Teens, Writing and Randomness

Never Done

2012-02-06T08:06:00.000-08:00

Last week I received fabulous news: my editor is happy with my latest revisions to the manuscript-in-progress, considers it “accepted” and is sending it off to copyediting, which means another pair of editorial eyes will look it over for grammar/typos/inconsistencies, etc. So while it’s not completely finished, it’s mostly finished. Thoughts have turned to covers, acknowledgements, book jacket copy … all the parts that spell: Done.

Prosecco was poured, cheers ensued, dancing about the office happened (which was very confusing to the dog) and this morning … I’m channeling Anne Bradstreet.

Here’s the thing: it’s never really done. Even when I spy one of my books on the shelves in a bookstore, I’m tempted to leaf through it with a pencil in hand and change a word or two. Or cross out an entire chapter. Or add an entire chapter.

And this latest book, in particular, unsettles me. I’m so not sure I’ve got it “right,” and when I pass it off to a reader I’m more anxious than usual. It’s as if I’ve sent my child out into a winter storm dressed only in her pajamas. I took some risks in this book. It scares me. I suspect it will never be ready.

Which is where the poet, Anne Bradstreet, comes in. Amazingly, this woman born in Northampton, England in 1612, who sailed with her husband and other Puritans on the Arabella in the 1630s and lived out the rest of her life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, tapped me on the shoulder this morning and said, “I know, right?”

Mother of eight, survivor of smallpox, a “Pilgrim,” to boot, she was also a writer, and one of her friends got hold of her poems and bundled them off to England, where, unbeknownst to her, they were published. She wasn’t … pleased. She felt they weren’t ready. They needed more work. And she wrote this poem about the experience of seeing her unreadied child exposed:

The Author to Her Book

Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth did'st by my side remain,
Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad exposed to public view,
Made thee in rags, halting to th' press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
The visage was so irksome in my sight,
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could.
I washed thy face, but more defects I saw,
And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.
I stretcht thy joints to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet.
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nought save home-spun cloth, i' th' house I find.
In this array, 'mongst vulgars may'st thou roam.
In critic's hands, beware thou dost not come,
And take thy way where yet thou art not known.
If for thy father askt, say, thou hadst none;
And for thy mother, she alas is poor,
Which caused her thus to send thee out of door.

I know, right?

Getting to Whoa

2012-02-01T08:09:00.000-08:00

A dear friend just accomplished a remarkable thing. She finished writing her dissertation, an original, hundreds-of-pages long scholarly paper. It’s a work that’s taken more than two decades to complete, and an effort that spanned multiple jobs, the births of three children, the care of aged and ailing family members, and all the rest life throws at you.

When she was finally done and typed that last word (at least, I imagine her typing some last words … I need to ask her, did she actually write “The End”?) she posted on Facebook: Whoa.

Yes. That’s it. That’s the feeling and that’s the moment. Whoa.

It’s completely personal and solitary and surprising and exhilarating. The whoa, when you’ve given your last bit of effort to some creative endeavor, and finally seen it through to completion. It’s done, it represents the best you can do, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s published or well reviewed or applauded by anyone. It is a perfect thing in that moment, like reaching the top of K2 or holding a newborn. You stare down from a dizzying height and feel: whoa.

Getting to whoa is so hard. It’s not just the hours and the actual work you have to put in. It’s the distractions, all the Life that keep popping up and keeping you away from the desk or the studio. It’s the self doubt (“Who am I kidding? I can’t write/paint/sing/dance!") and it’s the mortgage (“I need a real job; screw the novel I’m going to law school.”) and it’s the nagging Why? that kills the whoa.

Why am I bothering to do this? Especially on days when the work doesn’t go well and I have nothing to show for it, wouldn’t I have been better off vacuuming the car? Tangible results and all that?

It takes a lot of courage to get to whoa, and to my friend I say: Yay for you! You are amazing.

But she’s not the only one.

I have a father who, at age 75, has finally given himself leave to pick up a paintbrush and create. He’s always loved art and he’s always had a gift, but he always had a million distractions and other responsibilities. Still, he never let go of his dream to paint, and these days, not for profit or praise but for himself, because he loves it, he creates wonderful landscapes. The painting at the beginning of this post is one of his.

I look at it and think: whoa.

Dear Bully

2011-10-02T19:56:00.000-07:00

I remember bullies.

One in particular. Chris O. A tough little Irish kid from a big family. He came to school wrinkled and unprepared. He was always getting in trouble. The teachers couldn’t reprimand him enough.

And he tortured Gloria Z.

When I say that picking on Gloria was akin to kicking Bambi, I’m not exaggerating. Gloria was shy to the point of mute. She wore thick, coke-bottle-bottom glasses, and always walked with her head down and her shoulders slumped, as if she were trying to make herself invisible. In eighth grade, when most of us were sporting platform shoes and shag haircuts (sorry, it was the 70’s) Gloria showed up in knee socks and little-girl plaid skirts, only in large girl sizes.

Her grandmother dressed her. That’s because Gloria’s mother had died … none of us knew how, or why .. and Gloria and her brother had come to live with their grandparents. Who hadn’t gotten the memo about mod.

Gloria wasn’t my friend. She was just some quiet kid in the class and I was very busy with my own circle of friends and didn’t pay attention to her.

But you couldn’t not notice her when Chris O moved in.

With his spectacular homing device for detecting vulnerability, he focused every bit of mean he had on Gloria. He’d sit behind her and make kissy noises, and croon, “Gloooooria, won’t you be my girlfriend?” prompting laughter from all the boys around him. When she got up from her desk, he’d stick his foot out and trip her. Sometimes, during class, he’d whisper to her. Things that made her face turn bright red. Nothing for an audience that time, but designed solely for her pain and his delight.

Gloria was his goat, and the game was contagious. Other boys took up the cry. And even some girls (who years later would become doting mothers posting precious little Facebook details about their own cute daughters) would mock her, making fun of her clothes and her childish, whispery way of speaking.

To my credit, I never piled on Gloria. But to my shame, I don't recall ever rising to her defense, either. I was a shocked, silent, fearful bystander, horrified by what Chris O was doing ... but afraid of taking steps that might direct his aim at me.

I like to think I made a point of being kind to Gloria. But I didn’t invite her to my sleepovers. I didn’t sit with her at lunch. I can’t recall if she had friends. I think she didn’t.

The woman I am today considers that silent, former teenage self equally to blame for whatever emotional ruin Chris O might have caused Gloria. I can’t help it: I think bystanders suck. To witness bullying, or unkindness, and say nothing, is to tacitly condone it. I would do anything to go back in time for just ten minutes of that eighth grade English class, and get it right. But it doesn't work that way. The experienced middle-aged woman can't return to the eighth grade body and fight Chris O. I can't time travel back to the 70s and invite Gloria to anything.

Dear Bully, edited by the amazing Carrie Jones (love her YA books!) and Megan Kelley Hall, is a collection of essays written by authors, all sharing their stories about bullying. It’s a book about victims and perpetrators. Heroes and bystanders. Every role that one could play in the ongoing drama of bullying, all contained within this wonderful volume.

I haven’t finished all the essays yet, but more than one has moved me to tears. If you’re a teacher or librarian, I urge you to add this book to your class/library collection.

Epilogue to my bully saga: Chris O had an illustrious career as a perpetual troublemaker and bully, picking on smart girls (our future class valedictorian, who went on to become a mission doctor in Africa) and targeting Jews with particular venom (our future class salutatorian, who went on to become a famous medical researcher.) Administrators banned him from attending our high school class graduation trip, but he showed up anyway with cases of beer, got drunk with his friends, and trashed the hotel where we were all staying. I heard he later went on to become an inmate at some correctional facility, but I can't confirm that.

Gloria graduated from our high school, but I don’t know what became of her following graduation.

I went on to become a writer of teen novels, still processing all the things I learned … and didn’t learn … back then. Creating characters who are braver than I was, which, unfortunately, isn't saying much.

A portion of all proceeds from Dear Bully will be donated to Stomp Out Bullying.

The Biggest Boob

2011-09-24T07:52:00.000-07:00

I was supposed to be blogging about Banned Books Week today (which I am, if you’ll just bear with me) but first: a word about boobs.

Actually, “boobies.”

Don’t you just love ‘em? I do. I love mine. When I was in my early thirties, they fed my children. They linked us in a way which was more profound and emotional and visceral than I could have anticipated. They imprinted me as “mother” in a way that even pregnancy and childbirth did not, and stripped me of all the various credentials I had worked so hard to amass up to that point, reducing me to one, all-important thing: caregiver.

Which is the greatest thing anyone can be, whether one is a parent or a loving friend; a breast feeder or a formula feeder; man or woman; biological parent or adoptive. For me, it took those boobies to firmly establish what’s important in life, and I am so grateful for them.

I’m also grateful, every year, when I take those boobies off to the scanner and receive the diagnosis: healthy. I’m so grateful mammography exists, so grateful that because of the strides made in research and technology, a diagnosis of “breast cancer” is no longer the death sentence it was back in my mother’s day.

That is, if you catch it early. Which is why raising awareness about breast health and early detection is just as important as hurling millions of dollars toward lab research. Which is why what’s going on at Medomak High School in Waldoboro, Maine is so upsetting.

You know those rubbery Live Strong bracelets? Well, there’s a bracelet being sold to raise money and awareness for breast cancer, and it is stamped with the words “I (heart) Boobies.” Attention getting, don’t you think?

At Medomak High School, Principal Harold Wilson has been suspending kids who wear the bracelets to school and refuse to take them off. He says the bracelets are “disruptive to the education process” and violate the school’s guidelines against wearing sexually provocative attire.

Dude, in the eye of the beholder. Just because you can’t see breast cancer awareness bracelets without thinking of sex, doesn’t mean your student body isn’t more enlightened.

Yes, kids, you’re right: some adults are idiots. Please, don’t grow up to be like them. Please keep reading and informing yourselves, so that, unlike Harold Wilson, you’ll know that a Federal judge in Pennsylvania has already ruled that students are within their rights to wear these quiet little rubber bracelets, and forcing them to take them off violates their constitutional right to free speech.

Harold, do you really want to spend the taxpayers’ money in Bangor defending your policy when the Maine Civil Liberties Union challenges it in court? Because you know that’s gonna happen.

Which leads me (yes, I’m finally getting around to Banned Books Week) to all this squeamishness about breasts and body parts. And I was reminded of one of my favorite and most recently “challenged” books, The Accidental Adventures of India McAllister, by my friend, Charlotte Agell.

This delightful middle-grade book has been challenged by school districts around the country for a variety of reasons, one of which includes issues surrounding the discussion of breast cancer. The protagonist, India, has a mom who, in addition to being an artist, is a breast cancer survivor. She has had a mastectomy. But before her surgery, she made a plaster cast of her breast … not unlike the plaster casts some women make of their hugely rounded bellies in the final stage of pregnancy … which now adorns the living room wall in India’s house.

India remarks that this is a bit of a curiosity to her friends who visit, but she shrugs it off as just another body part. What if her mom had made a plaster cast of her nose? Odd, perhaps. But no biggie.

The pre-pubescent India approaches breasts with innocence. Free of all the sexual connotations they summon in the adult world (think Harold Wilson) they are mere facts of life, something all mammals share. She breezes past the plaster cast in her living room without a thought, without an agenda, but acknowledging that her beloved mother dodged a bullet when she had her breast removed.

India is not unlike those brave teens in Waldoboro who are refusing to remove their bracelets and willing to face suspension. They don’t have some twisted, prurient preoccupation with breasts. They’re not wearing the bracelets to be difficult: they have friends and relatives who have either died from or are dealing with breast cancer. They bought the bracelets as an act of solidarity with them.

The sexualized, lewd and vulgar view of breasts seems to be the realm of the adults. Who fear words. Like “boobies.” Yes, indeed, a molotov cocktail thrown into the order of an unruffled day at Medomak High. Which, ironically, is in an uproar at this point, because the principal felt compelled to make such a stink about it. Talk about “disruptive to the education process.”

Which makes you wonder if Principal Harold Wilson might not be the biggest boob of all.

Note: several days following this post, the Superintendent of Schools in Waldoboro ruled that students at Medomak High School could wear the "I (heart) Boobies" bracelets. All those who had been suspended would have their suspensions removed from their records. This ruling was in no part related to this blog post, but was most likely related to the power of common sense.

September 24th – October 1, 2011 is national Banned Books Week.

The Bangor Book Festival will be held just as Banned Books Week concludes: September 30th – October 1st. I’ll be participating in a panel on banned and challenged books with authors Charlotte Agell, Carrie Jones and Kelly McClymer at 9:00 a.m. in the Bangor Public Library Story Room, at 145 Harlow Street, Bangor, Maine.

Adonis versus Herb

2011-09-12T08:24:00.000-07:00

Like many of my friends, I have a high school senior living in my house … which I guess tells you a lot about the year I’m in for. Exciting, bittersweet, stressful. Fraught.

I know this stage is no picnic for the kids, either. Especially when the adults circle, with their inevitable questions about Life After High School.

At a gathering of families recently, we honed in on one particularly vulnerable member of the youth pack. She’s applying to college and has fixated on a single school. Despite our chorus of dire warnings about the need to have a list of “safeties,” she was adamant.

“What’s wrong with falling in love?” she demanded. “I mean, do people have safety husbands? Do they say, ‘I really love this guy, but if he doesn’t work out, these other three dudes would be fine.’” That caught us up short.

“Don’t think of applying to college like choosing a spouse,” offered one sage adult. “It’s more like … choosing a prom date. Marriage is forever but the prom is just one night.”

“Oooh, prom,” crooned one mother in the group to another. “Does your son know who he’s taking?”

“Prom is in May,” I commented, even though she wasn’t speaking to me. She shrugged.

“Never too early to lock up that date. Girls start shopping for their dresses in January.”

It was the first moment in my life when I actually thought I might drop to my knees and begin pounding the earth with my fists, wailing, “No no no! Don’t make me think about this! Not now, not ever, but especially not in September!”

I remember my own proms. For most of high school, I had the same boyfriend, so finding a date was a non-issue. Until my senior year, when the boyfriend went off to college and we broke up and I was untethered and prom-dateless.

That’s when I focused on … we’ll call him “Adonis” … for prom. He was sort of a friend but mostly a crush, and I really really really hoped he would ask me. He was the slim drummer in the band, a tan, varsity tennis player, and very cute. As the season for asking drew near (in the spring, by the way, none of this 10-months-ahead-of-time nonsense) I remember the phone ringing one afternoon, and a nervous male voice on the other end.

It was Herb. A guy I was friendly with, but didn’t know very well. A generally acknowledged “nice” guy who didn’t cause heads to turn when he entered a room. Herb was a solid citizen; he even stood low to ground. He exuded a sense of gravity.

He politely asked me to accompany him to the prom.

Reader, I tell you and I know this does not reflect well upon me: I turned him down. Not only that. Surprise pried frankness from my lips. I told him there was this other guy (I did not mention Adonis’s name) I really wanted to go with and he hadn’t asked me yet, so …

Yuck. Yuck yuck yuck and fie on the teenage me. As the mother of a teenage son I now loathe and detest all girls who reject perfectly nice boys for prom. I loathe my teenage self who didn’t have the sense to not tell poor Herb she was holding out for someone else. But as it turns out, I got what was coming to me …

Adonis asked me. Wonder of wonders, right? I was beside myself with excitement, and planned a pre-prom party at my house. Meanwhile, Herb went on a juggernaut of asking. Somehow, it got out that girls were turning him down left and right (I learned I was #3 on the list) and people started taking bets. Not only on who would be next in line, but how many he’d ultimately ask and who would finally say yes.

To his credit … to his great credit, actually … Herb got into the spirit of the thing, and when #9, Alison, accepted his offer, he made sure everyone knew. On the day during lunch when he strode to the ticket table to buy his prom “bid,” every student in the cafeteria rose and gave him a standing ovation. Herb bowed and waved.

Herb and Alison came to my pre-prom party and at prom sat at the same table as me and Adonis. Who, incidentally, spent most of the evening at another table, talking to a few of his tennis buddies. Who bought me flowers that clashed with my dress. Who barely spoke with me, let alone dance. For some reason, Adonis had had a change of heart about attending prom with me, and made no effort to conceal it. I had a miserable time.

Meanwhile, Herb was the man. Alison had the most beautiful wrist corsage in the room, and she and Herb danced every dance. I watched as he pulled her chair out for her, brought her punch from the drinks table, told her that she looked great. Let me tell you, #3 was feeling pretty jealous of #9 that night.

I guess this is all a long and tortured way of saying … I don’t know … what we think we want may not necessarily be the best thing for us? In life, go with substance, not flash? Don’t overlook those Safety Husbands, because they are true gold?

Maybe it’s just this: be open. Be open to all possibilities, and people. Because life surprises you.

Dumping the Dude

2011-09-06T06:45:00.000-07:00

On Facebook, I’ve been reading reams of posts from friends who dropped their children off at college this week. They are all such nice parents.

“Tell me how you all handle this! I miss her,” writes one.

“Have I adequately prepared him for what lies ahead?” muses another.

“She’s happy; but this is so hard for me,” says another.

“Wow. That’s the fastest move-in I’ve ever seen,” said Josh. My son’s roommate. After we heaved his belongings into their cell-like double in just under 23 minutes.

“We’re on our way to a wedding,” I explained to him, as my husband and I wrestled his dorm mattress (which had been suspiciously, stickily, adhered to a piece of plywood on the bed frame) into a sheath designed to deter bed bugs. Josh the Roommate, an affable fellow from Brooklyn, New York, had a few packages of cookies opened on his desk. He had arrived earlier and fully expected his roommate’s family from Maine to linger and visit a bit. Help unpack. Have a cookie.

Ha.

“You’re good with the sheets, right?” I asked my son, a.k.a. The Dude, once the bed bug cover was on. My eyes darted over the pile of stuff on the floor. Fridge, computer, duffel filled with clothes, microwave … good to go. A few things required assembly, but I figured even if Josh didn’t have a screwdriver someone in their suite would …

“Sure,” The Dude replied easily. Outside, it was a steamy 88 degrees, but inside the dark, dank room, it was a cave-like 68. Awesome, I thought. No need to stop off at Rite Aid for a fan. His dorm last year was air-conditioned. Not so this 70s-era heap of bricks and mortar, which resembled an air raid shelter.

Ah, last year. Freshman year. Orientation and all the fanfare and nerves and excitement of Move In Day. When dozens of upperclass volunteers wearing big smiles and Cardinal red tee shirts met us at the curb and carried our boxes into his airy, spanking clean dorm room. Where we took pictures of him and his roommate standing awkwardly together, arms folded tightly across their chests. Where I hungered for other freshmen parents to chat with, console with, confide in. Where we left, reluctantly, after hours of goodbyes and programming designed to make it all easier.

What a difference a year makes.

Instead of the silent, achingly nervous teenager we dropped off last year, we were delivering a young man who was glad to be “home.” As we drove him to the office where he’d pick up his room key, he rolled down the car window, hoping to catch a glimpse of people he knew. He had already registered for all his courses, already RSVP’d to three parties for the following weekend, already lined up an on-campus job interview, already knew his practice schedule for Ultimate Frisbee and a play he was in …

He was happy and busy and self-sufficient and we were free. Free to simply stand back and be happy for him, no worries. Free to hit the road and get to the rehearsal dinner on time, because he wouldn’t miss us as he and Josh set up their stuff in the abysmal room they were so thrilled to share.

After the wedding and the long drive back to Maine, I poked my head into The Dude’s now-empty childhood bedroom. The dog was curled up on his bed, which he had made up before we had departed days earlier. I wouldn’t call it neat, exactly, but it was tidy enough, and his books were back on the shelves and his bank statements and other mail were carefully stacked on his desk. He knew that would matter to me, that his room wasn’t left in a mess, and that’s when I felt the clutch in the throat. I called the dog out, and closed the door.

We’ll see The Dude again in about six weeks. But who’s counting?

For other posts re. The Dude, see 6/13/11 and 5/3/10.

WWHD?

2011-08-28T11:42:00.000-07:00

I spent two intense days recently with a particularly troubled teenager.

Unpredictable. Moody. Self-destructive. Given to emotional, violent outbursts as well as tender acts of kindness. Like I said, it was an intense two days. But I was preparing to speak at a writers’ conference, and lead a workshop on narrative voice in young adult fiction. And I was determined to reread The Catcher in the Rye before making any sweeping generalizations about how teens speak.

It had been a long time since Holden Caulfield and I had spent any time together. I think our last visit was back when I was a teen myself, reading his story for a high school English class. Judging from the semi-audible groans I heard from the attendees at my workshop, groans which moved through the room like the crowd wave at a ball game when I pulled out the book and its familiar red and yellow carousel horse cover, Holden was a known quantity to them as well.

“Isn’t that a little dated?” one outspoken fellow said, getting us off to a rip roaring start.

“Well, in some ways, it certainly is dated,” I conceded. “I was surprised to see the book’s original copyright is 1945.” (That drew a few contemptuous snorts.) “And Holden definitely uses some outdated slang. He references movies and film stars and music which a teen today wouldn’t relate to. But in the essential ways which define the so-called young adult voice, Holden is incredibly authentic.”

Prove it, their blank stares challenged. Show us how a 16-year old who has never heard of Twitter, Facebook or even the internet, can teach us anything about a young adult today. This dude has never used a computer. Never texted, sexted, or snapped a picture on a cell phone. He has no cable television, no iPod, no MTV. He puts change into a pay phone which has a rotary dial. He’s never heard of rap; he listens to jazz …

“Holden is first and foremost and above all a teenager,” I told them. “Regardless of all the rest of the discussion about him … Is he the voice of a disaffected generation? Is he having a nervous breakdown? Is he traumatized? Is he an alcoholic? … he sees the world and reacts to the world uniquely as a teen. And if we’re going to write for teens, we need to learn from Holden.”

Here’s what I learned from Holden, and what’s so true about every teen:

1. Holden “hates” everything … but not really. He constantly talks about what he “hates,” but it’s just a catchall word he uses as his emergent adult self begins to see and judge the world in new ways. He’s beginning to recognize hypocrisy and meanness and sadness, and it’s not fun. So he lumps it all into the category of things he “hates.”

2. Holden reacts to everything personally, but hasn’t a clue about himself. He’s hypersensitive, but not self-aware.

3. Holden wants to tell us his story … but wants us to think he’s indifferent to telling.

4. Holden acts first and thinks later. If he thinks at all.

5. Holden swears and drinks and affects what he recognizes as “adult” behavior, but the love of his life is his kid sister Phoebe, and he’s nostalgic about their trips to the carousel ride. Poor Holden isn’t an adult yet … but he’s no longer a child.

It doesn’t matter whether Holden is listening to Kanye West or Frank Sinatra. It doesn’t matter if he’s sending a friend a text message or a postcard. It doesn’t matter if he describes something as “corny” or “weak.” Holden responds to the world and tells his story from the perspective of an emerging adult, in a way that transcends the limiting details of popular culture. That’s why The Catcher in the Rye, despite being 66 years old, has something to teach us today.

So in my ongoing quest to capture the young adult voice in my fiction, I have a new mantra:

What Would Holden Do?

No Tears Here

2011-07-23T05:10:00.000-07:00

So in our local paper there has been a fair amount of hand wringing and eulogizing over the closure of the Borders Bookstore this week.

Leading the list of heart-wrenching observations is the loss of more than 25 jobs, which I agree, is a pretty bad thing, especially in this economy where it's no small feat to find another job. There's also been some praise for the franchise owner, who has been active in the community and has made efforts to promote literacy projects. Laudable stuff, that.

But as a local author, I have to confess I'm a bit bewildered by all the mourning. Not only did I have to consistently exert herculean efforts to convince the local Borders to keep my books in stock (and I'm distributed by a major publisher, so it's not like this was difficult) but I was always a bit surprised to see how many outstanding Maine authors were not on their shelves. This was in sharp contrast to our small, independently owned downtown bookstore (Gulf of Maine Books) where the owners are knowledgeable and actively promote Maine writers.

Plus, my neighbors seem to forget what happened when Borders arrived.

It located itself in a strip mall a few short years ago within (literally) a potato-bazooka-blast distance from a Maine-based bookstore/cafe called Bookland. Bookland was a largish store, filled with knowledgeable employees and book-lovers, and was a watering hole for many in our community. It hosted book signings by local authors, amazing Harry Potter parties for kids on "release" nights, sponsored literacy projects in the schools ... it was a fine store and good neighbor. It struggled mightily to remain open when Big Box Borders elbowed its way into town, but we all know the scenario: it was no match for the discounts which the multi-million dollar giant could offer customers, and eventually closed its doors. That retail space remains vacant. Oh, and a lot of people lost their jobs back then, too.

The narrative of the predatory Big Box Store and the demise of the Local Store is an oft-told, well-known tale at this point ... but it's repeated again and again in communities all over our country, and I don't understand why we haven't figured it out yet. We're all so sad when the little mom and pop convenience store, where you could get anything from screws to crochet hooks to school supplies to winter boots, is euthanized by the arrival of a Target or a WalMart, but when those chains open we all scurry to be the first to pick up deals on opening day.

Here's the really scary thing: in some communities, now that Borders has closed, there is no bookstore left. They killed off the competition, and now have disappeared in a puff of smoke themselves.

Amazon must be lovin' this.

As an author, I have gained a deep, deep, deep (we're talkin' Grand Canyon here) appreciation for the small business owners who run independent bookstores in communities throughout our country. They promote literacy and the arts every day they open their doors, and they're not getting rich doing it. May I humbly suggest that the next time you want a book, you browse one of their stores instead of the internet?

As an author, there are all sorts of things one can do to not only sell books but also support local stores. I thought this blog had a couple of great ideas:

http://randomactsofreading.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/creative-ways-indie-bookstores-and-authors-are-working-together/

Meanwhile, here's a shout-out to just a few of my all-time favorite indie bookstores:

Sherman's Books (Maine!) who recently sponsored the Books in Boothbay Summer Book Fair. Thanks, Jeff and Audrey!

Gulf of Maine (Brunswick) and the amazing, one-of-a-kind Gary Lawless.

Children's Book Cellar (Waterville), an anchor of literacy in downtown Waterville.

Longfellow Books (Portland)

The Vermont Book Shop (Middlebury) which was my favorite bookstore when I was a student and was reportedly Robert Frost's favorite, too.

Pursuit of Happiness

2011-06-28T13:22:00.000-07:00

So late May/early June is when I hear a lot of graduation speeches.

This can be fairly mind numbing, as clichés seem to have their origins in the Graduation Speech genre. One group of inventive Bowdoin College profs I know (names withheld to protect the guilty) have come up with a sort of “bingo” they play during the graduation ceremony, checking off boxes whenever a speaker utters a particular cliché (references to the ivory tower, going forth into the world, etc.), and jumping out of their seats and shouting the name of the current governor when they have checked off all the boxes on their cards.

It’s disruptive, highly amusing to those in the know, and puzzling to the other graduation attendees.

So I was amazed and delighted to hear a speech, written by a young man who graduated from Middlebury College this past February, which not only made me laugh out loud, but made me think. Rethink, actually. And question my assumptions about a few things I had previously held dear.

Here's the excerpt that grabbed me:

The problem with the American dream, the dream so often spouted on days like today, is not simply that it leaves us chasing material success, thinking that if we just get a bigger car, a bigger house, a bigger TV, then we will be happy. It’s the very idea of the pursuit of happiness. Because happiness is not something you pursue. It’s something you create.

I loved that. The idea that happiness isn't a goal or a pursuit, but a creation. And not necessarily for ourselves.

Then, this week, an article in The Atlantic came to my attention. It was titled "How to Land Your Kid in Therapy," and the basic premise is that parenting with a primary goal of raising happy children might be resulting in a generation of unhappy adults. It also posits that shielding kids from disappointment and rejection and pain doesn't do them any favors.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/how-to-land-your-kid-in-therapy/8555/

How many times as parents do we say, regarding our children and their futures, “I just want them to be happy.” As if that's the ultimate bottom line? The most important attribute we could ascribe to their adult selves?

Is there really anything wrong with that?

As a parent, it’s hard to hear one of your kids say “I’m not happy.” I mean, it’s sort of hard to hear it from a three-year old. But it’s sharply painful to hear it from a teenager/young adult. Your instinct, instilled from the moment of his/her birth, is to apply the bandage/erase the hurt/make it better. Because isn’t that our job? To make them well? Guide them along the road to happiness?

This article, and that speech, made me rethink happiness. I wondered, what if we stopped pursuing happiness, or just stopped considering it altogether? What would we insert in its place? What might constitute a better "pursuit?"

And how would my focus as a parent have changed if, instead of "I'm not happy" my son/daughter said, "I'm not ... compassionate."

How about, “I’m not generous.” “I’m not loving.” “I’m not kind.” "I'm not thoughtful."

When I look at it that way ... wow. Being somewhat unfulfilled or a bit bored with life or bummed out because you didn’t get invited to the party or disappointed because you didn’t get into your first choice college is … fine. Manageable. Lacking compassion is devastating.

I’m not sure how to resist being swept up in the cultural tsunami of The Self Actualized, Happy-at-all-Costs Child. It's tough enough to swim against the tide of parents in your own community, let alone a whole nation. Where we seem to think we have a constitutional right to happiness.

Maybe it's simply a matter of reordering priorities. Maybe move "compassion" to the top of the list for things we hope our children attain. Along with a capacity to forgive. The ability to show love. Loyalty. Generosity.

Somehow, I think if we make those sorts of things the goals, happiness will just happen. Something we discover along the way to a productive, unselfish life.

Return of The Dude

2011-06-13T07:24:00.000-07:00

It always takes me about one full week to adjust to summer.

Huh? you ask. Adjust to what? Sunshine and warmth? Fresh vegetables from the market, flowers in the garden, grilling, school’s out … ah.

Yes. School’s out. That’s it.

All the glories of summer in Maine aside, my head and my schedule have to make a tremendous adjustment each June to Teens at Home. Large bodies, fairly inert except for trips to the refrigerator, filling the house, filling the couch, filling the bed until long after noon … It knocks me off track, I’ll confess, especially since I’ve had ten months of quiet days to write, with only the dog making demands for the occasional walk.

In all fairness, I’m not describing my daughter, who is a veritable dervish most of time, and even when she is “relaxing” is productive in her art room, or trotting off to the library for a new book on tape, or going to her summer job or heading with friends to the beach. She’s actually the kid we entreat to watch more television, maybe play a few rounds of Angry Birds on the iPad.

No, I’m talking about The Dude, who has returned from college. Where, reportedly, he functioned. He got up and went to class and, judging from the grades he received, did the reading and learned something. He did laundry. He went to meals, joined clubs, made friends. In other words: The Dude was alive.

But then, year over, he returned to the nest.

“So what’s with the vegetative state?” little sister asked me, upon his return. The contents of his dorm room were still strewn about his room, which did not smell good. Which was probably due to the fact that the door remained closed well into the early afternoon, as he slept.

“What happened last night?” his father asked me, when, his day beginning at 2:00 in the afternoon, after his beauty rest and shower, The Dude met up with friends and returned loudly home at 1:30 A.M. It sounded like thieves had broken into the house and were ransacking the refrigerator.

I don’t why everyone expects me to have the answers to these questions.

“What happened?” I asked The Dude. “Did you have a lobotomy when no one was looking?”

“Huh?” was the reply. Truly, he was perplexed.

While there may well be no answer to this problematic question of why and how young people, who fully function as adults out of the parental home, manage to completely regress once back in the bosom of their families, there is a solution: The Summer Job.

In The Dude’s case, this is quite a job. Not only will he leave the parental nest once again and relocate to an island in Maine, but he will be responsible for a camp’s worth of boys for six solid weeks. He’ll be a camp counselor/tennis instructor/trip leader, taking boys into the woods or down Maine’s rivers for days at a time.

He will not only get himself up and jump in the lake at 7:30 every morning, but he will get The Little Dudes up. He will not only keep his tent clean and his stuff organized, he will entreat Little Dudes to do likewise. He will nag. He will remind. He will instruct.

He will know how it feels to push molasses up a mountain. And yes, I’m enjoying this.

Best of all, for six weeks, The Dude’s focus will be on someone else. Instead of being taken care of, he’ll do the caretaking. Instead of “self actualizing” he’ll help others come into their own, make friends, learn new skills. He’ll work to keep them safe and help them have a memorable summer.

I really can't think of a better way for him to spend his time right now.

So, tonight’s the farewell dinner and movie with The Dude, then he’s off. Little sister, The Dervish, will still be home, so life’s not quiet … but it’s not sponge life, either.

The New York Times had a great feature about teens finding summer jobs this season, which we all know is no easy thing in this economy. Take a look. I particularly enjoyed the kid in the carrot suit.

http://tinyurl.com/3ktchjq

Buzzing

2011-04-04T15:01:00.000-07:00

This blog is taking a break this week because I'm BUZZING! Visit me at the Random House Teen Book Community, Random Buzzers: http://www.randombuzzers.com/ You can ask questions about JERSEY TOMATOES ARE THE BEST and I'll do my best to answer before the week is out. Thanks for dropping by!

Virtual Tour

2011-03-27T14:49:00.001-07:00

Until very recently, I didn't know what a "Blog Tour" was. I don't want to confess how recently, because that would reveal my complete ineptness (is that word?) when it comes to Cyberworld Book Promotion, and book promotion in general ...

I had always assumed you promoted a book by going to bookstores and signing copies, or getting invited to nice events where people wanted to hear you talk about yourself or your book, and maybe they'd buy a copy. Pictured to the left is the "standard fare" of book promotion: stacks of Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best, offered for sale by a couple of very nice people, Gary Lawless and Beth Leonard of Gulf of Maine Books, an Indie Extraordinaire. They attended my book launch party, sold a few copies, and I signed.

That's it, right? Authors head out to stores or libraries or conferences, meet people, and sign books. In person.

But then my publicist told me that Tomatoes would be out on a Virtual Tour, a.k.a. a Blog Tour, and in the course of a mere week we can visit thousands of potential readers from all over the world, let alone Main Street in our home towns. If you're like me, and have only just learned about this sort of thing, here's how it works:

For five days, five different young adult bloggers will post reviews and interviews about Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best. Each blogger has asked different questions, so if you follow the tour you won't be subjected to the same material over and over. At the conclusion of each post, they'll "link" to the next day's blogger, as well as reference the previous post. It's a great way to spread the word about the book, as well as connect "followers" from one blog to another.

Most of the bloggers on the tour will be offering contests/book giveaways, so if you're interested you could win a copy of Tomatoes!

Here's the lineup for the Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best Blog Tour. I hope you can drop in for some, if not all, the stops along the way:

Monday, March 28: Steph Su Reads http://stephsureads.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, March 29: The Book Butterfly http://thebookbutterfly.com/

Wednesday, March 30: Random Acts of Reading http://randomactsofreading.wordpress.com/

Thursday, March 31: The Reading Zone http://thereadingzone.wordpress.com/

Friday, April 1st: Cleverly Inked http://cleverlyinked.com/

Launch Day

2011-03-04T17:26:00.000-08:00

The other day I was asked the following question by someone who was reviewing my new book, Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best:

“What has surprised you most about becoming a published author?”

The question itself surprised me. Sure, I’ve learned a lot more about the publishing business since selling a book. I’ve experienced the “process” first hand, of reviewing galleys and going over copyeditor’s notes, and writing bios and jacket flap copy. I’ve sat in bookstores and autographed my book. Stood in front of groups and read aloud (that’s way more fun than signing copies in bookstores by the way …) I’ve done all that sort of published-author-fun-stuff, and yes, it’s fun.

But I guess the biggest “surprise” of all is that I feel like the exact same writer I’ve ever been. Nothing has changed, really. I haven’t gotten rich, although my husband is still planning to retire on the movie rights to one of my books … if and when a big studio decides to purchase the movie rights. People don’t recognize me in the street, except to ID me as so-and-so’s mother. I still buy milk at the grocery store, scrub toilets, fold laundry and walk the dog. Although, now that I think of it, some days, when I’m working, and happen to glance up from the page, I see Frisbee staring at me with more than the usual patient worship. “My owner is a published author,” those brown doggy eyes seem to say. “A published author scoops my poop.”

So, there. That’s something new and different.

The fact is that even if someone decides to give you money and print your stuff, it still boils down to the same thing: hours alone, trying to tell a story and string words into sentences. I’ve been doing it since 8th grade, and the process is … pretty much the same. Although now I have a computer, and back in the dark ages, when I was an 8th grader, I didn’t even have an electric typewriter.

One of my favorite contemporary authors, Anne Lamott, describes this phenomenon brilliantly and irreverently in her book, Bird by Bird. These past few nights I’ve been rereading her chapter on publishing, not only because Tomatoes is scheduled for release this week, but because she just gets it.

Anne Lamott on “Launch Day”:

There is something mythic about the date of publication, and you actually come to believe that on this one particular morning you will wake up to a phone ringing off the hook and your publisher will be so excited that they will have hired the Blue Angels precision flying team to buzz your squalid little hovel …

In fact, Anne spends the day by the phone, waiting for it to ring. I usually don’t hear from my editor on launch day, but I usually send her a little something. Chocolates. A mug. A card thanking her for believing in me and my work.

Anne Lamott on “Being a Published Author”:

I tell you, if what you have in mind is fame and fortune, publication is going to drive you crazy. If you are lucky, you will get a few reviews, some good, some bad, some indifferent. … There will be a few book signing parties and maybe some readings, at one of which your publisher will spring for a twenty-pound wheel of runny Brie, and the only person who will show has lived on the street since he was twelve and even he will leave, because he hates Brie.

And finally, Anne Lamott on “After You Publish a Book”:

But eventually you have to sit down like every other writer and face the blank page. The beginnings of a second or third book are full of spirit and confidence because you have been published, and false starts and terror because now you have to prove yourself again. … What I know now is that you have to wear out all that dread by writing long and hard and not stopping too often to admire yourself and your publishedness in the mirror. Sometime later you’ll find yourself at work on another book, and once again you figure out that the real payoff is the writing itself, that a day when you have gotten your work done is a good day, that total dedication is the point.

For the next few weeks, now that Tomatoes is officially out in the world, I suppose I’ll be reveling in my own “publishedness.” I’ll get to read out loud, to a live audience, which I’ll confess is a lot of fun. There’s a party planned, and a couple of signings.

But then, it will all die down, and it’s back to work. I’m writing a new novel, which means long days alone with make-believe people, my laptop, and my biggest fan: the dog.

And that’s just fine.

Just Write

2011-02-07T04:21:00.000-08:00

Is everyone writing in my town, or does it just seem that way?

At a benefit auction the other night I sat across the table from a woman who has been writing short stories and memoir pieces for years. She’s at the point where she’s wondering if she could publish her work. She’s wondering: Am I ready for that? What’s the next step?

A friend across town who has an amazing literary blog (far more productive than I, by far) has just finished a draft of her fourth novel. Two blocks from her, another friend, who has won prizes for her poems and essays, is busily at work. In that same neighborhood there is another memoir writer, and two children’s authors. Across the street from them ….

Wow. Never mind. I won’t be able to list all the writers I know in town, let alone all the others I now imagine are squirreled away in their home offices/writing sheds/the library tapping away at laptops or scribbling in journals. I shouldn’t be surprised. Not only is this a college town, but it’s where Harriet Beecher Stowe lived when she wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” I’m convinced there’s something in the water that makes one want to tell a story.

Because basically, that’s it. It’s not about a career, or fame. Definitely not about the money, although some lucky folks do extraordinarily well. It’s simply a compulsion, to describe and tell and make stuff up and go for a wild imaginative ride and bring a few friends along if they care to listen. That’s it. If you have another goal in mind, I’d suggest abandoning this endeavor, immediately. It begins and ends with a need to tell a story, and tell it as well as you can.

The telling is what matters, because that might be all that comes of it. The best thing I ever heard in the way of writing ‘advice’ came from my advisor in college, the poet Robert Pack, who told us, “Most art isn’t very good, and most art doesn’t last.”

To a self-important 21-year old, this was a shocking revelation. What? Isn’t the goal here to create great art? Award winning novels, poems for major publications, series that resell as movie-rights? Anything short of that would be failure, right?

Oh, so, so wrong. Bob Pack was spot on, and here’s my riff on his wisdom: Most art isn’t ever published. Most published art sucks. So just go out there and tell your story. Because you have to. Because it gives you joy.

Another writing friend (from that same creative writing seminar with Bob Pack) has published several non-fiction books, but also writes many things that he simply … shares. Every year he writes a lovely Christmas story, and emails it to the zillion people he knows who just enjoy listening to him, and it’s a gift. It’s absolutely wonderful to see it appear as an attachment each year and it’s absolutely perfect without a cover or an ISBN number.

At the same benefit auction the other night was another friend who has decided to go a more structured, professional route with her writing. She’s entered an MFA program (Master of Fine Arts) and is currently taking classes with a fiction writer. She said something to me about that class which sparked this whole blog post.

She described herself as “superficial” (so not true) and said this guy is deep, and is trying to get her to be “deep.” She described her writing as horizontal, and this “deep” fellow wants her to be more “vertical.”

Okay, I’m not in the class, and maybe I’m getting this wrong, but can I just say I would love to throw a brick at this guy? This gal has been blogging of late, and her posts are hysterically funny. She has a voice; an authentic voice. I certainly hope Mr. Deep gets that, because an authentic voice is a rare thing. Something he can’t teach.

Beware of writers trying to be deep. They are full of … yeah. My guess is those “deep” stories wind up in the category of don’t-last-aren’t-very-good. Which is all fine, but probably not much fun to read.

Here’s my advice to my not-superficial, horizontally-writing friend: screw deep. Write “true.” What’s the story you want to tell? The story you have to tell, and the character’s voice that speaks to you? Don’t be afraid to tell the truth, to annoy people and rub them the wrong way and say the things that make them uncomfortable. Don’t worry about whether it’s profound. Just dig within yourself and make it true. And whether it winds up deep or published or just in the bottom of some drawer: it’s yours.

Okay, sun’s up in our little town. Coffee’s on. Let’s write.

The Anti-Social Network

2011-01-30T11:40:00.000-08:00

I haven’t been able to put my finger on what bothers me about Facebook, but then Stanford University did a study and nailed it for me:

http://www.slate.com/id/2282620/

Here’s my favorite line from that article: “Facebook tends to exploit an Achilles heel of human nature.” A.k.a. You Are Not Invited to the Party.

Yes. My friend Barb and I talk about this all the time. On days when we’re low energy, feeling like we haven’t seen anyone for a while, and wonder if everyone is getting together for dinner but not inviting us … Facebook is the nail in the coffin. It confirms our worst fears: everyone is having more fun, is happier, and, by the way, is better looking, than us.

Luckily, I’m a woman-of-a-certain age, in a relationship, with work I love, so on those low energy days I have much to fall back on and bounce right back. But if I were a teen?

OMG. Forget it. I don’t want to think about how I would have felt, 35 years ago, if there had been Facebook. I would have hated seeing pictures posted from all the parties I wasn’t invited to. I would definitely have felt that everyone in my entire high school was better looking and more popular than I was. What got me through those years was not having it shoved in my face that I was “out of it.” I could content myself with having a few wonderful girlfriends, a handful of activities I enjoyed, music to practice, homework to complete …. That’s how I survived. Ignorance is bliss. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

I think it’s ironic that the biggest global “social networking” creation of our age is the brainchild of a 20-something who, for all his achievements and brilliance, is a disaster at relationships. Yes, yes, I know, Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, does have a real girlfriends, so the depiction of him and his ex in the movie “The Social Network” is not accurate. But … pretty much every other interaction he has with real live people is fairly disastrous, don’t you think?

I’m trying to get my head around what this means for our kids who are coming of age in the age of Facebook. Of texting instead of speaking. Of emailing instead of slowly, thoughtfully, by hand, composing letters. I have boxes of old letters from when I was in college: letters from my parents, my now-deceased grandmother, old boyfriends … They are gems. Did you ever notice how someone comes to life for you when you see their handwriting? I have an impulse sometimes to strokes the words on the page; as if pieces of their souls inhabit the ink.

I think it’s fair to predict that when my son graduates from college, I will not have a single letter from him in my possession. I will, however, have received thousands of texts and countless emails from him. Frankly, that’s one of the benefits of sending kids to summer camp where there are no computers: they have to write letters home.

Sometimes I wonder if I should print out his emails, and save them in a box.

Anyway. I don’t plan to delete my Facebook page any time soon. But thank you, Stanford researchers, for helping me better understand what’s been bugging me about the whole “posting my wonderful life” thing. And in all fairness to Mark Zuckerberg, he does appear to have more of a sense of humor than Alan Sorkin gave him credit for:

Mark Zuckerberg on SNL

Advice for a New Writer

2011-01-23T08:10:00.000-08:00

The Dude (see May 4, 2010), a freshman in college, had some exciting news for us. His class schedule leaves Fridays open, and he plans to use the uninterrupted time to write. Not papers and course assignments: his own stuff. Things pulled from his imagination and deposited on the page. He has an idea for a play, and goes to a college where students regularly bring their creations to the stage, so apparently he's been inspired.

I tried to contain my enthusiasm, because The Dude withdraws, turtle-like, in the face of overweening parental eagerness. But I’ll confess, I’m thrilled. I’m a big fan of the creative life, and never dreamed that one of my own might choose it. I’m curious to see where this might lead.

I’m also DYING to talk writing with him. Oh, I want to heap my thoughts and advice and writing stories on him in ways that would undoubtedly make him run for cover and never, ever, take pen to paper again. An apt metaphor would be my woodstove, which gave me a lot of trouble early this winter, because I put too much kindling and fatwood in it to start, and filled the house with smoke. I piled on, way too quickly, and almost destroyed all hopes of lighting a fire.

I don’t want to do that to The Dude.

Start small with a fire, and gently feed the flame, one piece of dry kindling at a time. Make sure the flue’s open and the smoke is gently rising. This takes a bit of patience, but eventually the flames are strong enough for the big wood.

So I’ve kept my mouth shut, for the most part, and just expressed a lot of enthusiasm for his idea and his plan. However, if he were to ask, and I were to tell him, these are the two (only two) pieces of advice I would give a New Writer. Not a young writer: a new writer. Someone with a desire to write and a kernel of an idea:

Get a comfortable chair. Writing is, first and foremost, about sitting alone for long periods of time as you string words together, one by one. This is a basic, physical reality, and the key to The Creative Life. You don’t write by just thinking about it, or talking about it, or sipping cocktails at parties and saying, “Well, this is the novel I plan to write when I retire,” or “If I wrote a play, this is what I’d do ….” Nope.

This is solitary, sedentary, and maddening. You will spend an hour on a paragraph, then throw it out the next day. You will write three pages, only to realize that the last sentence on the third page is actually taking you in a completely new direction and the entire story is going to shift. It’s a process, and discovery happens during that process, but only if you sit down and just do it. Alone. For hours. So get comfortable.

Get acquainted with your characters. I’m a great believer in “Plot Follows Character” and have absolutely found that once I know my characters well, their actions (a.k.a. the plot) naturally follows.

So … how do you get to know your characters? Well, write about them. Move than pencil across the page and get them talking. How do they speak? Accents? Good grammar and big words? Bad grammar and profanities? What do they look like? What do they hum while they’re working? What’s at the gritty bottom of their backpacks? What do they find in the pockets of their winter coats when they pull them out each fall? What do they eat when they eat alone? What secrets do they have?

And … that’s it. Yes, certainly, I could write tomes of advice and suggestions and it would actually be a lot of fun to go over all that. I love to think about writing and talk about writing. But the fact is, I think it all boils down to these two suggestions.

So … good luck, Dude. Fly. Create. Be fearless. What did that teacher say on the Magic Schoolbus, that PBS show you always watched when you were a Little Dude? “Take chances! Get messy! Make mistakes!”

Yes indeed. You’ll find great things in the mess.

Driving in Cars With Teens

2011-01-16T07:06:00.000-08:00

I met a guy the other day who says he enjoys teaching teens how to drive.

No, he’s not some adrenaline nut with a death wish. He’s a father of teens. Who all have their licenses and happily cruise around town without smashing the family van or causing injury to anyone. This guy has a track record of proven success, and apparently other parents “lend” him their kids, who are in the permit stage, for highway practice.

Here’s what I would say about this man: he has no pulse. Unflappable. Calm, with a sense of humor, in the face of impending disaster. Someone should give this guy a medal.

The scariest thing I have done as a parent is get in a car with a newly permitted teen driver. Actually, it may be the scariest thing I’ve done, period. Scarier than having surgery (at least trained professionals are in charge) and scarier than skiing down a double black diamond slope (I’m afraid of heights.)

I realize that it doesn’t help the Newly Permitted Teen Driver to see terror on the Parent Passenger’s face, or hear the Parent Passenger gasp as the teen races to within mere feet of the car ahead before SLAMMING on the brakes. It doesn’t build confidence in the young driver to have a Parent Passenger clutching the armrest, eyes clamped shut, muttering prayers. An overall atmosphere of calm should pervade the driving experience; a calm which is shattered when the Parent Passenger says, “Slow down. Slow down. Slow down slow down SLOW DOWN!!!!!” when approaching a stop sign.

My buddy without the pulse reportedly doesn’t react this way. He’s known to calmly comment, “Okay, you just cut off a tractor trailer, which crashed into the car behind us. Remember to signal, check your mirrors, then glance over your shoulder before changing lanes.” Or: “Okay, luckily there are no cops in sight, because you just ran a red light and almost hit a pedestrian. Always remember that red means ‘stop’ and green means ‘go.’ Otherwise, you’re doing great!”

I’ve considered incorporating that calm, “no worries, bro,” tone:

“Now, did you see the way my head bobbled, whiplash-like, when you stopped just then? You hit the brakes a bit too suddenly, and were going a tad too fast.” Or:

“Did you hear that bumpety-bumpety sound just then? That was the sound of our car rolling over those kids crossing the street. You might want to pull over, so we can wait for the police to arrive.”

Even greater than my fears of what my Permitted Driver might do to hapless passers-by is what Even-Worse-Drivers might do to her. We’ve talked a lot about defensive driving, and exercising caution while on the road:

“Now, I want you to think of the most irresponsible, untrustworthy kid at your high school Someone you can’t count on to get from Point A to Point B without somehow messing up. Consider this: that person has his/her license. Every car on the road is potentially driven by that person. Heading your way, in the oncoming lane. So … watch out.”

Okay, so maybe that’s not the best way to inspire calm and confidence in a young driver. What can I tell you? I’m the shrieking-praying-armrest-clutching sort.

The only thing worse than driving with the Newly Permitted is watching them pull out of your driveway, with your car, the day they become the Newly Licensed. The day I watched through the dining room window as my son drove off with the Subaru, paroxysms of anxiety swept over me. I telephoned my own mother, who had taught me to drive on Route 17 in New Jersey.

She was not sympathetic.

“Yup. I know. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since you got your license,” she said. I laughed.

“Mom, I’m a middle-aged woman.”

“Yes,” she replied. “It’s a long time to go without a decent night’s sleep, let me tell you.”

It sure is.

Crazy Making (with apologies to Jonathan Swift)

2010-12-19T07:33:00.000-08:00

‘Tis the season, and I find myself imagining what the holidays will be like for today’s teens when they are, say, my age.

Here’s what I envision: A holiday office party in the not-too-distant future, let’s say 2042. Everyone at the party graduated from high school in 2011. Colleagues mingle, but all have brought spouses/dates, so introductions are also happening. Let’s listen in.

Sally: Dick, I’d like to introduce you to Jane, Tom’s wife. 780, 710, 740.

Dick: Hi, Jane, it’s great to finally meet you! Wow, guess that’s how you connected with an [elite college] guy like Tom. But that 710 … what happened?

Jane: Yeah, that was the writing portion, but I scored 12 on the essay and won a national cross stitching contest, so [elite college] gave me the benefit of the doubt. What about you?

Dick: 650, 690, 680.

Jane: I’m sorry, Dick. How’s it been?

Dick: (chuckles) A few bumps in the road but for the most part, Life’s Been Good. A sports tip, plus that 5 I got on the European History AP got me into [different elite college] Early Decision, where I met my first wife.

Jane: First?

Dick: A trust fund baby and three-generation legacy. Her family built the IMAX theater for the film department, among other things.

Jane: Let me guess … she didn’t break 2100?

Dick: (laughing) Are you kidding? 1980. We lasted three years. Ah well, live and learn.

Jane: For sure. Did you remarry?

Dick: (nodding and gesturing toward a woman across the room) Yes indeed, that’s her standing by the punch bowl. 760, 750, 790. Early Action to [Ivy League University]. National Merit Scholar and captain of her high school sky diving team. I tell you Jane, she’s a keeper.

Jane: Children?

Dick: Three. 740, 730, 770 and 740, 740 … 800. We were pretty damn pleased about that. Our youngest hasn’t taken the SAT yet.

Jane: Good luck with that! But I’m sure #3 is taking a prep course and you’ve lined up a private college counselor?

Dick: Obvi. Plus, we’ve flown all our kids to global hot spots to perform community service and participate in international peace negotiations for a week each summer.

Jane: So we’re talkin’ Ivies?

Dick: Jane. You need to ask?

I guess you can tell by now the “season” I’m referring to has nothing to do with holly, ivy, menorahs or Kwanzaa candles. It’s the season of decisions, and colleges are releasing their first wave of rejections and acceptances to high school seniors who applied for admittance to the Class of 2015.

Isn’t it exciting? Isn’t it thrilling? Okay, so a few kids are probably a little nervous right now, and there will definitely be a modicum of disappointment in the air, but let’s face it: this is by far the most important event in a young life. Where You Go To College determines everything: who you’ll marry, your income level, your future job … hell, your employee-based health care benefits and hence your life expectancy! Young people choosing a college today know they need to ask themselves: “How long do I want to live?”

That’s why those activities, those standardized tests, that class rank and those varsity letters earned during the high school years are so crucial. Kids today understand that happiness and future success depend on an outstanding transcript, while relationships and leisure time can always be deferred. They understand that less important than the type of car one drives is the college sticker on the back window of that car. They understand that the type of work one does simply doesn’t matter if, at any given social gathering for the rest of your life you can mention your SAT scores and the name of your college.

Teens today know that the alma mater is Life’s Trump Card, and even if they wind up behind bars, people will respect and admire them once they learn they graduated from an elite college or university.

It’s all so different from when I was a growing up. Back then, Sally, Dick and Jane played with their dog, Spot, and didn’t do much else since they only had three channels on the television and no X-Box. How boring! A life spent playing outside, building forts, and riding bikes with the neighborhood kids. Sports were “pick up,” and loosely organized by the older kids, so no regional travel teams with spiffy uniforms. No summer math enrichment, no cello camp, no foreign language camp. Kids had to make their own fun, and adults generally weren’t watching, which is a frightening thought because goodness knows what unsupervised children will do. I remember countless hours at a neighbor’s home, jumping on a trampoline that had no safety walls (imagine!!) and talking, talking, talking with all the other kids.

When I think of how much higher my own SAT scores might have been if I’d spent those hours taking practice tests!

There’s a documentary making the rounds right now called “The Road to Nowhere,” and it deals with this phenomenon of getting into college today. I haven’t seen it yet, but friends tell me I must. From what I hear, the teens it portrays will very likely resemble the attendees at the 2042 holiday party I described above. I'd love to know if anyone else out there has seen it?

Happy Holidays! This blog is on vacation until 2011.

Losing it in Holy Places

2010-12-06T07:38:00.000-08:00

I want to enjoy the holidays, I really do, but despite my best efforts to avoid commercialism, take extra Vitamin D (there is no light in Maine this time of year) and focus on the spiritual, I still manage to wind up being a completely stressed-out-woman-of-a-certain-age. Which is not attractive.

I know serene women (two) and I want to be one of them. They always greet me with these calm, centered smiles, usually as I’m blasting through the grocery store in a caffeine-fueled frenzy. They seem to float above the fray, yet accomplish all the important things. Their children adore them … I once bumped into the son of a Serene Woman, out buying a single red rose for his mother because he had just driven home from college and wanted to surprise her (take note, Dude) … and their husbands worship at their altars. Thank you, thank you! their actions imply, for being kind and steady and serene!

This is so not me, especially this time of year. And I know it’s my own fault.

Fact: I don’t keep it simple. For example, I string real cranberries and popcorn to decorate the tree every year. Yup. A couple dozen yards worth. It’s our Annual Torture Tradition, and leads to family conflict. “Inept” would be a good word to describe the spouse’s skills with a needle and thread, and the obscenities which fly as he tries to spear popcorn without crumbling it into bits are … not in keeping with the spirit of the season. The Dude has notoriously bad fine motor skills, so he’s only good for a couple feet of cranberries. Luckily, the daughter is a stringing machine, so she helps me get it done.

She’s also a cookie-baking machine, which is good because I bake way too many cookies. We like to give cookies as gifts, and one of my favorite things to do each season is have a pack of women over for wine, high-fat snacks, and platters of cookies, but for some reason I’ve got 10 recipes I love and absolutely have to make every one of them. One year I simply couldn’t face the labor-intensive spritz Christmas wreath cookie recipe I got from Martha Stewart Living (each wreath has its own “ribbon” sliced from candied cherries) and when I put out the nine varieties I’d made the family sniffed, “Where are the wreaths?” I should have hung up my spurs as Santa’s Little Baker right then and there, but instead I anguished, “I know! I know! Something’s missing!”

Here’s my theme melody for Christmas. Sung to the tune of “Jingle Bells.” What you deserve, what you deserve, you get what you deserve …

One year, things got particularly bad. And it wasn’t even Christmas. It was pre-Christmas, the run up to the season and the holiday shopping ads were already airing on television: late October. Halloween, my daughter’s birthday, and All Saint’s Day at our church all coincided that year to create a perfect storm.

My young children each required three costume changes that weekend. They needed Halloween costumes, then they needed pirate’s costumes (for a Halloween event at the Maine Maritime Museum; don’t ask …) then they needed Saint Suits. For All Saint’s Day, each child was to choose a saint and dress like him/her for mass. Our son (yet to become The Dude) chose to be St. Anthony, so I found myself madly stitching together a burlap tunic for him.

When I dropped him off early at church we saw all the other kids arriving in their saint outfits, which looked a lot like hasty riffs on the previous evening’s Halloween costumes. There were a few “Marys” with headdresses and princess gowns. Some “Josephs” in black Ninja suits wielding Sears Craftsmen hammers (you will recall that Joseph was a carpenter) and then … two boys strutting in carrying light sabers. My son’s face fell; my blood pressure rose. An intervention was looming, and I didn’t have time for an intervention because we were hosting a birthday party after mass.

“Luke Skywalker was not a saint,” I remarked. He hung his head.

“I look like a dork,” he said. I kept walking quickly into the building, leading him by the hand.

“You look like a third century hermit,” I replied. “Trust me; St. Anthony wore burlap.” He shook his head.

“I want to go home,” he said. We were in the building at this point. I needed to drop him off and race home to accomplish a few more things before racing back to actually attend the service.

“You have to stay here. You have to be St. Anthony. By the way, steer clear of Tom Riley over there. I don’t like what he’s doing with that hammer ….” He shook his head again and started walking back toward the parking lot.

“My outfit is dumb,” he mumbled. I held him by the shoulders. I bent down and spoke into his face. In retrospect I realize I should’ve just driven him home and abandoned this crazy scene, but instead, I snapped.

“Son,” I said, “Shut the F *** up.” His eyes widened.

Yes, reader, I said it. The “F” word, right there in the narthex of the Catholic Church. Oh, so far from serenity at that moment, I lost it in a holy place with my cute boy. I didn’t raise my voice, but the word, dropped in that moment, made it perfectly clear to Little St. Anthony that he needed to buck up and join the crew in the all-purpose room or his mother would spontaneously combust.

I didn’t want to be that woman, but, there it was. Crazed, over-the-top madness, trying to do the right thing but getting it all so wrong. Granted, we laugh about it now, and it all turned out fine at the time (the kids were pretty cute, filing into church singing “When the Saints Go Marching In”) but as I gear up for yet another happy holiday season, that weekend and that moment remain a cautionary tale.

Serenity, where art thou? Not, I suspect, within the pages of Martha Stewart Living. Nor at the bottom of three bags of cranberries. But I’m looking for you, so I suppose that’s a start … ?

Big Bird

2010-11-22T12:09:00.001-08:00

Around this time last year The Dude (see blog post May 3rd for more on The Dude) was waiting to hear from his first choice college and feeling fairly nervous, and among the many random things I said to distract him from the omnipresent nervousness was, “The Fosters are having steak and lobster for Thanksgiving Dinner. They don’t like turkey. Can you imagine that?”

I fully expected The Dude to chuckle politely at the Foster’s expense, but instead he exclaimed, “Cool! Can we do that? I hate turkey.”

Appalled. Dumbfounded. Horrified. And those were just my initial reactions.

“What sort of American are you?” I sputtered. “It’s downright unpatriotic to reject turkey on Thanksgiving. What would Ben Franklin say?”

“He’d say, ‘Dude, you’re right. Save a turkey; eat a bald eagle.’” he replied. The Dude is a bit of a history buff, and he was correct: Ben Franklin fought hard for the turkey to be our national bird, not the eagle.

“Ben Franklin lost that debate,” I continued. “That’s why we eat turkeys on Thanksgiving. It’s practically a requirement for citizenship.

“Madsy hates turkey,” The Dude continued, bringing his little sister into the argument.

“Madsy is a vegetarian and doesn’t count,” I fired back. My militant-non-meat-eating-locavore daughter dines on mashed potatoes and “Squanto Patties,” a.k.a. veggie burgers, on Thanksgiving.

“Dad hates turkey,” The Dude said.

“Dad would eat an armchair if you put enough gravy on it,” I fired back, a point which The Dude conceded.

“I think it would be so cool to come home from college for my first Thanksgiving and have steak and lobster,” The Dude said wistfully, which of course was the kiss of death for me, the turkey lover. I’m a real sucker for The Dude’s wistful tone. So right then and there I promised that for his first home-from-college Thanksgiving Dinner, the Maine State Crustacean would rule.

Even the militant vegetarian locavore, in spite of her job (more on that irony, later) was pleased.

“We need to support local lobstering families,” she said.

“Bugs,” I sniffed, referring to the local slang for lobsters. A.k.a. “slobbers.” A.k.a. prison-feed. Yes, it is a little known fact that back in Maine’s colonial period (when we were probably still part of Massachusetts) lobsters were so plentiful that they washed up on the shores and needed to be regularly swept away. In Thomaston, the site of one of Maine’s earliest prisons, inmates were forced to clean them off the beaches each day, boil and eat them. Apparently they became so sick of lobster they staged a rebellion.

Something which I am contemplating.

Don’t get me wrong: I love a good lobster in drawn butter. Outside, on a sunny Maine summer day. With boiled corn, potato chips and maybe even some steamed clams to start. You cook it all outside, so those smelly shelly fish odors drift overhead, instead of steaming up the house and soaking into the curtains.

Thanksgiving is not supposed to smell like a wharf. It’s supposed to smell like roasted poultry, stuffing (ooooh, stuffing!) and savory … things. Sage. Cranberries. Nuts.

In addition to the wonderful aroma a turkey affords, comes the absolute best part of the holiday: turkey sandwiches. My mother makes the best turkey sandwiches in the world, on white bread, with plenty of salt and full-fat mayo. I know friends who also put leftover stuffing (oooooh, stuffing!) and cranberry on their sandwiches, which I can appreciate but will pass on, thank you. You eat these behemoth sandwiches with ruffled potato chips while watching one of the Thanksgiving specials on television, like The Sound of Music, or The Ten Commandments, with the NRA’s very own Charlton Heston playing Moses.

“What are you going to tell Bob?” I asked The Vegetarian. She blanched. My daughter works for a farmer out of New Sharon, Maine: Bob, the Turkey Guy. Antibiotic-free, walkin’ around, big white turkeys. I am loathe to call them “free range,” because when you drive past the turkey farm in New Sharon, where hundreds of the birds lounge in a packed dirt yard behind a high, wire fence, there doesn’t appear to be much ranging going on, although they could. A bit. Bob’s turkeys appear to mostly sit, peck each other, and gobble grouchily.

“He’ll wonder why we’re not buying a bird from him,” she mused. She is going to be at the local farm the day before Thanksgiving, helping pass out some 250 enormous, freshly “dressed” (the polite term for “slaughtered”) birds to people who ordered them in advance.

Well, we certainly wouldn’t want to hurt Bob’s feelings, so Mom, the Turkey Lover, came up with the perfect solution. I ordered a large turkey breast from Bob, explained that’s all we were cooking for the holiday, and on Wednesday, the day before we carve (or rather, dissect) our Thanksgiving Lobsters, I’m making my favorite dinner. With mashed potatoes. STUFFING. And cranberry sauce.

Not the Big Bird, but it will suffice. And the point of the whole day, anyway, is to welcome home the ones you love. Such as The Dude.

I am so grateful for him, as well as my hard-working vegetarian daughter who reminds us all how important it is to Know Thy Farmer and support local businesses. For my non-picky omnivore husband who would indeed eat an armchair, without complaint, if it were properly seasoned. For all my fabulous memories of my extended family with decades worth of Thanksgiving recipes and traditions and stories (like the year my mother dropped the cooked turkey on the floor and my abuela slipped in the grease and there they both were, sliding, sliding … ) For Ben Franklin, Turkey Bob, Squanto … and stuffing. Above all, stuffing.

My Girl: Barbie

2010-11-06T06:40:00.001-07:00

When I was growing up, I loved Barbie.

I know, I know, this is SO not politically correct. Barbie is not anatomically accurate. Her waist is too thin and her boobs are too big and her clothes are too fabulous. She sends a nefarious, subconscious message to our girls and gives them all Cinderella complexes and eating disorders. She corrupts their values so they are hell bent on living materialistic lives and working solely to obtain wonderful wardrobes and fun sports cars.

Barbie is perfectly positioned to ruin a girl’s self image. Barbie is the great destroyer of everything we want our smart, healthy girls to be.

Now, back to why I loved her …

I played for hours with Barbie, and her friend, Midge, who, in retrospect, I believe was of mixed race origins. Midge had coffee-colored skin, freckles, and brown/red hair. I don’t know how I ended up with Midge in my collection, because she quickly became a “discontinued” doll. I suspect my Hispanic mother slipped her into my box of Barbie stuff, no comment required, and I loved her as much as I loved the pale, blond dolls.

I was a girl who heard, daily, that I was smart and going places. I would be the first in my family to go to college. I would have a career, and help make the world a better place. My mother filled my head with these messages as she simultaneously bought me Barbies and filled my case with the tiny, little-bound-feet stiletto Barbie shoes. The impossibly tiny belts. The glittery body sheaths.

Here’s what I never played with: baby dolls. I abhorred those fat, pink, bald plastic babies that you pretended to change and feed. I mean, please. Boring.

Barbie, on the other hand, had a job. She and her girlfriends got up every morning, put on their swell outfits, jumped into their fast car, and zipped off to work in Manhattan. They didn’t have any kitchen supplies: they ate out at exotic restaurants every night. They danced until dawn on the weekends, and their conversations revolved around the fascinating people they met: not burping, teething, or strolling. Barbie was not a mother; she was a professional. And for the record, my Barbie did not date a sugar stick like Ken.

She dated G.I. Joe.

Now, she didn’t live with Joe. Oh, no. The “guys” (owned by my brother) lived in their jeep on the couch, while Barbie and girls set up camp under the coffee table. You see, Barbie liked guys, a lot, but didn’t need a man to complete her. She was perfectly happy picnicking with Joe and the Dudes every once in a while, but please, boys: stay on the couch. Us girls are having way too much fun right now.

What can I say? Long after I put Barbie aside, I went to college, worked at a bunch of interesting jobs, married (someone who is neither a male model nor a Green Beret) , became a mother (and discovered that while changing and burping is NEVER interesting, loving a child is extraordinary) and continue to develop my career. I doubt Barbie had much to do with my life choices, but having a strong mother sure did.

Author Tanya Lee Stone’s new book, The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie, has just been released and I can’t wait to read it. It’s gotten great reviews, and I look forward to seeing what others have to say about my girl, both the good and the bad. For more info, visit the author's website at: http://www.tanyastone.com/index.php?id=51

Finesse Bullying

2010-10-25T06:57:00.001-07:00

A friend whose daughter is applying to college this year shares this chilling tale:

As they compiled a list of schools to visit she suggested that her daughter check out an all-women’s college. Her daughter has been attending a co-ed, public school.

“I told her that many women have chosen all-female colleges because they feel they offer an empowering, supportive environment. I mentioned that often, women feel constrained from speaking out in classes where often the boys/men dominate the discussion.”

Her daughter snorted. Contemptuously, I might add.

“Yeah, right. Let me tell you something, Mom. Guys don’t care if girls raise their hands in class. Other girls care. Guys don’t put you down and shut you up. It’s the other girls in the room, who want to keep you in your place.”

According to my friend, her daughter, who is a good student and speaks up in class frequently, has been getting hisses, catcalls and exaggerated “eye rolls” from a cadre of girls who sit behind her. One girl in particular … who, ironically, is a straight-A student who affects the look and language of a character right out of the CW … will often mutter, “Just. Stop. Talking,” whenever my friend’s daughter participates.

The friend’s daughter (let’s call her Jane; not her real name) has gone to the teacher and asked, “Do I speak too much in class?” and been assured she does not. The teacher has been made aware of these behaviors and is on the lookout for them, but it’s a big room and she herself has not heard these comments. Jane doesn’t want her seat changed, because that would require moving someone else and possibly calling attention to the situation. Jane certainly doesn’t want her mother intervening by calling these girls’ parents. She wasn’t even happy that her mother told the teacher what’s been going on. So … the status quo prevails. At this point, Jane still speaks up in class and takes the hits.

But for how long?

If the only result of all this is that Jane doesn’t apply to Smith this year … well, no biggie. There are plenty of colleges out there and at most of them women outnumber men anyway. If another result is that Jane learns to distrust girls … well, that’s unfortunate, especially because as an adult, womens’ friendships with each other can be such a lifeline.

But there’s another part of this that has such far reaching implications for Jane. Because when her mother discusses this situation with her, Jane isn’t angry. Jane isn’t wheeling around and telling these girls to f*$# off. Instead, Jane is ashamed. Jane doesn’t want anyone to know it’s going on. Deep down, Jane is wondering what’s wrong with her, since these girls are criticizing her.

Basically, Jane is being bullied, but with such finesse and subtlety that it’s hard to pinpoint or punish. The bullies themselves would probably be shocked if anyone told them that’s indeed what they’re doing. These are girls who in fact think very highly of themselves. One has actually been known to comment, “I mean, don’t you think we’d be a great subject for a T.V. reality show?”

Meanwhile, every time Jane absorbs a comment and does nothing, it’s like drinking a slow acting poison that you gotta know has a corrosive effect on her self esteem.

Jane will probably never jump off a bridge or hang herself in her dorm room, but she’ll learn to question herself. She’ll eventually learn to shut her mouth. And she’ll learn to turn her pain inward, instead of speaking up for herself. And that’s going to have implications for all her relationships, both male and female.

We think of the bully as the big mean kid on the playground picking on the skinny shy guy. Or the Regina George “Mean Girl,” who is blatant and over-the-top grotesque in her cruelty. Or the college student posting intimate videos of his gay roommate. We can identify and punish and fight back against that “big” stuff.

But there’s a subtler game being played here which only the kids are fully aware of, and it’s no less damaging.

Rhinoceros Hide

2010-10-12T10:21:00.000-07:00

“I like criticism, but it must be my way.”
Mark Twain

Yesterday was the first day of moose hunting season in Maine. As our family drove home from the western mountains where we had hiked amid idyllic foliage, we passed pickups from which giant moose racks poked from the back. In one parking lot, a moose hung from a hook, over a giant scale, surrounded by a posse of men and boys splashed in the blaze orange of vests and hats.

In addition to wondering about my own stupidity for hiking during hunting season, I felt a kinship with those moose. In my world, with a new novel set to launch in March, it’s the start of the reviewing season. Only instead of hunters toting guns, I’m in the crosshairs of critics. My publisher has just shipped the ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies, a.k.a. galleys, a.k.a. bound paperbacks still containing typos) of the novel to reviewers, and before long the all-powerful-opinionated horde will take aim at my baby.

Why would a sane person subject herself to this? Better to pin a sign on my back that reads “Kick Me” and walk down a middle school hallway. Or walk into an Irish pub in Boston wearing a Yankees hat. Either would be quicker, and less painful.

The simple answer to this question is: I don’t have a choice. Publishers do this because they believe they publish good books, which will get good reviews, which will result in $$$ for all concerned. This is, after all, a business.

Of course, reviewers don’t see themselves as members of some publishing house’s publicity staff. They see themselves as arbiters of taste and culture. Rendering a “service” to readers. Separating the wheat from the chaff.

Picking winners and losers, more like. Anointing and condemning. Caesar in the coliseum, deciding: “Thumbs up? Or thumbs down?”

Brrrrrr.

Like most writers, I love reading good reviews of my work. I bask in the sunshine of critics' compliments. I take them seriously, and allow myself to believe them.

And like one of my favorite writers, Mark Twain, I have nothing but the utmost contempt for critics who don’t “get” my writing, and publicly display their ignorance by publishing a negative review. Twain said it best when he wrote:

“The critic's symbol should be the tumble-bug: he deposits his egg in somebody else's dung, otherwise he could not hatch it.”

Exactly. Keep your hands off my dung! I want to scream, when someone dares to suggest that my book is less than perfect. I mean, I know it’s less than perfect. I just want them to write that it’s a little less than perfect; not a lot less.

Of course, as a critic himself, Twain was not above eviscerating a fellow author. Granted, James Fenimore Cooper was long dead when Twain wrote "Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses," so one could argue it wasn’t a “review” but rather, “literary criticism.” Whatever. It pretty much ruins the guy. You simply can’t read The Deerslayer or Last of the Mohicans again. Not without laughing until tears roll.

I suppose, as an author, it doesn’t reflect well upon me that I find this essay, which mocks another’s work, hysterically funny, but of course, at the time Twain was redefining the canon. While wearing a humorist’s disguise. “I’m glad the old masters are all dead, and I only wish they had died sooner,” he wrote.

Here’s the thing: I don’t mind being reviewed by smart people who read carefully. Even if they don’t love my book (sob!) they might have criticism which will help me write a better book next time. The problem is when a reviewer gets major things wrong … like characters’ names and basic plot facts. That’s when you tremble, because they wield power, and power in the hands of the poorly informed is … bad.

It’s also out of my control, so: time to dress for the season. For hiking in the woods, it’s blaze orange during the next few months. Otherwise, it’s the Rhinoceros Hide coat. Because if anyone other than my mom, my best friend, or my dog reviews my book, I’m gonna need to be wearing some thick skin.

Our Right to Read

2010-09-26T18:50:00.000-07:00

Imagine going into your public library to pick up a copy of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, only to find that it’s not available. Not because another patron has taken it out: because it’s been removed from the shelves. Permanently.

Maybe you’re not the questioning sort, so you figure what the heck, I’ll just find another classic … how about … F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby? But then you discover that’s missing, too. Disappeared from the collection and struck from the catalogue.

The list goes on: John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Even Harry Potter is gone. Hemingways are missing. Nobel prize winners (I’m thinking of Beloved by Toni Morrison, one of my all-time favorite books) are not to be found. Heck, you can’t even find a decent Jodi Picoult novel (although they’re readily available at most airport bookstores.)

If this scenario seems ridiculous and unlikely let me tell you: there are people in our country who are actively working to make this a reality. Every book, and every author I’ve mentioned here, have been targets, numerous times, of book banning. If you don’t believe me, ask the American Library Association. This is National Banned Books Week, and the nation’s librarians have a lot to say about our national right to read.

Just last week this issue raised its ugly head. A fellow named Wesley Scroggins out in Missouri called upon the powers-that-be in the Republic, Missouri schools to ban Laurie Halse Anderson’s young adult novel, Speak. He described it as “soft pornography.” He objected to the novel’s portrayal of dysfunctional families and insensitive teachers. I don’t know … I guess he thinks authors should only write about happy families and classrooms run by the Teacher of the Year?

Speak is a moving, empowering fictional account of a girl who is raped the summer before her freshman year in high school. She is emotionally scarred by this event, to the point where she can barely speak. It’s a story about how she ultimately deals with her attack and finds her voice again.

It’s not easy to read. But it treats, sensitively, an important topic. The author has received countless letters from girls, thanking her for writing this novel, which helped them cope with their own sexual assault traumas. When I read this book it confirmed my own decision to write for teenagers. It’s possible, through fiction, to touch young readers in ways that help them, and move them. Laurie Halse Anderson is one of our best YA authors out there.

Luckily, there is an army of teachers, writers and librarians out there ready to take on the Wesley Scroggins of the world, and while the citizens of the Republic, Missouri school district still haven’t taken any action regarding Speak, they’ve sure heard from a lot of people who strongly approve of the book. Librarians, especially.

And if there’s one thing I know, Wesley, you don’t want to make a librarian mad.

Every day this week, in honor of Banned Books Week, I’m going to recommend a recently banned Young Adult title. Thanks to Wesley, I’ll start with: Speak.

Picking up Strangers

2010-09-20T02:59:00.001-07:00

Here’s my favorite metaphor for writing: it’s like driving on a foggy night with the headlights on. You can only see a few feet in front of you, but if you keep on driving and focus on the road ahead, you eventually reach your destination.

I’m one of those writers who knows the end of my story from the outset, so driving in the dark with a destination in mind is the perfect metaphor. When I’m in the thick of it, plowing steadily forward through a new book, the only thing that keeps me on track when it all feels too big or too much to write, is the road before me. I focus on the scene on the immediate page: the particular word to describe the tables; the smell of the place when the character walks through the door; the color of her hair.

Then, some damn fool steps in front of the car, waving his hands.

We’re not talking about a distracting bystander, or a sketchy hitchhiker one can easily justify whizzing past. Oh, no. This dude steps in front of the moving vehicle. Go on, hit me, he dares. Or, do the unexpected thing, the risky/brave/out of the box thing, by pulling over, and letting me in.

I’m currently writing my third novel, and for the third time this has happened. And if past experience is any indicator of what’s to come, if I let this stranger in, I’m in for a ride I didn’t expect.

In my first book, Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress, the guy I picked up was Mr. Beady. He walked into the story as a minor, random octogenarian who was friends with the main character’s grandmother. A few chapters after he got into the car, he was practically a member of the family. He was an important foil; a source of great comic relief; and ultimately, a hero upon whom a major plot development hinged. Who knew, when he showed up for dinner one night carrying a bag of corn chips, that he’d be there for the climax?

In my next book, Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best (March 2011), I began with a single narrator, a girl named Henry, and before I knew what was happening her best friend was elbowing her way into one scene after another. When Henry made plans to travel to Florida and leave her best friend behind, I commented to my daughter, “My editor isn’t going to like this. The best friend is about to disappear.” My daughter, who at 16 has way better instincts about writing than her mother, disappeared into her room, returned with an armload of books which she tossed on my bed, and said, “You need a two-narrator novel. Here are a few good examples.” The final version of Tomatoes is told from two alternating points of view, and the twin “voices” in the book are an important theme.

And now, I’m back in the driver’s seat, this time cruising with my narrator through Lewiston, Maine, and I’ve taken him to a strange little place where I planned to introduce him to a girl … when another girl walked in. She’s short. She’s got a gold stud in her nose and blue eyes that my narrator says “unnerve” him. I’d planned to have her show him into the other room, then leave, but then … he followed her. I realized he’s going to follow her further, beyond the other room, all the way to the end of the novel. I don’t know where she was when I was outlining this book last winter, but a couple of days ago she arrived, standing boldly in the headlights, waving her arms ….

I think I have to let her in. And see where the journey takes us.

Tee Dah!

2010-09-12T12:26:00.000-07:00

A writer friend urged me to celebrate every little good thing in this business because there are always plenty of bad-writing-days and setbacks to discourage us. I've taken her advice to heart, and often pop open a nice bottle of wine on evenings after I've completed a new chapter, or heck ... even written a decent paragraph. If several writing friends have had good news ... a manuscript sold, a good review, a productive day of writing ... we like to get together for a mini celebration.

So I guess right now it's a champagne moment, because not only has Knopf released this wonderful cover for my next book, Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best, but a talented young man (Jasper Lowe of Thompson Street Productions) has just completed a book trailer for the novel. These are very "big" good things, if you ask me.

They are also time consuming things which, frankly, have very little to do with the actual process of putting words on paper and writing a story. Jasper and I went round and round discussing small details, correcting typos, tracking down the right "actresses" for the video and the right person to do the voiceover. Everything takes longer than you think it will, and before you know it you're spending a LOT of time promoting a book instead of writing one.

When I write, I have to sink down into the world of the story and shut out all the ambient noise of my "real" life. I can't answer the phone or think about errands or make out the grocery list, and I have to set aside HOURS to read passages out loud and "get" my narrator's voice in my head. I'm trying to find a metaphor for this place where I have to travel, imaginatively, and I guess I can most closely liken it to stepping into a padded, soundproof box, alone, and waiting for a video to begin playing.

Facebook, Twitter, press releases, book trailers, blogging, author signings and appearances are diametrically different activities. What's more, the type of person drawn to the latter seems awfully different from the type who enjoys the former. How are we supposed to do this, authors in the brave new world of social media? It seems to require a split personality, at least professionally.

I asked author Robin Brande, who has published two young adult novels (Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature; Fat Cat) how she balances her role as writer with her role as marketer and she said after wrestling with the topic herself and asking other writers what they advise she's concluded that the most important thing for her to do is write the next book. She said adding a hundred followers on Twitter is much less important than making sure the book she's working on is the best it can possibly be. Sure, we can't ignore social media, and we can tweet and blog and friend a bit ... but the lion's share of our energy has to be directed at the next book.

So ... Jersey Tomatoes won't be out until March, 2011, but check out this wonderful video which Jasper Lowe created for it:

Book Trailer

I'm going to sign off, and return to my padded writing cell.

Mosque

2010-08-23T03:31:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I was visiting a friend in Lewiston, Maine, around near the Kennedy Park section of downtown. We grabbed some lunch at a takeout counter … these flavorful fried pastries called sambusas filled with spices and goat meat … then walked a few blocks so he could show me a building under construction.

It was a new mosque. Or, to put it precisely, a dilapidated building being transformed into a new mosque.

My friend is only 17, but his excitement and pride over this building was palpable. I couldn’t step inside with him … I don’t know whether that’s because I’m a woman and the particular entryway where we stood was designated for men, or because it was still under construction … but we poked our heads in. There were cubbies for stacking shoes, sinks for washing, and inside the mosque itself a simple, cavernous space carpeted in a geometric design. The outside of the one-story building was non-descript: there were no decorations or signage that indicated this was a mosque. Next door was Mailhot’s Sausage, a juxtaposition which struck me as not just a little ironic, given what happened a few years ago at the other mosque in Lewiston.

Of course, this juxtaposition of cultures, of races and religions, is happening all over this town. And business goes on as usual. The old mosque on Lisbon Street is right next door to the U.S. Senate offices of Republican Olympia Snowe. The halal grocery store sells Muslim-approved meats across the street from the French sausage shop. In a week teachers at the Lewiston schools will call their rolls … Abdi; Bouchard; Mohammed; Ouellette … the traditional Franco names alongside the Somali. Standing in the center of Kennedy Park, little black girls with colorful skirts to their ankles and their heads covered in hijab race past me on their way to the playground. Meanwhile the spires of the Catholic basilica tower in the direction of Bates College, and the immigrant mothers file into the Trinity Jubilee Center, where diapers, canned goods and clothing are available for whomever needs them.

The hard words and anger coming from New York City right now, where plans to build an Islamic Community Center and mosque only blocks from Ground Zero have sparked such controversy, seem very far away and … dare I say it? … stupid, given the reality of Lewiston, Maine. Yes, this small city has struggled mightily to accommodate a tidal wave of largely non-English-speaking Muslim refugees in the last few years. It hasn’t always gone well: the incident I mentioned earlier involved someone tossing a pig’s head into the Lisbon Street mosque, defiling it. The public schools have been brought to their knees, trying to educate hundreds of children who couldn’t speak English, and in some cases couldn’t write in any language.

But then … I have this new friend. He’s 17, he’s Somali, and he has a smile which can light up a room. He plays soccer with breathless abandon; he studies hard and looks after his brothers; he’s planning to take the SATs, attend his senior prom, and go to pasta parties with his soccer teammates. He tells me about Ramadan and the challenges of playing pre-season sports without drinking or eating all day, introduces me to Somali cookies, and walks me through his world with a gratefulness and wonder that make me ashamed of any little thing I’ve ever complained about, ever.

His new mosque, reconstructed on a rubble-strewn site that no one else wanted, is a source of pride and spirituality for him. It’s a brave, optimistic outpost of faith for people tossed here from refugee camps.

The big issues of the world are too much for me. I don’t know how to make sense of men who strap bombs to their chests and walk into crowded markets or crash planes into buildings. I don’t understand why you would defile someone’s holy places. I don’t know why one would mock women who express their faith by covering their hair in a hijab or dressing in a nun’s habit.

So I’m just very glad to know my young Somali friend, who has shown me that while building a mosque, or building a community, or rebuilding a life, is never easy, it’s nothing to fear.

Jersey

2010-08-02T04:46:00.001-07:00

Last week I received exciting news that my agent sold foreign rights for my next book, Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best, to a publisher in Germany.

This has led me to thinking a lot about … Jersey. Granted, my book is only nominally about New Jersey, despite the title. (Which, incidentally, I got from a tee shirt my mother gave me when I was a teen.) “Jersey” is only the background noise in this novel; the theme is friendship.

Nevertheless, I’ve been wondering how Jersey translates for a German teen: the turnpike, the jokes, the shore …

The shore. That’s when it hit me. That reality TV show, Jersey Shore, which is about a group of twenty-somethings living in a summer rental in Seaside Heights, airs all over Europe. Not only are German teens familiar with Jersey: they think Snookie is The Garden State’s poster child.

If you don’t know who Snookie is, and if you graduated from high school when I did you probably don’t, Google her.

Anyone who buys my book thinking the main characters remotely resemble Snookie is in for a big disappointment. And anyone who thinks the eight drunken, foul-mouthed, albeit stunningly tanned, roommates from this series represent “typical” Jersey girls and boys is … far from completely right. Only one of those actors is actually from Jersey, as it turns out. Most hail from Staten Island. So there.

Thus, in a somewhat defensive mode, I decided to compile a list of Ten Things You Probably Didn’t Know About New Jersey. As I compiled I had to admit: my beloved home state (because even though I was born in New York and will most likely live out the rest of my life in Maine, I am a Jersey Girl) has its highs and lows. In all fairness, I’ve included both:

1. (high) Jack Nicholson, Bruce Springsteen, Frank Sinatra, Judy Blume, and Aaron Burr, are all New Jersey natives. (Hmmm … Burr might be a low …)

2. (low) New Jersey has more toxic waste dumps than any other state in the nation.

3. (high) The light bulb, phonograph and motion picture projector were invented in Menlo Park, New Jersey, by Thomas Edison.

4. (low) New Jersey is the car theft capital of the world. More cars are stolen, per capita, in Newark, than in any other city in the world.

5. (high) The honeybee is the New Jersey state bug.

6. (low) North Jersey has the most shopping malls in one area in the world, with seven major shopping malls in a 25 square mile radius. (I made this a low because I spent too much time in malls as a child and now have serious aversions to shopping.)

7. (high) The first baseball game was played in Hoboken, New Jersey.

8. (low) The first Indian reservation was in New Jersey.

9. (high) Atlantic City is where the street names came from for the game “Monopoly.”

10. (low) New Jersey has the highest population density in the U.S.

And, of course, New Jersey has the absolute best, most amazing tomatoes. What the orange is to Florida, the peach to Georgia, and the blueberry to Maine, so is the tomato to Jersey.

Letting Go

2010-07-18T09:51:00.001-07:00

In roughly six weeks we’re dropping our son off at college, the first of our children to officially “leave home.” The Dude (thus named in an earlier post on Perils of Skype, May 2010) is a fairly low-maintenance fellow, and other than clothes, a PC, bedding, towels and a desk lamp … oh, plus his hiking boots and backpack for his orientation trip … isn’t bringing much. He does seem interested in acquiring his grandparents’ mini-fridge, even though there’s a fridge down the hallway in his dorm … hmmm ….

Of course I can’t help but compare this sendoff to my own, 31 years ago. Unlike The Dude with his two duffel bags, I filled our family’s station wagon to the ceiling. Determined to transform the cinderblock-and-formica-tile floored hovel into a cozy bedroom, I brought wall hangings, a carpet, assorted decorative items … my poor roommate didn’t know what hit her.

We had no phone or fridge in that room: the phone was down the hall, in a closet of sorts. Once a week I called my parents to check in, and if they called me someone might pick up the ringing phone, knock on my door, find no one about, then leave a message on my white board that “Mom called.” No daily emails or cell phone contact or texting with the ‘rents.

We unloaded the car, my folks helped me set up my bed and fill my dresser, then they took a couple of photos of my roommate and me before they turned right around and drove the four hours back home. There was no Parents’ Orientation Barbecue, or speeches by the President, or Welcome Pavilion for them. They paid my bill, dropped me off, and left.

The Dude’s college has a Welcome Pavilion. They have scores of helpful volunteers to unload our car and carry his stuff up four flights of stairs. The President will indeed address us parents, and yes, we get lunch. But there’s more.

They have an entire office devoted to Parent Affairs, and there are even opportunities for parents to “volunteer” at the college. There is a Parents’ Group, we get regular Parents’ Mailings and … there is a Listserv. Where parents ask each other questions, vent, share information … you name it.

This is at once helpful and anxiety-provoking. For example, The Dude and I decided that it would be convenient and inexpensive to order all his bed linens and towels from the vendor the college recommended. Then the Listserv sounded off: “MY son only sleeps on 100-percent cotton sheets, and these are a blend!” “The towels are much too thin!” “My daughter hated the colors!” Oh. Well. I felt like a bad parent, sending him off with blended sheets.

Of course, The Dude shrugged. “Thin towels dry faster hanging on a hook,” he said. “I like plain blue.”

Have I mentioned how incredibly cool The Dude can be sometimes?

Then came the Laundry Service debate. An ad for a new laundry service at the college came in the mail, and my initial reaction was, “The Dude will improve his life and time management skills by washing and drying his own clothes. We are not paying for laundry service.” He agreed: “Aren’t there washers and dryers in all the dorms?” Simple enough. But debate raged on the Listserv.

One pro-service parent felt doing laundry would take away from her child’s chance to explore other meaningful opportunities at college. But another worried about allergic reactions to the chemicals used by the service. Another felt the service sounded good, but a two-day turnaround for clothes wasn’t quick enough, because her son’s football stuff needed washing every day …

Finally, there was a post from California. One mom asked her son, who is a rising junior at the college, to weigh in, and not only on the laundry issue. It was priceless.

Re. the laundry service: “I’d be embarrassed if dudes picked up my dirty crap outside my door but I’m not other people so no worries if it works for you. Everyone at school does their own laundry. We hang out while the dryer’s goin or whatever. Btw, I saw the mom thinking her kid needed service for his football gear. Dude, don’t let your mom do this. We’ll talk.”

Re. clothing: “Good socks are like, mandatory. Not what you want to learn the hard way.”

Re. books: “Buy books on Amazon. I saved a buncha dough.”

General advice: “It’s all good just chill out and let your kid go to school. It’s tough enough to earn this journey just getting into [college], but the best thing is being there ….”

Yes! Yes, thank you, Chill Fellow From California! We survived, and our kids will survive, even if their towels are paper thin and their sheets lined with plastic! Even if they lose their room keys, hate their roommates, dislike the food and have to study for a big test while their laundry dries!

I’m simultaneously looking forward to and dreading drop off day. I’m excited for The Dude; I’ll miss The Dude. I’ll enjoy making his bed with those blended sheets; I’ll definitely cry on the drive home. And probably, on days when I’m really missing him, I’ll check in with the Listserv for some advice.

Why Would Anyone Do This?

2010-07-11T10:19:00.000-07:00

As someone who writes for teens, I often find myself racing to catch up with them. I try not to add too many details in my books that will "date" them, but if I'm writing something contemporary, inevitably I'll have to reference some current music, clothing, or technology.

I'll confess, my musical tastes are locked somewhere in the 80's (not my fault, really, since I used to work at an 80's radio station and their entire playlist is embedded in my mental hard drive ...) so I regularly query kids on what they've recently added to their iPods.

Styles are easy enough to figure out: just carpool to the high school a few times or chaperone a dance (if you dare) to check out what kids are wearing. Technology and the Internet is tougher. I've leaned on my kids multiple times to walk me through Instant Messaging, Facebook, and texting. This process becomes highly comic when one of my manuscripts reaches a copyeditor who is older and even less tech-savvy than me. Confusion reigns, and problems are resolved only when a very young, junior editor can be found to explain it all.

Recently, I had reason to explore a new site on the Internet which has apparently taken off with teens in the past few months, and has left me absolutely bewildered. It's called Formspring, and I'd describe it as the Wild West of Cyberbullying. According to a recent New York Times article it's particularly prevalent among middle schoolers, and most parents have never heard of it.

Formspring is free, public, and mean. It's essentially a blackboard where anyone who signs up can ask you questions about yourself or simply post comments about you. And unlike sites such as Facebook, which only your "friends" can access, anyone can sign up for Formspring and post comments. Anonymously.

Yup. It's like taping a sign on your own back that reads "Kick Me." It begs an interesting question with a troubling answer: Why would anyone in their right mind subject themselves to this?

Now, it is possible to block or delete questions and comments that are sent to you via Formspring, and the site managers claim to have methods for tracking reported cyberbullies. But that doesn't explain the horrible, rude, often obscene comments which teens do make public. Why? Why would anyone purposely post horrible, untrue comments about themselves?

Shrinks and school counselors have explained the Formspring phenomenon as extreme attention seeking, as well as too much reliance on what other's think of you. Rachel Simmons, who has a wonderful site for girls, posted this insightful commentary on Formspring:

RachelSimmons

Much of what I've found as I explore the world of today's teens is exciting and fun and creative. But some of it is troubling, and I'd put Formspring in the latter category.

Summer Job

2010-07-05T03:43:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about summer jobs not only because … well, it’s summer … but also because the teens in our home are in the thick of theirs. I’m reminded of the myriad horrific summer jobs I had back when I was a teen growing up in New Jersey, and I wonder why I remain such an ardent believer in the Value of a Summer Job.

Here’s the summer job I always dreamed of having: waitressing on Long Beach Island on the Jersey Shore. Now, I realize the skanky television show Jersey Shore has completely co-opted all that is grand and glorious about that stretch of beach in the Garden State (yes, Jersey is the Garden State) and yes, hospital waste did on occasion wash up back in those days, but the waves were warm and perfect for body surfing and the place swarmed with other teens. I dreamed of earning thousands in tips while hefting trays at night, then swimming and tanning during the day. Sleep was not part of the plan …

Instead, I remained home in the suburbs with my parents during the summer, scavenging for work. I cleaned houses. I filed bills and answered phones in a doctor’s office. I stuffed diet pills into little pink boxes that rolled mercilessly toward me on a factory conveyor belt (sort of like Lucy and Ethel in the bon bon factory, only these were capsules filled with legal doses of speed).

These jobs were dull, lonely, and occasionally gross (one of the houses I cleaned was absolutely filthy) and paid minimum wage. They made me yearn for the unthinkable … summer’s end … and certainly strengthened my resolve to get a decent education so I wouldn’t get stuck doing those jobs forever. They also made me appreciate the plight of someone living day after day in a job she hated. They also made me think about the lives of those who would have been grateful to have even those jobs. It was, in retrospect, a good lesson for an entitled, college-bound kid from Bergen County.

Fast forward some thirty years to my kids’ current jobs, and I’d say they’re pretty lucky. My son is a counselor at a boys’ camp on an island in Maine. He sleeps in a platform tent with four little boys every night, listening to the water lap and loons call each night just beyond the tent’s opening. His days are spent teaching them how to play tennis, making sure they don’t drown while swimming, and helping lead them on hiking and canoeing treks throughout the state. Tough, huh?

But there’s more to it: last year, when he was a counselor-in-training, he dug ditches, hauled trash, and “raked” and sanitized the composting toilets. This summer, after a senior year spent thinking almost exclusively about himself (my college applications, my prom, my graduation) he’s spending seven weeks thinking almost exclusively about the happiness and welfare of others. Are the boys safe? Are they homesick? Are they treating each other well? Are they keeping the tent clean? I must confess I take a special delight in hearing my 18-year old complain about how he hates to nag kids to clean up, hurry up … heh heh.

Our daughter is getting a first-hand look at the world of local agriculture as she works Saturday mornings at the farmer’s market for Bob the Turkey Guy. 70-year old Bob drives all the way to Brunswick from New Sharon, Maine, where he raises and slaughters and packages organic, free-range turkeys. At the farmer’s market, he sets up his tent, unloads heavy coolers packed with ice and “product,” and entertains summer people and locals alike who stop by to purchase his sausages, cutlets and ground meat. Our daughter comes home filled with stories about Bob and all the other vendors. She’s been amazed at how hard a 70-year old man can work. She’s gotten a peak into what it takes to run your own small business and to earn a living one cutlet at a time.

That’s the value I see in a Summer Job. Sure, you earn some cash, and that’s good for a teen. But it takes you out of yourself, out of the usual rut of school and homework and all the wonderful and terrible things you deal with as a teenager, and plops you down into some other reality. You might end up seeing the world a little differently, and that’s always good.

Summer Reading

2010-06-27T18:37:00.000-07:00

Forty-eight hours into her summer my teenage daughter is tan, infinitely more relaxed than she was during her previous “exams” week, and has finished two books.

Wait. Two books? Why is she still doing homework?

Ah, now I remember. It’s not homework. It’s summer reading.

There is nothing more idyllic than summer reading. It’s not required by a teacher, there’s no test at the end, and the list is endless, random and completely one’s own. You never, never hold a pencil in your hand during a Summer Read … strictly verboten … because there’s no need to mark the text for notes or papers. Just let it all stream in and carry you off ….

My favorite place to Summer Read: a hammock. Definitely. And my favorite hammock in the world is on Hodgdon Pond, on Mt. Desert Island, in Maine, a secluded spot right near Acadia National Park. Loons drift by on the water, great blue herons swoop overhead, and there’s a regular symphony of frogs. I know some people like to read at the beach, but for me it’s too hot and the sound of the ocean puts me right to sleep. The beach is actually my favorite napping place in the world …

My favorite drink while I’m Summer Reading: raspberry lemonade.

My favorite time to Summer Read: anytime. All the time. But if you’re in a hammock, in Maine, you want to come in by 4:00 because otherwise the mosquitoes will eat you alive. I believe the mosquito is the State Bird of Maine, isn’t it?

What’s on my Summer Reading List: wow. Where do I begin?

In terms of “adult” books, I just got hold of a copy of Bad Girls Go Everywhere, a biography of Helen Gurley Brown written by Bowdoin College Professor Janet Scanlon. I just ordered Authentic Patriotism, written by a college friend, Stephen Kiernan, (we were in the same creative writing class!) and is a collection of stories about Americans who are contributing to their communities in significant ways. As for fiction, Tinkers by Paul Harding is on my list.

Of course, I always have a tall stack of Young Adult and Middle Grade novels I want to read! My friend Charlotte Agell has a new book called The Accidental Adventures of India MacAllister; fellow Brunswick writer Cindy Lord will soon have her next novel, Touch Blue, on shelves; Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta is in the stack; as is When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead; and Jumping Off Swings by Jo Knowles.

I was thrilled to learn that teachers and students at the James F. Doughty School in Bangor, Maine, have included my novel Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress as part of their summer reading/blogging project! It’s been fun to visit their blog and read what they think of Brett, and how they connect it to other books. Plus, it’s so amazing to think that Brett, Mr. Beady, Nonna and the rest of the crew are part of their summer!

The summer’s young, and my list could be longer … any suggestions of what I might add?

Pressure Cooker

2010-06-14T06:16:00.000-07:00

I still have nightmares about papers due but not yet started.

It’s the same nightmare, actually, just repeated over and over. It’s always Mr. Hillenbrand’s history class, back when I was a senior at Northern Highlands Regional High School in New Jersey. I walk into class for the first time, but it’s the END of the marking period, and for some reason I haven’t read the book, nor attended class, or even started the 40-page paper which the trim, ever-cool Mr. Hillenbrand is collecting from the other students at that very moment.

I wake in a cold sweat, absolutely panic stricken. And I graduated from that high school 31 years ago.

Why does Mr. Hillenbrand still have the power to terrorize me? I certainly had more challenging classes in college. Why don’t I dream of Murray Dry, the Darth Vadar of the Poli Sci department from my undergrad days, or the legendary, brilliant, never-cracked-a-smile Robert Langbaum from grad school?

I’ll tell you why: high school is freakin’ scary. And as scary as it was in 1979, it’s way worse now.

I’m talking about pressure. Whether you’re an academic kid hoping to get into college, or a hands-on guy in vocational ed hoping to find a job in this economy, it’s all fraught. And high school sports? Forget it. We’re in the thick of the post-season, varsity playoff schedule right now, and it’s wild. I watched a slip of a girl do battle on the tennis court the other day before some 100 shrieking fans: it was a tie-breaker to decide which team would advance to the state finals. I watched boys pound the earth in frustration as their lacrosse team failed repeatedly to score and their dreams of advancing to the semi-finals disappeared … and at least one pent-up parent who clearly had a little too much invested in the result, wept.

Maybe that’s where the real pressure is coming from: us. Grownups. Parents who should be helping kids navigate the world and put things in perspective, but are in fact piling on and raising the stakes. When did taking the SAT and applying to college become a life-or-death decision? When did surviving the sports schedule turn into the March to Bataan, where parents feel compelled to attend every single pre-season, post-season and regular season game, regardless of the distance from the school? And behave like screaming paparazzi in the stands?

I “talk the talk” to my kids, but they’re wrecks and somewhere along the way I’m sure I’ve ^%#*’d up. Live in the moment. Don’t let credentials define you. Call the lines fair and just do your best. I’ve said it all; but what do they really hear?

At my son’s high school graduation this weekend I watched and listened as young men and women I’ve known since they were in diapers stepped up to the podium and delivered wise, witty speeches. They were the top five in their class, and goodness knows what it took for them to get there. Their valedictorian said it best, describing the untold, unseen hours of toil leading up to “moments” like this: a graduation. Or a musical performance. A race. A soccer match. It made me think of the hours, weeks, and years I spend alone working, before one day a delivery truck pulls up and drops off a box containing one of my books. It’s an exhilarating moment, but most of life is just doing the work, messing up, cleaning up, and starting over.

How amazing that those kids already get that. At least, that’s what they said the other night. The last speaker talked about enjoying the journey, and I truly hope all his fellow graduates heard him … it was getting a little rowdy at the end. Beach balls started flying; mortarboards were flung.

Enjoy the journey. I hope they can.

Cover Agonistes

2010-05-30T04:40:00.000-07:00

So I'm at that wonderful stage with my latest book where I've finished all the hard work (ie. writing and revising) and now my publisher takes over with the fun stuff (ie. creating a cover, marketing, printing, selling, shipping ...)

Whoops. Did I just type "fun?" Did I type "wonderful?" Let's delete those adjectives and start over.

I'm at that nerve-wracking stage with my latest book where the part I control (ie. the words on the page) is complete, and now my publisher is in control (ie. creating a cover.) Before I became a published writer, I dreamed of this stage. This magic, where your tenderly crafted story is transformed from a stack of double-spaced typed pages to a realio trulio book that strangers can find in a library or bookstore.

Little did I realize, back when I was uninitiated and unpublished, that even if one has a fabulous editor (which I do) one cannot possibly prepare for the whims and fancies of the rest of the unseen horde working in that big publishing office in New York. It reminds me of sending a child off to elementary school: you think the teacher is the only adult she'll have to deal with. You never consider all the others who weigh in during your child's school days, like the mean lunch ladies, the grouchy bus driver, and the scary principal. Even with a great teacher in the classroom, those other folks influence a child's school days. Seriously.

A few months ago I saw a draft cover design for my new book, Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best, which will launch in early 2011. I really liked it. It was clever and eye catching and age appropriate and definitely something a teen would pick up. That's the key here: would a kid pick this up? Because let's face it, teen readers DO judge books by their covers.

So, I was happy. Surprisingly relieved. Because the road to the cover of my first book, Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress, was a tad bumpy. It seemed that this time, with Tomatoes, it was going to be smooth sailing.

Then, a few days ago, the bad news arrived: the lunch ladies didn't like the cover. New designs were in the making.

On the one hand, I'm grateful that so much careful attention is being given to my book. And unlike many of my writer friends, I have a publisher who puts a real effort into marketing; they did a lot to promote Brett. But I'm wary ...

Initially, Brett was titled Demigods, Brainiacs and Big, Bad News. When it came time to design the cover, my publisher wanted a different title, something which reflected that every chapter of the book began with one of the character's 8th grade vocabulary words. We conjured up 45 Definitions of Brett McCarthy and this is what the design people delivered:

I had a strong, visceral reaction to this cover. The copy at the top clearly draws on the "definitions" idea, which is cool. But the rest looked like a target at a firing range, with purple soccer girls all in a vulnerable array. And with a fatality at the bottom.

Here's the thing: no one gets shot in this book. It's a story about friendship. It's humorous. The cover clearly didn't match the "spirit" of the novel ... and we realized the problem was the title.

So, my editor and I brainstormed over the phone, and we came up with Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress. On the right is that cover:

This is the image used for the paperback Advance Reader Copies the publisher mailed to promote Brett. I liked it. It captures the main character's personality, and I loved the visual play on the work-in-progress theme. I especially liked the paintbrush with my name above it.

But then ... it got dinged. Someone somewhere in that vast building in New York felt it looked too much like a sports book and looked too "young." They wanted something that non-sportsy girls would read, and might appeal to older readers. So, back to the drawing board, and this is the version which eventually shipped in hardcover:

You see the basic idea, right? A dictionary. Merriam Webster's Collegiate, to be precise, and on the right are the wonderful little tabs you use to get right to the word you're looking up. The main character, Brett, is redefining herself throughout this story, so that's the theme they put right on the cover. Along with a truncated line drawing of a girl that used to be a soccer player.

I'm not going to detail my emotional reactions throughout this process, except to say my poor agent took the brunt of it. She's also the one who eventually told me it was time to stop arguing with the publisher because I was, after all, a first-time midlist author who had limited influence over this stage. And as usual, she was right. I'm no J.K. Rowling, and in this economy I should probably be grateful that I even sold a book.

I'll just say that when I visit schools today and ask the kids to raise their hands if they like to read books that remind them of dictionaries, nary a hand goes up.
Shortly after Brett launched, I learned that the paperback version would have an entirely different cover design. Today, this is what Brett looks like:

I like it. A lot. I don't think that's necessarily Brett on the cover, but it sure looks like one of her friends. And it most definitely captures the spirit of the main character and the book as a whole.

So now, with this latest news from my publisher, I guess it's once more into the breach. Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best is about two teens from ... you guessed ... New Jersey. They are extraordinary: one is a state champion tennis player who gets recruited by a tennis academy in Florida; the other is a gifted ballerina who is chosen for a prestigious ballet school in New York. It's a story about the pressure gifted kids face as they learn to take ownership of their futures as well as deal with the expectations of the adults in their lives. It's also about friendship, and what we'll do ... or not do ... for the people we love.

I think there should definitely be tomatoes on the cover ....

Gardening and Writing

2010-05-26T06:45:00.000-07:00

It's looking like the best year ever for lupines in my garden; don't ask me why. They are a persnickety plant for sure: resisting transplanting but then growing in wild abundance in the most unlikely, inhospitable soil. Who can predict a lupine's mood? Or why it prefers roadside, salt-soaked dirt, instead of the rich compost I bestow on it?

I know you can find lupines in plenty of places outside of Maine ... I've seen riotous fields of lupines in Iceland, and gorgeous specimens in my cousin's garden in Ireland ... but ever since I read Barbara Cooney's Miss Rumphius to my children I think of them as a uniquely Maine flower. I know it's not fair to claim them, but, there you have it.

I love this time in the garden. Blue and purple predominate; the colors are still cool. The fire and heat of red bee balm, golden coreopsis and yellow daylilies is for July, when summer is ripe.

I love gardening as much as I love writing stories, and for me the process is similar. It's about completing the big picture one small step and one mundane task at a time. Head bent, hands dirty, back sore, you yank one weed then another and then another ... and when you come up for air, and step back it's ... lovely. That's how I craft a paragraph. Scratching, slow going, dead-heading and picking out the bad stuff, until I can step back, read it out loud and ... yes. It sings.

This takes a long time. And I can't let myself think about that, because in spite of my chosen avocation and beloved hobby I'm a fairly impatient person. Writing and gardening is not for people in a hurry. There's a reason why a garden is filled with slugs and snails.

Of course, in all fairness, there are also some pretty zippy creatures. Butterflies. Bees. And I've been spotting quite a few hummingbirds in this patch of Soloman's Seal. I thought they were drawn predominately to red, but the nectar in these bell-shaped buds must be pretty sweet.

I'm far from alone in drawing this comparison between gardening and writing. I know it's "been done," and done better than me, but that's not stopping me these days. I wouldn't write a word or plant a single flower if I worried about who's doing it better. I'm at the stage where all I can do is yield to my own story and admire what others create, no worry allowed.

If you're also looking to admire: a friend recently gave me The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden by Stanley Kunitz. It's absolutely lovely.

Much of my garden is in shade, and I've let Sweet Woodruff carpet the edges and creep beneath the rhododendrons. Hostas, ajuga, and a few random lily of the valley mix in. I like the intentional wildness of this patch. Stanley Kunitz writes:

"Almost anything you do in the garden, for example, weeding, is an effort to create some sort of order out of nature's tendency to run wild. ... The danger is that you can so tame your garden that it becomes a thing. It becomes landscaping.

"In a poem, the danger is obvious; there is natural idiom and then there is domesticated language. ... Once the poem starts flowing, the poet must not try to dictate every syllable."

I'm not sure how that translates to writing fiction, but I'm inspired to try.

The First Time

2010-05-16T07:01:00.000-07:00

I recently joined a Facebook group called Children’s Authors and Illustrators, and they’ve started a discussion where folks can share their first-time publication stories.

They run the gamut. From the self-published to “A miracle occurred and they found my manuscript in the slush pile” to “My agent did it all!” There seems to be no single road to the Land of Publication, although one consistent point emerged: to fuel this journey, you’ve gotta work hard.

There is no getting around the work. Not simply the pages and pages of rewrites: we all know about revision. Not simply the emotional work of dealing with rejection and forging ahead anyway: we all know about the piles of rejection letters before the book finally sells. But the real work no one tells you about.

Years … no, decades of apprenticeship where you write fairly horrible, unreadable stuff that you file in boxes in your basement. Years when you spend most of the day at a “paying” job, only to squeeze the writing time in the slim spaces between sleep and commuting. Months you spend on the first 150 pages of a novel that seems to just write itself … only to hear from your most trusted critique partner that the concept is completely undoable and would you abandon it now, please?

But then, lightening strikes. You find your story. It’s not easy to write, but it feels good, so you go with it. Next thing you know, you’re typing “The End,” (which, by the way, is a tremendous, awesome rush) and photocopying it for readers, who tell you they love it, but …. So you fix the “buts” and send it to an agent (that’s the other thing that emerged from the Facebook discussion: nowadays you need an agent.) who loves it, but …. So you fix more “buts” and the agent sends your baby out into the wilds of first-round submissions to publishing houses and … kaboom. Someone likes it. Loves it, actually, and believes in it, and you, and is going to send you money and bind your baby with a cover and slap an ISBN number on it just to make the Library of Congress happy and Life is Good. And it seems, in that moment, that this just happened … but it didn’t. It took years, and lots and lots of hard work.

So it was with particular joy that I attended a book signing this past Saturday at the Gulf of Maine Bookstore in Brunswick, Maine, to hear my friend, Paul Doiron, read from his debut novel The Poacher’s Son. Paul is the editor in chief of Down East magazine as well as a registered Maine Guide and outdoorsman, and has written a literary detective novel set in the North Woods. It was sold as a three-book deal, has received more starred reviews than I can recount here, was reviewed in the NYTimes book review and reportedly (although Paul won’t swear to this) had an initial print run of 100,000. Now that’s a lightening strike.

Here are Paul and I at his signing at Gulf of Maine Bookstore.

But here’s the fact of the matter: even if that book had nary a starred review, a meager print run and no advance, it’s a thrill. There’s nothing quite like seeing the UPS guy pull into your driveway with that carton from your publisher. Nothing quite like ripping it open and … there it is. Your story, all dressed up like a real book.

And a signing, with an audience filled with friends, is such a gift. Gary Lawless, a poet and proprietor at Gulf of Maine, embodies the Independent Bookstore Owner Platonic Ideal. His well-stocked shelves are packed with great reads you’d never find at a chain store, and Gary and his partner, Beth, always seem to have all day to chat and share stories.

This is Gary Lawless of Gulf of Maine Bookstore.

They also know how to throw a terrific book signing! I hurried home with my copies of The Poacher’s Son and stayed up late reading about Game Warden Mike Bowditch …

Perils of Skype

2010-05-03T07:37:00.000-07:00

I recently dipped a toe into the world of Skype Author visits … with mixed results.

For those who are even less tech-savvy than I (and few are, I suspect): Skype is free software you can download onto your computer which enables you to video-teleconference using a webcam. It’s like turning your laptop into a two-way, interactive television.

Anyway, here’s the scene: I had brilliantly scheduled a Skype meeting with an after-school book group in rural Maine for the 30-minutes before I needed to drive my daughter to her lacrosse practice. My son was supposed to be at a tennis match, and I had set up my laptop in our sunny, open-concept dining room instead of my dark, basement office. The house was quiet, the dog was outside, and I was chatting calmly into my webcam with a group of girls who had just read Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress. Then, the front door slammed open.

Oh no, I’m thinking, as I’m trying to listen to the shy girl on the screen ask a question. The match must’ve been rained out. Please don’t shout “I’m home!!” like you usually do when you open the mudroom door …

Luckily, he didn’t. He strode into the dining room, weighed down by an enormous backpack, his tennis bag, plus the mail he’d just collected, and stared curiously at me while I spoke to my laptop. He’s a fairly intelligent lad, and figured out what I was doing … so instead of speaking, he waved. He started to use sign language/charades of sorts to indicate that he was indeed home (like I didn’t know that?) and that his tennis match was cancelled. He pulled up a chair alongside me, unfolded the newspaper, and started to read the sports section.

Really? I’m thinking. This dude is really going to rattle the newspaper while I Skype? Off-camera, I made a chopping motion to him with one hand, then pointed to the other end of the house. As far as I was concerned, the meaning was clear: beat it.

The dude shrugged. He got up. He sauntered into the kitchen, which is essentially an extension of the dining room. He swung open the fridge door and began rummaging.

Yogurt, I’m thinking. Grapes. A glass of milk. Choose a silent snack. Please, no potato chips. As if he read my mind, he slammed the fridge shut. He turned and zeroed in on the new bag of Cape Cod 40-percent-lower-fat chips.

My sister, Christine Bolzan, who is something of a social media expert in the Boston area and has coached me on Skyping, says it’s very important to keep your gaze focused on the green, pinpoint light of the webcam as you speak. Otherwise, the folks on the other end see you looking into your lap, or staring off into space. Concentrate on keeping your head still; smile pleasantly, she said.

It occurred to me that I’d never asked her what the folks on the other end see if you pick up the laptop and hurl it across the room at your son. Was it Dave Letterman who pioneered MonkeyCam? I was on the verge of pioneering crazed-mother-skyping-author-cam.

“Where do you get your ideas?” one student asked as The Dude, crunching, moved on to the utensils drawer.

I hate my life I hate my life, I’m thinking, as I replied to the green light, “Well, my children have provided a lot of inspiration.” I tried not to watch, but The Dude had found a piece of blank paper and scribbled on it. He approached. He stood before me, waiting, holding his paper.

Why won’t he go away why did I ever have these children, I’m thinking, as the teacher at the school 300 miles away motioned another student up to the camera for a new question. My son, sensing a break in the action, held up his paper. A note.

“I’m going out to get something to eat. Be back soon,” it read.

YOU CAN’T TAKE THE CAR I NEED TO DRIVE YOUR SISTER TO LACROSSE PRACTICE!!! I screamed. In my head. My still head. As I smiled pleasantly at the nice students on my laptop. As I put up my off-camera hand in a “Halt!” sign, eliciting a confused, disgruntled frown from The Dude.

That’s when the Gods of Skype smiled upon me: we lost the connection. The video froze and I heard the teacher at the other end saying, “Maria, we can’t hear you. Are you there? Are you there? Well, we’re going to try to call again. Hold on everyone.”

In the 20 seconds it took to reconnect I managed to communicate with my son not only my extreme irritation at his distracting me during a Skype author visit, but the imperative that he not take the car in his search for bigger and better snacks unless he also planned to drop his sister off at lax practice. Which he did. Semi-quietly. If the folks at the other end heard any commotion, they were too polite to comment.

Author/teacher Kate Messner wrote a wonderful article about Skype Author Visits for School Library journal which I heartily recommend: http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6673572.html You will feel empowered when you read it. You’ll think, “I can do that! How fun! How easy!”

It is, actually. But … beware.

Distractions

2010-04-24T16:59:00.000-07:00

So what do these lovely bleeding hearts in my garden have to do with writing?

Answer: absolutely nothing. That's the problem.

Spring has sprung in Maine and the siren song of birds, peepers, and yes, the very sound of crocuses hoisting themselves from the earth is calling me outside, away from my office. My writing "breaks" (usually nothing more than a stretch every thirty minutes or so) have turned into quick forays into the garden to see what's blooming. Which turns into yanking a weed or two. Which feels so incredibly good. Especially when one prolongs the weed pulling and focuses on the wild strawberries encroaching on the front beds. Unlike so much of what I do, I see immediate, remarkable results of my labor.

Oh, sure, writing is immediate. Drag a pen across a blank page or tap out a little staccato on the keyboard and words appear. But most days it isn't very good and there's a pretty good chance I won't keep it. Some days, the story doesn't draw me in the way I need it to, and distractions take hold.

Springtime in the garden is a pretty good one. So's Twitter. Facebook. Checking email. Reading the NY Times online, scanning my favorite author blogs, and logging onto the announcements page at my kids' school to make sure there isn't something vitally important to their educations which they have failed to share with me. The Information Superhighway draws me in ... no, sucks me in ... and overwhelms, and I'm down to a productivity level of about 25-percent. Damn you, Al Gore, for inventing the Internet.

Of all the distractions in my life, surfing the net is the biggest black hole. It eats up so much precious writing time that I think I would accomplish much more if I hurled my laptop out the window and wrote longhand, or even resorted to a quill and parchment. It's not that I don't want to work on my book: I love to write. It's never difficult to sit down in the morning and settle into work. But I'm weak. I'm no better than other people who can't stop checking their "Crackberries." Thank goodness I don't text, because I'd definitely be one of those hapless souls tripping over sidewalks or rearending other drivers.

This past February I noticed (yes, via the Internet) that several writers I admire had taken a month long No Technology pledge of sorts. Several stopped blogging and tweeting while others just reduced the amount of time they spent blogging and tweeting and social-networking in general. At the time, I didn't give their experiment much thought, and I don't really know how it turned out for them, although I do notice they've all "returned" online. Still, I'm wondering if I could use a dose of that discipline. Especially since the bleeding hearts have been piling on lately.

So, here it is, my personal No Distractions goal for at least one week: only 30 minutes, in total, devoted each day to Social Networking, ie. Facebook and Twitter and Blog Following. Answering emails won't have a time limit, but I will only check at set times each day: say morning, midday and evening. Then let's see, after one week, how much actual writing I'll get done.

Oh, and as for weeding: no limits there. Dandelions beware.

Librarians Rock

2010-04-18T03:01:00.000-07:00

Without question, my mother is responsible for my love of reading. She was one of those moms who was pretty strict about not over-indulging us with material things, like useless plastic toys, but when it came to books there were no limits.

This could have gotten out of hand, especially because I was a book junkie. The sort of kid who would disappear so deeply into a story that people would stand right in front of me and speak, loudly, and I wouldn’t hear them. I would come home from school with the Scholastic and Arrow book order sheets, and just check off one after another after another, and mom would let me buy them all. When the orders arrived, she’d have to pick me up after school that day to help me carry the stack home.

Then of course, there was the library. Free books. Imagine! We spent countless days in our town library; lost, lovely afternoons curled up in comfy chairs with a smorgasbord of books at our disposal. Imagine a chocoholic let loose in the Ghirardelli factory: that was me in the library.

By middle school I was a confirmed Bookworm, and opted to spend recess volunteering in the library instead of enduring the adolescent tortures of the playground. There, I met the second person most responsible for my passion for reading: Miss Fiore.

I never knew her first name. I never knew anything about her, except that she was one of those anomalies of the suburbs: an unmarried woman. All the women I knew … literally, all of them … were either married or too-young-to-be-married. The latter, we all assumed, certainly wanted to be married, and eventually would be.

Not Miss Fiore. To my adolescent eyes, she was too busy reading. I would sit behind the checkout desk, meticulously stamping return dates inside covers and filing cards scrawled with the names of the kids who had borrowed the books, when Miss Fiore would burst from her narrow, glass-enclosed office, a volume clutched to her chest.

“Oh my goodness! I was up all night with this one. I couldn’t put it down. It’s about a swan! Named Louis! Who plays the trumpet!” She looked a little wild-eyed as she held the just-arrived copy of E.B. White’s Trumpet of the Swan out to me … yes, that was one of the perks of working with Miss Fiore: first dibs on the new books … and how could I refuse? I took it, and stayed up most of the night reading, in order to enthuse with her about it the next day.

I met Anne Frank that way. Edgar Allen Poe. Johnny Tremain. She shared them with me as if she were introducing members of her own family, and I suppose, in a way, they were. Most importantly, she showed me how reading wasn’t a solitary occupation at all. It was a way into a new world, a way out of yourself, and, when shared, a unique connection with others.

To this day, librarians are among my favorite people. Granted, I’m the type who thinks “Read any good books lately?” is a gripping question and I truly want to know the answer. But have you ever partied with librarians? Try it; they are a hoot. Attend a “literary” gathering of any sort and the writers will inevitably talk about themselves and their “works,” while the librarians will talk about … well, the whole wide world. Just about anything that can be contained within the covers of a book. And not only is that fascinating and entertaining but it is incredibly generous.

I was a fortunate child to have crossed paths with such a generous soul. She influenced the direction my life would take.

I’m half tempted here to do a call-out to all the amazing librarians I see today, inspiring our children and sharing their passion for reading, but the list would be too long. Anyhow, you know who you are, Kelley, and Melissa, and Peg, and Merry … you rock.

Having Fun With Writers

2010-04-12T18:21:00.000-07:00

Writers spend so much time alone that any opportunity to reach out and connect with other writers is a welcome treat! This past Saturday, April 10, I joined authors, poets and illustrators from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance for a book signing event at the University of Southern Maine. It was all part of the Maine Festival of the Book, an annual event that celebrates books as well as readers and writers.

I was signing copies of my novel, "Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress," and was lucky enough to be assigned a seat next to author Cindy Lord, from Brunswick, who was signing copies of her Newbery-award-winning novel, "Rules," as well as her brand new picture book, "Hot Rod Hamster." It was a great opportunity to catch up as well as snag a Cindy autograph on a copy of "Hamster" for my goddaughter. BTW, "Hamster" comes with some really cool stickers ... kids will love it! In August Cindy's next novel, "Touch Blue," will be released and I'll just say here that I'm very jealous of anyone who already has an advanced copy. I hear it's wonderful!

A little further down the long table was a quartet of fab Maine authors. From left to right: Susan Shetterly ("Settled in the Wild: Notes From the Edge of Town") Hannah Holmes ("The Well-Dressed Ape") Monica Wood ("Any Bitter Thing" to name one of my faves) and Amy Macdonald ("Rachel Fister's Blister" is my favorite.)

I've been laughing out loud at Elizabeth Peavey's essays for years now, so I was thrilled to finally meet her! Among her essay collections she had copies of "Outta My Way: An Odd Life Lived Loudly." To Elizabeth's right in this picture is my dear friend, Charlotte Agell, who was signing copies of her picture books as well as her young adult novel "Shift." But Charlotte's most exciting ... and most "handled" book that day ... was the not-for-sale-advanced-reader-copy of her new book "The Accidental Adventures of India McAllister." This middle grade novel will launch this summer and it's filled with Charlotte's wonderful, whimsical illustrations and features a very special new character: India. Who, incidently, has her own blog, which is up and running and quite delightful. Check it out: http://indiasink.wordpress.com/

Signing books and chatting with the other writers is fun, but the best part of an event like this is meeting READERS! You can tell Cindy enjoys it ...

I loved these great smiles from Charlotte and Cindy ... plus I couldn't help but give you a peek of "India McAllister's" cover!

Days like this one made me feel so lucky to be a MAINE writer!

Writing ... Or Not ... With Children

2010-04-05T04:41:00.000-07:00

Warning: This is a longer-than-usual post. Busy readers with limited time beware.

I recently read a blog post by Marie Mutsuki Mockett about writing with a new baby, and it reminded me of my own days struggling to carve out a little creative time while nursing, changing diapers, etc. Today, that baby of mine is getting ready to head to college, and I have enough time to write novels!

The following post is something I wrote when I was in the "thick" of it:

I had an idea for an essay the other day. It came to me in the usual way: while I was vacuuming.

In the vacuum world mine would be an “antique” Hoover. It first belonged to Lucile Cade Watterson, went to graduate school with her son (my then-boyfriend-future-spouse), assumed a position of prominence in our newlywed apartment, and currently skirts Legos, marbles and pennies in our childrens’ bedrooms. When my mother-in-law bought the Hoover it was the latest thing: one of those circular models, yellow-ochre-hued, requiring size H replacement bags which nowadays are difficult to find. It scarcely works anymore: you have to go over a scrap of yarn or pencil shaving several times before the vacuum eats it. But for invoking the muse, there’s nothing like it.

Because this baby can roar. It transcends mere “white noise,” creating a din which blocks out any competing sound, from the telephone, to a crying child to an air raid siren. It belches burnt dust mites as its aluminum maw sucks viciously at pine needles, playmobiles, and curtains. My children run when I wheel it from the hallway closet; my husband leaves the house. And as long as I vacuum, no one, absolutely no one, disturbs my train of thought.

Uninterrupted, logically sequenced thought has been, for me, a casualty of parenthood. As a writer I absolutely require, even crave, retreat to that quiet place in my head where I record and reexperience the world in words. As a parent, finding that space has proved a creative challenge in itself. My children have a way of insinuating their needs and their presence into my quiet thoughts. Never mind the requests for snacks, the shrieks and wails and the bathroom debacles when we’re together; even in their absence I fall prey to interruption, as I suddenly remember the overdue library book, the holiday cookie party, the field trip permission slip.

This dilemma - of how to balance real life with The Writing Life - is not uniquely mine, or unique to writers. I see parents all around me struggling to balance the demands of their jobs with the needs of their children, their professional ambitions with their relationships. But for a writer the challenge gets to something fundamental, and a little scary. Writing isn't simply what I do: it's who I am.

When my children were babies, those dark days of sleep deprivation and diapers, I looked to other mother-writers for inspiration and advice, with mixed results. Louise Erdrich, who managed mothering five as well as composing wonderful novels, was nonetheless a true friend. I thought she was reading my mind when she wrote in The Blue Jay’s Dance, “Until I’ve satisfied our baby’s need, my brain is a white blur, I lose track of what I’ve been doing, who I am.” And later: “Our baby hates the playpen. She hates her car seat. Help. Help. Help.”

Toni Morrison, on the other hand, was no friend. I’ve heard it said that the meanest thing mothers do is clean up before other mothers arrive, and I suspect that a visit to Morrison’s kitchen would reveal sparkling counters and a freshly scoured sink. When she described in an interview how she composed Nobel-prize winning novels while her children played at her feet, I was sick at heart. How could anyone create the language of Beloved and Sula amidst appeals for juice and the insistent demands of a ripe diaper? It also begged a larger question: who would want to?

Three months into my first pregnancy I was waiting tables as part of a scholarship to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. The writer Nancy Willard had been assigned to review my manuscript, and I was thrilled. Not only was she one of my favorite essayists, but she was a mother. Her accomplishments included a faculty position teaching creative writing, a host of childrens’ books, novels, essays, and a grown son. I was dying to ask her how she pulled it off. As I refilled her coffee cup at breakfast one morning I slid into the chair next to hers and asked, point blank, how she balanced the demands of writing with parenting. I cozily shared with her my own impending motherhood, then settled back for some heartfelt advice.

She stared at me, aghast. Whether it was the question itself, or my bumptious interruption of her breakfast, clearly she was at a loss for words. Finally, she replied.

“In life, you make time for what’s important to you.” That was it. She bent her head over the bowl and tucked into her oatmeal, ending the audience.

It took me a few years to get over being dissed and dismissed by Nancy Willard, but following the births of my two children I realized that her advice, albeit abrupt, was right on. The trick has been forgiving myself for the long periods I go without writing.

Because life happens. Friends get sick and need casseroles, brothers become new fathers and hold christenings in Connecticut, Halloween costumes must be sewn and two-year-olds must spend every possible moment of their summers combing the beaches for sandollars. Children, if nothing else, are life at its most insistent and ephemeral. And I find that time and again it's more important for me to roll in the autumn leaves with them, than pay a babysitter so I can spend hours at my computer reworking the syntax of falling leaves for a magazine article.

Parenting young children has forced me to make cuts, to decide what's important right now and what can wait. And while writing is very important to me, my children can't wait. My creative time is brief, compartmentalized literally and imaginatively from the daily hurricane. When I do write I have to be efficient and the finished products are short: essays for radio, bits and pieces for the paper, pithy journal entries. For now, this is o.k.

I figure I play tennis and I play the piano: but never simultaneously. I'm a mother and a writer but I don't -- and I can't -- parent and write at the same time. One occupation has to yield to the other, each alternately insistent and "important." Depending on who's sick, or breastfeeding, or occupied elsewhere for a few hours, each day offers up a different range of the possible. And I simply take what's given, no angst allowed.

For the present, however, we're still Hoovering.

My Agent = My Hero

2010-03-28T10:42:00.000-07:00

"Changing literary agents is like changing deck chairs on the Titanic." - Unknown

This quote made me laugh out loud, although I think it's open to interpretation. I read it as: "What's the point?" Someone else might think it means, "They're all the same."

Of course, I couldn't disagree more, with either reading of the quote. My literary agent (Edite Kroll, of Edite Kroll Literary Agency) has done such a wonderful job for me that I can't imagine being represented by anyone else.

It sounds so Hollywood, doesn't it? "My agent." Like I'm someone important. Ha. The fact is, an agent is a middle man, an industry insider who knows editors and publishing houses and understands the book market and knows what sells and what doesn't. An agent knows all the things a writer doesn't necessarily know, or want to know. And an agent does all the things ... like attend book fairs and schmooze and pitch and promote ... that a person like me would rather not do. I prefer to stay home and write about imaginary people.

But my agent is more than just a deal maker. She's a former editor herself, and, I suspect, was a hair dresser or lumberjack in a previous life because she's that fond of cutting. She has no qualms telling me, "Well, I like it [it meaning the draft manuscript] but it's a little long. Cut a third."

howl howl howl

Which leads me to another hat she wears: amateur shrink. Because sometimes I need the professional who can talk me down from the ledge. ("Don't jump, Maria. Just cut a third.") She puts up with my pouty-verging-on-pugnacious responses to her excellent suggestions, and even when I walk around my office fussing and fuming and INSISTING to myself that I can't POSSIBLY cut a third ... she's always right and the book is better once I've calmed down and done the work.

Which leads me to another hat she wears: wise counselor. Because even though my editor is a goddess and my publisher is terrific sometimes the sales department is ... okay, I won't write that bad word. Let's just say negotiations about the cover for my first book didn't go very well, and after Edite listened patiently to me rant over the phone, she said, "Now. Let's think about how you can convey those opinions in a professional way that they will listen to."

Ah. Yes. Professionalism. Forgot about that. Because when we write a book, it's our baby, and we think it's perfect and we love it. But if this is a job and a living we have to understand that it's not a baby. It's a piece of intellectual property we hope to sell, and we need to be professionals about marketing it and negotiating a price for it. We need a contract, we need ironclad agreements and clear deadlines. We need a savvy agent to pull that all together.

Which leads me to the most important thing about my editor: she's good. She took the first novel I've ever written and sold it to a major publishing house in three weeks. After we closed the deal, I remarked to my new editor that I felt so grateful, not only that they read it so quickly but that they read it at all. She looked shocked.

"Well, Edite sent it. Of course we read it right away."

I have friends who published their first books some 20 years ago and didn't have agents. They tell me things have changed and everyone needs an agent these days. I can't speak for everyone; but I sure needed, and need, mine.

Where Stories Begin

2010-03-22T08:17:00.000-07:00

Where do you get your ideas?

When I visit schools I can always count on students to ask that question. You’d think by now I’d have an answer.

The fact is: I have no clue. I have a process, so to speak. I have a rhythm to my days and to my reading, and I keep a writing journal where I literally scribble thoughts with no regard to coherence or punctuation. My advisor in college introduced me to Peter Elbow’s Writing Without Teachers, and I’ve used the techniques in that book to pull stories from my imagination onto the page. But where a particular idea or character comes from is anyone’s guess.

Teachers say Write What You Know. But what does that mean, really? I play tennis and just completed a book with a character who plays tennis. Those scenes were very easy to write. But another character in the book is a ballet dancer, and I can scarcely touch my toes. To write the dance scenes, I had to rely on research … which included interviewing dancers, reading books on dance, watching instructional videos, and even attempting to go en pointe in toe shoes (Which, by the way, I do not recommend. Ouch).

No one could ever accuse me of knowing dance. I’ve seen it, I love it, I attend the ballet, but that world is beyond my experience or abilities. Yet the dancers who have read my chapters tell me I got it right. How can that be, if we’re supposed to Write What We Know?

I think the knowing here is not necessarily about facts. We can research facts and go out and gather enough details to make scenes and situations authentic. But what we know, and what we are ultimately compelled to write about, are emotional truths. The patina of factual accuracy is not what drives a story, although it can bring a story to a dead stop if you get it wrong. Emotional truth is what makes a story come to life, and we have to write about what we know is emotionally true. I can’t dance, but I know about performance pressure, the desire to excel at something you love, and disappointment if you don’t meet your goals. Because I know those things, I could write about my dancer.

So I suppose one place where my stories start is feelings. At the time I wrote Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress, my middle-school aged children were going through the difficult phase (which I had gone through at the same age) of growing apart from old friends. Their pain was palpable; it brought back my own memories from those days. I knew I wanted to write a story about girl who had lost her best friend, so I began by mining those emotions and memories and what I knew to be true about that experience. A narrator emerged, and as I got to know her, the plot followed.

I’m sure there are hundreds of different answers to the Where-Do-You-Get-Your-Ideas question … and I’m always fascinated by writers describing their stories’ beginnings … but for me, even if the answer varies a bit from book to book, it always starts with a feeling. Tapping into what I know is emotionally true about a character is the only way I can write.

Adults: MIA in YA?

2010-03-15T08:18:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading a fun, paranormal young adult romance called Shiver by Maggie Steifvater and it got me thinking about how adults are portrayed in books written for teens. This is something I wrestle with in my own novels, especially since the formula in a lot of YA these days seems to be that adults are either Missing in Action or idiotic.

In Shiver, the adults are inept/neglectful at best, and murderous at worst. Don’t get me wrong: I really loved Shiver (and just added it to the Book Talk section on my website) which is a wonderfully imaginative, beautifully written girl-meets-boy-who-is-also-a-werewolf romance. Much of the plot is driven by the premise that the protagonist’s parents are fairly indifferent guardians, leaving her free to host a wolf-boy not only in their house but in her bed, unbeknownst to them.

It’s a Teen Theme: Parents Don’t Get Us. Parents don’t communicate with us. They don’t understand our pain. Adults are pretty stupid. In Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, the parents communicate with their clearly depressed daughter by leaving notes for her as they zip off to work. In Carl Hiassen’s Hoot, adults are highly comic idiots. In Libba Bray’s Going Bovine, parents are incapable of understanding or easing their teen son’s pain, whether that’s emotional or physical pain.

“Kids don’t want to read about adults,” my agent tells me. Under her direction I’ve slashed and burned countless pages containing scenes with grownups. Granted, she was right about those cuts (she tends to always be right) but I’m one of those YA authors whose teens inhabit a world where adults are clearly present and involved, for better or worse. Balancing readers’ desires for peer-centric fiction with my desire to create authentic stories has been challenging.

In the book I’ve just completed, Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best, overinvolved parents are one of the main problems facing the teen protagonists. I’ve got the stage mother and a sports-sidelines screaming father from hell in this book, so I couldn’t very well have eliminated adults completely. Still, I had to trim and cut and streamline all the scenes with the parents, in the interest of holding my readers’ attentions.

In my first book, Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress, one of the main characters is the protagonist’s grandmother. My guess is that if the plot outline and synopsis for that book had ever come before an editorial board, it would have gotten dinged. (Luckily my editor just bought the whole book outright; no board.) I can imagine the comments: “Teens don’t want to read books about grandmothers.”

Well … sure they do. If grandma is funny. If grandma has something interesting to say. If grandma actually listens to the teens in her world, and gets what they are about. In Speak, an art teacher throws the main character the lifeline she needs to save herself from drowning in depression. In Robin Brande’s Evolution, Me and Other Freaks of Nature, one of the coolest characters who helps put the whole science versus religion controversy into perspective is an adult (again, a teacher.)

Part of writing YA is understanding how important, developmentally, it is for teens to test limits, push back at authority and take ownership of their lives. Perhaps they need to see adults as inept and clueless in order to take those steps. I get that this is a device in YA; I’ve used it myself.

But if we want to write authentic stories for young adults, should “old” adults necessarily be missing in action or foolish? I don’t think so.

Picky Picky

2010-03-08T06:02:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago I finished writing the “Acknowledgements” page for my next novel, Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best. As I did with my first book, I used this space to thank a woman I’ve never seen or spoken with: the copyeditor.

Until I rode the long conveyor belt known as Bringing a Book to Publication, I had no clue what role a copyeditor played in the process. I might have guessed this was some entry-level editorial assistant who had to pay his or her dues by checking manuscripts for typos. In the hierarchy of the publishing world, I would have assumed a copyeditor was an unnoticed, unloved, underpaid serf, performing his or her sad task in a cubicle behind the Xerox machine.

I have since learned that copyeditors are the unsung heroes of the publishing world, saving hapless writers like me from embarrassment on a global scale.

I mean, there you are, with the 250 page manuscript you’ve labored over for years, revised multiple times, spell-checked, run by your agent, and sold to your editor. It’s perfect, right? Or at the very least, fairly okay. Then, they give it to some mysterious person they call The Copyeditor, who spends a few days with it and manages to find, on virtually every page, typos, misspellings and punctuation errors.

Not only that: she finds massive inconsistencies. Gross mistakes that will reveal to anyone who buys your book that you don’t know what you’re doing. She finds that in Chapter Three your main character’s mother is called Marilyn, but in Chapter Fourteen she’s called Marian. A protagonist will walk into a room wearing a blue sweater, but when he walks out the sweater is described as red. People will drive from Point A to Point B over a span of 10 hours, but after consulting with an atlas your copyeditor notes that they’d have to motor along at 120 miles per hour to cover that distance in that time.

In my novel Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress, my characters fire potato bazookas. When the copyedits for that manuscript came back, the editor had noted that in the first bazooka shooting scene the kids had loaded the potato first, then added propellant, while in the second scene they switched that order. I remember feeling exasperated over such picky attention to detail … until I called a friend who regularly constructs and shoots potato bazookas.

“That’s a really important sequence,” he told me. “Anyone who has ever fired a potato bazooka knows you load the potato first.”

Ah. “Anyone who has ever fired a potato bazooka.” In other words: not me. I am a mere observer of potato bazooka blasting, and have never owned and operated one myself. If not for my astute copyeditor, my lack of bazooka expertise would have been broadcast to the world, and the authenticity of the book severely eroded. I can imagine bazooka blasting teens tossing the novel aside in disgust, pronouncing it lame, a hoax.

Okay, I’m laying it on a bit thick here … but seriously, it would have been a problem. You don’t want your reader to come to a halt mid-sentence and question the basic facts. Otherwise the whole illusion you’ve worked so hard to create comes crashing down; game over.

So … thank you, Dear Copyeditors, for your obsessive compulsive attention to picky picky details. You’ve saved me from making mistakes which might have derailed years of hard work, and helped me maintain the illusion that I actually know what I’m writing about.

A Mess of One's Own

2010-02-28T04:31:00.000-08:00

Writers love to see where other writers write. Come to think of it, non-writers also love to see where writers write.

I remember one memorable trip I took to Key West, Florida, where I visited Ernest Hemingway's home. Overrun with six-toed cats and wallpapered with photos of immense fish, it also had a palm-cosseted blue tile outdoor pool and an open, sunny writing room over a building adjacent to the main house. (photo above left)

I remember the near-reverent hush that came over our tour group as we passed through that room. I found myself wanting to touch his typewriter, give those keys a few good clacks of my own. I'm no Hemingway fan, but I couldn't help but feel awe as I stood in the space where he wrote Nobel-prize-winning novels. This is where it all happened, I thought. As if a writing place is somehow magical space.

So not my office.

I wrote my first novel in the basement. Granted, there's heat, and the floor is carpeted. But my "office" was a windowless area off the furnace room, and I allowed it to become a dumping ground for files and boxes of photos and ... shells from Florida and my old baby shoes and ... oh, the list goes on. The horror, the horror. I've actually included a picture of that computer desk in the slideshow I present to students when I do author visits. I wrote Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress here:

Things picked up a bit after Brett. I abandoned my hopelessly dark and messy cave and moved to a corner of the den, where there are windows and a delightful woodstove. I can get away from everyone here and work in relative quiet and if I cran my neck hard enough can check out the weather through the line of small, high windows behind me. I wrote Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best here:

To date these far-from-magical spaces have worked for me, but I'll confess: I want more. I want the Hemingwayesque Florida studio. I want the daybed for lounging when I feel the need to "create" from a horizontal position. I want the cozy writer's cottage surrounded by flowers, perhaps with a view (the ocean?)and most certainly with an amazing desk. Pottery Barn makes a nice one:

Ask anyone who knows me: I'm not a materialistic person. I rarely shop, I don't care about cars or jewelry or stuff of any sort. The only things I buy which I probably don't need to buy are books (I'm a sucker for a beautiful hardcover ...) But when it comes to a writing place, and I check out where writers work, I feel true longing.

When we first moved to Maine, my writing place was pretty amazing. It was an old stable which had been converted into an artist's studio and it gleamed with blond wood and white bookshelves. One entire wall was lined with long windows, and the only heat source was a woodstove. I would write on a makeshift desk that looked into the yard, and whenever I pulled my attention away from the page I could see the resident red squirrels run up and down the trees.

Unfortunately, that studio was part of a rental, and we eventually had to move. I took to writing in coffee shops after that, mostly because we had very young children and I needed to get out of the house for a couple of hours. The "white noise" of patrons chatting and the smell of really, really good coffee actually helped me carve out a focused, creative space in my head, and I got some good work done at Wild Oats and The Bohemian Coffeeshop in Brunswick.

Still, as I take my first tentative steps into a third novel, I'm wondering whether an upgrade is possible. One writing friend put a shed in her backyard and fixed it up into a very cozy writing "house." I think Annie Dillard writes in a shed. It's worked quite well for her ....

Of course, the good news is that while an extraordinary writing place is a wonderful thing, it's not a necessary thing. Quiet, paper, and a few square feet that you can walk away from and trust that what you've left there will remain undisturbed until your return, is really all that's needed. Ultimately, the magic is all in your head. In the imaginative mess of one's own we writers create.

Shall We Dance?

2010-02-22T02:40:00.000-08:00

Forget the foxtrot. Forget the jitterbug, swing, the rhumba, mambo, shagging, pogo, slam, the electric slide or that cruise-ship-and-elementary-school-gym-class favorite: the macarena.

Today's teens grind. And if you thought Elvis and those too-hot-for-television hips were racy, you ain't seen nothin'.

At the public high school in the Maine town where I live, the Vice Principal has banned dances until further notice as a result of grinding. In other towns, administrators have taken a more creative approach. I read of one case where the students must sign pledges and agree to shun obscene dancing. This earns them a bracelet (something approximating the type you get when you're admitted to the hospital) which they must wear at the dance. If they violate their pledge (use your imagination) their bracelet is snipped and they are ejected. By some burly chaperone, no doubt.

Ah chaperones. The unsung heroes of the public school system. Made of tougher stuff than me. I cannot imagine eyeballing a gym's worth of writhing teenagers, flash assessing obscene behavior and pulling the culprits apart. I can understand why a Vice Principal may decide to not go down that road.

What I know about grinding I've heard from my own teens as well as gleaned from the panicked parental rumor mill in our town. Plus, when a mother of teens from Pittsburgh mentioned that grinding was a concern for her (why did I think it was only happening in Maine?)I decided to do a You Tube search for grinding.

The videos ran the gamut: from dance studio instructors demonstrating the six basic steps in Beyonce's All the Single Ladies music video, to freak dancing at clubs to blurry hand-held camera footage of eighth graders simulating sexual intercourse. The latter approached what I imagine an orgy might look like. Seriously. I had considered posting examples, but because I write novels for readers as young as sixth grade, and some visit this blog, I decided to pass.

I wear my author's cap for the purposes of this blog, so I will resist parental ranting about grinding. I'm trying to understand it in order to authentically portray the characters in my books, just as I had to get up to speed on text and instant messaging, Facebook, and playing phone pranks on a cell phone. I'm not judging; just trying to understand.

Still, my age and maternity encroach, and I find myself thinking of the movie Red Hot Ballroom. If you haven't seen it, run (don't walk) to your nearest video store and check it out. It's a documentary about an annual citywide ballroom dance competition that takes place among New York's elementary school students. Watch these little kids move and your faith in the future will be affirmed. Watch as they master difficult dances and show us how joy and beauty can emerge from form.

My advisor in college, the poet Robert Pack, was a big believer in form. He believed that the formalistic rigor in writing something as complicated as a sestina or a sonnet actually released creativity instead of inhibiting it. Adhering to form opened possibilities, he felt. It made you work a little harder, and wonderful things resulted.

Some of the hip hop moves I found on You Tube under the search "grinding" were pretty cool, complicated steps that would require a lot of practice and talent to perform. Other examples of "grinding" I've seen done much better by the dogs in my neighborhood. I guess it's up to the chaperones to sort it all out.

Speaking Boy

2010-02-08T06:07:00.000-08:00

I’m trying something new with my next novel: narrating from a male point-of-view. A teenage male, no less.

For a woman-of-a-certain-age, like myself, (you fill in the number) this is a stretch. Not only because I have to adopt the parlance of the high school cafeteria, but I have to inhabit the mind of a 17-year old boy and try to respond to the world his way. Everyone advises me to just keep thinking sex, sex, sex, sex … and occasionally FOOD!

But that’s the stereotype, isn’t it? Thuggish preoccupation with overwhelming physical need. Best expressed in sentence fragments and obscenities.

Boys are so much more. I know my boy is, and I’m fascinated by the layers of teasing, random anecdote, sports talk, current events talk, and NO talk we have to mine before hitting the rich, emotional lode our young man carries within. It’s a process, and requires me to unhinge my own gateways into conversation and simply remain open; listening and waiting.

The linguist, Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don’t Understand, posits that men and women speak so differently that their conversations are essentially cross-cultural communication. I totally buy that, and incorporating that premise into my day-to-day has added a level of humor and depth of understanding between my husband and myself that has helped our marriage survive. It’s helped me talk to my son. Expressing it artistically, however, is another challenge.

So in addition to eavesdropping on teenagers and consulting with my own teens, I’ve been looking for role models: authors who have “cracked” the authentic, contemporary male voice. Sherman Alexie’s Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian tops my list, as does Libba Bray’s Going Bovine. It’s encouraging to me that Libba is a woman (You go, girl! You speak boy!) Right now I’m halfway through Garret Freymann-Weyr’s After the Moment, a novel in which she very consciously explores notions of masculinity and a male point-of-view.

My wonderful editor at Knopf, Nancy Hinkel, recommended Tim Tharp, both Knights of the Hill Country and The Spectacular Now, along with a historical novel by Victoria McKernan called Shackleton’s Stowaway and a book about chess competition called Perpetual Check, by Rich Wallace.

The stack of books on my night table teeters at this point … but any other role models you might suggest?

This blog is on vacation next week. Next post will be February 22nd.

Wanted: An Honest Critic

2010-01-31T07:33:00.000-08:00

When I was 21 I attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and almost gave up fiction writing altogether.

My manuscript was critiqued by the novelist Stanley Elkin, an exceedingly grouchy, old white man whom I now suspect was in some significant pain; he had MS, was in a wheelchair and often called attention to the fact. He was prolific and successful and smart and ruthless. I was eager and inexperienced and unskilled and vulnerable. He told me my manuscript wasn’t a manuscript at all; he didn’t know what it was. The characters were undeveloped and unbelievable, the writing poor, the plot non-existent … there was more, but I’ve blocked it from my memory. I do know I cried, right there in front of him, and he looked genuinely surprised.

“This is going to help you,” he said, with a tone that hinted of helpfulness. Then, he lapsed back into attack mode.

I cried for most of the rest of that day. Another friend, also 21 and also assigned to Stanley, drank half a bottle of Scotch following his critique. Both of us vowed to never write again.

Twenty-seven years and three book deals later, I finally understand what Stanley was up to. If called upon to critique, you’ve gotta be cruel to be kind. Well … maybe not exactly cruel. But honest. If someone is trying to break into this business and make a career out of writing, you aren’t doing them any favors by avoiding the hard truth. One could waste years sending out seriously flawed manuscripts which “nice” people say are wonderful.

Friends don’t let friends write poorly. Put that on my bumper.

When I was in that isolated, full-of-self-doubt place called Drafting a First Novel, I shared the first 50 pages with a writer friend and a college acquaintance who has her own imprint at a major publishing house. My writer friend, who is an extremely nice person and has published many books, was … extremely nice. “You have talent!” he enthused. Imprint Woman delivered the goods. She treated me like a potential client: she told me exactly what was missing and why she wouldn’t be able to pitch it to a committee. This did not make me happy, but it set me on the right course. I rewrote, and a year later had an agent who also set the bar high and pushed me to rewrite. And cut. A third of the manuscript, if you can imagine. It was like surgery without a spinal block. But … she sold that baby. And now I have an amazing editor who helps me improve my writing.

Your favorite elementary school teacher, the person you sleep with, your best friend and your mom are not going to give you the straight poop. Not only is it unlikely that they have the editing/critiquing skills you need, but they don’t want to make you feel badly. Stanley Elkin had no such tender feelings toward me, so he didn’t hold back.

So if we don’t have agents and editors already, where do we go for genuine critique? Among my writer friends I’ve witnessed several good options. Some make the commitment to obtain MFAs at non-residential programs; others attend writers’ conferences in which they submit manuscripts for critique. Some form critique groups. One friend hit the jackpot and received excellent advice from a writer in our town who is not only highly skilled and successful, but also a kind, constructive teacher. Bingo.

My Scotch-drinking fellow sufferer went on to write for magazines and become an editor at Rolling Stone. Stanley Elkin published 10 novels, two volumes of novellas, two books of short stories and a collection of essays. Wikipedia says he obtained great critical acclaim throughout his career, but not much commercial success. He died in 1995. RIP.

The F Bomb

2010-01-25T07:13:00.000-08:00

So I tried a little experiment the other day. I pulled out a popular, commercially successful YA novel which had been published by a reputable house and turned into a successful motion picture and counted the “fucks” on every page.

That got a little boring (there were a lot of them) so I decided to simply check to see if the F Word appeared on every page. That became tedious as well (few pages lacked a “fuck”), especially because I became distracted by all the “shits” and considered tabulating their occurrences, too.

This little experiment actually had a point. I’ve been wondering: if YA dialect is to be authentic, must it necessarily be obscene? And yes, I do mean dialect, not dialogue. Face it, grownups: they speak a version of English more easily translated in the Urban Dictionary than the Oxford English Dictionary. More than occasionally I hear a word emerge from a teenage mouth and I wonder: what the dickens did that mean? For example: rager. Until recently I didn’t know a rager was a big party, and I’m not alone in my ignorance. I was out hiking with moms-of-teenage-kids and I asked the group, “So, who knows what a rager is?” and nary a soul could answer. So, yes, teens speak in dialect.

But, back to the potty mouth. I ask you: really?

Are today’s teenagers swearing to such an extent that a realistic depiction of their conversation translates into an F Bomb or more per page? I consider this just as I complete a scene in my latest novel in which the F Bomb most certainly appears and feels appropriate. The characters’ language is consistent with their behavior and deportment and the choices they make later in the book. Then again … am I just being lazy? Do I hope to find an authentic voice by simply sprinkling the text with a few swears, plus the occasional “dude” and the ever-present “like”? (As in, “It was, like, you know, totally awesome, dude, like, you wouldn’t believe it!”)

My brother and his family recently returned from a trip in Ireland, and my little nephew, all of seven years old, commented, “All the kids are always saying …” He leaned in to whisper: “Fuck!” Yes indeedy the F Bomb is alive and well among Irish youth today … and if you don’t believe my nephew check out Roddy Doyle’s books. I was thumbing through The Barrytown Trilogy and saw more F’s per page than in the aforementioned YA-novel-turned-into-a-successful-motion-picture.

But here’s the deal: Doyle’s dialogue rings true. He knows his characters, this is how they speak to each other, and if it’s a struggle to understand it on the page, try reading it out loud. You hear real people, you get caught up the cadences of their language, and before you know it you are transported into their world.

Author (and newly minted Printz Award winner!) Libba Bray does this very well. Her teenage-boy narrator in Going Bovine, with all his variations on the word “suck” and the proliferation of “dude!” is pure American teen. I believe in this boy and I walk alongside him on his journey. Likewise, the obscenity-free Victorian-era patter of her teenage girls in A Great and Terrible Beauty. Their language, more than anything else, helped place me in a time and space quite different to my own.

I know dang well that a single F-Bomb might keep my book off certain library shelves. But I also know that in my quest for authentic voice, I may have to choose words and language which I personally may not use, but which my characters will use. I guess the challenge is to use the language carefully and not gratuitously. But I guess that can be said for every word on the page. Le mot juste, and all that.

Same as it Ever Was ....

2010-01-17T15:35:00.000-08:00

So I’ve probably revealed a bit about myself by titling this post with a line from a “Talking Heads” song, but after mucking about in the on-line chatter over 15-year old Tess Chapin from New York City, the party music of my youth has taken up a steady beat in my brain.

In case you haven’t heard, which is hard to imagine: Tess Chapin is grounded. She attended a party where there were no adults, drank alcohol, and returned home one hour past her curfew. Her parents have grounded her for five weeks, and Tess has launched a campaign on Facebook to have her “groundation” lifted. The New York Times got hold of the story, blogged about it, and a firestorm of comment and debate (some civil; much not) has erupted between parents and teens everywhere.

Back when I was a producer at a “talk” radio station in Atlanta, Georgia many years ago, we called this a “water cooler” story. That meant stories people talked about at work when they bumped into each other at the water cooler/the coffee machine/the lunch counter. “Water cooler” stories may lead to tears or belly laughs or shouts and shrieks, depending on their content. They elicit very strong, often polarizing reactions. They always lead to retelling; they’re viral.

As the parent of two teenagers you can imagine which camp I fall into. As a writer combing through all the posts, I’ve been fascinated not only by the opinions expressed but also by the “voices.” The adult condescension/wisdom/warnings/threats/pleadings. The youthful rebellion/humor/naivete/obscenity/pleadings. Pleading to be heard. Pleading to be understood. Pleading don’t-screw-up-your-life. Pleading let-me-live-my-life.

Same as it ever was …

Coincidently, I was working this past week on a chapter in which a group of 17-year olds have gotten their hands on a case of beer and are drinking it at night, lying on blankets in the middle of a football field and gazing up at the stars. (It started as a case of Corona, but my 16-year old daughter reminded me that these particular middle-class kids would not be drinking imported Mexican beer. She suggested Budweiser but I went with Rolling Rock … and yes, those are the sorts of questions I wrestle with throughout a manuscript ….) I’ll confess that it’s been fun to step out of my parent skin and sprawl drunkenly beneath the stars with friends. It’s been fun to abandon my role as purveyor of sage advice and experience. It’s been interesting to crawl back into my teenage self and remember why I did the things I did.

I don’t recall, ever, when I was making reckless choices about drinking or driving or sex, that my behavior was based on any sort of a big “F- You!” to my parents. Actually, their advice and their rules and their example played no part in the decisions I made at the moment. I was too full of life and energy and “YES!” to consider consequences. I was too busy riding the incredible rush of being and feeling young.

If there was any great imperative guiding my choices it was the overwhelming need for contact and relevance in the world of my peers. I didn’t necessarily have to be popular: I just didn’t want to be left out. Now that I have a spouse and two children of my own, I’m apt to forget that as a teen I felt an existential, consuming loneliness that evaporated when I felt that my peers accepted me. It’s a dangerous combination: all that energy and all that loneliness. No wonder the good advice of involved parents often falls on deaf ears.

Still, if my kids are any example, I'd say despite the tuned out looks and the snarky responses to my always-excellent (!) advice, their hearts are open and they do hear us. Whether that influences their behavior at any given moment is another question, but I have noticed that when I shut up for a minute and listen ... really listen ... to them, they return the favor. It doesn't mean anyone is going to change his or her mind or yield any ground, but it's a start.

So, the Chapin parents must ground, and hold their ground. Tess must struggle mightily against any restrictions. And all must rail about the inability of the other to hear/understand/act accordingly. In the worst cases, something bad happens and relationships are irretrievably wrecked. In the best, love and good humor and good sense prevails and we muddle on, so that we parents live to see our children chiding their teens, and our children live to hear our words of wisdom emerge from their mouths.

In Praise of Verbs

2010-01-11T07:00:00.000-08:00

I can name the author, book, chapter, page number and very sentence responsible for transforming me into an Ardent Believer in Verbs. We’re talking Saul-in-the-Blinding-Light-of-God epiphany here, and my writing has never been the same.

The book was The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx. Chapter 32, “The Hairy Devil,” page 254.

Up to that point, ie. the preceding 253 pages, I had ridden the delightful waves of her buoyant, unpredictable prose without quite realizing its effect on me. I’d smile when I read her descriptions of a rainy wharf: “Rain sluiced over the upturned [boat] bottom, pattered on the stones. … A man leaning in a doorframe, hands draining into his pockets.” Or a scene inside the offices of the The Shipping News: “Car doors slammed outside, Billy Pretty’s voice seesawed. Nutbeam snapped up alertly.”

Proulx’s rain didn’t fall: it sluiced and pattered. Hands weren’t thrust into pockets: they drained. Voices didn’t get louder and softer: they seesawed.

Assertively and efficiently, the author employed verbs not only to tell me what her characters were doing, but also how things looked and how they sounded. She was also telling me a little about how her characters felt: a man whose hands are draining into his pockets is in a different state of mind from a man whose hands are balled into fists and jammed into his pockets.

Then, at page 254, one of the main characters (Tert Card) approached a deli platter, and my writing life changed:

“He plucked at the plastic wrap, seized a handful of ham, and shoved it into his mouth.”

I stopped. I reread. I counted: plucked, seized, shoved. In three verbs and one line, Proulx told me all about Tert Card’s state of mind and foreshadowed the brutish events to follow. No adjectives, no physical descriptions, no annoying adverbs. Just simple, unequivocal language.

Maybe if I had chanced on the sentence out of context I wouldn’t have thought much of it. But the whole novel had been working on me for 253 pages, and finally, with that single sentence, something clicked.

Verbs rule. Verbs are the bomb. Verbs have got it goin’ on.

Granted, The Shipping News has some pretty rad adjectives, too, and more than 300 pages of take-your-breath-away sentences. One writer friend of mine asserts that the final line in this novel is one of the best final lines of all time … more on that later … but for a Writer Apprentice like me, who reads not only for joy but also to improve my craft, this book taught me an important lesson.

My words don’t approach the richness of Annie Proulx’s language, but I’ve got a few ideas for strengthening my verbs. First, I whip out a red pen, and hunt down every “to be” verb on a page. Any time is, was, are or were occurs, I ask myself “What’s the action here? Can I substitute a better verb which gives the reader more information and enhances the scene without piling on adjectives? Sometimes the answer is no: to be just simply must … be. Other times a wonderful verb will flex its muscles and step into the sentence. Amazingly, the sentence sings.

So, I’m a believer. Better yet: I believe. Drinking that Verb Kool Aid and working toward better and better writing.

Oh, and about that final line? The question circulated on Facebook not long ago, and folks voted for their favorite all-time-best-last-novel-line. I vacillated between the last line in The Great Gatsby and the last line in James Joyce’s short story The Dead. But then my friend reminded me of the final line in The Shipping News and despite the presence of the “to be” verb I had to agree:

“And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.”

2010-01-04T07:14:00.000-08:00

YA ... Why Not?

I’ll confess: I wrote my first Young Adult novel by accident.

I wasn’t new to writing. For close to a quarter of a century I’d been a writing “apprentice” in the truest sense of the word. I had boxes of scribbles, drafts and old journals stacked in the basement. Plenty of essays, articles and stories … some published, some not A little bona fide writing income of various sorts. But no complete work of fiction, with a beginning, middle and end.

Then, I heard her voice.

This fourteen-year-old kid, in my head, telling her story. Improbably, I knew her. I liked her. I saw her. I laughed out loud at the funny things she said … which tended to be a little embarrassing when others at the dinner party didn’t know what the hell I was laughing about … and I cried, tears pouring down my cheeks as I pecked away at the computer and she shared her saddest moments with me. Before I knew it I was writing a novel. Spending whole days, weeks, and months alone in my basement office with make-believe people. Receiving no paycheck. Unable to account for myself when people asked what I’d done all day.

I got a little weird during this process. My family would tell you I got very weird. When it was over I had a stack of pages filled with teenagers flying up and over a story arc. I got lucky, and a publisher decided those pages could be a hardcover book with an ISBN number. Today I find myself smack dab in the middle of a genre, with the career I always wanted but the audience I never expected.

I also find myself a tad surprised by the … do I dare say it? … lack of respect my beloved genre receives. It startles me, because more than a few of the best books I’ve read in years are “young adult” novels. Nevertheless, many adult readers, writers, and so-called keepers of the literary canon don’t seem to view the genre as bona fide.

One acquaintance, who is having trouble selling her “adult” novel, remarked to me that she might just need to bang out a YA and sell that, since it’s so much easier to do. At a recent gathering of my book group, where we had just read The Book Thief, one member sniffed that she certainly hoped we weren’t going to start reading teen books now because she didn’t have time for that sort of thing. And when I recently visited the website for my “alma mater” Bread Loaf Writers Conference, I was stunned to discover that they not only exclude YA writers from their faculty, but do not accept YA manuscripts for consideration for scholarships.

Newly-minted, mid-list writers like me aren’t the only ones feeling the pain. Margo Rabb, the author of the bestselling Cures for Heartbreak, describes in her essay, “I’m Y.A. and I’m O.K.” that when she told a writing friend that the book was going to be published by Random House in the Children’s division, the reaction was: “Oh my god. That’s such a shame.” National Book Award winning author, Sherman Alexie, reports similar sentiments: “I thought I’d been condescended to as an Indian — that was nothing compared to the condescension for writing Y.A.”

To be sure, a YA novel is different from an adult book. The pacing is quicker. The amount and type of description is different. Thematically, one is aware of the appropriateness of the material, and particularly with first person-narratives the voice has to be authentically “teen.” Of course, even as I write this I’m thinking of the proliferation of “crossover” books snatched up by young and “old” adults alike. Blockbusters like Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, Marcus Zusak’s The Book Thief, Meg Rosoff’s How I Live Now … I could go on and on … not only appeal to teens but in some cases are also marketed as adult books.

So, what is YA? Does the definition matter? And is it real writing?

Luckily, I have a live-in YA consultant who helps me sort through all this: my 16-year old daughter. She has little patience for all the literary hand-wringing, and, as she does with all things, cuts right to the heart of the matter.

“If you want to write YA you have to understand how kids feel,” she tells me.

Ah. Feelings. There’s the rub. Because if there’s one thing that distinguishes YA readers from adult readers it’s the response to the work. Teens respond to books the way they respond to everything: emotionally, the intellect nowhere in evidence. Your typical teen reader is not excited by beautiful imagery or lovely description. Thematic complexity is a big bore; even plot, to a certain extent, takes a back seat to the heartstrings. Teens read in order to get on board the roller coaster of feeling, and the job of a YA novelist is to take them on that ride.

When I talk to kids who have read my book, Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress, they can’t wait to tell me how certain scenes or characters made them feel. “Ohmygod I can’t stand Jeanne Anne!” they exclaim. “I love Mr. Beady!” they confide. “Bob is so hot!” they agree. Note: the book contains no physical description of Bob. They have conjured his hotness purely from their own emotional, hormonal imaginations. Such is the YA reader.

When I recall the books I’ve loved in my life, inevitably the list draws from the novels I read as a teen. They are burned into my imagination. From day to day I can’t remember what I need to pick up at the grocery store, and I stumble when asked to recount the basic premise of an “adult” book I’ve read within the last year. But I can picture in my mind’s eye the look on Mercy’s face when her beloved, long-missing John burst into her house in Wethersfield and buried his face in her lap (The Witch of Blackbird Pond). I can smell the burning flesh, see the boy staring stupidly at his hand, coated in molten silver (Johnny Tremain). I recall my heart pounding as Jan crawled through gutters and tunnels to evade the Nazis (Escape from Warsaw).

There’s something extraordinary about the love affair we have with our books when we’re young, and as a YA author I feel so lucky to have stumbled back into that world. I’ve had to open my heart again to the experience of “firsts”: first love, first betrayal, first loss. I’ve had to pare the words down to their most evocative and most true, because kids don’t want and can’t handle too many words. (Note the blank looks that come over their faces as we blah blah blah at them in tones reminiscent of Charlie Brown’s teacher.) I’ve had to listen, really listen, to how kids talk to each other, because YA readers love dialogue, and if you get the voice wrong you’ve lost them. I’ve had to revisit that time of life when, for better or worse, you lead with your heart and check your brain at the door.

And as any writer would agree, the best stories begin at the heart.

So, to my utter surprise, I think I’m here to stay. Coming of age, a work in progress, an apprentice for life … but completely committed to creating the best novels I possibly can for young adults. Because whether or not I’m a real writer, they are real readers.