Welcome to The Next Big Thing Blog Hop, a rather innovative way for authors to give some exposure to all the secret things we do while holed away and muttering to ourselves. I’m happy to be part of it and to celebrate our general author-hood by answering some questions.

I was tagged by fellow Austinite E. Kristin Anderson, a brilliantly talented author with quite a few projects up her sleeve. She’s an integral part of the Austin kidlit/YA community and a very fun person on top of that.

Anyway, on to the questions:

1: What is the working title of your book(s)?

HALLWAY OF 1,000 POSSIBILITIES, though that will very likely change. The book has evolved so much that what was once a hallway isn’t even really a hallway anymore. It’s more of a mushy corridor.

2: Where did the idea come from for the book?

I’ve always been fascinated by psychology, and by the way stories (particularly fairytales) externalize villains. Even as a kid, it seemed to me that the worst monsters and demons live inside us, and that facing the truly scary things involves facing ourselves. I guess I unconsciously decided to write a book that tackles this notion.

3: What genre does your book come under?

Fantasy/Psychological thriller

4: Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Oh, man. Well, Elle Fanning or a slightly younger version of Elizabeth Olsen would be great for my protagonist, Lena. Both would have to dye their hair black. Helena Bonham Carter has always been a shoo-in for the Witch (even BEFORE her Bellatrix Lestrange tenure). Morgan Freeman might make an excellent Professor. Asa Butterfield would be a haunting Stowaway. And the Nun….you know, I have perennially pictured her as Lilith from “Cheers.”

5: What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Troubled thirteen-year-old Lena’s only refuge is to retreat into the cold grey matter of her head where the People live: the Witch, Professor, Stowaway, and Nun are her friends and protectors, keeping Lena safe from her abusive mother— but when Lena refuses to acknowledge how dangerous her mother is, and when the People are kidnapped by the Ghouls, Lena must do battle to save them all.

6: Is your book self-published, published by an independent publisher, or represented by an agency?

I will be finishing in the next few months, and then on to the next great adventure of querying agents.

7: How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

A. Long. Time. From now on, the novels I write will be tightly plotted/outlined BEFORE I begin writing.

8: What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Hmm. I suppose it would appeal to those reader-y sensibilities that devour books like Coraline, A Monster Calls, and Summer and Bird.

9: Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Well, more than anything, a fascination with people and their myriad, wildly creative coping skills.

10: What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

I’m hoping that despite how psychologically complex the undertones of the book are, it will come across primarily as an adventure story. Older/more sophisticated readers won’t have any trouble spotting its psychological currents, though, so my hope is that it’ll appeal on a few levels.

Please check out the blog of my fellow author Samantha Clark, another brilliant Austinite YA author. She’ll be joining the Hop next week on the 20th. Bookmark her blog and check back in next Wednesday!

So something very interesting happened the other day, something I was loathe to reveal for a while because I thought it would make an unsavory statement about my psychological health. But after careful consideration I realized that whatever this incident means, it indicates that I’m not boring, so that must be good.

The scene needs some set-up: every night, my husband and I put our two dogs—a German Shepherd and an American Eskimo—to bed in our foyer by the front door. We put up a baby gate to secure them in that space because I don’t trust our Eskie alone at night in the living room, since she has been known to destroy things and is therefore not allowed on the couch. From the upstairs landing, my husband and I can look down on the living room, but we can’t see the dogs in their little nook.

So the other night we put the dogs to bed and went upstairs. I realized I’d forgotten something downstairs, turned on the landing light, and looked down on the living room to see the Eskie curled up comfortably on the couch, staring back up at me. A shaft of eerie half-light was falling on her. Her expression was like Irene Adler’s after Sherlock had bested her—unabashed, calm, collected, still conniving.

I froze. And what was my first thought? My very first, raw, unmitigated thought? It was: “Oh my God, our dog is an utterly sentient being with above-human intelligence, who waits every night till we go to bed, then jumps the gate and goes to sleep on the couch. She’s so smart, in fact, that when she hears us stirring in the morning, she jumps back over the gate so we’ll never know. All this time, she’s picked our hapless household in which to brew her cunning plans, which are to equalize relations between humans and the alien canine-species to which she belongs.”

Seriously. And the weirdest part is that I stood there thinking this for a good minute. That’s a long time. I kept running the scenario through my head, staring into my dog’s beedy little sentient eyes, wondering if she was about to talk to me and tell me she’s been on to me for years.

Anyway. Once I came to my senses and realized that we had simply forgotten to put the gate up, the incident raised all sorts of fascinating questions for me. Questions like, where did my trusty pragmatism go, in that moment? Is this simply what happens to people who read and write so much fantasy and science fiction that it’s bleeding out of their ears—does it eventually take up residence in the brain? If so, how much residence? 50%? 25%? Do all fantasy and science fiction authors harbor the same alarming capacity to suspend their disbelief? I certainly hope so. I hope I wouldn’t be the only fool that invading aliens would think to contact first, just because they knew I’d buy whatever story they tossed at me.

Despite my authorings, in life I’m a skeptical person. I like the scientific method, I require proof and data. But wow, all it took was a haunting shaft of light and a creepy stare from the dog for the contents of my brain to Reveal Themselves.

I think I will read some non-fiction for a while. About gardening.

In my defense, the dog really was looking at me like she was one of the rats of NIMH. Except she’s a dog.

Also I blame Dr. Who.

So it was recently put to me that even though, as a blogger, I often feel that the well has run dry in terms of what people might want to hear about, I am probably wrong about this.

The conversation went something like this:

Me: I just don’t know what to say on my blog. I’m just not blog-minded. I mean, all I ever think about is writing, and who wants to hear about that?

Other person: Blank stare. You’re kidding, right? Did you just hear yourself? Haven’t you ever read someone’s posts on writing and been inspired?

And that was it—voila, the folly of my ways was revealed to me.

I think the problem is, deep down, I didn’t know if I felt qualified to talk about the way I think about writing, because I think I was convinced that the way I think about writing is weird. This isn’t uncommon, among us somewhat neurotic and self-conscious writing bunch, to feel that we are anomalies among our contemporaries. Which gave me the courage to really examine my own thinking.

The way I think about writing is heavily influenced by the way I think about drawing. I have seen by now that this “way” of thinking about drawing has both served and not served me. Namely, for most of my life I have had trouble articulating exactly why I felt something should be drawn a certain way. I felt the picture deep down, on a gut level, but I couldn’t articulate it. I have found that this is a seductive, popular way to think about art: that it’s gifted by the muses, a matter of lightning striking, or not there at all. But that’s just not true.

Years ago, a friend who had gone to art school pointed out that I needed to learn to articulate exactly why I did and didn’t like certain pieces of art, and to articulate how I think about my own. This had never occurred to me before. I saw that I’d been wrongly assuming I needed to preserve the mystique of my own intuition, going so far as to keep my exact reasons for the way I draw a picture even from myself. I think I actually believed that if I think too much about a picture, it will go down the tubes as I’m creating it.

And there is some truth to that, at least for me—there is definitely something about letting the subconscious take over, to reacting from the gut, to having a dialog with a picture as it’s developing that sometimes feels very far away, as if you’re watching someone else create the picture. And, honestly, this “zone” can be so magical and otherworldly that it’s addictive. It soothes the nervous system, balances the mind.

But there’s definitely a need, I see now, to balance this with critical thinking. To understand exactly why something in a picture is happening; to be able to come from the zone and, rather than feeling like you are at the whim of the muses, to apply your cold hard critical mind to a piece of art and take it apart, bit by bit. Thankfully, this does not wreck that nebulous, intuitive space from which pictures are born, as I feared it would; it just gives it some backbone.

And so because I am so used to the mental states required to draw, I realized that at one point I approached writing the same way. Until I learned that writing and drawing are very different beasts. Not so very long ago, I plunged forth into writing as though into a sort of 3-D picture of the world I’d created, with very little understanding of the intensely critical thinking involved in creating character, structure, plot, cohesive narrative, all that. In short, I approached it like I approached pictures: that if I wandered around in it long enough, an intuitive flash would strike me and all else would come clear. The bones of the plot would drop from the sky and place themselves neatly before me. The main character’s story arc would rise from the sea, fully formed, and embed itself in the soil, a ready-made psychological profile of the MC.

No, sir. Some people may create structure on the fly, but not I. If left to wander around in a world I have built, I will wander forever, sniffing the roses. I will forget what the heck I started out to do in the first place. I need a track, well-paved and clear, to follow; so that all the little enticements along the way are just that, and I can return to the path any time I like.

I think it comes down to trusting your critical mind. For me, still, my critical mind comes into play much more with writing than with drawing; and I think this is because drawing has been a cathartic, intuitive activity for me nearly my whole life.

And yes, I felt self-conscious about admitting that I have only learned to truly trust and employ the full range of my own critical writing mind in the last few years—and much of it in the last year. And, more every day. I somehow believed that people who are not also artists and therefore inclined to live in some diaphanous goo in their own heads were born with brilliant critical writing minds, an innate sense of structure, or at the very least the understanding that the critical mind is, well, critical to writing a book. But this is baloney, I see now. Every writer has different struggles, different strengths and weaknesses and areas of learning. It does no good to compare yourself. Other writers, I imagine, would give anything to be able to step off that path guilt-free and sniff some darn roses.

So that is a relief. I now feel freer to post about writing from the slightly ghetto-style, duct-taped, homemade, school-of-hard-knocks, but deeply sincere place it has been for me. Perhaps it will be useful to others.

Our regional Austin SCBWI conference was stunning as usual, and you can see coverage on Cynthia Leitich Smith‘s blog here. Our dazzling keynote speaker, Lisa Yee, also blogged about her conference experience here.

And every once in a while, someone’s presentation rocks the foundations of the stage they stand on, and finds its way so deeply into every audience member that there’s a palpable CHANGE going on, as if every single person in the audience’s cells are shifting and readjusting to (or deeply resonating with) the information being shared.

So I want to focus on the talk given by the incredible author/university professor Donna Jo Napoli, because I had the good fortune to remember much of what was said, and because much of the speech lies so close to my heart.

This is a totally paraphrased, condensed, summarized version of Donna Jo’s words; please bear that in mind. I will happily throw in any corrections if other conference attendees remember things I’ve forgotten or misstated.

The talk was titled “How Writing About Terrible Things Makes Your Reader a Better Person,” and, although it was basically about censorship, ended up digging far deeper than that.

Here goes:

I understand that parents want to be protective of the ways in which their children meet information about things like sex and religion….and there are some things to consider.

There are protected children—the children who have enough to eat, a bed to call their own, a private area in which to do their homework, and adults in their lives who listen to and love them, people around them that those kids can count on.

Those are the protected children….and we’re going to put them aside for a minute. Then there are children who don’t have enough food to eat, and no bed to call their own, and no place to do their homework. They go to school tired because they didn’t get enough sleep or the right things to eat. And this may not have anything to do with whether they have parents who love them; many times they do, and it’s a socioeconomic situation that keeps them from having what they need. This is one version of the unprotected child.

Then, there are the children who are completely unprotected, and those are all over the socioeconomic spectrum—they are rich and poor and from all ethnicities. All kinds of things go on behind closed doors. They have no adults in their lives they can trust. They have learned that telling what is happening to them does no good, or they have learned that telling is going to make things a whole lot worse for them. So they exist in isolation. They don’t know if there is anyone like them in the world.

Now what can be more powerful for an unprotected child than to read about other unprotected children? They need to know they aren’t alone, and how people in situations similar to theirs have coped…..

When I was little we were poor, and I didn’t know anyone else was poor. I loved the book “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” because it was about another poor child. In the book, the main character escapes *a man who is at the bottom of the stairs. But you know, I would have given anything to read about the child who didn’t escape that man.

And I would argue that the protected children need books about unprotected children even more. If you are loved, and you are well-intentioned and work hard, it becomes very easy to assume that good things have come your way simply because you worked hard, and not because you were loved. It becomes easy to walk by the homeless man on the street and say, “That’s his own damn fault, he should have worked hard.” It becomes easy to forget the opportunities you had because you were loved. And you become intolerant, and intolerable. If you are loved, books will teach you empathy for the suffering of others. Books give both protected and unprotected children the tools to cope with the world as it is.

We need to learn empathy. Empathy is the foundation of civilization. Without it we’re just animals. And one way for us to do that is through books.

Yeah….(it’s back to me, Salima, now.) Is that not amazing? If ever you have the opportunity to hear Donna Jo speak, I highly recommend it.

*I BELIEVE that’s what Donna Jo said—”a man at the bottom of the stairs.” I have not yet read the book, so if anyone who has read it needs to correct me, please do.

I have been a terrible blogger lately, for which there is no excuse, but I have been meaning to post this for a while, if that helps at all.

I have read many, many good YA books lately, but the one whose heroine made a sort of indelible impression on me is the female protagonist of Maureen Johnson’s recent thriller, “The Name of the Star.” The book itself is deliciously suspenseful and set in London, no less. But to me, the real greatness of the book lies with Rory’s character.

Reasons to love Rory:

She is simply the most grounded, down-to-earth fictional teen girl I have read about in quite a while. I love many types of stories, but I consider Rory a BA—and not because she can fight demons or demonstrates incredible physical ninja-skills or has a scheming brain or can slaughter monsters with the best of the boys (and believe me, I am a sucker for all those types of heroines in stories, and I definitely feel there is a place/need for them as well.) No, Rory’s kickass qualities are of a different type and infinitely relatable, which is why I think it’s so important to have characters like her out there. She is simply a teenager who has a very strong, centered sense of herself.

Examples:

When she arrives at boarding school and is confronted with girl cattiness, she holds her own without backing down—but she does so without becoming embroiled in the politics of the cattiness. She is understandably a little apprehensive about this new environment but does not equate her self-worth with how she is perceived, nor is she consumed with trying to fit in; she brings her quirky, funny self to the table and allows herself to think critically about the people and things around her. And she does not resort to viciousness or preoccupation with the catty girl. She just sees this girl for what she is, calls it for what it is, and goes on with her own life.

She has easy access to all her thoughts and feelings, and does not beat herself up for them. This is more important than it sounds, especially for women and girls, as we’re often so used to censoring ourselves it’s almost second nature. And I think it’s especially important when what is considered typically “strong” in a lot of media portrayal of female characters is women who “kick ass with the boys” and “don’t fall apart when things get rough.” I LOVE that Rory DOES emotionally react to things and does so unapologetically. Sure, she delves into the spectrum of emotions—confusion, anger, sadness, self-doubt, all the normal things to feel. But she isn’t consumed with trying to be otherwise, to prove herself, to be “better” or “other” than she is. She just is. She has an incredible amount of self-acceptance, which I found the most empowering of all.

As far as her romance with Jerome goes, this was another refreshing aspect of the story, another place where her very intact, independent sense of self comes in. I’ve never seen this in a heroine before: she likes Jerome, is attracted to him because of his fun, quirky, easygoing qualities—the way Johnson wrote him, he is as human as Rory is. And on Rory’s part, she doesn’t idealize him at all; she just likes him, thinks he’s interesting and enjoys his company. When she and Jerome kiss, she understands what her body wants and responds to; but not once does she confuse this feeing will lifelong love, and not once does she ask herself how she can live without him. I’m not saying it isn’t understandable to confuse hormones with lifelong love or grand hopes for the future, but I also can’t deny it’s refreshing to read about a teenager who has a slightly more down-to-earth perspective of her boyfriend.

So yes, these are the reasons I think Rory kicks butt, and is so very unique and likable and interesting. She LIKES herself—behold. So many of us don’t like ourselves as teenagers, and it is great and critical to have books to reflect that; but to have characters who also demonstrate what self-acceptance might look like is an awesome thing indeed.

If you are a storyteller who writes in the English language, chances are the lore of Germany and Britain (among other nations and regions of the world) influenced you at least a wee bit.

Recently I got to go see some of the places that produced the storytellers who wrote things like Treasure Island and Harry Potter and Demian and Mary Poppins and the stories in the Brothers Grimm and Peter Pan and I could babble on and on….

So here it is: Sometime in mid-August 2011, arrival in London at 6am.

We manage to baffle a seasoned London cabbie by staying in a hotel no one has ever heard of. Check in to our elusive hotel is not till 2pm. Drag ourselves to a coffee shop, where we discover the phone that Sam spent a total of 12,000 hours configuring for European travel (GPS and whatnot) does not work.

Sam’s despair at this discovery:

In an effort to cheer him, I remind him that travel is largely improv and that I have spent countless sleepless nights in various train stations and airports in Europe due to my own poor planning skills. He regards me blearily. I remind him further that I did most of this fly-by-night European travel as a hapless young adult, and that we are considerably more resourced now. He does not look comforted.

We emerge into sporadic rain to walk around until we can check into our hotel about seven hours later.

Without thinking, Sam asks, “Would you like to pop into a shop and pick up an umbrella?” We are both delighted that he has acclimated so quickly.

Anyway. If someone had told me I could saunter along the Thames and see some of the most famous places in the Western world casually popping up along its relatively cramped banks, I would have been stunned. But there they were—

Westminster Abbey….

The Houses of Parliament….

Big Ben….

Which are all a stone’s throw from one another.

There were other London delights:

Trafalgar Square…

Amazing street art….

And the majestic Globe Theatre….

which is about as far away from Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey as my neighborhood post office is from my house. We have a distorted Americanese sense of space, you see, which makes it almost impossible to imagine that such famous historic sites could be sitting as closely together as some houses in my neighborhood cul-de-sac (only a slight exaggeration.) This startled Sam and I to our American bones. (Also I realize my phone-camera HDR has oddly superimposed this man’s face over the brick in the pic above.)

The next day we visit the Tower of London, the duly impressive site of, well, oh so much.

In its early days it served as a royal residence, then became primarily a prison—a fearsome castle with an inner village and lush green lawn where a moat once lay.

In one of the more stunning feats of human narcissism (in regard to the animal kingdom), exotic animals were imported from all over the globe to come stay in the English castle and entertain the royals.

The dogs and lions and bears of the Royal Menagerie were pitted against one another in the animal-version of gladiatorial games to delight the kings. The more powerful the menagerie of royal captive animals, the more powerful the king, or so the mis-informed monarchs believed. Turns out, some of these animals were unhappy and….my goodness…..bit people. In the 1800’s, because of this, the animals were transferred to the Regents Park.

Aside from the heinous crimes committed there against human and animal (the Yeoman Warders are very happy to tell you about the heads that rolled—literally), it was a work of pure wonder. We saw Henry the VIII’s suits of armor, growing successively wider over the years:

After a couple of days in London, we fly to Edinburgh, Scotland, one of my favorite places in the world. I mean, just look:

Edinburgh’s combination of beauty and its animated, warm, cheerful people made it feel like home.

On to the Germany portion of our trip—first to Koln (Cologne) to see the Kolner Cathedral. You simply cannot imagine the scale of this thing. Imagine three of the biggest cathedrals you’ve seen stacked one on top of the other. The most Gothic, dark, rich, haunting structure imaginable. Climbing to the highest tower will win you a view of the awesome belfry, a panorama of the city, and some hard-core vertigo.

Then on to the bucolic little town of Wierschem, where we strolled around our B&B for the evening breathing in the smell of horses and apples and gentle evening. I’m from Virginia and badly miss those smells.

The next day we were off to Burg Eltz, my favorite castle on earth. You enter a dense forest, wind down a path, turn a corner and there it is—tucked into a wild lonely valley, secluded and majestic, sitting on its rock. There is no manic tourist town at its base, no gaudy ticket center, nothing at all—just this timeless castle perched on its stone, surrounded by steep wooded hillsides. It is the Frog Prince’s castle, the castle of anyone who ever wished to retire quietly away and live happily, privately ever after.

Here is what it normally looks like (it was under construction while we were there):

And the inside! It’s not as opulent as some other castles, but its rustic beauty is just what I love. Some of the royal drinking-vessels also make you think steampunk originated here, right here in the bowels of this secret castle. Look at some of the king’s cups:

We drove south along the Mosel River on our way to Freiburg, and had one of those lovely spontaneous moments of seeing a castle on a hillside….

and one of us shouting, “What the heck? Let’s go look at it” and swerving off the road to find this was a castle one can officially tour—Burg Thurant, a mighty but intimate “Burg,” situated above a steep hillside vineyard and primed for battle. The courtyard inside was gorgeous….

and then, up in one of the towers, an actual torture chamber. Imagine—outside, this lushly tended garden rife with roses, and inside a human cage, a rack, a cross, and some horrible poker. Presumably to disembowel prisoner(s).

And in the backyard, a flame thrower. You know, just in case.

It is these moments that put our own history into grave perspective. There was a person in that cage once. And, you know, lots of people in the trajectory of that flame thrower. (Yes, I realize the medieval Europeans are hardly alone in their feats of barbarism, and that this barely compares to the cold remove with which we can deal destruction these days. But I’d never been in close proximity to something as specifically designed to torture as a rack. Within twenty feet of a rosebush, no less.)

Then on to Freiburg for a day, which was lovely.

Freiburg sits in my most beloved place on Earth, the Schwarzwald (Black Forest), where I spent many childhood wanderings and where relatives once told me that garden gnomes come alive at night to creep around the homes of their masters. I love the German word for ancient—”uralt.” And this is the most uralt place I can think of, in a fairytalish sort of way. We hiked, looked down upon glorious vistas, felt removed from time and modern life and like we were the first travelers in some of these enchanted groves:

In Gutach, I raked my toe across a raspberry bush and was needled by thorns:

We tried to take a shortcut back, and ended up surreptitiously trapped in several farmer’s fields and having to undo complicated locks to free ourselves (which we always put back into place) and scuttling down treacherous hillsides laden with more thorny bracken, of the area-around-Sleeping-Beauty’s-castle-variety. Sam’s chivalry was on display as he walked ahead of me whacking down thorns and checking upcoming fields for wild boars (or the Black Forest equivalent, possibly an errant unicorn.) The adventure was a welcome hiatus for both of us from our relatively soft and well-ordered lives; we both fancied ourselves frontierspeople by the time we emerged from the last of the tangled fields bruised, torn, and bloody. We were grinning like idiots and preparing to do the hapless-American act for some angry German farmer.  I think Sam almost hoped we would encounter something appropriate to the region, such as a troll or a talking owl.

Then on to Schwangau, in Bavaria. The closest thing to a real and living kingdom, majestic, silent, ageless. An Eden tucked into one small corner of the world, the Bavarian Alps.

My dream is to one day spend a long amount of time there, at least a month or so a year. My head flooded with story ideas, and I realized (painfully) how conducive to creativity environment is.

I get chills just thinking of it.

Then back to London to fly out. Much as I love London’s people, it was a shock to return not only to the English-speaking world but to the manic pace of a city. Sam and I, still acclimated to the pastoral wonders of southern Germany, sat on the Tube and stared at the city dwellers as though they were characters in some slightly dystopian fairytale.

We went to Stonehenge and tried to sift through some of the touristy feel around it to sop up the true glory and mystery of the place. I did learn that one of the sarsens weighs 45,000 tons, which is hardly conceivable, and that 1/3 of each stone is underground. The fields around Stonehenge are peppered with ancient burial mounds. Really, no one knows “haunted” till they’ve been in England.

Many hours and a freezing plane flight later, we alighted into the 110 degree Austin heat feeling utterly dazed. Only just now are we re-adjusting to wide roads, 24-7 pharmacies, the ubiquitous presence of fast food, and front lawns in danger of spontaneously combusting. (As soon as we got back, we watched Sound of Music, Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter in frantic succession, just to help remind us. Soon we’ll do the sensible thing and raid the BBC archives and begin watching German films.)

So. Yeah. It is all the more amazing to read old fairytales, having seen some of the landscapes that inspired them. For me, the tales and stories we grew up with have moved a bit more into the light.

I have been a terrible blogger lately, but will try to get back on track. This means that posts about some things, like the Teen Book Festival (which happened almost a month ago) and our trip to Europe (over two months ago) will be belated and out of order, but full of stuff worth mentioning. If you’re interested, I posted my personal Texas Book Festival schedule—the panels I intended to visit—here. I did not make it to all of them, sadly, but you can read about how fun and cool and worth a trip to Austin this Festival really is. And it will give you some idea of what I’m talking about if you weren’t there.

There was so much, so incredibly much, about the Festival that was awesome, inspiring, hilarious, encouraging. I will try to distill this colorful list down to my own personal highlights (things I shall file away in my writerly toolbox):

Amazing YA author Sarah Dessen talking about her outlining process. She claims it’s not really an outline, but that she’s always got the first scene, climax, last scene, and first line down before she starts the rest of the book. As someone who barreled blindly forward when I began my first YA manuscript, I can appreciate Sarah’s process as wonderfully structured.

I did not get many pics, but here is one of Sarah in our local graveyard. Don’t be afraid, the location will be explained later:

My new fangirlish love for author Martha Hall Foose, a delightful Southerner I was unfamiliar with. She knocked the socks off the audience at the Literary Death Match. All the authors involved did a wonderful job of reading their work aloud for seven minutes. Martha blew us away—the delivery, the content, the humor. I will be purchasing Martha’s books just to read the language over and over.

The “Convergence of Souls” panel, for which over a dozen prominent YA authors gathered in the Texas State Cemetery and made up stories for audience members. In the graveyard. In the dark. Seriously, how cool is Austin?

And last but not least, the amazing, incredible Kate DiCamillo mentioning that early drafts (the first through fourth, I believe) of her book “Because of Winn Dixie” are online. Kate said it’s a gift to other writers to be transparent about one’s own early drafts. I looked and was fascinated….wonderfully encouraging to see that everyone begins somewhere, especially this literary great with her fable-like language. I think the next time I’m on a school visit and a child is discouraged about writing because they want to get it right the first time, I will direct them to Kate’s drafts.

A pic of Kate DiCamillo’s and Rebecca Stead‘s signing table. Author/editor David Levithan is on the right:

And…for way more great festival pics and a general round-up of events, Cynthia Leitich Smith‘s has a wonderful blog post on it. So does Shelli Cornelison here, and Donna Bowman Bratton here.

Perhaps it’s my years working in Montessori schools that are rearing their heads, because process-oriented vs product-oriented seems to be a theme I keep returning to.

I got to thinking about this because I recently got married and I couldn’t help noticing a parallel between the pre-marriage steps and pre-publication steps.

While I very much appreciated the outpouring of congratulations around our big day, I guess I am a sucker for that delicious, behind-the-scenes stuff of life, the chaos and growth that happen in private, without a public face. Learning to trust yourself. Learning to trust another. The hilarity and gravity of dealing with your personal demons as you embark on the extraordinary adventure of marriage with another human being who is just as complex, nuanced, and idiosyncratic as you are.

The same goes for publishing—much, much emphasis and focus is on the big day when it Happens (and understandably so)—but the days leading there can often feel like a slog or a preamble. To me, it’s those small steps, the ones performed in quiet obscurity, the impressive ones that nevertheless don’t get parties, that really matter. Mailing out the first query; bearing the first rejection; meeting the first agent; connecting with the first author-friend; the fledgling author attending their first writing conference, and the precious moment they cast out their antennae to begin learning about this sometimes daunting industry. All the tiny milestones upon which the openly celebrated days stand. The ones where there is no traditional holiday on which hundreds of people chirp “Congratulations!” on your Facebook page.

As with the process of learning about a partner, there are many, many things to enjoy about the quiet, private process of making a book out of nothing. I would encourage authors who are not yet published to enjoy the luxury of writing without a deadline, in relative anonymity, without any kind of pressure other than the self-imposed sort. I think sometimes we are so intent on getting published—which I don’t blame us for—that we forget to savor what we have right now, the bliss of being intimate with our stories, just us and them, with no one’s hungry eyes on them yet. Every author who has written under pressure, saddled with expectations, probably yearned for just a taste of that freedom again.

Those are the kinds of things I mean—the little private joys and sorrows on the journey toward publication, marriage, having a child, graduating—all the things Hallmark deems worthy of notice. We have to remember that the things we do before and after are noteworthy and festive, and that it’s not up to anyone else to tell us when we’ve “arrived.”

Or, perhaps there ought to be a greeting card line solely for writers.

So on June 4th, The Wall Street Journal published a piece titled “Darkness Too Visible” by Meghan Cox Gurdon.

People have covered the subsequent uproar rather nicely, as has Twitter. Laurie Halse Anderson wrote one of my favorite (and very compassionate) response pieces, as did the incredible Sherman Alexie.

As for me, this article makes me sad. Really it’s nothing we haven’t heard before, but it creeps me out every time. And why?

Probably because I find the article’s assumptions about the parent/child relationship, and the child’s relationship to the world, rather eerie.

I think of teenagerhood as a window of time in which people are hungrier for experience and understanding than possibly any other time in their lives. I remember being a teenager, and I remember the lives and fates of classmates of mine whose parents either worked very hard to keep them as sheltered as possible from the dangerous, chaotic nature of the world, as well as kids whose parents themselves were depictions of that dark side (addicts, abusers)? In either case, these parents were disengaged. Checked out. Not there.

Teenagers understand that the world is nuanced, frightening, that there are dark corners that house atrocities and violence. Many of these teens seek out books, which offer glimpses into the lives of characters reflective of the teen’s experience, or who introduce him/her to an entirely new one. In healthy home environments, the parents of these teens are present to their children—they’re there to honestly answer the hard questions that books might raise.

But for some children, literature is one of the ONLY doorways into normalizing the truths of a world that is terrifying, unpredictable, random. For kids whose lives are darkness every day, the experiences shared in books are often the only things addressing the truth in the life of the child at all. If the adults in his or her life aren’t present, where is that child to turn? There are few to no classes in school that address these darknesses with any authenticity. There’s nowhere for the child to have his or her personal and very real experience normalized and validated. AND, the children who live in the darkness of having experienced abuse, rape, bullying, cutting, attempted suicide, and drugs are not relegated to certain socio-economic groups, as is often imagined; they’re everywhere—including among the very rich, the very white, the very elite. They’re there, with no one to talk to.

What’s the alternative to censorship? Self-education. Parents seeing good reason to educate themselves, and therefore their children, about what happens in the world every day. Parents having the courage and curiosity to wonder why children do things like cut or commit suicide or do drugs. AND, those parents no longer seeing their worlds as utterly separate from the “darkness” as it were, and understanding that their own children are exposed either directly or indirectly to some form of violence every day. And that their children are wondering. Their children are curious. Their children, if given the chance (and even if they’ve had limited exposure to trauma) would like to develop empathy as to what goes on in the mind and heart of a troubled child, a troubled neighborhood, a troubled community.

To me, that’s the very saddest part about all this. The terrible, false assumption that “darkness” and “trouble” happen over THERE. Away from HERE. In my experience, the children of parents who assume this are not happy, safe, free from harm, living in a light-filled world. Instead these children work tirelessly to house their personal darknesses all alone, because there’s No One There. Emotionally, they’re orphaned.

The author of the WSJ article naively assumes that parents are the all-knowing gatekeepers who alone understand that when teenager’s minds are exposed to “darkness,” they are instantly ignited with thoughts of self-harm or harm to others. This viewpoint suggests that the human mind itself, sheltered or not, is not innately curious. It’s a monstrous underestimation of capacity.

No human being is exempt from darkness. To assume that a light-filled and innocent state is one to be cultivated and then sustained does an incredible disservice to any child. By hook or by crook, a human being will find a way to explore his or her own darknesses. The ways in which this happens are as varied as people themselves. But all of us will do it—either with the wide-awake help and guidance of loving adults in our lives, or without. And the road is far darker without.

Most YA literature is written with more integrity and concern for the human experience than adult lit. I have never read a YA book in which hope was not a prominent theme, no matter what the issue at hand. YA themes reflect aspects of the psychological developmental process—individuation, family dynamics, identity, struggle, tragedy, coping skills, powerlessness, cultivating a moral compass, and often, the protagonist regaining/developing a sense of empowerment within his or her given world. Most adults would do well to be so preoccupied with these fundamentals of the human experience.

And here they are in YA, finally. If anything, we should celebrate. Far less teenagers, and therefore members of our population, will grow up repressed, forced to experiment with their budding sexuality and desire to be accepted in isolation, away from parents who shy away from subjects that make them uncomfortable—only to later make decisions reflective of people who have never been spoken to with honesty and courage. Children have the right to develop the tools to navigate this world—empathy, critical thinking, honed perception. And they need our help, and the help of books, to do it.

So  we were in a restaurant in the airport in Denver today and the waitress was rude.

And I thought, “Maybe she has a baby elephant that she’s hiding back in her apartment at home, and her landlord can’t find out about him. And the only way to keep the elephant from trumpeting is to buy special elephant food from a store that’s only open from 7-9 am, and this morning on her way there her windshield wiper exploded, causing a minor scene and much delay, and she didn’t make it to the pet store. So now she’s depending on her unreliable neighbor Bert to keep the elephant quiet all day by watching elephant movies with it—which serve the double purpose of featuring lots of loud trumpeting that the landlord may hear and assume is just a film, should the real elephant join in. But the waitress still can’t be sure how it’s going, hence her terrible mood. She really is a very nice person, otherwise.”

Yeah. It helps.