And I bet I forgot something up in that list. Anyone know of anything else going on that should be provoking excitement?

• I wrote a book that was really, really, really hard to write, and I didn’t give up even when I desperately wanted to. And now I have a finished book that I am really proud of, and I learned so much from the writing experience that I would never have learned if I hadn’t pushed myself to step really, really far outside my writing comfort zone.
• I wrote the first draft of another book that was a lot easier to write but also a lot of fun, and now I am mired in revisions on it but I am excited about those revisions because man, this book is fun. Writing is fun!
• I made a bunch of awesome new writer friends. I went on two writing retreats with fabulous people who love talking about books and writing, and also, you know, the other aspects of life that are fun to talk about too. I got to see a lot of my friends experience amazing and extremely-well-deserved successes with their writing that made me so delighted they might as well have been my own.
• I also read a bunch of fantastic books this year. I’m not going to make a best-of-2011 list because I haven’t read enough 2011 releases because I am a total fail on that front, but here are some of my favorite books I read this year, listed in the order in which I read them: Real Live Boyfriends by E. Lockhart, Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood, Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins, House of Dead Maids by Clare Dunkle, If I Stay by Gayle Forman, Chime by Franny Billingsley, I Am J by Cris Beam, and Catching Jordan by Miranda Kenneally.
• Aside from the writing aspects of life, I also have wonderful family and friends who I got to spend more time with than I typically do, and I’m looking forward to that trend continuing, and increasing.

And yes, sure, there were also less-than-fabulous things that happened in 2011, but, I don’t know. It’s New Year’s. I’m feeling good and I’m looking forward.

Speaking of looking forward, here are some of my resolutions for 2012:

• Finish the book I’m currently revising. This will be the easiest resolution on this list to keep, I think.
• Write one other book in its entirety. This will be fun as I don’t even know yet what my next project will be. I have a hundred ideas but I haven’t picked one yet.
• Write the first draft of one other book. This is a stretch goal. I have never written as much in a single year as I am pledging to do here. I’ve never finished more than one book in a calendar year, much less completed yet another draft in that same timeframe, but 2012 will be the year, baby.
• Blog more often. This is a stretch goal too, ha. I am a good tweeter and a terrible blogger.
• Read at least 10 YA books published during 2012. I made this resolution last year too, and I came close, with 9 (and I’m halfway through another one now that I am totally not going to finish before tonight). I am a slow reader, and there are always so many older books I want to read too. But this year I am totally going to meet my goal!
• Read more books with queer characters. See here for more on my 2010 fail on this front.

Happy New Year’s to you and yours! Hope you’re looking forward to 2012 as much as I am!

Today is the official release date for one of my favorite books of the year, Catching Jordan by Miranda Kenneally!

CJ is a fantastically believable and fantastically fun story about an awesomely strong heroine trying to figure out what she wants out of life. And also flirting with cute boys and playing in surprisingly interesting football games.

Here’s what I said about it on Goodreads:

Before I was three chapters into this book, I was already thinking, “Okay, this is so the next Anna and the French Kiss.”

And by the end, I hadn’t changed my mind at all. I mean, subtract France and pastries, add football and a bunch of extra hot guys, and, yeah. That pretty much sums it up.

Okay, not really. “Catching Jordan” stands alone. Hilariously, adorably, touchingly alone.

What made me think of “Anna,” though, was the happy, stupid grin I wore all through the reading of both books. The grin that meant “This book is so much fun, and so true, and so freaking CUTE, and I absolutely do not ever want to put it down.”

Like other reviewers, I am not a football person, but that didn’t matter. I mean, I’m not a hunter, either, but I still liked “Hunger Games” just fine. Miranda does a great job of explaining the football logistics in a way that sounds authentic but still makes sense to a complete newbie like me. Also, it helped that Jordan’s position was quarterback, because that’s one I’ve actually heard of and even vaguely know something about. (They throw things, right?)

But my main takeaway from the book was not related to football, or hot guys, or hilarity, though all of those things play huge roles in the story. My main takeaway was that it was fascinating to read about a smart, ambitious, awesome girl making decisions about her future — what she wants out of romance, what she wants to do with her impressive talents, what role she wants her family and friends to play in her life, and how to start making decisions for herself even when everyone else around her is more than happy to make them for her.

But aside from the deep thoughts aspect, there is plenty of candy in this book. There are 300-pound football players strutting around shirtless! There are cheerleaders playing foosball and talking trash! There is a girl experiencing her sexual awakening and having fun while doing so!

Check it out, I promise you’ll be delighted.

Miranda is also, just coincidentally, a fabulous friend who gives awesome writerly crit and keeps me company when occasion calls for martinis to be drunk prior to Breaking Dawn viewings (which occasion tends to do, because, have you seen Breaking Dawn?)

(Though I should note that Miranda’s willingness to drink with me did not influence my feelings about Catching Jordan. Were that the case I would be actively supporting all my college friends in their various investment-banking-related endeavors and, I suppose, posting about those on my blog instead.)

Anyway, go check out Catching Jordan, you will be delighted I promise!

No need to mumble an apology if you haven’t. Seriously. There are so few of these books out there that unless you specifically seek them out you’re unlikely to come across one. Oh, except for the one that hit the NYT bestseller list last June. (Thanks, Libba Bray!)

(By the way, if any of the terminology in this post is unfamiliar to you, here’s a good guide.)

The second book I wrote, the one that led me to my current agent (but which sadly did not sell), had a trans protagonist and a gaggle of trans-spectrum supporting characters. Said trans protagonist had originally been the best friend character in the very first book I wrote, and revealed himself to be trans about halfway through the writing of that first book (this being one of those situations in which the character knew far better than the author). I loved writing about him, which is why I put him at the center of my second book; he’s my all-time favorite character I’ve created, and even though I haven’t worked on his story in more than a year, he still talks in my head a lot and I love thinking of future stories for him and his friends. (Side note, does anyone else do that with your characters long after the book is done? Because I have this whole fantasy in my head for my former protagonist’s frat brother’s complicated adult life as an investment banker looking for love.)

Anyway, the book I just finished doesn’t have any trans-spectrum characters. At least, not as far as I’m currently aware (see above re: characters and the secrets they hold out on us). Which I am actually kind of concerned about. I have ranted before about how I think authors have an obligation to represent a full spectrum of characters, and I try to live by my own rants whenever possible.

But all of that leads into Deep Thoughts about what is involved in presenting a trans character, especially when they aren’t the protagonist. Which by necessity leads to Deep Thoughts about what it’s like to be a trans teenager, either of the out, closeted, or semi-closeted varieties. Because whereas with some categories of “diverse” characters you can get away with a couple of words of explanation ― for example, in the first chapter of your zombie apocalypse book you can establish a character’s diversity credentials with lines like “Kathy’s mocha-colored skin” (remember how in the mid-2000s it seemed like every best friend character resembled some sort of caffeinated beverage?), “Gary’s boyfriend,” “Trisha’s wheelchair,” etc. ― when it comes to trans characters it seems like there’s some obligation to educate the audience with a detailed, long-ass section like “Zach’s gender was assigned female at birth, but Zach feels more closely identified as a boy, and so at school he uses male pronouns, but his parents make him wear dresses on Sundays” and on and on and on, and poor Zach has to spend the rest of the book explaining what pronouns to use and he never has time to engage in any zombie-killing before his brain gets eaten (because zombies don’t care about your preferred gender pronouns, just how yummy your neurons are).

But to get back to the point about representation ― if kids on the non-straight end of the sexual orientation spectrum are underrepresented in YA (and they are), just think about how underrepresented that makes trans kids. Malinda Lo’s handy set of graphs shows that fewer than 1% of YAs have queer characters ― and of that tiny number of queer YA books published from 2000 to 2011, only 4% are about trans characters.

Given that, I tried to make a list of the YA novels I know of that have trans characters. It is a very short list. And while it’s possible that I’m missing some, the numbers would seem to indicate that it’s also entirely possible that I’m not. (It’s also worth noting that every book on this list came out within the past eight years, and the majority were within the past four. If you were looking for a trans YA book in the 20^th century, sucked to be you, kid.) (ETA: I should note that more trans YA novels are listed in the left sidebar of Lee Wind’s fantastic blog, but I’m not personally familiar with most of the others on his list.)

YA novels with trans-spectrum protagonists who narrate the story:

• Parrotfish by Ellen Wittlinger (female-to-male, 2007)
• Freak Show by James St. James (gender non-conforming, 2007)
• Cycler and (re)Cycler by Lauren McLaughlin (defies categorization, 2008 and 2009)
• I Am J by Cris Beam (female-to-male, 2011)

YAs with trans main characters who don’t narrate:

• Luna by Julie Anne Peters (male-to-female, 2004)
• Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher (male-to-female, 2009)
• Jumpstart the World by Catherine Ryan Hyde (female-to-male, 2010)

YAs with trans supporting characters (and surely there have to be more of these that I just don’t know about, right? Right???):

• Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan (male-to-female, 2003)
• Down to the Bone by Mayra Lazara Dole (genderqueer, 2008)
• Beauty Queens by Libba Bray (male-to-female, 2011)
• I Am J by Cris Beam (yes, I already listed this one above, but it’s the only YA I’ve come across that has more than one trans character in it, so it goes here too; 2011)

I have also ranted in the past about the phrase “I want to read about more characters who just happen to be gay,” which is something I hear said a lot, and which generally bothers me because it seems to dismiss or at least diminish something that’s actually a really important part of who a character is.

And yet, every now and then I do hear myself thinking, “I wish there were more characters who just happened to be trans.”

Because I look at a list like the one up there and I think, “Holy CRAP, we need more trans characters in YA in every way, shape and form.”

Because if a trans character can only make it into a YA if they’re the main character (which that paltry list of trans supporting characters would seem to indicate), and a YA with a trans main character only gets published once every year or two (as the lists of trans protagonists suggest), then that adds up to almost no representation whatsoever of an entire demographic. At all. Except for the same teeny tiny handful of books that everyone recommends over and over and over again.

And it’s not like YA literature is the only space where this is a problem. How many transgender kids have you ever seen on TV aside from on talk shows about transgender kids? And aside from the occasional “fabulous” drag queen, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a trans-spectrum teenager in any movie, ever.

But that said, I would love to hear that this is all my own damn fault for not reading the right books, watching the right shows, or Fandango-ing the right movie tickets, so please, if there is stuff featuring trans characters that I’m missing, tell me now so I can go check it out!

In the meantime, I think I am going to go reread I Am J again, so I can pretend it is 10 books instead of one.

Every now and then this is a helpful thing. Like when a new Harry Potter book comes out and everyone else finishes it the night they got it and then it’s over, whereas I will still be enjoying the thrill of that first read five days later.

The thing is, there hasn’t been a new Harry Potter book for four years now.

So I have had few occasions in which to relish my slow-reader status. In fact it’s quite the opposite. The more I immerse myself in the YA readership world, the more my slow reading becomes a pain in the ass. My TBR list grows and grows into infinity, and yet I keep hearing about new books coming out that OMG I MUST READ NOW OR I WILL DIE. Etc.

2011 was the first year I ever set out to track the books I read, which has resulted in making me that much more conscious of my reading speed fail, especially compared to my universally-much-better-read friends. I can look down the list of titles and dates and confirm that indeed, is not at all uncommon for it to take me two weeks to finish reading one book. Or three. Or even longer. No matter how much I enjoy the book (see above re Harry Potter), I just can’t force myself to read any faster.

But tracking my reading has also enlightened me to something else I might not’ve noticed otherwise: I am not reading enough books about queer people.

I just added a new column to my book-tracking spreadsheet (I have spreadsheets for everything, it’s kind of a problem) to denote queerness, and therefore discovered that out of the 27 books I’ve read so far this year (I know, it’s pathetic), only 5 had queer characters. Three books had queer protagonists, and 2 had queer side characters. So, 18% of my reading thus far in 2011 has involved some sort of queerness, and only 11% has involved significant queerness.

Given that every book I’ve written and every book I’ve ever wanted to write has had at least one queer protagonist, something seems off here.

Granted, 8 of the books I read this year were either published or set before 1970, back when queerness was That Thing We Don’t Speak Of, unless we were speaking of it this way: 

And of course much has been made lately of the fact, best demonstrated by Malinda Lo, that even today, queer characters in mainstream YA are few and far between.

All I can do now is try to make up for it over the two months left in this year. I’ve also been failing miserably in my goal of reading 10 books published in 2011 while we are still actually in 2011 (though I read 2012’s Born Wicked twice this year, does that count?). So I guess that means reading as much queer-inclusive stuff published this year as I can get my hands on. Happily, right now I’m reading Lauren Myracle’s Shine, which has queer secondary characters, and my Kindle already houses Brent Hartinger’s Shadow Walkers, Brian Farrey’s With or Without You, Alex Sanchez’s Boyfriends with Girlfriends, and Scott Tracey’s Witch Eyes. (And now I’m realizing how incredibly heavy my reading list is on the queer boys rather than girls ― but, well, that’s still very disproportionately what’s out there. And anyway, all these books look awesome.)

So, are there any other circa-2011 queer YAs I should add to my list? (For the record, I’ve already read I Am J and Beauty Queens.)

The backstory:

Two authors wrote a post on a Publishers Weekly blog about their experience shopping a YA SFF that featured five narrators, one of whom was queer and engaged in a same-sex romance. Although they got agent interest, there were also requests to change the queer character, and one agent offered representation on the condition that they make the character straight. They refused, and the novel is still unrepresented.

So, that’s nice and depressing. But on the upside, people started tweeting with the hashtag #YesGayYA, and all of those tweets were, obviously, pro-queerness.

My story:

I write exclusively queer YA. All my protagonists are queer, and usually most of the other major characters in my stories are queer, too. And I always have a strong central romance involving my queer protagonists.

I have a fantastic and extremely queer-supportive agent now, after a hunt that involved two manuscripts and more than 70 rejections. I’m working on my third queer YA novel now and eagerly awaiting my first sale.

None of the agents I queried ever asked me to change any character’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Nor did any of them ever say anything that hinted they were rejecting it based on the characters’ / books’ queerness.

But that doesn’t mean they weren’t.

This stuff is usually invisible, is the thing. It was really overt in the experience described in the PW post. But 99.9% of the time, I’m willing to bet, this stuff happens off the record, behind the scenes, entirely inside the heads of the various gatekeepers who control this industry.

Which is why it’s so hard to figure out how often this really happens.

Unlike with many genre authors, or authors of books with queer secondary characters only, there’s no logical reason anyone would ask me to de-queer a character. If I took the queerness out of my books, there’d be pretty much nothing left. It’s a lot easier to just send me a form rejection than to say “I can’t sell a YA book about a bunch of lesbos, sorry.”

On the other hand, there were plenty of other reasons for agents to have turned down my bunch-of-lesbos manuscript. I know, because I got personal rejections too. Rejections that pointed out flaws in the tone, the pacing, etc. — legit stuff that has nothing to do with the girl/girl makeout scene in chapter 12.

That’s why this stuff is so hard to talk about. It’s why, as the PW post points out, people are hesitant to speak out when it happens to them. It’s so hard to be sure when it’s really happening. There are always a bunch of other factors, and no one ever wants to accuse anyone of homophobia, or racism, or misogyny, or anything else, unless they are absolutely 100% sure. And even then, really, because all authors are so freaking paranoid (and with reason) about being blacklisted by the people who have the power in this industry (even though no one seems to be sure exactly who those people are).

There has been a rush today of editors, agents, etc., saying “We want queer YA! Send it to us, please! We are not like those other people!”

And I have no doubt everyone saying that means it, completely and unequivocally. But, as author Scott Tracey pointed out in his post on this, “That’s not exactly the same thing as putting out that content.”

My next book will be my first foray into genre, a ghost story. It’ll be my first book in which the character’s sexual orientations and gender identities aren’t intrinsic to the central plot. It’ll be the first time I’ll be in a position where an editor could ask me to de-queer the story. I’ve always had faith that no one will, but I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have that faith. Just because I don’t hear about that happening much doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, as today’s threads have proved.

And yes, sometimes when I get frustrated with this industry, sometimes when I read the daily sales lists on PM and wonder when mine will be there — sometimes I think, “This would be so much easier if I’d only start writing about straight people.”

But then I remember I don’t want to. No offense to my straight friends, of which I have many, but I just don’t think straight people are anywhere near as interesting as the rest of us. (Sorry! I still like you guys, I swear!)

I hope stories like today’s don’t scare other prospective authors of YA books with queer characters away. That’s always my first thought when this comes up, and why I tend to downplay it. After today, though, I don’t think I will. The code of silence around this issue has lasted long enough.

So if this does ever happen to me, will I come forward and say so? I’d love to pledge to do so here and now, but… well. I’m still just as paranoid as everybody else.

I’ll try, though, I’ll pledge that much.

By the way, lots of people have said lots of really fantastic stuff on this topic so far, most of them far better than I, so I’ll close this post by quoting some of my favorites.

Two of the best posts I’ve come across are by Witch Eyes author Scott Tracey and my DC YA mafia compatriot Rick Lipman.

From Scott’s post:

I had agents who said there wasn’t a market for a paranormal with a gay character who had a romance. I had editors suggest they would reconsider the book if Braden and Trey became Brenda and Trey. Or if I removed the romance and made it a straight girl/gay guy buddy comedy. …

So … it happens. And sometimes it works out. But I hate when people say it doesn’t happen. I don’t like to throw the baby out with the bath water. It’s not a black and white issue. Publishing is not completely homophobic, or completely supportive. It varies, and it changes, and there’s no one standard for how things work. It’s a business, and it’s a business run by MANY different people with MANY different beliefs.

From Rick’s:

I am irritated, however, at the folks rushing to say, “Well I know TONS of Agents and Editors and they would NEVER do this!” It sounds a bit too much like, “My child is an angel and couldn’t possibly be guilty of whatever you’re accusing him of.”

People have prejudices. This is the real world. Some of those prejudices, in this case, may hinge on presumed marketability. Some may be personal that can hide behind the pretense of poor sales or no readership base. It doesn’t matter. There ARE agents and editors who don’t want to handle anything “too gay,” I know plenty of folks who have had similar requests made of their stories in my time, and a lot of the protestations seem to carry an undercurrent of disbelief.

In short: To be shocked that this could happen is a remarkable point of privilege.

And on Twitter, John Jacobson of Dreaming in Books said, in chatting about the fact that I’ve never experienced this in my own publishing life:

I think it makes a difference if the queer is major major to the story. Story-centered or multiple PoVs = easier to ask. I think that’s why it’s so hard to get LGBTQ genre fiction out of the gate. I bet more respond with “take it out” with it. In the case where it’s a big part of the conflict, they can sell it as a “serious contemp” which seems to loosen taboos.

*By the way, although I know “gay” and “YA” rhyme and that’s cute, when we use the term “gay” we actually aren’t being inclusive of the entire LGBTQ community, since many LGBTQ folks don’t consider themselves “gay” and some are in fact heterosexual. That’s why I keep saying “queer.” “Queer” is the most inclusive term out there, and strings of initials are annoying.

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!

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.

We spent every morning having really detailed discussions of craft with our workshop instructor, the amazing and legendary writer and editor Katherine V. Forrest, and then reading and critiquing the openings of each others’ novels. And man, people wrote some seriously awesome stuff in this group. Just in our 10-person workshop, which was on genre fiction, we had 3 YA novels, 2 mysteries, 1 new adult, 1 women’s fiction, 1 sci-fi, 1 paranormal, and 1 lesbian werewolf series (a-rooo!). And 10 freaking brilliant writers and critiquers. I got so much fantastic feedback on the opening of my Shiny New Idea that it is still rather boggling my mind. (Fortunately I recorded my entire 30-minute crit session on my iPhone so I can revisit it whenever I feel like being boggled all over again.)

Everyone had to do a Fellows’ Reading in front of the whole group, which was great because I got to hear everyone’s amazing work (and by the way, I have never written poetry in my life but hearing all those awesome poets read their awesome stuff made me want to go pick up a quill pen and a notebook and start scribbling then and there), and which was awful because it meant I had to get up and read from my own writing in front of a bunch of people and a video camera, which is basically my greatest fear ever in the world. But the environment was so incredibly supportive that I was able to get through it without becoming a shriveling mess. And that in itself is an amazing victory.

(And another awesome thing to come of that? We had to make sure our readings were no more than 4 minutes long, which meant I had to find a scene and trim off every inch of fat from it to get it to 4 minutes, which was actually a really useful exercise to have done.)

As a side note, aside from the fact that I am apparently allergic to the L.A. area (seriously, I got sun poisoning after 10 minutes outside, I got hung over after 2 beers, I kept stubbing my toes on things, I experienced a variety of mild yet annoying maladies that I haven’t been victim to for years, etc), PLUS there are things about California that are simply inappropriate (I get that it’s a desert but the whole having to wear a hoodie after 6pm thing does not work for me, especially in AUGUST; also, why the hell are all the outlets upside down?), I could happily spend more time in that part of the country. The whole no-precipitation-no-humidity thing is quite novel to me. Also there were a lot of hella hot people out there. We have hot people in DC but they tend to wear more clothes here. Also, Diddy Riese? Um, YEAH.

I’m still processing everything from the experience, but man, what an EXPERIENCE. I really consider myself blessed to have been a part of it. So please forgive me if I seem a little blissed out this week. I’m just blissfully thinking about writerly queerness, most likely.

Well, that or lesbian werewolves.

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!

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!