squeetus

In utero peep show

For the next post I've invited several awesome YA authors to chime in on the topic of morals in literature. Thorny topic, and their responses so far have been fascinating. I can't wait to share them all with you and hear your responses. Will minds be changed? Will the very foundations of the earth shake and moan? We'll know in a few days.

But now a quick update on Charybdis and Scylla. We never name our children until after they're born, so don't expect that news anytime soon. (I hope not anytime soon!) But genre has been established. Two girls.

Pink mixers, pies, and the meaning of life

the actor and the housewife will be in paperback in the US in 2 weeks! Check out the new digs:

Since publishing the actor and the housewife, many people want to engage me in a discussion (or lecture) about married women becoming friends with other men. They make assumptions about my point-of-view, and are usually wrong. And it's made me realize that so many readers don't know or haven't thought through what it means to be a writer.

the actor and the housewife is about...an actor and a housewife, actually. They're both married to other people but they become friends. Many readers assume, therefore, that I wrote this book with the intent of teaching a lesson about how, contrary to popular belief, married men and women can be friends.

The truth? I have no strong opinion on the matter.

But wait! How could i possibly write a book on the subject and have no opinion about it?

Well, first I don't think that is the subject of my book. This is not a non-fiction book, representing years of research and clinical trials. This is a novel about fictional people and their own unique lives. That's all I ever wanted it to be. I don't have any intimate male friends, my husband doesn't have any intimate female friends. This isn't a personal issue for me. I don't have an opinion about other people having this kind of friendship. I've heard many personal stories about it working beautifully for entire lifetimes, and others about infidelity and heartache that follows. It's not for me to decide if people should or shouldn't have such friendships. That's up to them and the spouses, of course. I also didn't have an opinion about Becky and Felix's friendship when I began the book. I was simply interested in these two characters and in seeing where their friendship would take them.

That's where it started, of course, but a story becomes much more than the premise where I began. This book was fascinating for me, to explore issues of family and marriage, and friendship too, motherhood and daughterhood, and all the different niches the people in our lives take. At no point in the writing of the book did I ever consider it a treatise on the question of men and women being friends. And I never came to any global conclusions on the topic. I didn't try to, I didn't want to. I did form opinions about the case of Becky and Felix, of course. After two and a half years of immersing myself in their story, I came to know and understand them intimately, and love them too, and I was very excited to share their story.

Naturally the discussion of opposite gender friendship will come up as people read it. And that's a wonderful thing! One of the purposes of literature is to read about other lives and reflect on our own, form our own opinions.

I know some people will be offended by what I've said. They will think I'm being careless. They will say that a story has power (it does!) and that it's a writer's job to use that power carefully and only write stories that are morally uplifting (absolutely not!). Really, do you want to trust anyone with your morals? That's impossible! I can't possibly write a story that will be in keeping with everyone's personal morals and world views. I have offended people with every single one of my stories. Yes, every one. I get emails regularly about the abhorrent morals in princess academy, the obscenity of goose girl, the vulgarity of book of a thousand days, the lasciviousness in forest born, etc. We're all so different. There's no one way to see the world, no one kind of right story, no perfect character. I would be a fool to attempt it. Besides, it goes against every thing I believe in. We all want stories to change us, don't we? I can't change you. My book can't change you. The story you tell yourself from my book can.

SHANNON'S FUNDAMENTAL WRITING BELIEF
2. It is an author's job to tell a story that is true to the characters and the world they inhabit.
2. It's the reader's job to give that story meaning.

Of course I do a lot of work to allow for meaning. I do many drafts so that I can create layer upon layer of story. But I will never attempt to write a story that comes prepackaged with morals and universal meaning. It would be a sorry excuse for a book. And meaning is ONLY possible when the reader creates it for herself. You can teach facts. But no one can teach meaning, morals, understanding. The chemical reaction happens in the reader's head, not on the printed page. Book is dead, so the story is only alive inside the reader. If I tried to write uplifting stories that can change the world and teach people how to be, then I would fall flat on my face. I would cease to be what I should be - a writer. A story teller. A defense attorney for the characters. An objective observer. A person thrilled by the wonder of people I'm not and places I don't live.

Not everyone needs to love the stories I tell. Certainly not everyone does. But I am always grateful for those who do. It makes me feel less alone as a writer to write stories that fascinate me about characters who I love, despite their flaws, and then find readers who are willing to go on that journey with me and are happy they took it. Thanks a bunch. I wish I could give you all a great big hug. Or make you a pie. Which is basically the same thing.

T.S. Eliot paid taxes too

I've come to gain new insights on T.S. Eliot's "Wasteland." April is the cruelest month because he's a writer, and April is when you get your biannual royalty statements as well as pay taxes. Often the latter negates the former.

If you would rather not know the economic realities of being a writer, please don't read this post. Sometimes I get emails from people who are angry with me for being honest about the writing industry and discouraging them. I don't want to make you upset. I you'd really rather not know, again, please don't read.

When I first published the goose girl, Dean and I made a "seven year plan." That is, in seven years, we said, we'd be able to live off what I make as an author. It's been seven years, and it ain't happening. Happily my husband likes his job and has no desire to leave it, but I know from the assumptions I hear from others that the reality of a writer's wages may be news to many of you. I could safely live on my income if I were single, and some years I could support a family on my income, but other times it would be way too risky not to have a second income to depend on.  But I do think many of my blog readers would like to understand the back side of it, because I never did.

1. Generally, authors get paid twice a year, but only if they've earned out their advance. Some books earn out their advance in the first six months, but others never do. This is not a stable income. You never know how many books will sell. With checks coming in April and October for mystery amounts, it's hard to depend on royalties to pay the bills. You really need a steady source of income when you have a family.

2. As we're self-employed, writers don't get benefits like health insurance. In a few states, if you join the Writer's Guild you can be covered by a group plan, but not in Utah. And for insanely stupid reasons, Dean and I are not insurable privately. Either we have group insurance or nothing. We not only need Dean's steady income but his insurance benefits.

3. Taxes. Boy howdy. Because I'm self-employed, add an extra 15.3% to my tax rate. I get taxed hard. Really hard. I never imagined how hard.

4. An author gets a small percentage of a book's earnings. This may seem unfair, but when you look at everyone else in the chain--publisher, editor, publicist, distributor, bookseller, etc.--you see that no one is getting rich. This is just how it is. For a paperback children's book, the usual is 6-8% of the cover price, and hardcover is 12-15%. (Note that paperback refers to trade paperback. The royalties from a Scholastic book fair edition, for example, are much, much, much, much lower.)*

5. Agents take 15% off the top.

6. A chunk of your royalties are often held "in reserve" for up to 18 months against returns. So when a bookstore orders copies of my books from the distributor, some months later I'll get a royalty from those book sales. But if the bookstore doesn't sell them and returns them (and this happens all the time to everybody) then the next pay period the publisher will take those royalties back. Again, unstable business.

Say an author sells 100,000 trade paperbacks one year. Wow, that's a boatload! That is an impressive number and one any author would be thrilled to have. The total sales add up to about $800,000, while the author's royalties on that would be about $48,000--a respectable income. But take out agent and taxes, donate the max to a SEP IRA to offset more taxes, pay the babysitter (if you're a mom like me), and out of that $48K, you have maybe 10-15K to pay rent, utilities, car, food, etc. A great second income, but most likely not enough to support a family.

Well. We all knew it wasn't about the money, right? Many children's authors make a living not from book sales but from speaking fees. Authors can do school visits and be featured authors at conferences and book festivals, most of which pay an honorarium. Also, if you have a degree along with publications, you might get work teaching. These are great opportunities for added income, but ones I don't partake of because I was lucky enough to begin publishing early in my life when I have young children, and I can't leave them so much. And if I did, I'd be paying more babysitting costs, which would take about half of what I earned anyway.

So how do writers become rich, or even self-sufficient? Most do not. We hear a lot about the big name authors, but they are the exception. For the majority of authors, writing novels is not a stable career. The illustrators I know enjoy doing picture books but make their income from other sources, like doing book covers or ads for banks or whatever other small jobs their reps can score for them. So you do it because you love it, you do it because you have no other choice, and you get an education and plan on a second career.

Please know that I don't mean this as a complaint. I love my career. I'm so grateful to get to be a mom and have my dream job. But if I see one more Hollywood movie or TV show portraying filthy rich novelists, I'm going to knock some heads. It's just not reality. Here's reality: I'm sitting in bed in my pajamas, leaving shortly to go pick up my son from kindergarten. My house is crazily cluttered because my kids have a lot of freedom while I've been sick and I throw up if I lean over to pick up things. My 3-year-old is singing a song about candy in the kitchen. Why candy? Did she find a cache somewhere? I thought we'd cleansed the house of her favorite drug! I'm risking candy spazzes and huge messes to take 10 minutes to write this blog post. I will probably have 15 minutes of clean up to pay for her 10 minutes of unsupervised freedom. But last week I finished a first draft of a new book, and today I'm going back to revise another book, and I have this wonderful second life that rides alongside my mother life. It's very cool.

*I always need to add a note when revealing an author's percentage of the book. Even though we get very little per book, it still means a GREAT deal when people buy our books. If our books keep selling, then we get to keep writing and publishing. Even if we're not making a lot of money, we are making some and get to continue to do what we love. As well, it makes a difference when people check our books out from a library. Libraries keep track of circulation numbers. If our books circulate well, then when a new book comes out, that library system is more likely to buy copies. Authors love libraries!

Names that make you weep

Saturday I'll be at the Provo Children's Book Festival...I guess. I must have signed up for this before realizing I was pregnant, and they mercifully cut out an hour of signing and any presentation, so I'll just be there with Dean and Nate signing for one hour. First 30 people in line. So don't come for my sake, but there will be lots of other Utah authors as well as Jenni and Matthew Holm (Babymouse) in town for the event. Every child who attends gets a free book! Bonus!

Okay, maybe I'm insane, but I'm going to broach yet another sticky topic, this one perhaps even more heated than book banning. What are you up to next, squeetus? Sex ed? Religion? Politics? No, no, this time we delve into the miasma of baby names. I know, I'm risking reputation and angry emails, but I have opinions on the topic. Let me side-step them a tad and list for you some of the worst twin names we could think of:

Caesar and Kaiser
Scylla and Charybdis (our twins' in utero names)
That and Thet (I love this one, actually. It's my six-year-old's suggestion, and I think it's his equivalent of This and That)
Barry and Larry or Harry and Terry or Gary and Perry or Sherry and Mary 
In and Ex (with the last name Hale)
Yin and Yang
Dexter and Sinister

For boy and girl:

Erin and Aaron (via my sister)
Romeo and Juliet (creepy)
Zac and Zo (short for Prozac and Zoloft, via my mother-in-law)

I told the other authors of the Exquisite Corpse Adventure that I'll be naming them Joe and Nancy, after our twin heroes. (In celebration, Jon Scieszka said he will be naming his kidneys Joe and Nancy.)

And the grand list from Dean (of course):

Mary-Kate and Ashley
David and Mecha-David (works with any name!)
Shean and Dannon
Zan and Jayna
Apollo and Artemis (ooh, i almost like that one)
Jekyll and Hyde
Robert and Ernest (Bert and Ernie)
Michael and Michaela
(anything)-aydon and (anything)-aydyn
Madisyn and Radisyn
Devon and Cambria
Jeffrey and NAMBLA

Alright, bring it on. What are the worst twin names ever? And my apologies to any of you whose own precious names are on the list.

I do believe in fairies and first drafts

Thanks for all your comments last post. I found them all very interesting and several points I think deserve further discussion another day.

But first I must crow.

Callooh Callay! I stand atop the dresser with my fists on my hips like Peter Pan and declare, "Oh, the cleverness of me!" I finished a first draft.

By the time I finish and publish a book, it's no longer mine. I don't really feel that I wrote princess academy or book of a thousand days. It seems like too much for one person to do. Besides, now those stories don't belong to me anymore. They've split and become hundreds of thousands of individual stories, each belonging to their individual reader-creators.

But the first draft is always ALL mine. In all it's glory, it is me, me, me! I did that, I claim that, I own that. I thunk it all up with my very own brain. I'm the only person in the world who knows that story, who read that story, who controls that story. Midnight in Austenland is all mine. Mwahahaha!

I already know what will happen tomorrow. A creeping unease will crawl over me, tickle me at night, nag at me during the day: "But what if it's all crap? And what if I can't fix it? What if it remains crap forever and ever and ever?"

Be quiet, evil thoughts, I say! No matter today! Today I am the conquering hero, I am winged victory. I am youth and joy, and I crow to the sky, "Oh, clever, clever me! I wrote a first draft all by myself!"

To ban or not to ban

In a recent post I recommended the Bone series by Jeff Smith, and a commentor asked what I thought about a volume of the series being challenged in one state by a parent who objects to depictions of smoking and drinking. This is always a delicate subject so I hope I'll be clear here in my response. I'm amazed how often people will assert that I have this or that belief based on something I said in a blog post and it's not something I believe remotely. So I cry and I plead and I beg not to read into what I say but assume the best!

First let me grandly state that I am opposed to CENSORSHIP. I don't think there are many authors in the world who aren't. Let me explain why in this case and please add your thoughts in the comments as I know every issue has many sides.

I believe absolutely in parents' right to monitor what their children are reading and watching. But book banning goes further. Book banning takes the book out of many children's hands. Book banning states: "This book isn't right for my child; therefore it is right for no child and no child should have access to it." While I believe that those who seek to ban books usually have the absolute best intentions, I don't think banning a book from a library or school system accomplishes what they want.

For one thing, book banning brings the challenged book MUCH more attention. [SIDE NOTE: Please challenge my books! Ban away! It's great publicity. Go ahead and perform some public book burnings. My sales numbers will only go up.] Those who oppose a book are doing it a great favor by talking about it so publicly. I know a couple of authors whose books were among those most challenged last year, and they do not celebrate that fact. It hurts. It makes them sad. But realistically, it really does help sales.

Banning seems such an extreme action to me, especially as it is so strongly based on opinion. It represents a few people's (or often, one person's) opinion of what is not okay. Opinion is so personal, I think it's a very tricky thing to assert that because one parent found a book inappropriate for her child, that means it's inappropriate for all children and the book should be out of access. Here's an interesting list of the most often banned books in the US in recent years. I'd bet that even a person who is passionate about banning certain books from libraries could find several books on this list that they love. They might think, "What on earth could anyone find wrong with that book?" But of course many others might be asking the same about a book like Bone.

In order to ban a book, I should think one would need to prove that the book is detrimental, that it does more harm than good. The Bone series has gotten so many kids reading books and done a great service to literacy in general. Much good has come out of these books. I would be very surprised to find any child who decided that smoking and drinking is a good idea based on reading those books. I hesitate to talk too  specifically about these books because I haven't read every volume in the series, but my impression was that the story didn't glamorize drinking and smoking for kids. The main characters don't smoke and drink. But I'll go a step further: to my mind, the presence of alcohol and tobacco in a book isn't necessarily a bad thing.

What a shocking thing to say! How on earth, Mrs. Hale, can you justify that? You who don't smoke or drink alcohol and don't want your children doing it either, how can you possibly believe that a book who demonstrates characters enacting in such behavior could be beneficial?"

Thanks for asking, and with such passion! I discovered recently that my six-year-old didn't know what "smoking" meant or what a "cigarette" even was! It's just not common anymore, and we don't know anyone personally who smokes. Depictions of smoking in books is already anachronistic. And yet cigarettes still exist, and it's likely that one day my son will be offered a cigarette. I'd like him to be prepared. I've found it very helpful when a book showed someone smoking because it gave me an opportunity to talk about it with my son. I explain what it is and why we don't do it. I tell him about times when people offered me a cigarette and how I said, "No thanks," and that was fine. I brought up the subject again with him a few months later, and he remembered the conversation vividly. We've had similar conversations about other things based on what we read in books.

I spoke with a neighbor recently who was uncomfortable with her twelve-year-old daughter reading Twilight. She is morally conservative and told her no, no, no, based on what she'd heard about the books. But the daughter was getting desperate. EVERYONE read the books and she felt left out. So the mother used this as an opportunity to connect with her daughter. She read the Twilight books along with her daughter and talked to her about sexuality. The stories allowed her a way to communicate with her daughter on a subject she felt was very important. She reads most of her daughter's books now and says it's deepened their relationship.

My brother when he was five was offered chewing tobacco by a neighbor boy. While my parents had talked to him about smoking, they'd never mentioned chewing tobacco because it wasn't relevant, they thought. He was unprepared for the invitation. Perhaps if he'd read a book where someone chewed and asked about it, my parents could have explained what it is and why it's bad, and then when the situation arose, he would have known how to respond. Books are, in part, about education. If books only show virtuous characters who never do wrong and a world sanitized of any possible offense or harm, how educational is that? What good is such a book? Burn that book, I say! Burn it, burn it! (okay, not really, I just wanted to shout that textually.)

I think the important thing for worried parents is parental involvement. When parents read to their kids and/or read what their kids read, that opens doors to conversation. Sometimes kids don't know what to ask, and sometimes parents don't know what their children are facing. Reading together offers more conversation possibilities than regular life because stories take us to places and situations we might never face together with our children.

Really, though, my opinion is based on a certain key belief: I don't believe that children imitate what they read in books. I believe they absorb and learn from books, but I don't think they smoke because a minor character in a book smokes. A child's behavior is much more influenced by parents, siblings, and peers. But books do affect how a child sees and makes sense of the world and her place in it. Books are powerful, I have no doubt. But even more powerful are parents. Books + parents can change the world.

Unrelated to book banning, this story is just too wonderful.