Link it up:
- Sometimes even famous writers need a random job to pay the bills. (My random jobs have included ice cream scooper, front desk assistant in a film studies department, and salesperson at the American Girl store.)
- Digging these notebooks.
- A literary emotional thermometer.
- Once in a blue moon you’ll find a video on idiom origins.
- Nova Ren Suma with a great post on why deadlines matter.
- “What is important is the immediacy of the story and the point of view of the teen. YA lit speaks to the teenager, current or past, in its readers, regardless of the protagonist’s age.”
- Really, was Mallory anyone’s favorite baby-sitter?
- Love these literary city guides (especially the one for my personal favorite place, Charlottesville, VA).
- Fear and the economy reflected in YA.
- Helpful post on attending educational conferences as a writer.
- Two things I love: gifs and the Fourteenery. Seeing them combined on Buzzfeed pretty much makes my year.
You worked in an American Girls store? I’m so jealous! There were never any stores around me… I think there may be one now in one of the bigger malls.
And no, no one liked Mallory. I don’t think even Ann M. Martin liked Mallory.
Trust me, it wasn’t as glamorous as you might think. 😉 But my coworkers were very cool.
And I think a recent interview Ann M. Martin shared what she envisioned the BSC was doing as adults, except for Mallory. Wah wah.
Did you ever read Mallory Pike, #1 Fan? I never read it as a kid, but I have this ongoing project to track down and own the entire series, even the later books, so I read it as an adult. Mallory is a total brat. She literally stalks a local writer by finding out where she lives, and the writer is nice enough to let her be her “assistant” for a school project Mal has. But then Mal becomes convinced that writers HAVE to write about things only from their own lives, and she gets insanely angry with this poor author when she discovers that her characters are *gasp!* made up. And calls her a liar. And it’s like, umm, crazy much? In short, Mallory is the worst.