Now, I’m usually someone who’s pretty careful about these things, but for some reason, I clicked on on a link or a quiz, and instead of the actual information, my computer hung itself and I closed my browser window.

During this time, apparently, an application called ‘Are You Interested?’ installed itself onto my Facebook account. But nothing appeared in to have changed in Facebook. Today, I logged into the email account I use for Facebook (and other junk), only to find 46 emails from single men in my area who apparently think I’m “hot” and want to “talk” to me.

Great! Right?

Ummmmm… As someone in her forties, it’s pretty flattering to receive 46 emails telling me ‘I’m hot’. In fact, that part made my day! And being in my forties, I have a realistic outlook on men. I no longer expect all guys to look like Rob Pattinson (or John Taylor of Duran Duran, who was more my era). So some of the men weren’t too scary to look at either. I saw no peg legs, no eye patches, full heads of hair. You know, they looked pretty normal. Faces were pretty balanced, not like serial killers or anything. (http://faceitdarlin.com/2010/03/09/face-of-a-serial-killer/).

Except…

I’m usually a security freak. I belong to Facebook, yes, but I keep everything private except my photo, which Facebook now insists you must show everyone. I hardly remember adding this application to Facebook, and now more than 46 complete strangers have seen my picture (assuming that at least one of them didn’t think I was hot), responded to it, and I’m listed as ‘single, seeking men’.

How did that happen? My Facebook account, where all the other information for this dating app was stolen from, says I’m engaged. Why, then would ‘Are You Interested’ think I’m single?

It almost makes me wonder if I went into a fugue state at some point and blocked out the memory of joining an online dating site? But no, my memory is better than that, AND I don’t drink.

It’s more of a violation of my privacy. I’m a reasonably savvy Facebook user, but I was tricked into letting this app have access to my info. I also know that this method of tricking people into joining an app is just the beginning. As we get smarter, the apps will get smarter too. Where does it end?

Somehow, in the middle of this violation of my privacy, I still can’t stop smiling. I can’t wait to get home and tell my fiance that there are at least 46 other men out there who think he has great taste!

My friends think I should just have a drink, since nobody would notice over the smell. Others think I should just use the smell as an excuse to go outside. It’s a gorgeous early spring day, and I cannot tell you how tempting that is.

Since the outbreak of H1N1, part of Health Canada’s plan has been to make sure that hand sanitizer is available everywhere. We’re encouraged to bathe in the stuff.  Have you found any new and innovative uses for it? Please share if you do!

Even leading up to the games, people were concerned about homelessness, traffic, crowds, security, and of course the lack of snow and the costs to taxpayers to move it. But when that flame came running down my street, I, like many Canadian’s, got caught up in the excitement of having an historic event in my home town. It was like that Olympic flame (which incidentally represents the fire Prometheus stole from Zeus and gave to humanity) brought a memory of tradition older than most of us Canadians are used to. Suddenly, none of it mattered anymore. Yes, as a taxpayer, I’ll be paying for the games for years to come, but since the games are here, I might as well enjoy them.

Over the past week, I have watched Vancouver come alive with excitement and even patriotism (those of you who know us, know Vancouverites aren’t overly patriotic). Even our protesters are passionate right now. We’re abuzz with all of it.

Yes. The death of Nodar Kumaritasvili on the luge track last week was a tragedy, and for him and those who knew him these may in fact be the worst games ever, but calling the Vancouver Winter Olympics the “Worst Games Ever” has got to be a joke.

Before dubbing the Vancouver 2010 games “the worst ever,” let’s consider a few factors:

• These games are held in Vancouver BC – one of the most beautiful cities in the world. And even without snow (which is a fluke, because we normally have an 8-10 foot base on the mountains this time of year), we’ve had gorgous sunny days to enterain our tourists.

• We have acknowledged the leaders of the four host First Nations as heads of state. This is a huge symbolic gesture. Ironically, or perhaps not, the first Olympics where Canada wins Gold on “home” soil is the first Olympics where Canada has honored it’s First Peoples. Like maybe it’s not just our “home” soil.
• While we may have protesters fighting for the rights of the First Nations people at the games, these protests have been peaceful, allowing for freedom of expression for all. (Even a few Central Canadians who came all the way to Vancouver to stir up the crap).

I realize there are many pros and cons to these games, but I don’t want to get into them now. You can read about those in the news. I want to look at something else, another angle. Let’s look at Olympic History. Before you call Vancouver games the worst, let’s look at some of the Summer Game fiascos.

• Berlin, 1936 – where only members of the Aryan race were allowed to compete for Germany and Hitler promoted racial supremacy. (Sorry Germany, but this is right from Wikipedia). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Summer_Olympics

• Moscow, 1980 – where many countries boycotted the games due to the Russian invasion of Afghanastan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Summer_Olympics_boycott

I think we have a long way to go before you can call us the worst. And since it’s the British press who are picking on us, keep in mind that you’re hosting summer games, in one of the smoggiest, noisiest, busiest cities in the world, a city with a history of war and terrorist attacks.  If you think our protestors and security “breeches” are a big deal, just you wait.

When London’s in the news in 2012, we’ll be watching.

• NanoWhino: for the tendency to whine about how little I’m writing.
• NanoWino: For the tendency to drink for inspiration. (Not recommended for minors)
• NanoRhino: For those who are just plowing through their word counts. (Like a charging Rhino)

Well, that’s all I’ve got so far. Looking at these, you’d think I was whining or wining a lot, but I haven’t been. I’ve just been playing with words a little too much and have gone a bit loopy.

Of the three, though, I’d like to be the latter, the NaNoRhino. I understand that quantity does not equal quality, and there are days when I know I’d feel better writing one scene I love rather than 1667 words that I don’t. But I have surprised myself. I have had ideas filter in that I know wouldn’t have if I hadn’t shown up at the page every day this week. I even have Dr. Wicked to thank for some of it, on those days that I felt I needed a bit more pressure to write something down.

I’m having quite a bit of fun with NaNoWriMo so far, and if you’re doing it, I hope you are too. I am looking at it as a great opportunity to work on my second novel. I can try out some story ideas without expecting them to actually work. I can get to know my characters even better by listening to them talking in my head all month. I’ve even given myself permission to write scenes that I know will be cut. I think NaNoWriMo is an excellent opportunity to learn to not take myself too seriously.

So what makes a book YA? Here are some of the things I have learned:

• Protagonist is under 20 (some may argue that the main character is under 18).
• Age of reader ranges from 13 – 21, with the reader being about 2 years younger than the protagonist.
• Main character has autonomy from their parents – either the parent is absent, or dead,  or not in the picture because of disagreement with protagonist, etc.
• Main character embarks on a journey which has to do with coming of age or some sort of rite of passage.
• Identity is a key component – who am I right now? (Character has to overcome obstacle to find out who they are) with a high sense of importance placed on character’s  peer group – it’s about self and society.
• Ending – has to have feeling of hope (can be poignant/witty, can have sense of grief, but hope must prevail). Often there is a revelation at the end, a sense of life carrying on.
• Everything centers around action and story – use of scenes.
• Story often follows a chronological structure with less back story, sense of story happening “Now”
• There are fewer subplots and a greater sense of a unified story.
• Novels are generally shorter  < 100,000 words (with many exceptions, of course).
• There is often a moral component to the story without preaching.
• Voice for this genre is important. Readers need to feel they can relate to the characters without being talked down to.

One last thing to keep in mind when writing YA fiction is the role of parents, teachers and librarians who act as sort of Gatekeepers to books sold and distributed in this genre.

When you see someone throwing on the wheel , it just looks so easy, but it’s not. It takes time to get there. Before they let you work at the wheel, most pottery teachers make you learn hand building, so you get familiar with the clay. For the purpose of my writing analogy, think of it like learning to read and write, getting familiar with medium of words. Before I actually got to the potter’s wheel, I took a couple of courses of hand building, and my work was lumpy enough to make me want to give up altogether. But I persevered.

Then when I finally got to work on the wheel, I thought, “Wow. It’s going to be fun now.” Little did I know that, at first, you spend hours just learning how to center the clay on that metal wheel. And that’s just so it doesn’t fly across the room when you press the pedal that makes it go. Never mind making the clay into an actual shape. Rest assured, there’s at least a dozen nuances there that I’m not getting into.

Once I got the clay onto the wheel, it took me two classes just to get the clay to make a symmetrical shape. For a writer, this is akin to knowing how to write. In fiction, it’s like getting to know your characters and centering them in their world. The character is the clay, and the character’s world is the potter’s wheel. Everything relies on how well centered that piece of clay is on that wheel, just like everything about the characters and their world has to be solid and well-balanced.

In pottery, it can be easy at first, while your muscles are still getting used to the clay, to throw that little lump off balance. But you persevere, straining, as your hands grow stronger, your fingers more adept, until that little lump becomes cylindrical. With writing, the actions and words of your main character, your character’s voice, can so easily throw that character off balance too.

I could go on for hours about the ways I have learned that pottery and writing are similar, but I wanted to express what I think is the most important similarity: knowing when to scrap something. This is where writing is like pottery.

Let’s say you learn to throw a bowl on the wheel. First, you must prepare the clay. To do this, you wedge it on a table or hard surface to get out as many air bubbles as you can. This is akin to knowing what you want your story to be about, your research.

Next, you center the clay, which takes a long time to learn. Then, when it’s centered, you open it and form the bowl. Then you remove it from the wheel. The first time I got this far, I was amazed. It was hours and hours of work. Little air bubbles can so easily get in the way and prevent the bowl from even finishing.

Then you wait for the clay to become hard enough to trim (“leather hard”). Once it’s trimmed, you bisque fire it. Then you glaze it and fire it again. And ta-da, you have a bowl.

The part most people don’t know is how many things can go wrong. Even after throwing that bowl, you can wreck it when you try to take it off the wheel. If someone bumps it while it’s waiting to dry, it can get ruined. You can over-trim it and ruin it there. If there was an air pocket, it can explode in the bisque firing stage. Or, a bad glazing job can ruin all your work so far.

So, the lesson I learned from pottery is detachment. Nothing like having to throw out a bowl because the glazing went wrong. You can either learn to let go of your work, or give up. I chose to learn to let go.

The same, could be said for writing. Scenes, pages of description, hours of work could all be scrapped. In fact, some of it must be scrapped in order to make a better piece of work. Leaving in those extra bits can be like leaving an air bubble in the clay that could destroy the whole piece.

Fortunately, words are a much more flexible medium than clay. It’s never too late to get help or rework you words, story ideas, character development, voice, and so on. The key is to keep learning, let things go, and never give up.