Sex and Finishing

...Wow, that really sets me up, doesn't it?

Well, let's get the obvious out of the way: I'm done with the first draft of my manuscript. I finished on Tuesday and I thought about beginning the editing process yesterday, and then I laughed. And laughed. And laughed some more. Because if there's anything that I enjoy less than my cat waking me up four in the morning because she wants wet food, it's editing. So I'm going back to the original plan of waiting a month or so and then beginning. I may start a bit in April, but right now, I don't even want to look at it. I'm going to pretend I've sent it off to my editor (his name is Carmichael, because he was the same guy who sold me horses when I was nine...and yes, I had a list of all 400+ horses that I bought from him) and wait until they send it back to me. Really, I mean, I'm going to send it to Staples to get bound and then I can get going with it. The one bad thing about that is that Staples is far too efficient and they bind supernaturally fast.

I wonder if I can pay Staples to take an extraordinarily long time to bind. Hmm.

So now that that's finished (I can't refer to it by a name because there is no title right now), I'll move onto the second (first?) part of this blog title. I just finished a book (the second in the series) and I don't even know how my eyes didn't fall out from rolling them so much. Look. I understand that some YA books feel the need to have sex scenes. I have no problem with those scenes. What I do have a problem with is when the girl just goes limp and does absolutely nothing while the guy ravages her. In this book (which will forever remain nameless), the girl, the main character, constantly "gasps" and "sighs" and "melts". Really. How many times can you gasp in a scene without finally becoming so light-headed that you just pass out? It makes me think of the noises I make when I have the hiccups and I'm trying to hold my breath to get rid of them.

Listen, sex scenes in young adult books are fine, as long as they make sense and I don't feel uncomfortable reading them. Why would I feel uncomfortable reading a sex scene, one may ask? Not because of the sex. But because sometimes (like in this particular book), it feels like the guy is totally taking advantage of the girl. This guy seems to be bullying the girl into making out with him and I just sat there, thinking, My goodness, I should probably call the fiction police on this guy.

It all made me think about my book and how I don't really have any sex scenes in there. It didn't make me want to run and change a bunch of stuff, because I didn't feel the need to have one in there (besides, you know what other books didn't have a sex scene? The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, thank you). I mean, sure, there's romance in my book, and Amory and Fintan are very close, but I didn't want Amory to "sigh" and "melt into his arms". I didn't want Fintan to take charge and throw her around, landing just short of clubbing her over the head.

Not all YA books are like this, I know. But it just seems that the ones I've read recently have some sort of scene where I want to shut the book and throw it out the window. Lucky for that book, it's most likely from the library, so I can't do that unless I want to incur some heavy fees. But really. Did Twilight teach us nothing about flimsy girl characters? Not all girls want to curl into a fetal position for months because the guy they like is a vampire/monster/dictator type. Not every girl wants a guy that they supposedly hate to walk in on her while she is in nothing but a "flimsy camisole" (because that is what every girl in YA books seems to own, I swear) and pajama shorts.

This rant went a little out of control. Sorry. But I've read both books in this series (well, there's a third and it's waiting for me at the library and I'm dreading it. But I have to finish series, because I'm a loser), and both books have driven me nuts. So I felt the need to get this off my chest and screaming at my boyfriend about weird YA sex scenes didn't sound appealing when I thought of it.

Sorry. Go back to your regularly scheduled lives. I'll just be here, staring at the wall and wondering just how long I can put off going to Staples.