Adults AND Kids - Get off your phones and get reading this summer

As many of you know, I am also in education and an English and Reading teacher. If you have kids in school you will have also seen the same thing as I have seen lately. Kids ARE NOT reading. 

Schools have really reduced how much reading kids are doing. When I first started teaching, I had students reading 8 novels a year. In my current district, kids at the middle school level are only reading 1 novel a year. What's worse is that in many of the cases, teachers are reading the novel to them, playing an audio version, or only having them read portions of the novel. 

But this gets worse. 

You adults are not helping the issue either. Kids are coming home and telling the kids to do their homework and you are on your phones.

Not exactly the best role models I would say.

Consider some of these numbers from The National Literacy Institute:

• 54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level).

• 44% of the American adults do not read a book in a year

Or consider these numbers from Literacy Inc.:

• 56% of young people claim they read fewer than 10 books a year.
• 50% of U.S. adults are unable to read an eighth grade level book.
• 33% of U.S. high school graduates never read a book after high school.
• 80% of U.S. families have not purchased a book this year.
• 50% of books started are never read to completion.
• 70% of adults have not been in a bookstore in the past five years.

Not exactly encouraging numbers, would you agree? And yet, what will we see this summer? Kids will leave school and head to their rooms. Dive on to video games or binge watch those things they were banned from watching at school. Honestly, you know this will happen! For many parents, this is an easy way to "keep them busy." Why fight getting them to read? 

My question is Why not get them to read? 

We have made so many excuses as to why we don't read. We claim we don't have time, but wow, we had time to watch that entire season of Stranger Things. We claim we are too tired to read at the end of the day, but staying up watching Netflix or playing the latest Grand Theft Auto. Or better yet, books are expensive, and yet within walking distance there is probably a public library. 

Look people, we know statistically that if we read 30 minutes a day, "outside of work" and that would also include school, we increase our vocabulary by 10,000 words a year. If you are also upset that maybe your student in school is not performing as well as you wanted, then maybe it is time to do something about it. 

I challenge all of you. Get off the computer. Get off the TV. Get off your phone and read a damn book. Be a model for your kids and read. Get them reading a book. And I would also encourage you to not get "graphic novels." Yes, I know some teachers say, "well, at least they are reading" but the reality is that graphic novels will not increase comprehension or reading speed. Let them pick books of their choosing and topics they want. 

I DARE YOU!!!!!!!

And please share this with everyone... If you care about America's future!

Find The Middle Ground Please - Writing Women's Fiction

This last weekend, I was reading submissions and there was a ton of women's fiction coming in. People, you have to find a happy medium here when it comes to plot lines. I literally saw two styles of writing. 

1) Totally depressing stories that would lead anyone who reads it to heavy drinking.

2) Ridiculous and stereotypical "rom-con" plot lines masquerading as women's fiction. 

And guess what? I pretty much rejected both types and the reason was simple. readers, in no way, would be able to connect with either of the plot lines as they should with a true women's fiction novel. Both concepts are simply too extreme.

I have talked about this before, but the thing that makes a women's fiction novel unique is the way it SHOULD connect with the reader. These stories need to have "a take away." That unique idea or concept that the reader walks away with, after reading the book saying "Now I get it. Now I understand X going on in my life, or in the world." These are stories about people, how they see the world and how they navigate issues going on around them. 

However, when writers, in an attempt to "stand out" or "make the story interesting" pile on so much extra stuff, no reader is going to be able to relate to all of it. 

• We can relate to a single divorce, but we can't relate to a divorce, and then pile on a personal disease, a parent who is also sick, a loss of a job and then a kid with a drug problem and then another who is pregnant. 
• We can relate to a funny situation of meeting up with the person you had a crush on in college again, but when we add in that each of you have 3 kids, a housekeeper, and two of the kids want to start dating each other, and you are in competition for the same job in a company, and you both have to relocate, and there is the crazy lady at church trying to get the characters together... too much.

Along the same lines, when it comes to women's fiction, there were a lot of you out there just writing your personal stories and then "fictionalizing" the stories. Honestly, my recommendation is to just write your story and don't try to change it. When authors fictionalize their story, they often add on all of that other "stuff" because they feel "their story" is not that exciting, and then they run into these same issues. 

Bad Things Happen - Deal With It!

I get it, life is pretty cruddy.

You are going to get sucky days. You WILL get bad reviews. You may get cut from lines. 

But you have to deal with it. You have a choice. 

QUIT

or

SUCK IT UP BUTTER CUP AND MOVE ON!

PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO PEOPLE WHO NEED THE MOTIVATON!

This especially goes to my favorite Harlequin Historical Authors!

Here is your motivation for the weekend.

Do You Know Why You Do What You Do In Your Novels?

When I read submissions, I can often tell within the first few pages whether or not the author is new at the game or is experienced in the craft of writing. It really doesn't take much to figure it out. How do I know? It is all about what they are doing in the stories? So many authors inaccurately insert conventions in their stories, or do things to their plots. Does it mess up the story? Not necessarily. But it certainly doesn't enhance the story in the least bit.

Here is the issue. For many new authors, they are busy learning the craft of writing while they are writing. There is nothing wrong with that. But for these authors, they are also attending every workshop they can get to. They are watching every video, attending every online meeting and reading every blog such as mine. They are like a sponge absorbing everything. Again, there is nothing wrong with this, except for the fac that when someone tells them this is going to work great in their story or it is going to make their story better, they put it into their story...without thinking.

One of the things that separates the experienced authors from "the newbies" is that the experienced authors know when to use those conventions and when not to. They also know what those conventions do and the impact on the story. Let me give you an example.

Do you use an prologue or not? What is even the purpose of a prologue? If you are a new author, you might just insert it because you have this short scene that doesn't quiet fit with the rest of the story or has some information you want to dump, but that is it. Is that really a good reason for a prologue? I would argue, probably not. For those new authors, they have seen other prologues with information such as this and they "believe" that is what the author is using it for, but the reality is, they are missing the real reason. The author is probably doing something much bigger. 

To get to the point of these experienced authors takes a lot of time reading and studying the writing of other authors. You don't read for pleasure, but you read to "study." You take the time to stop and ask, "why did the author do that? and "what is that doing to change the story?"

If you are a literature major, you will understand this well. This is really what we all did getting that major. We tried to figure out why Hemingway could mess up his grammar and still make it work. We figured out why Falkner could write those obnoxiously long paragraphs and still somehow make it work. 

I guess what I am trying to get at here is this. Take your time. Learn the craft. Know why you do what you are doing in your story. You will find you are going to be much more successful!