In Which I Begin a Potentially Award-Winning Young Adult Novel

I'm trying (for the second time) to read a book that should be riveting. It's not. It should be, because it won the Newbery Award two years ago. Theoretically, this makes it the best Young Adult/Juvenile fiction that was written in the year 2005. These books are generally so good that I bought this one the day after The Announcment was made, so it doesn't even have the gold sticker on the cover.

On this second reading, I'm thinking the book is not riveting not because it isn't good, but because I keep stopping to think about how I could so write a book like this. I think for long periods of time, and then I have to go back and read the last couple of chapters over again because I realize I haven't been paying attention to the story.

Here are the reasons I think I could write a decent coming-of-age story. None of them include the belief that I am a decent writer. Using the "write what you know" advice that successful authors sometimes give, I base my reasons on personal experiences that I could elaborate on in a really interesting way if I had skills. And a good editor.

1. I grew up in the seventies.
2. I grew up in East Oakland.
3. My parents belonged to a really weird religion.
4. All my clothes were handmade or came from thrift stores. Because of the weird religion, they weren't allowed to be fashionable.
5. My best friend's mom was a prostitute.
6. My best friend's mom sunbathed naked in her backyard.
7. My best friend's mom sent us to the store one time with a note, saying that it was okay for us to buy cigarettes so we could try them out under her supervision.
8. My mom was kind of a hippie.
9. My mom talked a lot about the threat of The Illuminati, and other stuff like that.
10. My best friend's dad was a hippie. (Her parents were divorced, by the way.) He didn't have a bathroom in his cabin, so he used his pumpkin patch when nature called--"to help the veggies grow better."
11. One of my best friends died of cancer.
12. My brother was a budding used-car salesman/terrorist.
13. Another friend's mom was a practicing witch who wore a hand-crocheted purple skirt everywhere she went.
14. The boy I loved hated me back. According to his mom, he used to sit around after school drawing pictures of me with glasses and braces.
15. When I was a baby, my parents' only mode of transportation was a motorcycle. So they sandwiched the infant me between them whenever we had to go anywhere. There's got to be something I could do with that!

So now that I've told the Internet the most interesting things that ever happened to me, I'd better hurry up and write the book before someone else steals them and does a better job.

Chapter 1: I Grew Up in the Seventies.

Cue Peter Falk saying, "Isn't that a wonderful beginning?"