krista bought a big inflatable Shamu and when we were tired on the drive home she put it in the bus aisle as a mattress and then tried to sleep. It didn’t work so whale. HA!

So all this week I am wrestling the whale. This is the longest book I’ve ever written (400 pages! What is up with that?). Good times.

Other news:

Have you heard of this writing conference? Great price, great presenters. I hope to be a part of it someday when I grow up. Or maybe next year, when MATCHED is actually out! They’re having a great auction for charity that night and Penguin was kind enough to donate an ARC of MATCHED, so that will be just one of many items available.

I’m doing a book signing in August (click the Events page for more details). There won’t be any copies of MATCHED there, but my other books should be available, and I always like going to the BYU Bookstore. I worked there for several years in college for the best boss ever, George Satteson. And everyone there is so nice.

And, finally, the biggest news of all. The potty-training was a success. I am living in a land of rainbows and gumdrops and shiny things and now have only one child in diapers.

Books read on vacation recently:
Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
Anna and the French Kiss, by Stephanie Perkins (ARC)
Paranormalcy, by Kiersten White (ARC)
Firelight, by Sophie Jordan (ARC)

The past two weeks have been some of those weeks where I haven’t done a lot of writing but I did do a lot of living. Cleaned out some messy closets, hosted two Fourth of July barbeques, had two sets of family come to stay, went running with my sister, shuttled Boys to swimming lessons, made lots of cookies, read a bunch of great books, wrote a letter to my grandmother, spent summer evenings out in the backyard pushing kids on swings and soaking in summer, went on vacation. It has been lovely.

Usually, it’s a little hard to let go of the routine for me. I’m really disciplined about getting the writing time in every day. I haven’t had more than a couple days off from writing/editing since last year at this time when I took a step back from MATCHED. But this time, it’s felt really good, and it hasn’t been hard to stop writing at all. I think it’s because I needed it so much. Needed a break. To recharge. To get some distance.

It’s a fine balance, isn’t it? Because discipline is what gets the books written, but so is inspiration.

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner.

The last post had a couple of great questions in the comments, so I thought I’d answer them here, since I couldn’t address them in just a sentence or two. And I’m going to throw in another couple of questions that I’ve been getting a lot via e-mail.

Diane asked: I got a galley of Matched… I have read it, and loved it! I can’t wait till it is officially is released and I can booktalk it to our teens–I am preparing a booktalk now! But…but…but…I am going to ask the question all the people above will start asking when they read it too. When is the next book due to come out?

We’re planning on having the books come out about a year apart, so it will be in Fall 2011 if all goes well. (And thank you for liking MATCHED! I was so, so happy when I read your comment, and I hope your teens like MATCHED too.)

Enna Isilee asked: Do you finish the entire draft before you take a break? I would assume so. But usually when I write, I’ll take a break half-way through the draft and when I come back to it I think it’s crap and I just scrap it. Ever had that problem? I think that if I actually FINISHED an entire draft, I might feel more comitted to take the time to edit it.

Yes, I finish the whole draft before I take the month-long break. And yes, I have had that problem (coming back to a partially finished draft and hating it and giving up). That’s why I make myself finish the first full draft. Because, by then, you come back and find crappy parts but you don’t give up as easily because it is THREE HUNDRED PAGES LONG AND YOU SPENT SO MUCH TIME ON IT AND YOU ARE GOING TO WRESTLE THAT WHALE INTO SUBMISSION IF IT KILLS YOU. And, also, I always like my finished books more because they have a sense of arrival, of completion, of a story told. So I have a little more faith that they can become something good than I do the half-finished drafts.

Did you know MATCHED would be a series when you wrote it?

No, I did not. I actually thought it was a one-book thing. And it has the same ending now that it did when I queried it. I felt like the character had become who she needed to be and so I ended the story where it felt right. I definitely was thrilled that Penguin saw series potential, though!

Are you worried about all the hype MATCHED is getting?

To some extent, yes. I’ve written six books and I’ve never really had hype before. And can any book live up to a ton of hype? And sometimes I think people think that this book is an “action” book, because of the Hunger Games comparisons, which it is not. To me, this book is the story of a girl named Cassia who learns to choose. So, in a lot of ways, I feel like it’s a quiet book. And I wonder if people expect that.

But, to another extent, no. Penguin is doing a killer job of generating buzz about the book, which means they believe in it, which means the world to me. And what that also means to me is that MATCHED has a better chance of being read by the readers who will find something in it. Who will see themselves in it. And nothing means more to an author than that.

I have this list called the “Books of My Life” which is, obviously, a list of the books that have been the most important reads of my life. (Crossing to Safety, the book at the top of this post, is at the top of that list and has been since my grandmother gave it to me when I was thirteen.) And I know MATCHED will not be one of the Books of everyone’s life, of course. But if it could be on even one person’s list?

Well. That would make my life.

I won’t be posting next week because I’ll be on vacation, and when I vacation, I vacate. But I’ll be back.

Currently reading:
Wolves, Boys, and Other Things That Might Kill Me by Kristen Chandler

UPDATE: The winner of the ARC is AlannahP Javier! Alannah, can you e-mail me your mailing address so I can get this book to you? If Alannah doesn’t claim the ARC by the 10th, I’ll draw again.

Remember when I said I would post a picture of the book I’ve been reading at the beginning of every post? And then I forgot? Apparently I like to lie. I will start posting book pics again–probably not with every post, but definitely more often.

In other non-lying news, today is the last day to enter to win the ARC of MATCHED! I’ll update this blog entry tomorrow morning with the winner.

And in REALLY FANTASTIC news, awesome author Melissa Marr is giving away TEN copies of MATCHED–four on her blog, six on her fansite. Click here for more information. She’s fantastic!

It’s so exciting when people get behind the book. It is kind of crazy to me that we still have almost five months to wait before MATCHED is released. I would wonder what to do with myself if the Boys weren’t so constantly, chronically busy/entertaining and if I didn’t have two sequels to write.

I’m actually at that place in the manuscript of Book 2 where I close the file and walk away for a month. I know a lot of writers do this and I do too. I build the time into my schedule because I know the book will be better if I do. I just get to a point where I’m a hamster on a wheel revising tiny things or trying over and over again to fix a problem that I just can’t fix, even though I know it’s there. There’s one particularly sticky area that I’m going to let sit at the back of my mind while I’m on a break with the manuscript.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t write at all. If a great idea comes to me about the book, I’ll open a Word file and jot it down and save it. I’m working on another project that I really like, and I’m always thinking of things to put in Book 3 and adding them to that file.

But mostly I’m just letting my mind rest. Working on one thing for months and months (I started drafting this book back in November and have tried to work on it daily ever since) makes your focus narrow and tunnel-y. Which is exactly what I can’t have if I want to go back and look at this draft and make it better and solve the bigger problems. I have to get out of my little book world and look around. Try this, with your writing, if you haven’t already. It will work wonders.

I promise I’m not lying.