Author: beckylevine

Becky Levine is a children's book writer, working hard to strengthen her picture-books skills. She is the author of The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide, a book to help you get started with a critique group, learn to revise from a critique, and strengthen your own critiquing powers. She has also published two nonfiction children's books with Capstone Press. She is currently seeking representation. Becky lives in California's Santa Cruz mountains, where she spends a lot of time sitting on the couch, knitting needles in hand, thinking through the next revision. At her day job, she writes grants for a nonprofit healthcare organization.
Posted in Revision

2nd Draft: Focusing the Telescope on…?

Posted on by beckylevine

So, that first draft is done. The last chapters are off to my critique group. I’m reading and reading and ordering more books and reading, trying to get some more history and psychology into my brain.

I’ll also be cleaning my office–all those piles that have just gotten added to and sort of pushed into neatness the last few months need to be dealt with. I need to get the 1st draft binder on the shelf, start one for the 2nd draft, get all the notes I made while I was writing toward “The End” at least stuck in there for me to contemplate.

And then I’ll get revising.

For me, the 2nd draft is a huge deal, but–at the same time–another pass where so much doesn’t get touched. In my first book, when I looked at my first draft, the thing that jumped out of me was that my hero was way too passive–he was playing sidekick to his sidekick. So the 2nd draft was all about turning that around, putting him in charge, getting him to take the risks and have the failures and figure out the next thing to do–in other words, actually turn him into a hero.

Yes, of course, I revised smaller things to–I worked big-time on his goals, I’m sure, and played with setting and dialogue as well. But the revision had a main focus–that “thing” I had to change before I could really move on. Again.

For Caro’s story, I’ve got two biggies. The one I’ve talked about before–letting go of the 2nd plotline (and stashing it somewhere safe to write into another book) and bringing the storyline I’m choosing now to the forefront. The second thing I have to do is really figure out my antagonist–Caro’s mom. I have to get much closer to who she is and what she does–both in terms of making things really hard for Caro and in terms of all the hours of the day that she isn’t on the page. I have to understand her fear and come up with actions she takes, because of that fear.

So…to start, I’m reading. More history on immigrants in Chicago, on how bad things were and how long the problems lasted. The fact that people were fighting this battle for at least two generations (and, yes, are still fighting it) is a big part of my story, and I need to hone in on that sense of This is STILL happening?! I’ll also be reading about mothers and daughters, the not-good stuff…okay, the really not-good stuff. Light, pleasure reading? Um…no. Has to be done, though.

And somewhere in here, I’ll be plotting. I just downloaded the beta version of Scrivener for Windows, and I’m really excited about that corkboard. I’m going to dig out some of my plot books and think about connections and tension and layering.

Does this sound like it’ll take a while? It sure does to me. But it is part of the process. The first draft did a great job showing me what I don’t have figured out–and I’m going to get at least some of that cleared up before I start writing again. Will I go on and on and on forever before I revise. Nah. Don’t worry. I can only sustain not-writing for so long. Pretty soon, half the books will be read, some of the plot will be figured out, and I’ll start itching. 🙂

Until then, though…

Posted in First Drafts, Uncategorized

The End. AKA..Whoa, What Now?

Posted on by beckylevine

I’m a little bit happy. And I’m a little bit scared. And I’m VERY kind, because I am NOT inserting a video of Donny &  Marie singing I’m a Little Bit Country.

You’re welcome.

So…I just finished the first draft of my WIP.

209 pages. 40 scenes. A whole heckuva lot of unknowns.

I’ve had my reservations about writing this loose draft, and–yes–there’s still part of me that wishes I’d been able to plot it more tightly along the way. But most of me is recognizing that, for this book, that would have been a large waste of time and maybe even messed me up big time. Because the realization I came to today, as I blasted through the last three scenes of the draft, is that there are two stories here.

One belongs to my main character, Caro, and I didn’t write nearly enough of that story this time around. The other story may belong to Caro, as well, but not to who she is at this age, this year, in her world. Or it may belong to another character, one I don’t know yet and will need to find before I pull the pieces of that storythat have showed up here into their own book.

I’m pretty sure there will have to be another book, because I think it’s the only way I’m going to deal with the sadness I felt today as I wrote these scenes. The story I won’t be telling yet is the story of the girl who gets to be part of Ida B. Wells’ world, whose life parallels and intersects with Wells, and whose choices will be strongly impacted by Wells’ beliefs and actions. That girl is not Caro. When I think about that unknown girl and about figuring out who she is and weaving a story for her, I am a bit intimidated, because it will mean very much stretching myself  into writing about a culture that is not one I know, not one I grew up with, and finding the connections and universals that I believe do exist.

For now, though, I’ll be working with Caro and the story that is hers to live and experience. The story of a young girl, daughter of an immigrant, who has to fight her way free of her mother’s fears and find her route to and into some of the darker, more frightening parts of 1913 Chicago. Parts that do belong to her world, even as her mother fights to keep them away from her, to keep Caro sheltered from her own history and, definitely, her future.

Probably half the plot points I’ve written at this point don’t belong to Caro–they belong to that other girl. Who is starting, even today, to be a shadowy figure in some part of my brain and who will, I’m hoping, stay with me and become less foglike, even as I write with Caro.

I know that I have a choice here. I could keep working on the story that focuses on Wells and this other girl, or I can decide to put that story on the shelf…for now, and develop a lot more of the plot around Caro’s actions and choices. Today, and for a while, I’m sticking with Caro. Story for me is character, wrapped around plot, threaded with setting, complicated by relationships and conflicts. And Caro is strong in my mind right now, even if she isn’t yet strong on paper. Her strengths, her weaknesses, the grief she is going to face–these I know.

So these I will write. And revise. And revise again…

And, always, leave myself open to possibilities.

Posted in Blog Contest

Eva Ibbotson Dies: Sharing a Favorite Book

Posted on by beckylevine

I just read Eva Ibbotson’s obituary in Publisher’s Weekly.

This is a huge loss. Ibbotson is one of my favorite authors, not because I love every book she wrote or, honestly, because I’ve read every book she wrote. She’s one of my favorites, because one of the books she wrote falls into what I consider the as-perfect-a-book-as-you’re-ever-going-to-read-outside-Plato’s-cave category.

Island of the Aunts

I’m not going to review this book. I am going to tell you only that it is a beautiful blend of mystery, magical creatures, quirky Dahl-esque old ladies, previously unwanted children, a definitely-NOT-deserted island, and humor.  And then I am going to give away a copy. Because I’m not loaning out the one on my shelf!

If you’d like a chance to win a copy, leave a comment and tell me what magical creature you’d most want to be stuck on an island with. And, remember, you have to take CARE of that creature.

I’ll enjoy all your entries, then, oh…let’s say Wednesday the 27th, I’ll draw one random winner’s name out of the pot. Meanwhile, let’s all celebrate the magical gift Ms. Ibbotson has given to children (and grown-ups!) everywhere.

Posted in Uncategorized

Why I’m Wearing Purple Today

Posted on by beckylevine

This is (hopefully) a quick post about why I’m wearing purple today. (And, no, my son is wrong–it’s NOT pink!) I tend to keep this blog pretty non-political, ditto with a lot of my social networking stuff. It’s actually always been pretty hard for me to Speak Loudly in public (NOT in private; ask anyone in my family), and for years as an adolescent and woman in my young twenties, I did a lot of tucking my head, swallowing my anger, and not saying anything.

Too much.

Most of that quiet was about me, not about others, but–you know–not all of it.

Bottom line: Teen suicide is too important to be quiet about. Teen suicide that’s happening because cruel, careless, thoughtless…STUPID people are persecuting these kids is WAY too important.

I honestly don’t know if wearing purple will do a thing. I don’t know if the It Gets Better campaign will do enough–let’s face it, things should be better NOW. But–yes, if it makes one teen hold on, speak out, ask for help, NOT kill themselves, then it’s doing something, helping someone, and that counts. So maybe my wearing purple does, too.

Symbols. Sometimes they’re as frustrating as the problem they’re trying to fight–because even while I wear this shirt, someone else out there is alone and frightened and angry and way too close to despair.

The alternative, though—NOT wearing this color—felt worse.

This just gets to me so much, because it feels like history repeating itself over and over and over…Gays can’t marry. My father had a good friend who, not that many years ago, had to go to Arizona to get married, because California wouldn’t let him marry the Japanese woman he loved. Gay teens are killing themselves. Black men got lynched. Some of my family escaped Germany, some didn’t.

I could look at that paragraph and see the differences. But what I see is the sameness. Hatred. Narrow-mindedness. Fear.

And then, I guess, I just keep speaking out and fighting. And, yes, today–wearing purple.

Posted in Critique Groups

Guest Post: Constance Lombardo on Growing a Critique Group Over Time

Posted on by beckylevine

I hear a lot about groups that didn’t make it–where meetings trickled away, or people weren’t submitting, or the group was just the wrong fit for too many members. That’s why, when Constance Lombardo sent me this guest post about her group that DID make it–with all the ups and downs and persistence it took to get there, I was thrilled. Read on to see the work that Constance and her critique partners put into keeping this group alive and, ultimately, a strong, supportive place.

THE SECRET GARDENERS

Four years ago, I moved to Asheville, joined SCBWI and decided to form a critique group. I found another writer/illustrator with the same goal. We scheduled and advertised our first meeting. Asheville is full of artists and writers, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by the amount of people who showed up– ten, I think. A mix of picture book to YA writers and illustrators. Wow, I thought, this is going to be easy!

We worked out some logistics: we’d meet twice a month at our favorite local bookstore, Malaprops, we’d read our work and offer feedback at meetings, leaving the first 20 minutes for chatting (hopefully on book-related subjects!) And we would use the ‘sandwich’ rule – a positive statement about the writing first, then discuss what might need work, close with another positive statement.

Four years later, the last survivor from that first group to our current configuration is me.

People moved away. One of us had twins. Someone else had surgery. Others decided they didn’t have time for the group. Change is part of life, right?

Over the years, we’ve had people show up once, after being told that a commitment was required to share work for feedback, and then never return. (We now have a rule that you must attend at least one meeting before you can share.)

We’ve had people show up only when they wanted to share their own work. (New rule: you must attend at least one of our twice a month meetings regularly to remain in the group.)

We had one woman who left the group, saying we were all mean. (More conversation on keeping things positive.)

We’ve had some intense chatters. (I’ve been guilty of this at times. Reminders about staying on-topic.)

And we’ve had some serious personality clashes. New York personalities (myself and others) vs. Southern personalities. We’re still working on that one.

What have we done best over the years?

About a year ago, when our group hit nine committed writers and illustrators who attend and share regularly, we decided to close the group. Most of us are SCBWI members and it’s a requirement for any new members, when we do have an opening. We wrote down a list of Intentions and Rules, including some previously mentioned. We now post our work (especially longer YA or MG chapters) the week before we meet.

We’ve had local authors (Allan Wolf, Alan Gratz) and a local illustrator (Laura Bryant) speak to us about their journeys. A local editor (Joy Neaves) also spoke to our group. We’ve learned a lot from these meetings.

And we picked a name. That was interesting. As we threw out ideas, I realized that I am attached to my concept of the group and that some of the names were just not acceptable to me. (New rule: any major change had to be ok’d by all members.) We made a list of potential names:

  • Monkeys with Typewriters
  • Make Way for Madeline
  • Wonderlanders
  • The Inksters
  • The Secret Gardeners

We all voted and happily agreed. We are now The Secret Gardeners.

An illustrator from our group (Holly McGee) was pulled from the slush pile to illustrate her first picture book from Kane/Miller, Hush Little Beachcomber by Dianne Moritz. (Hooray!) Author/illustrator Kit Grady has a new book out, A Necklace for Jiggsy (Hooray!) Megan Shepherd’s articles have been in Faces, Calliope and Appleseeds magazines (You go, girl!) And we recently had another published author join us, Karen Miller (Monsters and Water Beasts: Creatures of Fact or Fiction?)

And the rest of us have made great strides in our writing and/or illustrating. We are:

We’ve been published in our Carolinas chapter newsletter, The Pen & Palette, and in the SCBWI Bulletin, cheering each other on all the way. We celebrate each other through our successes and commiserate over our (numerous!) rejection letters. We share knowledge (agent lists) and ask questions (how to write an effective query?) We attend conferences together and hang out in the hotel bar talking late into the night.

We’ve come to know each other, our work, our writing/illustrating styles, our strengths and weaknesses, and our dreams. We’ve come to appreciate each other, to understand what we’re each trying to accomplish, to be encouraging, and to offer the kind of feedback that makes us all work harder to deliver our best.

And we have fun! We went to see Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix. And we’re planning to see HP and the Deathly Hallows together. This year, one of our scheduled meetings fell on my birthday, so I requested that we meet at The Chocolate Lounge (which is as wonderful as it sounds!) We ate chocolate, drank dessert wine, and talked about books. Then I knew, this isn’t just a great critique group, these are my friends.

Posted in Uncategorized

The Honest Scrap Award: Passing Along the Thanks

Posted on by beckylevine

Last weekend, Kim Koning sent me a note that I might want to check out her blog post. What a wonderful surprise to find out that I was on her list for the Honest Scrap blog award. Here’s the description of the award:

The Honest Scrap Award:

This award is about bloggers who post from their heart, who often times put their heart on display as they write from the depths of their soul. This means so much to me as that is the root reason of why and what I write about. I believe writing is your heart without a mask. My writing, whether it be a blog post, a poem, a piece of prose or a WIP is the truest part of my soul. To me writing is about honesty and truth-seeking. There is the saying that the pen is more powerful than the sword. I believe that writing is a way to challenge people and to speak often times for those who cannot speak.

As a recipient, I get to pass the award onto other bloggers who I think meet this description, and then you get to hear 10 honest things about me. Lucky you! I’ll try not to get too gushy. 🙂

Step 1: Sharing the Award

I’m going to pick some of the bloggers I’ve discovered more recently, bloggers who I think examine this writing life closely and, yes, honestly, but mostly with intelligence and imagination.

And ten things about me you may never have wanted to know:

1. I do worry more than I let you see on the blog. So much for completely honest. 🙂

2. Working at my parents’ veterinary clinic, I successfully and without injury held (down) many cats and dogs for exams. I have a huge scar on my hand from the one time I tried to hold my own cat while a vet took his temperature. File that under the category of Should Have Known Better.

3. I don’t really like the beach. I lived near it (5 minutes) for 18 years of my life and lived on it for a year in college, and have probably accrued fewer hours of actual on-the-sand-or-in-the-water time than many people who grow up in the midwest.

4. I took myself off to Great Britain for five weeks when I was 25, by myself, with a backpack and a lot of train tickets. Got lost many times, but lonely only once.

5. Someday I will probably own something produced and manufactured by Apple. But not yet. (Especially now that Scrivener for Windows is “coming soon!”)

6. I don’t like shoes. I wear them because I have to, but only when absolutely necessary.

7. You don’t want to give me a plant. For the house or outside. Not if you care for its survival. Seriously.

8. Years ago, a friend and I rode in the Port Townsend Kinetic Sculpture Race. We won a prize for best costumes. Don’t ask.

9. I type 100 words a minute. And, no, I won’t type all your college essays for you. Been there, done that.

10. When I was in grad school, I worked as a tour guide at Ashlawn, James Monroe’s home in Charlottesville, VA. And, yes, I started saying y’all. It just felt way too rude, in that place, to use California-speak: “Okay, you guys can move into the next room now.”

So there you have it. Happy Honest Scrap Award to Mike, Jordan, Michelle, and Claudia, and happy weekend to everybody else!

Posted in Critique Groups, Critiquing

Remembering: The Feeling of a First Critique

Posted on by beckylevine

I’ve been doing this critique thing a long time. I met one of my current critique partners before my son was born, before he was even much more than a possibility in my future. I’m pretty used to the ups and downs that go with submitting my work, having my critique partners chew it into tiny pieces read it, and listening to what they have to say. Like all good critique groups, most days are great; a few are tough.

Monday was different. It was the first time I’d submitted a picture book, not to mention the first picture book I’ve ever written.

I had a mini visceral flashback as I was driving to the meeting. My stomach was churning, just a bit, with that balanced mix of nervousness and excitement that, to be honest, I’d almost forgotten existed. Nervous: What if they can’t stand it? (Translation: What if I realize I should never have started this picture book, let alone thought about writing anymore?) Excitement: What if they absolutely love it? (Translation: What if it becomes obviously clear that all I have to do is come home and start emailing queries and this book will be on the shelf in six months?)

Yes, both extremes, both equally unlikely. What happened, of course, was that they were all very excited about what I’ve gotten on the page, loved specific pieces of it, and had some wonderfully brilliant suggestions about what isn’t working yet and what to do about it.

All good.

But the feeling in the car made me think back to when I was just starting out with critique groups, looking for one that was a good fit, mailing around copies of my work to people I’d never met, so they could read my writing for the first time. And I thought, this is what everybody goes through when they make the leap–when they jump into their first group.

Duh. Well, of course, I know this. It’s why I wrote my book. But still, this was a strong, physical reminder of what that feels like.

It’s a risk. Stepping into a group, whether it’s your first time or yet another round of trying to find your place, puts you and your writing on the line–emotionally. Even if you know, logically, that the critiquers’ responses to your writing will stay out of those extreme reactions, you still hope for totally positive feedback and fear the bad stuff. You will have butterflies in your stomach on the way to your first meeting, or as you submit your first chapter to an online group, and those butterflies won’t disappear after Day 1.

They will, however, go away eventually–making themselves available for another writer ready to take the leap. Your stomach will calm, your hands will relax their grip on the coffee cup at meetings. You’ll start to see the pattern of good and bad in the feedback you receive, and that mix will strengthen your writing and your confidence in your own abilities.

So, if you’re standing by the river, wondering, take off your shoes and dip a toe or three into the water. Start your hunt. Scary? Yeah. And worth it.

Posted in Books, Character, Point of View

Looking for an Unlikeable Hero You Love? Read CRACKED UP TO BE

Posted on by beckylevine

I hear about this all the time–either in question or statement: Can you create a non-nice hero that your readers like? You can create a non-nice hero that your readers like. And I always find myself searching through my memory for an example.

No more. I just finished Courtney Summers’ Cracked Up to Be, and she’s done it. Brilliantly.

Parker Fadley was perfect–all through high school and, I suspect, for years before. So perfect that she pushed herself to the point of cracking…and past. As the book opens, she is “recovering” from months of switching gears big time–doing everything wrong, everything she could possibly think of to mess up her world. She is on probation at school, with piles of conditions to meet if she wants to graduate from high school. And she is still on a rocket path of self-destruction, although that manifests itself as apparent attempts to destroy everything around her–her friendships, her relationship with her parents, and those chances at graduating. She is angry, cold, sarcastic, rude–you name it. And, on the surface, all for the pleasure of it.

So how does Summers make me like–love–Parker? I think she does it in two ways:

  • Point of View
  • Need

Point of View
Parker is fast. Her brain zips to the smart-mouth response, to the perfectly cruel thing to say (and, yes, the real delight she does get in saying it). At the same time, she’s clamping down on the panic that continually threatens her and scanning for escape routes. And snapping her fingers to get herself out of obsessive-mode or keep the nausea from turning into actual vomit. The book races, and Summers achieves this speed by getting us deeply into Parker’s point of view. Not the technical 1st person, present that is Summer’s tool, but the complete and total connection to the way Parker sees the world. As a threat to her goal, a trigger to her loss of control, a series of potentially devastating attacks. All from people who say they wish her well and have no clue, in her mind, what she truly needs. This is the point of view that Alicia Rasley talks about in her book The Power of Point of View.

Need
What Parker needs is to be left alone. Her quest for perfection and her (self-assessed) inability to achieve it pushed her, somewhere in the past, into an action that had horrible consequences. (No spoilers, and–on a side note–Summers did a wonderful job of trickling in the clues without once frustrating me.) Since then, Parker has decided that the thing she needs to do to save herself is to be alone–to be so horrible and damaging that everyone she has ever cared about, and who cared about her, will just give up on her and leave her to herself. She believes she is that bad-that this is the best thing they can do for themselves and that this is the only thing she can do to keep from destroying anything else. She’s, honestly, willing to totally destroy herself to reach this goal.

And you believe it. You believe in her self-hatred–totally woven into the hatred of everyone else that she projects. You believe in the absolute desperate power of this goal, that she cannot see past it to the help that she actually needs. You believe in the logic that makes her behave as she does, speak as she does, push…push…push as she does. There are so many kind people in this story, and Summers gets you to believe in the shallowness, stupidity, and danger that Parker sees in all of them. At the same time as you know she’s wrong.

There were so many times that I winced as I read this book, that I cringed at the nastiness coming out of Parker’s mouth, that I empathized with the friends who are ready to leave her to her own path, with the not-friends who are ready to help her along it. And so many times that I laughed at the wit with which she delivers her poison and ached at the moments when she almost reaches out.

If you want to see how to do this–how to create the mean, nasty, painful hero your readers can’t resist, pick up a copy of Cracked Up to Be. And enjoy. 🙂

Posted in First Drafts, Plot, Revision

This is My Brain. This is My Brain on Plot.

Posted on by beckylevine

This post is dedicated to Terri Thayer, for listening and not once telling me I’m crazy.

What my brain tells me when I announce that, in the second draft of this WIP, we may be dropping one entire, MAJOR plotline:

  • Wow!
  • Wouldn’t this be a betrayal of Character X? Who just happens to have been a real person in real life that you totally love and admire and want to write about?
  • Hold on!  Does that mean you don’t have to finish the 1st draft??!!!
  • You could buy fewer index cards for the re-plotting party.
  • You’d be writing less broadly and more deeply. That would be a good thing.
  • Are you just copping out? Is this just the cowardly easy easier road to take?
  • Does this mean you’re thinking of a second book? Another historical fiction? You swore there’d be no more historical fiction!
  • You’ll cry more, if you write it this way.
  • This story is supposed to be about the girl and her mother. Have you seen the mother on the page yet? No, you haven’t. Because that other plotline keeps getting in the way. Get back to the mother.
  • You’ve written almost 250 pages, and now you’re telling me it’s a different story?

What I tell my brain:

  • Shut up and let me write.
Posted in Social Networking

Back to Goodreads: Unclogging a Piece of Social Networking

Posted on by beckylevine

I hear myself saying this a lot to people–if social networking isn’t fun for you, don’t do it. And I’m serious about that–I have fun here on my blog, fun on other people’s blogs, fun on Facebook and fun on Twitter. And, yes, if you add them up in some fancy mathematical equation, it’s way too much fun.

I don’t know about fun with LinkedIn. I’m there, and I check in every so often, but–honesty–haven’t figured that site out yet. If you have a brilliant epiphanetical revelation for me about it, please do share. So…I wouldn’t rate LinkedIn as high on my fun scale, but it doesn’t cause me any stress either.

Unlike Goodreads. Or, to be more specific, the current state of my Goodreads account. When I first signed up for GR, I did like it. For a long time, I liked it. And then, I think, I let myself be sucked into the social-networking shoulds:

  • You should use X to market your book
  • You should link your blog to X
  • You should friend lots and lots of people at X, especially if they send you a request

Um…

As a small piece of social networking, these should are true.  But, and here’s the important thing, I think–we can’t do everything everywhere!

I like Goodreads because it gives me a place to rave about a book I love, and the site makes it super easy for me to share that rave with people on…yes Facebook & Twitter. I like Goodreads because, when I’m running low on book ideas, I can scan people’s lists and get ideas. Except, as it stands, there are way too many people and way too many lists for me to do that. My site is clogged. So do I use Goodreads for the part that makes me happy? No. Am I using Goodreads productively for social networking? Definitely not.

A while ago, Sherrie Petersen announced on her blog that she was stepping away from Facebook. As much as I like it out there on FB, Sherrie’s post made it clear that this was a great choice for her. And that doing a reality check every now & then about our social-networking habits can be sanity-making.

Time for me to back up. I’ve decided I will no longer use Goodreads as a piece of my social network. I’m not closing out my account, but I will be going through my list and deleting quite a lot of the people there. Most. This feels a little bit like crossing people off the wedding list because the park isn’t big enough. (Yes, we had our wedding celebration in a park–where else can you find a big enough BBQ pit?) And that part isn’t the best feeling.

The part about just leaving people on the list whose book recommendations I really, really want to see sounds great. I often get a craving for some seriously great fantasy–I know who’s list I’m going to go to for those. I am on constant look-out for new MG and YA and PB books; I’m going to keep some big readers in those genres. Mysteries, historical novels–I need a steady feed of suggestions.

But that’s it. If you read my blog and if you friended me on Goodreads and if you find out you’re no longer on the list (is that even possible), I still do want to talk. Come find me on Facebook or Twitter, where I’m having actual conversations! For me, Goodreads needs to be the quiet corner of the public library, where I quiet-as-a-whisper pass books back and forth with a few like readers.

What’s overloading your right now? Is there a piece of the social-networking pie that you’d feel happier (and lighter) without? Drop into the comments & share your thoughts. Or don’t! 🙂