Poetry Reader & Assistant Jane Carlton makes 5 unique, summer-ready suggestions for taming the procrastination monster and getting your writing done.

I was going to write this post last week, but I kept putting it off. [...]

Stephanie contributes to the exciting debate, led by Elizabeth Vail and E. Lockhart, on romance in YA lit. We’d love to know your thoughts, too!

[...] I would buy a young adult novel with no romantic plot. But I just counted my young adult novels, and there are 262 of them, and I CANNOT think of one that doesn’t have any romance in it. [...]

Kerri has had an epiphany: those first hundred pages are as important to writers as they are to agents and editors.

[...]The worst is writing the whole 300 pages, realizing it’s all gone awry, then having to go back and rewrite everything all over again. Because so much of the time, what went awry was IN those first hundred pages.[...]

I am conflicted. I can’t decide if I am more of a reader than a writer. I mean, I love to write and do it extensively in my journals and in my mind, but I don’t have a plethora of writing credits to my name. However, my reading credits are vast and heavy and give [...]

Julia tries outlining … tentatively. And decides she prefers the term “guidelining.”

[...] outlining is dangerous for me. I could plot so much and become so proud of certain ideas, that the story becomes stilted and stiff. Plus, when I actually start to write snippets of dialogue, characterization, even weather, I will want to steer the plot down a completely different path. [...]

Kerri gives you the low-down on what’s been happening at YARN since 2012, and makes a promise to reconnect with her own writing.

[...] I’ve backburnered my own writing during this time of flux—and that has to stop! It’s making me cranky. So, like all of you whose 2013 might finally be settling down, I want to get back to that novel, pronto. [...]

In a fittingly thought-provoking final blog/publication for 2012, Lourdes wonders if reading on a mobile device might just save reading from doomed obscurity in countries like Uruguay, where she moved a year ago. This is required reading.

Bradley lets us in on a few secrets about his reading habits in this confessional little blog that features a student, a pipe, and Winnie the Pooh.

As one of my classes ended recently, a particularly shy student wanted to know if she could ask me a question. A personal question, she clarified. [...]