{"id":3859,"date":"2013-11-19T15:30:06","date_gmt":"2013-11-19T04:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/?p=3859"},"modified":"2013-11-19T15:30:06","modified_gmt":"2013-11-19T04:30:06","slug":"miscellaneous-memoranda-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/miscellaneous-memoranda-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Miscellaneous Memoranda"},"content":{"rendered":"

–<\/strong> There’s an interesting article at Stacked<\/em><\/a> by Kelly Jensen about ‘book packagers’ \u2013 that is, companies that come up with concepts for a book series (often targeting the Young Adult market), then hire writers to write the books. For example, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants<\/em> and The Luxe<\/em> series were both products of the book packaging company, Alloy Entertainment. The article reports that authors are now starting up these sorts of businesses themselves. There was James Frey’s company, Full Fathom Five, which attracted a lot of the wrong sort of attention a couple of years ago when it was revealed how little he pays his writers (and the writers don’t even get their name on the cover of the book). Now Lauren Oliver and Lexa Hillyer have had commercial success with Paper Lantern Lit. I’ve read a couple of the books mentioned in the article, unaware that they were ‘book packaging’ products, and found them to be competently written but fairly bland and forgettable. Still, I’m not exactly the target market.<\/p>\n

–<\/strong> There’s also a fascinating post at Justine Larbalestier’s blog<\/a> about the differences between YA and adult romance, and no, it’s not about how explicit the sex scenes are. I’m not sure I agree with all the assertions \u2013 for instance, is it really true that most adult romances are told from the perspective of both lovers, whereas YA is usually first person and a single point of view? However, I found the discussion really interesting, particularly the idea that eternal love and happily-ever-after endings rarely work well in YA novels.<\/p>\n

–<\/strong> Over at Kill Your Darlings<\/a>, there’s an interview with Dianne Touchell, who ran into some problems at a literary festival because her YA novel, Creepy and Maud<\/em>, was judged to be a bit too confronting by the festival organisers. Cue discussion of whether YA novels today are too dark and depressing . . .<\/p>\n

–<\/strong> There have also been a few (depressing) articles and posts lately about how difficult it is to earn a living as a professional writer. Tim Kreider at The New York Times<\/em> reported<\/a> how frequently he’s expected to write for no pay at all and Sherryl Clark wrote a post on her blog<\/a> about acclaimed authors who have given up on writing altogether because they need to pay their bills. On the other hand, Paula Morris at New Zealand Books<\/em><\/a> pronounced herself happy to be a part-time writer because there’s “something pathetic in the designation ‘full-time writer’ \u2013 it tries too hard, and manages to sound boastful and defensive at the same time”.<\/p>\n

–<\/strong> Finally, best of luck to all those doing NaNoWriMo<\/a> this month. (I don’t think I could write 50,000 words of novel in a single month. Well, I could<\/em>, but at least 40,000 of the words would be complete rubbish.) To encourage you in your endeavours, here’s a lovely giant squid:<\/p>\n

\"Captain
Captain Nemo and the Giant Squid, from the 1870 French edition of ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea’ by Jules Verne. Illustration by Alphonse de Neuville and Edouard Riou.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

– There’s an interesting article at Stacked by Kelly Jensen about ‘book packagers’ \u2013 that is, companies that come up with concepts for a book series (often targeting the Young Adult market), then hire writers to write the books. For example, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and The Luxe series were both products of … Continue reading Miscellaneous Memoranda<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-this-writing-life","category-young-adult"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3859"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3871,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3859\/revisions\/3871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}