Soooo, I've been a fan of today's guest blogger for a long, long time. Ryan Miller is a good friend from college that I lost touch with until recently. We reconnected over our love for children's literature. Since then, he's become one of the Muses' biggest fans.Currently, he's the executive editor at the San Luis Obispo NEW TIMES and the Santa Maria SUN. 

Seriously, guys, Ryan is one of the funniest people I've ever met (c'mon just look at that portrait) and I can't imagine a better man to step up to be Mr. Friday for a week. So put your hands together for Ryan Miller...

Thank you. Yes, hello. This is Ryan Miller. You probably remember me from some of my comments here at the YA Muses blog, like “I totally agree, Bret.” Or maybe, “I convinced my city librarian to get several copies of Under the Never Sky.”

            

Yes, I’m that Ryan Miller.

Of course, considering such bon mots as those, it will come as no surprise to you to learn that I’m a professional writer. A journalist, actually. That means I write about stuff that really happens.

           

Sounds great, huh? Yeah, it is—except when I try to write about the other stuff. You know, the stuff that doesn’t really happen. Fiction, it’s called.

            

Journalism is easy, see? You just talk to people and write down what they say. Maybe you throw in a description of what they look like or what they’re wearing. Or you can observe an event and just report what happened.

            

You’re essentially transcribing life, and what could be easier than that? It’s all right in front of you, like pennies to be plucked from the sidewalk. Just scoop up that visual detail and drop it in your pocket to be used later.

            

The sound of the source’s laugh? Grab it. The color of his eyes? Take that, too. The smell of the dingy parking garage where you’re meeting? OK, Woodward, jot it down. Put it all in your article and sell some papers!

Fiction, however, has no ties to reality. It’s all made up in your head. To write something fantastical, you have to sit in front of your computer and think as hard as you can think, sometimes building entire worlds from the ground up. You have to decide which way gravity goes and probably create colors that have never been seen before, like grallow or purnk.

        

Or so I used to think.

            

I’ve tried for years to write a story, and it’s a good one. It’s got ghosts and giant animals fighting and a hero who can’t see—but I get paralyzed by the sheer scope of what I’m trying to do. I had a sneaking suspicion that it was easier than I was making it. Not much easier, but a bit. And then this Bret guy goes and talks about Bruce Coville and slipping details sideways into your stories, and I would have smacked myself in the forehead if I weren’t worried that such a move would take out the light bulb going on up there.

            

Here’s the thing: I already do that. The detail slipping, that is.

            

There’s a mantra we journalists use (we narrative journalists anyway), and it goes like this: “Show, don’t tell.” What does that mean? Well, instead of saying, “the guy was angry”—which, admittedly, can be a judgment call—we can write, “when the red creeping up his shaking face finally reached his cheekbones, he flipped the table over with a roar.”

            

OK. Maybe that wouldn’t be much of a judgment call to label that anger, but still—which was more fun to read? More descriptive? More informative?

            

So suddenly I’m looking at how I write every day about the stuff I see, and I’m looking at my much less successful attempts to write about stuff I’m just pulling out of my head—because, hey, all journalists have a novel in them somewhere—and I’m realizing I’VE BEEN DOING IT WRONG.

            

The fiction part, I mean.

            

Because if I can slip something sideways into one of my news stories, and—if Bret can be believed—I can also slip something sideways into a bit of fiction, the two genres aren’t that far removed from one another.

            

As I realize these things, more light bulbs spark to life. The air above my head resembles a landing strip, and I hope no 747s are in a holding pattern anywhere nearby.

            

So that weird-looking dog I saw lapping up water from the gutter on my way to work? It can find a home in the desert city I’ve been trying to populate for years. So can that woman hurrying to catch the bus. And the smell of the gyro place a few blocks down. I just have to tweak a few details.

            

Because that’s what it’s all about, right?

            

I mean, JRR Tolkien didn’t need to create a place for his hobbits to spend time when they weren’t hiking to Mordor and mucking about with rings because houses already exist. He’d seen them. A lot of them, probably. He simply made the doors round instead of rectangular, sort of shoved them underground a bit, and—voila!—he’s a genius. (But he might not be a good example, since he kinda did create a couple of races, an entire creation mythology, and several languages for his stories. Show off.)

            

JK Rowling didn’t invent wizards, she just took what she already knew about the “fictional” people group and put her own spin on them. MT Anderson didn’t make up whales or stilts, but he did couple them together. HP Lovecraft … nah, I’ve got nothing. I was just trying to keep the “authors who go by their initials” thing going. Also, Cthulu creeps me out.

            

My point is that I’ve been trying to figure out a way to chip this block of stone I have into something I can put under my cart to make it roll, all while leaning against this sleek chariot I use every day. Get it? I don’t have to invent the wheel. Neither do you. We can just, you know, make it glow at night, whistle when it spins, and leave marks in the road that resemble eels on land. Or something.

            

Ooh, land eels. I’ll have to remember that one.

            

Here’s another way to look at it. Even Dr. Frankenstein didn’t just try to conjure his creature out of thin air. The story I want to bring to life is like a body. And there’s already a skeleton waiting for me. There’s even a little muscle on it. Some tendons. Maybe a bit of cartilage. All I have to do is flesh it out by choosing skin tone, eye color, muscle tone, general build, hairstyle. The fun stuff. The details. At the end of the day, I’ll have a unique creation that I didn’t have to make from scratch—and thank goodness, huh? Because who knows where to find a quality femur these days?

Ryan Miller is a journalist and editor living on California's Central Coast with his wife, two daughters, and a baby on the way. His freelance nonfiction work has been published in Longshot (formerly 48 Hour Magazine, in which his work also appeared), Mothering, San Louie, and California Northern. His fiction work hasn't been published anywhere. He collects thimbles, first-edition YA novels, loteria decks, dragons, teas, and collections.

We're continuing our series written by regular YA Muses readers, responding to and expanding on previous Muse themes.  Today, we are thrilled to introduce to you Angela Brown, a blogger and writer who never fails to cheer us with her comments and often gives us something more to think about as well.  This is a lady who has a wealth of ideas...

The writers here at YA Muses are great.  Every day we get a different viewpoint on the “theme” of the week.  Bringing out thoughts on the same topic from unique perspectives is a wonderful idea.  And that’s what I’d like to briefly touch on today.

Ideas…more specifically: where I get my ideas.

No, I don't have an "Idea Man"...though that would be awfully helpful :-)  He could sit down, do all my brainstorming for me, type up ideas, fly an airplane and drag the new ideas along behind him in a banner.  Then again, I wouldn't be able to call them MY ideas if I let someone else do all my thinking for me.

Source

It might be tempting to put out a bounty on ideas.  I mean, hey, when I'm running on vapors, the sign I just passed says "Next imagination station 300 miles" and I'm feeling desperate, putting a call out may work:

Source

Thankfully, I haven't needed to put out a bounty or call upon an idea man.  Many of my ideas formed during the mundane-ness of my paying gig, sometimes with the aid of music.  Being surrounded by gray Hayworth in a cubilce for several hours of the day could turn my idle mind into the devil's playground.  But that idleness morphs into my Imagination Haven.  I think about my current WiP, ways to improve it, scenes to add, darlings that might have to get the ax.  Then, like a mermaid, I get distracted by some new shiny that spins on its head and wags its tail with vigor-

“New shiny!”

Oops, sorry, um, yeah, as I was saying - something inspired by a "What if?" or an "I wonder if..." or "Why?".  That's where Post It notes come in handy.  Yes.  I said Post It notes lol!!!!!  The little things are a life saver for me because I'm not very good at carrying around a journal - which, by the way, keeping a journal nearby is a very smart thing to do.  Take it from someone whose purse looks like this on the inside:

Source

There really is an order to the chaos lol!!!!!

Take my idea for my A to Z blog opera.  It first started as "Why are good girls attracted to bad boys?", inspired by Adele's song "Set Fire to the Rain" (she doesn't literally mention bad boys and good girls but it made me think about it).  That prompted a blog post asking the same question.  Got some great answers, one of them being how opposites are bound to attract.  What's more opposite than an agent of heaven and an agent of hell?  Then mix things up by having them become attracted to each other and over a bit of time, fall in love only to discover each other's lies and truths.

After pantsing my way through the A to Z blogging challenge - and receiving some of the most inspirational and encouraging comments from old and new blog followers - I decided to take this "blog opera theme" and turn it into a novel/novella currently titled NEVERLOVE.

Idea > Encouragement and Inspiration > Novel in the works!

Not every idea happens this way - oh how I wish it could :-)  Like Donna mentioned, it can happen during routine things.  Katherine discussed how ideas can form like magic, coming at you from everywhere all the time.  Talia emphasized further how ideas are everywhere.  And let's face it, it's kind of hard for some of us to pin down that precise moment when a specific idea hit us because of the "everywhere-ness" of how ideas can come about.  Not so hard for Bret who shared when he had his "Eureka!" moment for an idea, because that can happen sometimes.  Guest blogger Mike Jung (Big Woot for such a wonderful post that had me laughing and enjoying the topic as well) even shared a mixing bowl recipe that I'm sure will work for many :-)
So if nothing else, I want to end things with this:

I - Imagination
D - Diligence
E - Everywhere-ness
A - Anytime, All the time
S - Something special

Today's guest poster is the wonderful Heather from the Book Blog BURIED IN BOOKS.  Heather is an avid reader and a writer, and we are thrilled that she found us!
 

When I was asked to write a guest post for the YA Muses blog you can’t imagine how excited I was! And then my nerves hit. I planned to have this to Talia by the weekend, but I just counted and I have ten drafts so far. You see, in my world, authors are Rock Stars. Sure I enjoy music, but I just listen to it, it’s background noise. I don’t write about it, cheer for it, visit websites, enter contests and follow blogs for musicians. I’m just not that interested in them. But authors....if I get a tweet, a request to read their book, an email, a mention anywhere I’m flying for days. It’s like being published in the newspaper for me. So when a Rock Star asked me to write something of course I wasn’t going to turn her down, but then, nerves.

So here is my best. Here’s hoping it is interesting to you. I found the YA Muses through the YA Mazing contest, the first one that was held. I hadn’t even heard of the Apocalypsies and being a book blogger I thought that was kind of terrible. So, I became a frequent visitor of the authors, especially the ones I liked. I participated in a weekly meme called Waiting on Wednesday (WOW) which featured upcoming books and would search the Apocalypsies site for new books. I kept popping over here and started reading the posts. Soon I wasn’t coming just for a WOW but because I wanted to see what they had to say. I loved that each author wrote on a different day and everyone wrote on the same topic. I was a lurker for a long time. Remember, they are Rock Stars to me. Writing on a Rock Star’s blog is scary. But eventually I commented. I loved the post on the Lucky Charms, especially Talia Vance’s My Lucky Charms. I didn’t know about elephants being lucky until I read that week. But I was glad to know other writers were as superstitious as I am. I have a picture of my dog Baylee that watches over me as I write.

I thought I’d write about book blogging since that is what I do mainly. Of course I read the book and then I write my opinion of the book. I schedule the post usually for midnight to go up the next day. Hopefully, Blogger is working. Maybe though, I’m setting up a guest post like Talia is today. So I copy and paste it. But the author wants his/her picture and bio on the post. All their links, the summary of the book with a picture of the book, links for buying the book and the guest post.

Do you know how long that is? And if you didn’t include all the links for me I have to look them up. And even more often, there is a giveaway of their book with this type of post. Even more space added. It takes me a good hour to set up a post like this. Maybe because I’m slow, I don’t know, but people aren’t going to read all that information.

And then there are the interview posts. I don’t do them often. I’m not good at them. I don’t have insightful questions to ask and I don’t care if you like white chocolate or dark chocolate when you are writing. My friend Jenny asks the best interview questions and I asked her secret. She told me she just asked what she thought she’d like to be asked. It helps some, but I have to have at least to read the book before I can ask you interview questions. Some authors don’t get that.

I don’t DNF books. If I didn’t like it, I will tell you and give you the option of me not reviewing it. I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings and I am not looking to publicly humiliate someone. One author told me to go ahead. I was still able to find many things that I liked about the book regardless of the anachronisms in the book. And one thing authors should remember is that people read negative and positive reviews and take both into consideration. I read one blogger that is a friend and have realized that we pretty much like the opposite in books. That’s okay. I still like to read why she didn’t like the book. It’s probably the same reason why I will like the book. With Net Galley, I just let the publisher know I don’t write DNF reviews and send it on. I’m always relieved when I’m not the only one, though. I look at Goodreads to see if I should try harder to read it.

I also do blog tours which are for lesser known presses or indie or self published books. I agree to those if I’m interested in the book premise. I usually just do a review of them. I’ll do two to four of those a month. I also purchase books that I want to read but rarely get a chance to read those as I also get one or two requests from authors or publishers to read books and I’m up to 12-15 books to read a month by then. That is my absolute limit. I only have so much blog space to post and between reading all day and blogging usually from 8pm to 2am sometimes 4am it has turned into a full time job. There are also Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus.

Reviews have to be posted on my blog, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads, and Library Things. If it came from Net Galley, I have to provide links to all those places, and my review and then clear that book as a completed review. Then it’s comment time. You see the comments don’t magically appear on my blog. I go around to other blogs and read their reviews and make meaningful comments on their blogs. Then hopefully they’ll come back and comment on mine. So if it’s your book I’m reviewing, your book will get more attention. The more comments, the more people actually took the time to read what I thought about the book. Of course, my stats tell me that plenty more people came by to see what I thought, but those comments mean a lot.

And that is a day in the life of a book blogger.

Bio: Heather, mom to two sons and wife to one genuine saint of a man! Book Blog Buried in Books. I have been blogging for almost two years and read a lot. I review MG and YA novels of all types except self help. I also have a writing blog that I write on sporadically. Not many people have discovered it, One Toe in the Water.

As Donna mentioned yesterday, this week we are welcoming some of our readers onto the blog to write additions, responses and inspirations from any post or idea or theme we've mentioned over the past couple of years.  It is my pleasure to introduce to you Beth Hull,  former high school English teacher, YA writer, long-time Muses reader, eloquent blogger and now a good friend. (Oh! And mother to a four-year-old and a newborn, so finding the time to write this for us is a major accomplishment! Applause, please.)

In April, Talia wrote a post called “Overwriters Anonymous.” And while I’m as guilty as the next writer for clinging to my purple-prosed darlings, I’m also guilty of just the opposite: underwriting. This usually happens when I’m really excited about the story, and I don’t want to take the time for minor details such as, say a character’s physical attributes. Stephen King distinguished between “Taker-Outters” and “Putter-Inners.” I definitely belong to the second camp—my latest first draft clocked in at 35,000 words—which is a little more than half of the expected page count for a contemporary YA novel.

So if you find yourself looking at a novella when what you really wanted was a novel, here are some areas that might benefit from a little beefing up.

Setting: While most readers don’t want page-long paragraphs describing the exact shade of orange of the main character’s sofa (or the feeding habits of sperm whales—sorry, Mr. Melville), we do need to have just enough detail to put our characters in concrete places and times. Nobody has conversations or battles or romances while suspended in fog.

Character descriptions:  I always err on the side of Not Enough when it comes to describing my characters, so much so that one reader of my last book said the male lead was incredibly sexy, yet she couldn’t remember a single physical description of him (confession: there weren’t many). I went back and added a few things in. No, it’s not going to make a 35k manuscript jump up to 60k, but it’ll help the reader.

Subplots and plot layers:  Rather than pretend I have any of my own tricks for this, I’ll just promote Donald Maass’s Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook. (People who know me are rolling their eyes, because I am constantly raving about this book—it is full of great ideas.) If your manuscript is looking a little anorexic, a few of the subplot and plot layer exercises in Maass’s book will do wonders for its physique. (Really. Get the book.)

Interiority:  Basically, all the showing in the world is not going to give readers an accurate depiction of what your character is thinking. Give us her thoughts occasionally, not just clenched fists or gulps or tears. Tell us why she reacts the way she does. This is something Katy really helped me with, so I may as well just send you to her post "Building Better Voice."

Once I take myself off of writing-maternity-leave and revise that 35k manuscript, I hope I’ll be able to take my own advice. If you have any other ideas, I could totally use them!

We are so fortunate to have a wonderful group of followers, but we also know they are fantastic writers as well. This week we are rolling out the red carpet to welcome some of our most faithful readers (and commenters) for guest blog posts.

First up, PB Rippey!

Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses.

--Amy Tan

When I’m scared, I Google. And that’s how—one tense afternoon in 2010, revision of my middle grade novel burying me alive, I found the YA Muses.

Right away I knew I’d discovered a Treasure Site. I was impressed by the information-packed posts and the generosity of (very busy!) writers sharing tips, struggles, successes and (cue drum roll) fears. I had received five agent bites on my novel over the year and was frustrated when they all turned me down. All. Of. Them. Agony! As I prepared for another round of submissions and struggled with the suffocating revision, I read the Muses every morning. I read this by Veronica: Revising is not a treadmill. Thereis a point where you feel satisfaction and pride and know it's time to shut the machine down and take the walking somewhere else. 

Talia’s post, Thanks For The Rejections brought me up short—her positive twist on rejections made me re-examine how I handle them, or how I handle negative feedback, or great feedback, for that matter. I poured over Katy’s Prompting Revision post with the helpful writing exercise tucked inside it. I did the writing exercise and felt a little less panicked. Donna’s post, The Big Break was partly responsible for getting me out of my office and into more SCBWI events, where I received fresh critiques on my manuscript and won a Special Mention in a Writer’s Day contest. To my surprise, joy and I admit it was definitely slightly terrifying, I won a critique on the first 15 pages of my novel from the YA Muses themselves. I can confidently report that their critiquing is just as generous and detailed as their blog posts. 

And when Muse Bret arrived—ah, perfect! His post, Stupid Hill is a must-read if you, like me, are planning yet another next-move with your manuscript, or are frustrated to the point of primal screaming into the stack of clean bath towels you are carrying to your linen closet. 

The YA Muses is more than a blog, it’s a writer’s resource, a (FREE!) toolbox. Catching them at this early point in their careers is a gift to any writer seeking representation and a home for their novel. That troubling afternoon in 2010, little did I know I’d be Googling myself into help—and hope. Thank you, Muses. You are appreciated.

Bio:

PB Rippey is a Los Angeles based poet and fiction writer. Her work appears in such journals as, Zyzzyva, Phoebe, anderbo.com, Pedestal Magazine, Runes, Pool, Chaparral, The Chattahoochee Review, Santa Barbara Independent and many others. Work is forthcoming in Askew. She is the author of the poetry chapbook, Nightmares With Moons (Pudding House Press). Between hunting for representation for her middle grade novel, PB attends SCBWI events, writes and raises her preschooler (never in that order). Her writing blog is http://pbwrites.wordpress.com