Some Contests That Rock

One of my favorite things about the online writers’ universe is how good we are at giving each other opportunities to win things.

Here are some contests and challenges of interest:

The Let’s Get Beyond Tolerance scholarship and giveaway: To raise awareness for a scholarship for queer folks and allies, the “LGBT Book Summer” is under way through August 31. Buying LGBT-themed novels enters you to win a fabulous prize pack of even more LGBT-themed novels!

The Diversify Your Reading Challenge, sponsored by Diversity in YA, is giving away a bunch of cool book prizes to challenge participants who read books featuring queer characters and characters of color. The deadline for entries is September 1!

Through tomorrow at midnight, author K.E. Carson is giving away copies of The Duff (which is awesome) and Bumped (which I haven’t read yet but have heard is also quite awesome) at her blog.

Go forth and enter stuff!

On Being a Queer Writer

So, I spent last week in L.A. with these awesome people at the Lambda Literary Foundation’s emerging writers retreat.

For the past few days I have been struggling to figure out how to put the experience into the right words, and failing. So instead I will just say that it was not what I was expecting, and that it was an amazing experience that I can’t imagine ever forgetting. (And now I will ramble for a bit.)

When I hear the word “retreat,” I think “sitting and writing for hours and hours,” which is not what this was. I mean, it could have been in theory, because in between the workshops, the readings, and the panel sessions, we had a fair amount of unscheduled time. But that unscheduled time tended to be spent having long conversations about what it means to be queer and to write about queer stuff, and otherwise doing things that were not sitting and typing alone. (That being said my fantabulous roommate Anna-Maria McLemore did manage to, like, finish a book while we were there, so what do I know. Maybe everyone else did that too and I was just a big slacker.)

Instead of sitting and writing for hours, I sat and talked and listened and thought for hours, which is basically paradise for me, when the stuff I’m talking and listening and thinking about is as interesting as it was over the course of this week.

Because it was very much about owning my identity as a queer writer. Which, I’ll admit, isn’t something I’ve thought about much before now. Yes, I write, yes, I’m queer, yes, my characters generally are too, but that was sort of as in-depth as I’ve ever gone with it, my tendency to wax on about queer YA trends in #GayYA chats and in ranty blog posts aside. But with the level of discussion we had over dining hall tables and meeting rooms and dorm corridors over the past week… man. One of my workshop-mates, Allison Moon, tweeted, “There are times when young queers like me understand when our elders refer to ‘family.’ This week was such a time.” And that basically summed it up for me too.

“Just Happening to Be LGBTQ” Dismisses a Depth of Character

A couple of weeks ago during a #GayYA chat on Twitter, Lucas J.W. Johnson and I bonded over our shared annoyance with the oft-used phrase, “I want to read more YA characters who just happen to be LGBTQ.” (In fact I have blogged on this before, in rant form, as has Lucas, more thoughtfully.)

We were invited to continue the conversation on the GayYA blog, which btw is full of awesomeness, so we did, in a two-part post, because apparently we had a lot to say.

From part 1:

Robin: I think people usually just use the phrase as a shorthand term for when they really mean something like, “I wish there were more paranormal thrillers with LGBT characters in them.” Which is obviously a very understandable desire.

Lucas: Yes, and one that I share! The problem I find with it is that the shorthand term almost seems to downplay that part of the character, like them being gay isn’t really important.

Robin: Absolutely. If a character is LGBT, I as a reader WANT to know about that aspect of the character’s life. I want to know about it now as an adult reader, but I would’ve wanted to know about it a lot more when I was 16. People don’t just “happen” to be anything. And there’s a certain dismissive tone to the “just happens to be” phrase that I think is generally not intended. Just “happening” to be LGBT is not the same thing as just happening to have green eyes.

And from part 2:

Robin: I watched Princess Bride over and over and over when I was eleven, and if there had been a Princess Bride with Wesley as a chick, I’d have watched it at least 80 gazillion more times.

Lucas: Ha! A fair point! But even then, as we’ve discussed, it would make a difference to the story, small as it may be.

Robin: Right! If, in Princess Bride, Wesley had been a chick, it would have totally emasculated Prince Humperdinck. Even better comeuppance! But I would want to see Prince Humperdinck actively addressing the fact that Wesley was a chick and that he, the Prince, was obviously not doing it for Buttercup in that department. But mostly they’d all still just have spent the movie running around the hills swordfighting and such, same as ever.

Lucas: Haha, yep! And Buttercup would too have been dealing with more than just not being in love with Humperdinck. No matter the situation, making a character LGBT is going to affect the story. Even if it’s just in a small way! It is, in fact, those small ways that matter most. They’re what make the difference between a character trait like that being tacked on, and having actual organic, realistic characters and situations.

Robin: Yes. And the dangerous thing is when you try to write around those traits in the name of making sure your character “just happens to be” whatever.

(I really don’t know why I wound up talking so much about The Princess Bride, but now that I’ve thought about it, the idea of a queer version is really pretty exciting, no?)

Anyway, come on over to GayYA and tell us what you think!

Off to the Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Retreat!

So, tomorrow I will be gallivanting off to L.A. for a week for the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Emerging Writers Retreat. Said retreat is a very cool affair that will involve hanging out with 40 awesome writers of various genres and getting to learn from awesome workshop faculty — like, in the case of my workshop, the fabulous writer Katherine V. Forrest.

I’m really excited to spend some quality time focused on craft. I’ve read many a writing how-to book but never taken an actual creative writing class (I was always too intimidated to register for them in college, which was incredibly stupid of me — any aspiring writers who have not yet gone to college, please don’t make the same mistake I did!). So, I’m psyched to really delve into this stuff in a serious way for an extended period of time, instead of the usual routine writers do when they get together, which is to obsess and obsess and obsess over the ins and outs of the publishing industry. (Which isn’t to say that isn’t fun too. )

Plus, this retreat will be the official kickoff for the writing of my next project, Shiny New Idea, since I sent my Neverending 1950s WIP off to Awesome Agent yesterday for his thoughts, which means it is mercifully out of my hands for a while. My Shiny New Idea is currently still feeling very shiny, even though I’ve got about 50 pages of it first-drafted now, so I’m taking that as a good sign and looking forward to making it better (and hopefully longer!) over the next week.

Also, since this retreat is for LGBT writers (apparently the popular nickname for it is “gay writers’ camp,” hee), I am expecting to have lots of great conversations about various LGBT-related stuffs. (I know, I know, that will be so new and different for me! )

Also, since I am finally done with the Neverending 1950s WIP (for now), I hope to be a better blogger after I get back into town and things settle down. (As if I was ever such a good blogger, ha.)

Have a great week all!