Word War Check and a Free Gift

Jill here. Steph and I are having so much fun at the teen writing conference. It totally makes us want to start a Go Teen Writers in-person conference. Someday, maybe.

How goes the word wars? Feel free to post your weekly word count in the comments section.

Shameless plug: I wanted to let you all know that the first book I wrote (not the first to be published), The New Recruit, is FREE on Amazon Kindle through midnight this Saturday, June 22nd. Whether or not this is your kind of book, if you have a Kindle and don't mind downloading a freebie, it would really help me out.

It's also quite fun to read Spencer's sarcastic voice.

Here is the link to the Amazon Kindle page: http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Recruit-Mission-ebook/dp/B0097ADIGW/ref=pd_sim_kstore_3

And here is a Facebook/Twitter message you could post on your wall, if you're feeling saucy and would like to help spread the word:

Like spy guy books? The New Recruit by Jill Williamson is FREE on Kindle through 6/22. Get yours now! http://tinyurl.com/kyabaok

Thanks so much for any help you can give.

And to encourage you in your word war, here are two videos that my friends Chris and Jacob did, penalties for the losers of their word war with each other. Pay no attention to the length of these videos, they're super funny. So, have a good laugh. And keep on writing!

It's Word War Time!

Jill and I are spending the week at a teen writers conference in Olathe, Kansas. We knew we wouldn't have time for blogging this week, but Jill had the fun idea to host a word war.

If you're not familiar with a word war, it's when writers decide to write for a set period of time and see who ends up with the most words.

This word war will run through Friday at midnight. On Friday, we'll have a form up for 24 hours where you can submit your word count. This will be on the honor system...unless you're one of the top three people to final and then we'll need to verify your words.

The top three will get their pick of a free download of Go Teen Writers: How to Turn Your First Draft into a Published Book, a free download of The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet by me, or a copy of Captives by Jill. (If you already own all these, we'll work out an alternative prize.)

You can begin counting your words...NOW!

If you need help staying motivated, consider playing "1k in 1 hour" in the comments section below (where you race with other writers to try to write a thousand words in one hour) or chat with other writers on Twitter using the hashtag #GoTeenWriters. Or when you're done writing for the day, consider posting your word total in the comments section so you can cheer each other on!

Want to tell others you're engaged in a word war this week? You can grab one of these badges for your blog or Facebook page:

Have fun!

Are You Writing Stereotypes?

Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms. She writes weird books for teens in lots of weird genres like, fantasy (Blood of Kings trilogy), science fiction (Replication), and dystopian (The Safe Lands trilogy). Find Jill on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or on her author website.

I think it's far too easy for us to judge one another. We meet someone new, and, whether or not we mean to let it, they make a first impression that sticks. And maybe that changes over time if that person becomes a friend and we get to know him or her better. But if we don't, we often tend to label that person for all time. We think we know what he or she is all about.

We do this with types of people as well. The dumb jock. The dumb blonde. The homeschooled student. The band geek. The nerd. The Christian prude. The rich girl. The gay guy. The stoner. The, the, the.

People are so much more than any one label. As writers, it's easy for us to start out with these labels. We want to create a group of characters that are varied, so we might jot down a few of those labels I used up above to help ourselves create a diverse cast. And it might work at first. But if we stay there, with those cliche archetypes, we will write cliche characters: one dimensional characters.

Let's not.

Instead, challenge yourself to create a culture in your book, whether you're portraying a real culture from the world we live in or a made up culture in a fantasy setting. Culture is varied. It's rich. It's different. No one person on this planet is the same as another. Not through DNA and not through life experience. We are all human. And we are so much more than any one stereotype. Our gender, race, parents, siblings, income, religion, country, hometown, friends, teachers, sexuality, interests, profession, skills, life experiences, and quirks ... these things combined make up part of who a person is.

So play with that list. Don't just have The Nerd. Instead, have an only child whose parents are both doctors. Since it's always been the three of them at home, our guy has never really felt like a kid. He's been a little grown up from day one. And, frankly, he finds other kids his age obnoxious and juvenile. So rather than playing basketball or video games with his neighbor, he practices the piano, reads history books, and studies French so that when he travels with his parents to France each year, he can work on his accent.

Don't just have The Dumb Jock. Have a guy whose dad is hard on him. Nothing is ever good enough, though he's always gotten praise from his dad when he does good on the football field. So he works harder at football than anything. And, yeah, he doesn't study as much as he should. But as long as his dad is happy and not picking a fight... And maybe he does tend to pick on smaller guys at school, but it's what his dad does to him. It's good for those little guys. They'll be tougher because of it. Plus it makes our guy feel better to be able to dish it out some when he's always having to take if from his dad at home.

Do you see what I mean? No matter how you and I might label people, whether we mean to or not, no one on this planet is a label. We are all so much more.

Have you ever labeled someone? How might you try and get to know that person better?

And what about your characters? Do you have some cliche stereotypes in your book? How might you build them into flesh and blood people who have depth and are unique?

Should Teen Writers Blog?

by Stephanie Morrill

Stephanie writes young adult contemporary novels and is the creator of GoTeenWriters.com. Her novels include The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series (Revell) and the newly released The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet (Playlist). You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and check out samples of her work on her author website.



A writer emailed me to ask, "When do you think a writing blog should be started? Before you publish so people have someplace to go if they're interested, right away? After you publish so there's already interest, hopefully, and something to talk about? And how do you get attention once you have one?"

I see this question asked fairly often, and it always knot me up inside because I'm fearful of saying the wrong thing. Every writer's path is different. Every blog and blog readership is different. With blogs:

There are no absolutes or guarantees

Some published authors have very popular blogs. Other very successful authors have blogs that don't seem to have much traffic. And then Jill and I, who aren't racing up any best sellers lists, have seen success with Go Teen Writers. You can do things to help your blog be successful - like posting consistently and promoting on social media sites - but sometimes even that doesn't get you traffic.

Why are you starting a blog?

This is the first question you should ask, in my opinion. Who is the blog for? Who do you want to reach? What are your goals? Because if your goal is to sell books...that won't keep readers coming around. I don't like being sold to all the time, do you?

I've blogged unsuccessfully and successfully. And you can see the difference in these answers:

Who is this blog for?

My original blog that was on my author website: Uh, the publisher told me I should have one, and I want to do what they ask.... Teens, I guess.

Go Teen Writers: Teens who love writing and who hope to be published someday.

Who do you want to reach?

Original blog: Whoever is already on my website and wants to connect with me.

Go Teen Writers: Teen writers.

What are your goals?

Original blog: To promote my books and to be able to connect with readers.

Go Teen Writers: To encourage teen writers along their journey and to build a community for them.

When you look at those answers, it's clear why my author blog never grew to more than ten or so faithful readers. I had no idea what I was doing or who I was doing it for.

Why a blog?

Another question you should ask is if a blog is the right thing for you. When a blog is done well, it takes up a lot of time. A lot of time that you could be using to write or read. When you think about your goals, is a blog the best way to achieve those goals? Or would it be better to use a YouTube, Tumblr, Twitter, Pinterest, or other sites that I'm not savvy enough to know about?

I've seen writers have success with starting email loops for their genre or with Facebook groups for people who are in the same season of life as them. I've been a part of YA lit email loops and was briefly in a Stay At Home Writers Facebook group for moms who write with little kids underfoot. Maybe you don't need or want a blog, maybe another format would serve you better.

How is this different than what's already out there?

This one requires a bit of research. When I first started Go Teen Writers, I did an internet search to see what else was out there for teen writers. Because I knew if teens were already happily plugged into a community, that meant they probably weren't looking for a new one. Figure out what would make your blog unique. 

When should you start? Before or after you're published?

I have no idea. Some people create wildly successful blogs and land book contracts and TV shows because of it, like The Pioneer Woman. Other people limp around in the blogosphere but still manage to get book contracts.

I don't talk to publishing committees on a regular basis, but it seems to me that a great blog can help you, but a so-so blog won't hurt too much because there are so many ghost town blogs out there. (Unless on your blog you regularly roast editors and publishing houses - that will hurt you.)

If you start the blog after you're published, you'll have something to promote (your book) but it doesn't necessarily mean you'll have more to talk about. The average writer's life isn't full of blog fodder.

Should you talk about writing?

This wasn't in the question, but I'll address it anyway. Writing is a natural thing for us to want to talk about. We are, after all, writers. And other than my kids and trips to Costco, there really isn't much that's consistent in my life that I could talk about outside of writing.

Amanda Luedeke is an agent with MacGregor Literary (Jill's agent, actually) and she wrote a

View Amanda's book on Amazon

wonderful post called "Blogging as a Fiction Writer." In it she says:

Blogging as a fiction writer is difficult. So difficult, that if I were in your shoes, I’d probably choose something else to build my platform. Maybe Facebook or Twitter. Something easier. Because unlike nonfiction authors, fiction authors aren’t really experts at things. They don’t have people coming to them, looking for answers or solutions or world peace. They don’t have that clear topic to drive their blog. They just have themselves and their imagination. And that doesn’t always make for an interesting blog experience.

But she does offer 6 great ideas for blogging as a fiction writer in her article, and you can read her great suggestions for blogging and growing your blog here.

I don't consider myself an expert in blogging or anything, but if you have questions, you can leave them below and I'll do my best to answer them.

Next week Jill and I will be teaching at the One Year Adventure Novel conference in lovely Olathe, Kansas. This means we won't be blogging BUT Jill had a fabulous idea. Next week we're going to host a massive word war here on the blog.

Not sure what a word war is? It's where a group of writers compete to see who can write the most words in a set amount of time. Details will go live on the blog Monday morning, so make sure you check it out!

What is today's bird?

by Stephanie Morrill

Stephanie writes young adult contemporary novels and is the creator of GoTeenWriters.com. Her novels include The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series (Revell) and the newly released The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet (Playlist). You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and check out samples of her work on her author website.






I spent the bulk of last week camping in and hiking around Bryce Canyon National Park with my husband and favorite tiny people.

McKenna and Connor chilling our first night in the hotel.

While camping and I are still on iffy terms with each other, I've come to really love hiking and all the cool stuff it allows you to see. Hiking can be a great adventure, but hiking with kids...well, there are times when I feel each step I've taken, and when each future step seems so daunting that I just want to sit down and call for the rescue helicopter to come put me out of my misery.

And isn't it the same our stories?

One day you feel swept away into the story, caught up in the beauty of it all, and another you're looking at your manuscript thinking, "Who thought this was a good idea? How many words do I have to write before I can let myself be done for the day?"

The first time I read Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, I was a senior in high school (it was assigned reading for my English class) and I was in the process of teaching myself how to write Real Novels. Like, ones that were longer than 10,000 words. It was daunting.

In the first chapter of the book, she talks about a report her brother had to write for school about birds, which he had put off until the night before it was due, and he was freaking out about how he was going to get it all done in time. Anne's father said to her brother, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird."

Anne applies this to writing with the concept of giving yourself "short assignments." She says:

Say to yourself in the kindest possible way, Look, honey, all we're going to do for now is to write a description of the river at sunset...that's all we're going to do for now. We are just going to take this bird by bird. But we are going to finish this one short assignment.

I think this is some of the best writing advice I've ever been given. It's talked me out of moments of despair where I'm thinking, "I have this huge mess of a story that needs to be edited within a month! How am I going to get this all done?!"

Usually it takes another cup of coffee, some deep breathing, and a reminder that I just need to focus on one task at a time. Same as hiking up a canyon with my kids. I just have to coax their little feet one step at a time until we reach the rim.

I left for vacation last week feeling overwhelmed by what would be waiting for me when I came home. I'm trying to get The Unlikely Debut of Ellie Sweet edited and turned in, I'm teaching classes next week that I desperately want to go well, and it's birthday season in my family - four next week, including my husband's and my mother's.

Cue the deep breath and me reaching for the coffee pot.

Today, I need the reminder that I don't have to edit my entire book right this moment. Instead I just need to edit page 44. And when I've done page 44, then I can worry about page 45. Page by page. Bird by bird.

What about you? What's your "bird" for today? Consider posting it below, then coming back later and letting us know how it went.

How to Know If Your Book Is Middle Grade or Young Adult

Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms. She writes weird books for teens in lots of weird genres like, fantasy (Blood of Kings trilogy), science fiction (Replication), and dystopian (The Safe Lands trilogy). Find Jill on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or on her author website.

I see a lot of confusion over middle grade and young adult books. I see this from authors and readers. And I also see it in book reviews, especially when a reviewer will slam a book for not getting deep enough into the characters emotions or for dealing with mature subject matters. But here's the thing, most of the time, those complains are because the reader doesn't understand which genre he or she is reading.

First of all, there are usually three age groups of books for middle grade and young adult. There are the middle grade 8-12, the YA 14 and up, and the middle grade/YA crossover books 12-16. Confusing, I know. But knowing who your own target audience is, and knowing which publishers are publishing the type of book you are writing will make your life easier.

Kids like to read about characters who are older than they are. So, if you're main character is 14, you're likely writing a middle grade book. If your main character is 18, you're likely writing YA. Don't write a YA book with a twelve-year-old protagonist, unless it's a coming-of-age story and the bulk of the book's content fits YA better that middle grade.

Keep in mind that the conflicts that your characters are dealing with should fit the interests and conflicts that your target readers have. A ten-year-old reader isn't concerned with romance, so putting romance into a middle grade book for 8-12 year old readers is a mistake. But a sixteen-year-old reader is interested in romance, so romance is often included in YA books.

Middle Grade
These are books written for readers from ages 8-12. These books tend to focus more on plot than characters. That's not to say that middle grade books have bland characters. They just don't tend to go as deep into the characters' points of views. These types of stories are often about the adventure and fun.

Eight to twelve year old kids don't tend to buy their own books. Yes, there are always exceptions to this rule, but mostly, for this age group, parents are buying the books or the kids are getting them from a school or library, which means a teacher or librarian is buying the books. This means that these books are being examined by adults before they get into the hands of the kid reader.

Middle grade books are also edited for content by the publishing house. These editors know that parents, teachers, and librarians are going to be checking these books over. Romance, drugs, graphic violence, swearing ... these things don't usually fly in a middle grade book.

Young Adult
These are books written for ages 12 and up. YA books tend to focus more on the characters and their problems. They tend to have deeper points of view and be more emotional. The plot is important, but often not as important as the drama. Teens tend to buy their own books, and often, adults no longer pay attention to what teens are reading.

YA books are sometimes edited for content, but you can get away with a lot grittier things. For those of you who read Captives, my editors really helped me with the content in that book. And Captives is a 14 and up book. Replication is a 12-16 book. There is some romance and violence in it, but it's not graphic enough to need a 14 and up rating from the publisher. Every publishing house is different, of course. There are some YA publishers who will let anything slide. *shudders*

So what do you have?
Ask yourself: How old is my protagonist? What is my plot about? If I have more mature issues, how mature? Stories that involve sex, drugs, extreme violence, and language will put your book into the 14 and up YA category. But if you have only a little of one of those mature topics and it's a subplot and handled tastefully, you might be able to fit into the 12-16 YA category. Really, it's all about finding the right publisher for your story. Studying books similar to yours will help you figure that out.

Don't think that middle grade books can't be cool. They can. And teens who are sixteen will read them. So will adults. And they can have have a little romance, just not emotional romance. The Percy Jackson books are all middle grade. The romance in those books was tame enough that the series never crossed over into young adult. If you have soap opera-type drama in your book, it's probably YA. The Harry Potter books changed as Harry got older. The first three books were middle grade. The last four were YA because of Harry's age and the more emotional plot lines.

Do you know if your book is middle grade or YA? Do you know your target age group?

Diversity in Literature and a giveaway!

by Rajdeep Paulus

Rajdeep Paulus writes Contemporary Young Adult Fiction and blogs weekly at In Search of Waterfalls. Connect with her in on:Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Goodreads, and Instagram! Her debut novel, Swimming Through Clouds, released June 1st with Playlist Young Adult Fiction!

Bringing Rainbows to Young Adult Fiction

I grew up on books. I’ve loved reading for as long as I can recall, and road trips were the best. This was back in the day when my parents owned a station wagon, (a what?!) and no one cared if you laid down in the back. I just brought a stash of book, and the miles went by like nothing. And when it was too dark to read, I laid on my back and looked for shooting stars.

As a new writer, only having completed about three full manuscripts at this point, I found it only natural to introduce characters of my ethnic background. (I was born in Punjab, India, but celebrated my third birthday in New York!) My first book, the one that will probably never leave the archives, is told from the point of view of a North Indian girl who grew up in Chicago named Rani. She even resembles me with her long straight dark brown hair.

And maybe someday her story will get dusted off and find a home. For now, she makes a cameo in Swimming Through Clouds. But I still love her, because she helped me to find Talia and Lagan and their story.

I think everyone wants to read a story they can identify with. Not just on an emotional level, but just like very few of us resemble Barbie growing up, we all need to identify with characters and stories that remind us of ourselves physically, culturally, and ethnically—to name a few categories.

On a hunt for these very stories, as a senior during my undergrad years at Northwestern, my one Indian English Professor, Madhu Dubey, agreed to help me craft a senior project centered around the ten or so South-Asian authors I was able to find at the time. Authors who wrote in English. And wrote stories that took place in America. The thing is, as is with so much of cultural fiction, the running theme repetitively centered around living between two cultures. The “hyphened” generation, if you will. And I get that. Many of us whose ethnic roots lie across the oceans are only a couple of generations away from our parents as immigrants. So the stories were needed (and still are,) but, there are so many other stories to tell. Tales that include ethnic and cultural details but center around the more universal experiences of life. That’s my goal as a writer. To introduce colorful stories that no matter what your background is, you can step into them and feel connected, make friends, and fall in love.

I grew up in Windsor, Ontario which wasn’t that diverse. Then I finished high school in Livonia, Michigan, and I think I was one of three or four brownies in the whole school. Not until I ventured off to college at Northwestern and fell in love with Chicago did I get to immerse in diversity. And my friends were from all over the globe, and that’s how I always imagined my life. Happened to marry a guy from India, but his family is from the Southern most state of Kerala while I was born in Punjab, in the north. A North meets South love story I like to tell people. And if you’re talking India, that pretty much means two different countries. We call our kids Malayabis or Punjialis, since he’s a Malu! :)

I think that’s why I love being a New Yorker best. The world has showed up here, and I can’t wait to write their stories. We’re friends with so many couples who are married interracially, that when I spin my head, every other kid has a beautiful mix of features on his or her face. In my own family, many of my nieces and nephews celebrate at least two cultural backgrounds, sometimes three. And the world is changing more than ever. Diversity is accepted and celebrated more than ever. Why shouldn’t literature reflect this? I think it should!

And you? Do you have a favorite YA read that featured a diverse band of characters? Or is there a story you're itching to write? Maybe a buff Eskimo dude meets a lost Caribbean teen who wanders off from her Tour Guide group and knows nothing about how to weather the cold let alone how to dress for the Arctic! Make your own up! I'd love to hear what ideas you amazing teens come up with!

We're super excited to give away a free download of Rajdeep's debut novel, Swimming Through Clouds. Here's how you can enter to win:

a Rafflecopter giveaway