Ever been cheated on?

Today at YA Confidential, our teen spies are talking about sex, infidelity, and everything that goes along with it. So stop by and tell us what you think: Once a cheater, always a cheater? Or is there more to the story?

Teen Roundtable: Sex, Cheaters, and "Poop"ular Devices

Taylor Swift totally gets me

So, I'm a terrible blogger. I joined the Platform-Building Campaign RIGHT BEFORE I MOVED. Maybe this was one of those biting off more than you can chew kind of things. And then I missed the first challenge and haven't responded to multiple tags (I will, I swear!) because I was, you know, moving. And Friday was my birthday, and Karen Hooper took me to Disney World.

I wrote this post about Taylor Swift a while ago and forgot to post it. So I'm posting it now because I always meant to and otherwise this blog post would be extremely short and kind of a no-content pathetic apology. Are my sentences even making sense at this point? I don't know. Probably not.

Here you go:

In college I did get made fun of a little bit for liking perpetual high-school princess Taylor Swift. People were especially baffled by the fact that I'm an uberfeminist and yet somehow don't want to throw things at the traditional fairytale girl-in-a-tower message of most of her songs.

But what they didn't understand is that Taylor Swift understands ALL my emotions. She may not realize she understands them, since I was never forbidden to date someone by my father and I never fell in love with the boy next door, but her songs are SO much deeper than that. (Sarcasm meter: 42.7%)

When querying agents, WHAT is more appropriate than the chorus of "You Belong With Me"? Sure, most of the song has absolutely no application to the process (it would be super creepy if it did), but when sending a full to a dream agent, I really do think the line of "Why can't you see? You belong with me" is very appropriate.

And then after it's been a certain amount of time, you start feeling a little more "Story of Us" than anything. You know, "I used to think one day I'd tell the story of us / I sent my full and you offered rep instantly / and people would say she's a lucky one / I used to know my place was a spot on your list / now I'm searching my mail for that damn 'no thanks'..." (What do you mean that's not how the song goes?)

But I think her most applicable song is "Mean"--especially when battling with the inner-critic. I am at 0% sarcasm when I say that most situations can be made better by thinking "Someday, I'll be living in a big ol' city, and all you're ever gonna be is mean." (At a family reunion, I got forced into playing and singing this song in front of MOST of my relatives. Thank goodness nobody got a video. Yes, I used a country twang.)

Even my dad likes this song.

PSA: The Pity Party

I can't think of a good way to introduce this post. (What do you mean, I'm a writer, I should be more creative? Don't look at me like that.) So basically, here you go, with only this craptastic introductory paragraph to segue you into my topic.

(I can hear them coming for my college degree now...)

I think it's a bigger waste of time trying to talk yourself out of self-pity than it is to just let yourself wallow in it for a little while. This might not work for everyone--some people just keep wallowing. But if you're like me, you just need an hour to not feel guilty about feeling BAD, and then it's way easier (not easy, but easiER) to snap out of.

Seriously, put on the Damien Rice CD or watch Grey's Anatomy reruns for a couple hours. Wallow in the "MY LIFE SUCKS" feeling. Don't expect anything of yourself, don't feel guilty that other people have it worse than you, don't beat yourself up for being sad for a stupid (or no) reason. Don't listen to people who tell you to suck it up, find the silver lining, be happy, blah blah blah whatever.

And then later you can make lemonade or find the silver lining or squirt lemon juice into someone's eye.

I think it's pretty counterproductive to try to get over emotions we haven't actually EXPERIENCED fully.

You can spend DAYS trying to convince yourself not wallow, and end up in this awful spiral of guilt because you can't talk yourself out of feeling bad. Versus a couple hours of FML fun.

I'm not saying do this every time you stub your toe. (Though, seriously...ow.) But it's ok every so often to just be down in the dumps for no reason, or for some ridiculous reason. If you need permission from some random stranger on the internet, I'm giving it to you. But mostly I'm saying give it to yourself.

Doing your taxes definitely constitutes a good reason.

Trying something new: the Platform-Building Campaign

I am greedy. I want more friends. I had roughly the same number of friends in high school as I had in college. I think it was 5. Perhaps 7 right before exams when people wanted my notes.

I got this idea from Alison (who is my awesome CP and whose blog you should read. Do it.) I'm gonna sign up for this: http://rachaelharrie.blogspot.com/2012/02/fourth-writers-platform-building_06.html



I like YA writers. I like fantasy writers. And I have ulterior motives. I want you all to be my friends, so that I can have more than 5 friends (since there are no exam periods (I hope.))

I think all the trees hate me right about now.

Dear Trees,

I am sorry for how many of you I have killed.

I made the decision to revise by hand before I realized that this draft would be 85% new material. (I am also sorry to all the pretty colored pens I have depleted, but that is another blog post.) I don't know why my brain thought it would be easier to keep track of everything this way. It doesn't look terribly efficient in this picture, does it:

I am sorry that this isn't even the extent of the damage of draft 2...that it is missing another 1/4 of the draft that did not yet exist when I took this picture.

I am sorry for printing so many chapters, even if I tried to do them on recycled paper or double sided (which is quite a feat with my persnickety printer.) I am sorry for wasting twice as much paper by handwriting new chapters and then printing them once they were typed up. I am also sorry I had to print all the chapters in 12 point double spaced, because I needed to make corrections, and that just wasted more paper.

And...sorry for not making a single plot note in a word document, and instead writing them all down in notebooks.

Please forgive me for the thirty pages I'll waste tomorrow. For the packet of 500 sheets that I bought at the store and went through without a second thought.

And, if you can, try not to think about what draft 3 is going to be like.

If it makes you feel better, I recycle everything. And I'm usually too lazy to buy paper towels, so I end up using dish cloths, which does not kill any of you.

Please do not drop a large branch on me while I am out walking.

With sincerest regrets,

A.S.