Sunday Night Catchall: November 22, 2015

Not going to lie: one of the most satisfying moments of my week was beating my dad and brother at Catan. (Okay, fine — the most satisfying moment of my week ...) Anyone else play board games with your family that get really awkwardly competitive?

Speaking of competitive board games, I'm dying to know the answer to this: my friend Rebecca and I have been playing very intense games of Bananagrams (which, for those of you who don't know, is like Scrabble but about speed more than anything). I use nothing but super short words; she mainly uses longer words to free up board space. For those of you who play, which strategy do you use? Now I'm curious.

Obligatory cat photo! Sorry to be clogging up the internet with more cat pics than it already has. If I had a pet wombat, I'd post those pictures instead, but I'm stuck with this guy (who does not seem happy that my mom's taking a picture of him).

If you haven't already perused the hashtag on Twitter, check out some highlights from yesterday's #TransYAChat! It's interesting regardless of whether or not you're a writer.

Oh, and if you've followed my Twitter account this weekend, you know I spent my entire weekend working on a novel instead of writing an essay. Welp, want to guess what I'm supposed to be doing instead of writing this blog post? Oops.

#TransYAChat Highlights!

Today, the blog GayYA ran a fantastic chat on Twitter about trans representation in Young Adult literature. People raised great points, so I thought I'd share some highlights! Make sure to check out the hashtag #TransYAChat on Twitter to see all the questions and answers, because the posts below are by no means an exhaustive list on all the great things people said.

On the importance of good trans representation:

On what needs to be represented more in YA lit with trans characters:

On what writers should remember when writing about trans characters in YA:

Other thoughts:

January 18, 2015: Sunday Night Catchall

"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

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Crazy end to Packers vs. Seahawks game! Wow. As much as I dislike the Seahawks (I'm from San Francisco; what do you expect?), that was epic.

The Oscars have decided we need to just honor more white people than we already do. Um ... what?

On the subject of racism and movies, you might want to research more about Selma before you take how events were portrayed in the movie as historical fact. This article by Roger Stone and Phillip Nelson is a good place to start.

It's only January of senior year and I already identify with this kid in The Onion.

I'm attempting to use Twitter! Now how one transitions from 50,000 words to 140 characters, I have not a clue. But it's a good challenge.

My brother informed me a few days ago that Unwind by Neal Shusterman is now the beginning of a series. So an added plus of senior year that I'm discovering: having the time to go back and read more Young Adult books! If you haven't read Unwind, I highly recommend it. It's one of my favorites.