E-mails are a big one, and sometimes this falls into the realm of Writer Sage because sometimes these e-mails are to agents or editors.  Querying isn’t too big a problem anymore for me, unless I’m making the query very personalized.  And then I freak out over one or two sentences.  Status queries can be agony.  A thank you for some excellent revision suggestions.  An e-mail to my editor that contains anything from “Here’s these edits” to an explanation of why I disagree with an edit or a question about one.  At work, I might just be sending an e-mail stating that I’m sending something to someone at the main lab.  It might be an e-mail with an attachment included, and that’s all I need to say.

But I stress about it.

At work this week, I had two requests for writing.  One was a self-evaluation.  The other was a resume with my updated lab experience.  Now, I have been told time and time again that the self-evaluations are meaningless.  Some people in the lab have even copy-and-pasted past evaluation answers into the current (identical) form.  Not me.  First I worry about the content. The first question is about new things I’ve learned and how I’ve made the lab more efficient and so on.  (It’s the only question I think is actually worth anything, tbh).  So I worry about what I learned this year vs. last year, and whether it’s impressive enough, and have I filled enough lines with the answer.  Then I start rereading it to see if the wording is bad.  Do I sound too full of myself here?  Does this sound like I think I did more than they think I did (and is this a bad thing or should I inform them of that)?  Does this item here seem wishy-washy?  Can I say this in a less awkward way?

And, stop.  Right there.  That’s really important in writing books, but really?  Who cares if my sentence was awkward in a self-evaluation?  One of our employees can barely read English.  Nobody else in the lab is a writer.  My first draft will probably be more polished than what anyone else turns in.

But I do three drafts and reread and reread and reread.  And reread one last time, just in case I change my mind or some key thing is going to pop out at me.  Because that’s what I do with this kind of writing.  Hey, at least I don’t send it out to betas.

Except on that resume thing.  Because at one point I was looking at the resume of a coworker with similar experience, whose bio I was supposedly going to be able to copy and make minor changes to.  And I stared at two of her listed pieces of experience and tried to figure out which one I actually had, because to me they sounded like a different way of describing a similar experience.  I finally took it to my supervisor and asked him what he thought.  He told me to combine them, lol.  After I figured out what to toss and what to add and what to leave alone, I found a new thing to stress about.  I remembered that when I was being taught to make a resume, there was a big deal made about the way you list your experience for each job.  I had to bullet each piece of experience and start the description of it with a verb.  And the verbs all had to be the same tense.  But the sample resume didn’t, and that made sense because some things are constantly being done by me (lab work, for example) and some are experience I have, but of things I did in the past.  I must have gone through and changed verbs and tenses about 20 times.

But you know what?  That’s not going to matter when they read the bio.  The reader isn’t going to notice the verb tenses.  They won’t care if I shifted them or not.  Certainly, nobody’s going to choose whether we get this projected based on a tense shift.

And it’s funny, especially in light of my “making your words count” post yesterday, that the things I stressed most about in these types of writing are the things that barely matter at all.  The actual words don’t count in my self-evaluation and work bio, only the message does.  Nobody cares how I phrase an e-mail at work, as long as they know what I’m trying to say.  A thank you to an agent or an editor could probably be simply “Thanks!” without my trying to express my appreciation in a wordier fashion.  No matter how many times I reread that long e-mail to my editor, in the end I will send it with only superficial changes made to it.

When you’re writing for an audience, for entertainment, every word counts, and how you write it counts.  Your readers are reading for your style and your words and your phrasing and your message.   You need the whole package.  And of course, I stress about that, especially in the editing phase.

But not like I stress about these things that just don’t matter.  Weird, huh?

Lots of love,

Sage

The two I play are Hanging with Friends and Words with Friends.  Words with Friends is essentially Scrabble.  Hanging with Friends is a hangman/Scrabble hybrid.  Hanging is my favorite (so far I haven’t lost).  With Hanging, you have a certain set of letters that you can create a word from 4 to 8 letters long.  Each letter has a number of points it’s worth, and one space you have to fill might be worth double or triple.  You get points for the word, but those aren’t what wins the game.  Instead those points are used to collect “coins” so you can get special avatars and such.  What wins the game is whether the other person can figure out your word before they run out of letter guesses, just like in hangman.  You also get fewer guesses for longer words (supposedly because there are more letter options in the word) and more for short words.

Sometimes for Hanging, I focus on getting more points and sometimes I focus on stumping the other person.  I am much better at beating the other person in Hanging because, in the end, a better vocabulary is your friend.  This is not necessarily true for Words with Friends.  An impressive vocabulary can help you figure out how to use a difficult set of letters, but for Words, what matters is the points you got for each letter.  It doesn’t matter how great a word is if it’s a ton of common letters and doesn’t land on a special square (double/triple letter/word score squares).  Then someone will hit me with “za” on a triple word score and get 33 points.  Grrrrr.  (But now you know that trick, as do I )

So what do we, as writers, learn from Hanging with Friends and Words with Friends?  It’s how to make your words count.  It doesn’t matter if you use a ten-dollar word, if you don’t use it right.  Even in Hanging with Friends, I know that there are some letters the people I’m playing with always guess first.  Also, the guesser gets the last vowel automatically, so if you have several of that same vowel, they get every one without a single guess.  If you have several of any letter, it leads to fewer guesses that they have to make.  So I have to try hard to avoid these things, even if the letters I have available give me the opportunity to make a great word out of those letters.  In Words, a long word might be gold, but it might have been worth more if you had put it in the right spot, or if you had used the same letters for two smaller words in different places.

Writers are taught that we have to make sure that our words matter.  We have to make them count for all they’re worth.

Maybe my Hanging with Friends and Words with Friends obsession is nothing more than me being thrilled to show off my writer’s vocabulary.  Totally possible.  But maybe, just maybe, it’s helping me learn to make those words count.

Lots of love,
Sage

But, of course, there is a difficulty.  Once we get past the change-a-sentence-here, change-a-sentence-there stuff, we come to edits that require knowledge of the scene.  And I have to admit that after a year away from the novel, I don’t remember every detail of every scene perfectly.

For example, my editor wanted me to change a scene, and when it came time to consider what to do about the scene, I thought I had the fix.  Basically, Mailee’s and Eric’s clothes were wet and they probably should change them.  No problem.  I’d make a simple change and have Eric grab clothes for himself and Mailee from his room and they would both change.

Oh, wait.  As I read the scene, then the beginning of the chapter, I realized that they weren’t at his apartment.  They were at her mom’s house.  Well, that posed a bigger problem, since he wasn’t going to have any clothes there to change into (I might have considered him wearing her clothes if he wasn’t huge and she wasn’t tiny ), him leaving to get clothes would destroy the scene, and her changing when he hadn’t didn’t make any sense because they were going to spend the rest of the scene cuddling.  Oops.

Later on, my editor reminded me that Mailee’s hand was hurt, and she should react that way in the current scene.  I was preeeeetty sure her hand was hurt from punching someone, but I had to read everything in between those scenes to make sure that that was all.  Mailee’s a little accident prone, so there were plenty of other reasons she could have hurt her hand, but, nope, I was right and it was the punching.

Of course, there are some things that you’re going to have to reread and reread no matter how long ago you worked on it.  I was adding in a bunch of world-building mythology into the novel, and I had to make sure I didn’t contradict anything that is vital to the plot.  Mailee has a week to perform her quest, so I had to make sure the week was included in the mythology.  And then I debated whether or not I really needed that week.  Wouldn’t it be simpler to lose it?  Oh, but, wait, the week was needed because someone had started the quest before, and I needed to explain why everything went back to square one when he didn’t finish.

And I probably would have remembered most of the mythology even with the distance.  I mean, it’s the reason the plot follows along the way it does.  But it’s the details that I worry about, and so the distance must be crossed so I can gain a new familiarity with this novel that I once knew every word of.  Well, maybe not every word, but I sure would have known that they were at Mailee’s house, not Eric’s.

Lots of love,

Sage

When you write a novel, you put your heart and soul into it.  When you revise it, you’re polishing and making it even better than when you started, so now your heart and soul has been shined up and how could anyone not love it?  You get pet scenes and pet plot points and pet characters, and even pet lines, and then someone tells you to change one.  And you get defensive because it’s your baby.  They tell you to explain something you know you made clear.  They don’t get what you were doing.  And you think it’s all their fault.

And then you calm down.  You look at what the basis of the complaint is.  You figure out ways to make necessary changes without losing the things you love about that scene or plot point or character or line.  You remember that sometimes you miss information when reading too.  And you also see if what you thought was clear was maybe not so clear after all.  If they don’t get what you’re doing, maybe you need to make it more obvious.  Maybe.

Of course, the whole time, you still appreciate their hard work.  You make a lot of changes, you don’t make others (sometimes you should have).  But there’s always this little tiny defensive voice.  But I find that defensive voice goes away pretty much as soon as I finish the edits and read through it.  There are very few things I remember from my earlier versions, and they are all MAJOR edits (like losing/adding in scenes).  I rearranged the beginning of Love Sucks, and I could not tell you what scenes came before others.  As important as I thought the way I originally wrote it was, it was not important enough to remember.

Those beta notes on Love Sucks, though?  They were two years ago.  I reread the novel for fun some time last year, and I took out most of Mailee’s stuttering a little before that.  Other than that, I haven’t touched the book in over a year.

So when I got these edits from my editor, it turned out that I was so distant from the book that I didn’t feel defensive about any of them.  Not even a little.  If I think there was a bit of a reading miscomprehension, I figure out how to make it all clear.  There’s one place so far that I’ve had to STET, and I was perfectly mellow about it, and all the rest of the revision notes have been me just nodding along and seeing what I can do.  Maybe I got an editor who gets it?  Well, I think I did, but my betas got it too, I know they did.  I have betas who still tell me they love that novel.  And one major suggestion by my editor is one that I’ve gotten before and I shrugged off and now I’m all ready to do it.

Distance is nice for taking revision suggestions.

But don’t get me wrong.  I’m still an advocate for going straight into revisions as soon as you’re done with the novel if you’re still on that writing high.  I love the initial editing passes, and I almost always do them within that month I finished.  And I don’t suggest waiting a year or two before getting those first beta notes, no way.

But distance is nice.  And I’m hoping that I continue to feel this way about my edits.

And as long as my editor doesn’t suggest I do something odd like cut out the main LI and make my MC fall in love with a minor character (yes, it’s happened before), I probably will.

Okay, time to go back to edits.

Lots of love,

Sage

Last year I took on the 100 Book Challenge again.  For those of you who don’t remember, the challenge is to read 100 MG or older books.  Graphic novels count, but I didn’t read any in 2011.  Rereads count, but not if you reread it twice in 2011 (I had one audiobook I listened to twice in 2011, but it only counted once).  I also read several chapter books in preparation for NaNo, but none of them counted.

In all, I read 103 countable books.  11 were adult books.  27 were MG. 1 was a classic (hard to define YA/MG/adultness). 64 were YA (big surprise).  4 were beta reads.  10 were audiobooks.  2 were won in blog contests and 1 was won at a radio event when I was getting a hair cut.  Only 17 were books I got out of the big Borders closing shopping trips (but I have several more on my TBR shelf), and out of those, I adored only 4 and ended up buying sequels/prequels if they were available, and I hated 2.  This year I rediscovered the library and 23 counted books came from there.  7 chapter books were not counted, and all but 2 were library books.

So you’re probably tired of the stats and just want the list.  Here’s my 103 books of 2011:

1. Meetings at the Metaphor Cafe by Robert Pacillio
2. Jane by April Lindner
3. Death Masks by Jim Butcher
4. Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
5. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
6. Sphinx’s Queen by Esther Friesner
7. Coffeehouse Angel by Suzanne Selfors
8. Luna by Julie Anne Peters
9. Choker by Elizabeth Woods
10. Clockwork Angel: The Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare (audiobook)
11. Dr. Friedrich’s School for Minions(beta read)
12. Blood Rites by Jim Butcher (audiobook)
13. Across the Universe by Beth Revis
14. The Demon’s Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan
15. Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork
16. Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
17. Fairest by Gail Carson Levine (audiobook)
18. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
19. Water Wars by Cameron Stracher
20. Dead Beat by Jim Butcher (audiobook)
21. Daughter of Xanadu by Dori Jones Yang
22. The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale (audiobook)
23. Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
24. Warped by Maurissa Guibord
25. Princess Academy by Shannon Hale (audiobook)
26. The Outside Boy by Jeanine Cummins
27. Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
28. Empty by Suzanne Weyn
29. Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
30. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
31. Kiss Me Kill Me by Lauren Henderson
32. The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
33. Front and Center by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
34. The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting
35. Glee: The Beginning by Sophia Lowell
36. Twice Upon a Marigold by Jean Ferris
37. Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves
38. Ironside by Holly Black
39. Divergent by Veronica Roth
40. Huntress by Malinda Lo
41. A Deadly Game of Magic by Joan Lowery Nixon
42. Breathing Underwater by Alex Flinn
43. Steel by Carrie Vaughn
44. Battle Dress by Amy Efaw
45. I am J by Cris Beam
46. Invincible Summer by Hannah Moskowitz
47. The Shakespeare Stealer by Gary Blackwood
48. The Boyfriend List by e. lockhart
49. Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale (audiobook)
50. Wildwing by Emily Whitman
51. The Boy Book by e. lockhart
52. River Secrets by Shannon Hale (audiobook)
53. A Need so Beautiful by Suzanne Young
54. House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones
55. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
56. The Off Season by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
57. Forest Born by Shannon Hale
58. Paranormalcy by Kiersten White (audiobook)
59. The Secret of Ka by Christopher Pike
60. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
61. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by e. lockhart
62. Beastly by Alex Flinn
63. The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab
(xx. Blood Rites by Jim Butcher (audiobook))
64. Prom and Prejudice by Elizabeth Eulberg
65. Soundtrack (beta read)
66. Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan
67. The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman
68. The Treasure Map of Boys by e. lockhart
69. A Series of Unfortunate Events: A Bad Beginning by Lemony Snickett
70. Enter Three Witches by Caroline B. Cooney
71. The Agency: A Spy in the House by Y.S. Lee
72. Harmonic Feedback by Tara Kelly
73. The False Princess by Eilis O’Neal
(Cam Jansen and the Mystery Writer Mystery by David A. Adler)
74. Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary
75. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
76. How to be a Pirate by Cressida Cowell
77. The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary
(Clementine by Sarah Pennypacker)
78. Frindle by Andrew Clements
79. Ramona the Brave by Beverly Cleary
80. White Cat by Holly Black
(The Talented Clementine by Sarah Pennypacker)
81. The Witches by Roald Dahl
82. Real Live Boyfriends by e. Lockhart
83. Ramona and her Father by Beverly Cleary
84. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
85. Supernaturally by Kiersten White (audiobook)
86. Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar
87. Blackbird (beta read)
88. Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary
89. Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake
90. The Worst Witch at School by Jill Murphy
91. The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School by Candace Fleming
(Time Warp Trio: Summer Reading is Killing Me by Jon Scieszka)
92. An Awfully Beastly Business: Battle of the Zombies by the Beastly Boys.
(Ghosthunters and the Incredibly Revolting Ghost by Cornelia Funke)
93. The Worst Witch Saves the Day by Jill Murphy
(The Boxcar Children: The Vampire Mystery by ???)
(Marty McGuire by Kate Messner)
94. Doctor Who: Forever Autumn by Mark Morris
95. Poirot’s Early Cases by Agatha Christie
96. Mason Dixon: Pet Disasters by Claudia Mills
97. No Talking by Andrew Clements
98. Liar by Justine Larbalestier
99. Red Glove by Holly Black
100. Beauty Queens by Libba Bray
101. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
102. Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
103. Jack (beta)

There are so many books on this list this year that I loved.  Some of them were surprising (I had no clue I was going to love The Boyfriend List and its sequels so much), some were totally expected (there was no doubt I was going to love A Need So Beautiful).  I know I should tell you my favorite book, but I just went through the list and found the task impossible.  Even when I tried to make a top 5 list, I had difficulty, lol.  Yay for a year of great reading!  In recent years, I’ve found it difficult to enjoy reading.  My writer self kept intruding.  Sometimes that still happens, but I’ve gotten back to reading for fun and enjoying good or fun (or both) books again   Unfortunately, there were a few books I was very disappointed in as well.  One got my very first 1 star review on Goodreads.  I know.  But overall, a great year for books for me.

I’ve taken up the challenge again this year. I am currently on my 3rd book this year, and I have loved every one of them so far.  And they’re all so different, so this is kind of amazing.

Anyway, I hope your reading last year was as successful, and feel free to take on the challenge with me.

Lots of love,
Sage

Busy August.

Two days into September, I received word that I had made it into the second round of the anthology.  There was still another round of cuts to go, but just getting that far was really encouraging.  I knew that if I was rejected, I would be confident enough to submit it elsewhere.

So I waited. In the world of publishing, it wasn’t that long.  Just under two months.  And then a couple of weeks ago, we were told that the table of contents would be decided on that Friday.  Imagine my nerves that week, lol.  Friday came, and then we were told that only rejections were going out that night.  Acceptances would be the next evening.

I didn’t receive a rejection before bed.  I had to work the next morning (Saturday, I know), so I went to bed a little early.  I got up at 6 a.m. when my iPod went off, and just like every morning, I checked it to see if I had e-mail.  I did.  There was a little red circle with a “1″ in it.  Kinda like when I see that “Inbox (1),” at first I got excited.  And then I remembered that rejections were going out.

I tried not to be too disappointed as I opened my e-mail.  It was a rejection, I knew it.

Only it wasn’t.  It was an offer!  But not for “Fireflies”, not for the anthology.  It was an offer for Love Sucks, which I submitted to an e-publisher a little over three weeks ago.

That’s right!  Love Sucks is going to be published by Musa Publishing!

So, yeah, that was pretty good news.

Even better was when I received the acceptance for “Fireflies” that evening.

Two acceptances, one day.  There might have been some dancing involved.

All right, it’s time for NaNo.  Hope you enjoyed my little story.

Lots of love,

Sage

I’m back after a long long break.  But I’m back and ready to post as much as possible.  I have big news that I’ll announce in my next post, but this one is about the main cause of my disappearance: writing depression.

Last year after NaNo I devoted my time to revising Fireflies into a YA (for those just tuning in, Fireflies was a MG, and three agents suggested I revise it into a YA).  I started revising on the cruise, but didn’t get very far.  But afterward, I knew enough time had gone since the R&R request, and I needed to get on it.  So I focused on the revision, taking a detour for ScriptFrenzy (I only wrote 50 pages) in late April.

The problem was…I wasn’t enjoying it at all.  There were some good things I was writing, but every word was like pulling teeth.  The same for when I wrote for ScriptFrenzy.  The same after I gave up on Fireflies for good and tried working on a H/V sequel and on another old novel I gave up on once upon a time.  And when I thought about it, Nano Kid, my NaNo novel from 2010, had been difficult to write (though you wouldn’t know it from my NaNo stats).  I’m not going to lie.  Almost every novel has some area where I struggle to put the words down and get through the scene, but this was happening for everything I was writing and had been since I finished H/V (summer of last year).

For Fireflies, I had more discouragement because I never felt right making it a YA.  I felt like Fiona acted like a pre-teen and that the plot was better for an MG, but it seems like agents felt my voice and the relationship between Fiona and her brother were better for an older audience.  But being a YA required an additional 20K words and probably a romance too.  Plus I had other issues to address, based on agent and beta comments.  I worked on it for months, added enough words to make it into YA range (whether I succeeded in making it YA is another matter ), and fixed some of the problems, but in the end it just wasn’t working.

Meanwhile, I had non-writing issues I was dealing with.  I’ve been focused on diet and exercise because of health issues, and until May I was having difficulty seeing results despite working out a ton and eating pretty well.  In May, my cat had a tumor and had to have surgery (he’s okay).  Plus, I’ve been having money issues, which is why I stopped sending out books in May.  I have the books, just no money to send them anywhere Notice how this all kinda comes together in May?  Notice when my last blog post was?

It may be a bunch of excuses, but the end result was that I just was completely depressed by everything writing related.  I unplugged from the writing world as much as possible.  No blog, no Twitter, and I even visited Absolute Write rarely (and then only to act as a moderator).

This ended in August, thank goodness, and I’ve slowly been integrating myself back into the writing world since.  But what happened in August? you might ask.  Well, it turned out I needed a kick in the pants in the form of a Three-Day Novel.  My friend and I rented a cheap cabin for a three-day weekend and wrote our fingers off for 72 hours.  I had been coming up with plot points for that novel since March, but I have to admit that with the way my writing had been going earlier this year, I was pretty nervous about devoting 3 days to writing.  Especially since my April writing vacation completely failed.

Anyway, the plan had been just to be silly and not worry about plot or characterization…but that plan died pretty quickly.  But here was the amazing thing about this novel: the entire time I wrote it, it never once felt like I was forcing the words out for words’ sake.  It was fun.  It had been over a year since I had had fun writing, and the entire thing was just plain fun.

And, you know what?  Revisions and betas later, it’s still fun

After that I wrote and submitted a short story to a kidlit contest (I did not win), I started a short story in the novel world (I never finished, but only because my focus went elsewhere), and I took Fireflies and cut it down into a short story.

Say, what?

Yep.  I figured out the problem with Fireflies.  The “brilliant concept” and “beautiful writing” worked better in a shorter work.  I had all these extra scenes in it that I didn’t need (in the teeny MG version, even).  Scenes that were actually causing problems.  Thanks to agent and beta comments, I could ID those quick and zap them out of the story.  Then came the harder part.  What Troy scenes did I need to get rid of?  See, the heart and soul of the story, to me, is Fiona dealing with her brother who is recovering from a Traumatic Brain Injury.  So every scene with the two of them was golden to me.

I cut a bunch.  I kept a bunch.  In the end I had 7000 words that revolved around the very essence of what I wanted when I wrote that novel and could be marketed to adults.  And what did I do then?  I actually submitted it to something.

That was all in August.  And, well, stuff has happened since then.

I’ll tell you about it next time

Lots of love,

Sage

But for now, the winner of part 3 is…

Ariel

Congrats, chica.  Leave me a comment with some kind of contact info, so I can get you your books. (If you don’t comment in a week, I’ll go with the random # generator’s second pick, whose contact info I know I have).

Have a great week, everyone.  I’ll probably post Workout Wednesday next.

Currently on iPod: The Joke by Lifehouse

Lots of love,
Sage

By the way, is “workout” one word or two?  Or maybe it matters what context I’m using it in.

Well regardless of the spelling, here’s my past week’s workouts:

Thursday:

Aqua fitness – 35 minutes of cardio, 10 minutes of abs, and about 10 minutes hitting around a beach ball

Zumba – 50 minutes of dancing, variety of music including latin, reggaeton, bellydancing, etc.

Friday:

PT (personal training) routine – a bunch of exercises on the Purmotion “machine,” which looks like a giant jungle gym.  Chin ups, pull ups, lunges, step ups, two ab exercises, and a shoulder exercise.

Saturday:

Aqua fitness – pretty much the same as Thursday

Sunday:

Took it off

Monday:

PT routine – Skater lunges with weights, triceps lifts (12.5 lb dumbells for both), squats with weights, chest press (22.5 lb dumbells for both), leg lifts, midrow cable (35 lb), and a cable exercise with a staff that made me feel like Mulan (20 lb)

Zumba – 50 minutes of dancing.  This was a new class, and I don’t know if I’ll go back.  More pop-oriented and the instructor wasn’t big on going over moves before doing them.

Iron – Barbell weight lifting with light weights set to music.  Hour class.

Zumba – 50 minutes of dancing.  This class seems more ab-oriented, which is great (Yeah, I did 2 different zumba classes ‘cuz I was pretty disappointed with the first)

Tuesday:

Aqua fitness – a variety of cardio and strength moves with gloves on

Wednesday:

Same PT routine as Monday.

In general I’m going to have my first PT routine of the week on Monday with my personal trainer.  Then I’ll do the same routine on my own twice more and fill in the rest of the week with classes or something boring like the treadmill.

Can you believe that with a schedule like this, I used to be the girl who hated P.E.  I have to admit that having an inhaler has really improved my ability and willingness to workout.  Having the personal training once a week to keep my workouts fresh from week to week and then a bunch of fun classes like aqua fitness and zumba really help.  In fact, I look forward to working out most of the time.   Miles away from teenage Sage.

So hopefully I keep up the good work, yeah?

Oh, I almost posted without reminding you.  Don’t forget to enter the third Bye-Bye Borders giveaway.

Currently on iPod: It Doesn’t Matter by Allison Krauss and the Union Station

Lots of love,

Sage

Here’s the third installment of the “Bye-Bye Borders” Book Blowout Extravaganza.  The theme is a bit murky here.  In fact I’m not sure that with these books, there is a theme.  “Realistic” doesn’t really work with Dangerous Angels or Glee, lol.  Really, they’re just the books that didn’t fit in with the other themes I made up.

I’ve only read the Glee book so I’ll start with it.

1. Glee: The Beginning (an original tie-in novel for the show) – Enroll early at McKinley High–before New Directions was even a glimmer in Mr. Schuester’s eye.  When did Rachel first decide Finn was more than just a jock?  When did Puck and Quinn start their secret romance?  And how did the fledgling Glee Club function without a fearless leader?  Hint: It wasn’t exactly a perfect melody.

Break out the gold stars and refill the slushies: It’s time to find out what happened to all your favorite characters before the show-mance began.

Note: I thought this would be pretty ridiculous, and it was, but the same way Glee is.  If you remember the good old days of early Glee and you can deal with Glee without hearing the music (surprisingly, I had just as much fun without the music), you’ll really enjoy this.

2. Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp by C.D. Payne – Youth in Revolt is the journals of Nick Twisp, California’s most precocious diarist, whose ongoing struggles to make sense out of high school, deal with his divorced parents, and lose his virginity result in his transformation from an unassuming fourteen-year-old to a modern youth in open revolt. As his family splinters, worlds collide, and the police block all routes out of town, Nick must cope with economic deprivation, homelessness, the gulag of the public schools, a competitive type-A father, murderous canines, and an inconvenient hair trigger on his erectile response–all while vying ardently for the affections of the beauteous Sheeni Saunders, teenage goddess and ultimate intellectual goad.

3. Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books by Francesca Lia Block – In five luminous novels, acclaimed writer Francesca Lia Block spins a saga of interwoven lives and beating hearts.  These postmodern fairy tales take us to a magical Los Angeles, a place where life is a mystery, pain can lead to poetry, strangers become intertwined souls, and everyone is searching for the most beautiful and dangerous angel of all: love.

4. Buck Fever by Cynthia Chapman Willis – Twelve-year-old Joey MacTagert’s dad wants his son to carry on the family tradition of hunting. But Joey has “buck fever”—he can’t pull the trigger on a deer, and hates the idea of killing animals. He’s more interested in art and hockey, two activities that his dad barely acknowledges.

Joey’s dad wants him to use his special skill in tracking to hunt down the big antlered buck that roams the woods near their home. Joey knows how to track Old Buck, but has kept secret from his father the reason he’s gained the deer’s trust. When trouble between his parents seems to escalate, Joey and his older sister, Philly, find themselves in the middle of tensions they don’t fully understand. Joey wants to keep the peace, and if conquering his buck fever will do it, he has to try.

5. Crash into Me by Albert Borris – Owen, Frank, Audrey, and Jin-Ae have one thing in common: they all want to die. When they meet online after each attempts suicide and fails, the four teens make a deadly pact: they will escape together on a summer road trip to visit the sites of celebrity suicides… and at their final destination, they will all end their lives.
As they drive cross-country, bonding over their dark impulses, sharing their deepest secrets and desires, living it up, hooking up, and becoming true friends, each must decide whether life is worth living – or if there’s no turning back.

So there are the five books.  And you can win ALL FIVE with a song.

- Leave a comment that includes some way to contact you (like an e-mail address or your twitter name).  This way I can get in touch if you win

- Leave the title, artist, and genre (just so I’m not surprised) of a song, and give me a description of the story that song tells to you.

Examples:

The Lazy Song – Bruno Mars – pop – A guy just wants to be all lazy today.  Nothing wrong with that

Teen for God – Dar Williams – folk – A girl who really believes in God goes to a bible camp where she has to deal with the girls who came from bible schools and are very judgmental. She struggles with temptations, wondering why God even put them there for her.  And she laments that in college she’s not even going to believe in God, but for now she’s proud to be spreading His word.

(See, it can be complicated or really simple, up to you)

- You can get an extra entry if you tweet about the contest, so leave your twitter info in that case.

One winner will be chosen at random for each giveaway, which will each have the same entry requirements (but please choose different songs from any earlier giveaways you entered).   This contest ends on Saturday, May 7 at 11:59 p.m. I’ll announce the winner on Sunday (Mother’s Day), along with the next giveaway.

Have fun.

Lots of love,

Sage