squeetus

Bonus! Secret epilogue to The Princess in Black 2

When writing any book, I always cut more than I keep. I just have to go through a lot of sentences, try out a lot of ideas, before discovering what works just right. Sometimes what I cut I really like but doesn't work for the best of the story. In this case, Dean and I adored the Epilogue to The Princess in Black and the Perfect Princess Party. It made us laugh. But we cut it for two reasons. 

1. Originally we didn't have a chapter about Frimplepants in book 2, but we decided to add one in order to introduce him again. New readers might not yet be familiar with him. And besides, I just never tire of saying the name Frimplepants. Adding the new chapter 2 also added several pages. We want to be mindful of page count. The more pages, the longer the book for young readers and their parents, the more illustrations LeUyen must complete, and the more expensive for the publisher to print it. This book was already longer than the first, so we had to watch that page count!

2. It was nice to end the story in the celebratory moment with Princess Magnolia and all the princesses enjoying the party. Cutting away to Monster Land after that was funny but also anti-climactic. 

But at the least, I'll post it here. It might be fun to read it with a young PIB reader and help them understand a little bit about the process of writing and editing a book. This epilogue would also be a good one to discuss in terms of reading comprehension and inference.

 

EPILOGUE

The pink monster could not get out of that goat pasture fast enough. It was good to be back in Monster Land. No shiny sunlight. No unpleasantly fresh air. No yelling princesses. 

The pink monster put its clawed hands in its pockets. It went for a stroll.

A slimy monster was heading toward the hole. It had its nose in the air. It was taking in the smell of goats.

The pink monster put out a clawed hand to stop it. 

“ROOAARR!” it said.

That meant, “No goat hunting today, my slimy friend. Things are awkward up there. It’s the Princess in Black’s birthday, you see. I wouldn’t dare go up without a gift.”

The slimy monster said, “ROOAAARRR.”

That meant, “Thank you for the warning. You have been most helpful.”

The slimy monster turned away from the hole. It went home. 

It wrapped a gift.

Hopefully the Princess in Black liked toenail clippings.

On writing, privilege, and being a working mom

A Salon article sparked some conversations yesterday on twitter and rightly so. I thought the article writer made some excellent points (as well as missed some others), but it all feeds into the conversation we've been having the last couple of weeks about writers and money and how we use our time. I think it's vital to acknowledge privilege wherever we have it--yes I've worked hard, I've sacrificed a lot to be able to write books, but I've also had help. It was a huge help that for the first 8 months of my marriage we lived on my husband's income while I finished The Goose Girl. When my student loan payments kicked in, I put aside fulltime writing to get a job, and my writing became slower and more sporadic.

We had some rocky years with job losses and recession, but then there were 2 1/2 cushy years when he had a job that paid our bills and I was able to stay home with our first child, who did not have special needs and was a good napper. (I did have two books published at this point, but that income was pocket change.) I was able to write Princess Academy, River Secrets, and Austenland during that time. I've written while having a fulltime job, I've written with small children and no babysitting help, I've put in the hardcore years. But I've been much more productive when I didn't have to work full time, when I did have a babysitter, etc.  Circumstance has as much to do with the ability to create art as talent and passion.

Privilege also meant I was born in a house with books in it. Both my parents were college graduates. I didn't have to worry about where I was getting my next meal. I wasn't mocked for spending a Saturday reading. I was encouraged and able to attend college. I was encouraged and supported in my decision to get an MFA. At every point in my life, I've been surrounded by people literate in things like how to apply for college or a student loan or a checking account, all the nitty gritty stuff that helps lead to success that I had the privilege of taking for granted.

One part of the article stood out to me. The writer tells about a bookstore event she attended for a breakout, successful author.

"When...an audience member, clearly an undergrad, rose to ask this glamorous writer to what she attributed her success, the woman paused, then said that she had worked very, very hard and she’d had some good training, but she thought in looking back it was her decision never to have children that had allowed her to become a true artist. If you have kids, she explained to the group of desperate nubile writers, you have to choose between them and your writing. Keep it pure. Don’t let yourself be distracted by a baby’s cry."

When I was young and hopeful of becoming a writer, I believed that was true too. I'd heard other women writers say the same. I thought I'd have to choose between being a writer or being a mother. It was a great motivator for me, actually, to finish The Goose Girl because I thought that would be it. I needed to get one book out before having a kid because then it would be all over.

Twenty books and four children later, it's not all over.

I've written at length about living in the crossroads of art and mothering. It's challenging for sure. And I have a feeling that the books I write (genre, for children), that glamorous, childless writer wouldn't consider real books anyway. But it's simply not true that children prevent deep thought, the creation of art, the passion for something as involved and longterm as writing a novel. There are many writers who have proved otherwise, over and over again. And for me, the more years I spend with my kids, the more stories I'm eager to tell, both for them and for me.

I answer your burning questions about authors and filthy lucre

Thanks for all your great comments from the last post. I did another post in 2010 about the economics of being a writer if you're interested. To answer a few of the questions from the comments:

 

Daniel wrote: "The only caveat I would suggest is that it might (emphasis) take the writer of the 700 page sci-fi tome a bit longer to write his book than the children's author's book, which I suspect is substantially shorter (not to diminish it's value, at all, based on size...just that it's not apples to apples in value returned to the author for their time at the book signing)."

In response, Sage Blackwood wrote: "The shorter the book, the longer it takes to write."

This is often very true. THE PRINCESS IN BLACK is 2500 words. If a writer of a 300k book took as much time working on every 2500 words as we did in PIB, it would take 23 years to complete a book, and not the 6 months-a year that many such writers take. I have often written 300k word books and whittled them down to 90k words. You can't judge by a book's length how long the author spent on it. Besides, it's irrelevant, as we're not paid by the hour.

Alysa also responds: "Re: Daniel "might take longer to write...the 700-page book" -- it might or might not, but I don't think that should enter into the equation.

"Time spent writing could well be figured in to other places (book price, advance amount, etc) but the time spent on the signing itself is equal for both parties. It is a speaking event, they are hired to speak and to sign for a certain length of time.

"They are not being hired to write during this time, so how long it takes them to write the book doesn't really factor in, the way I see it. I think it's a case of children's authors making smaller commissions per sale than adult authors for no reason other than precedent."

Allison writes: "As a amateur writer, I'm curious: would you say new authors get less royalties than well-established authors like yourself? Is the difference significant(such as 5% vs. 20%), or do most authors get an average of about 10% or 15% but established authors make more simply because they have a bigger fan base (aka more sales)?"

If you have an agent (a legit agent who knows her stuff) and you sign on with a legit professional publisher, you're going to get about the same as everyone else. There might be slight differences. Maybe a freshman writer would get 6% on a paperback, and a sophomore author get 6% to 25k copies sold at which point it escalates to 7.5%, for eg. Really, really big authors maybe work out super sweet deals, but I wouldn't know.

Kathy asks, "I'm finally a stay home mom just this month, and I'm also an unpublished author. I want to publish traditionally, but I'm worried about how it'll affect my family when it happens (one day!). What's been your experience as you raise young kids and work in the published world? Are you away from them a lot?"

This is a big question. I love being a mom and I love being a writer, so I wouldn't trade in either. But I'll warn you that it's very, very hard to balance. After you're published, guarding your writing time gets increasingly difficult. My advice: don't do it if you're looking for a hobby or a simple way to make part time dollars. Do it only if you can't live with yourself if you don't. I've written at length on writing and mothering here.

See also Nichole Giles and Jacqueline Garlick's comments on indie publishing, as their experience has been different than the example I gave.

PJ writes: "If children's author's make around 10% and adult authors around 15%, where does YA fit in? It is the fastest growing market in publishing isn't it? They should make more than adult authors I would think. Why do children's author's make a smaller percentage anyway? That seems especially unfair since there books usually cost less anyway."

YA is considered part of the children's field. As far as I've seen, the numbers are the same in YA as in picture books and middle grade. People just don't want to pay the same for kids' books than adult books. Everything kid is expected to be less: admission, food, clothing. It doesn't matter if it takes as much work, skill and time to create a kids' book as an adult book, the market just won't support it. I wish it were different. Maybe it could change, but would you spend $35 on a YA novel? $25 on a picture book? In general, anything to do with children is valued less than anything to do with adults (think of kindergarten teacher vs college professor. Has a children's movie ever won Best Picture? etc.) Publishers and agents would have better insight into this discrepancy than I do.

Jessie asks, "I have an author money question I've been curious about, I read a lot of eBooks, and have been wondering about the Kindle Unlimited program. Since I get to read those books, practically for free, I was wondering how authors get paid for them. Do you get a small percentage? Is it worth it at all?"

I know next to nothing about this program. It's sort of like Spotify is for music. I don't think my books are a part of it? But I'm highly suspicious that it would be at all profitable for the majority of authors.

Petunia Krupnik asks, "Just a question, are you going to Salt Lake Comicon again this year?" I'm planning on attending the September one.

Emily asks, "How can I convince my friend to read a different genre?" I have a random idea. Introduce her to a good graphic novel or two in her favorite genre. After she reads those, introduce her to a couple of other graphic novels in other genres. People are more likely to read GNs outside their genre comfort zone. It's a great way to discover new genres they didn't think they liked. They are then more likely to go on and read other prose novels in different genres. Any other suggestions?

Advice to a new novelist: be hardcore

Good morning! I got an email from a friend asking for advice on behalf of his niece, who has written a novel but can't find an agent. As I get these sorts of questions a lot I thought I'd answer here and get my Monday post done! Two birds! One stone!

The niece has sent her ms to various agents and heard the same reply: they admire the writing but the market is saturated with dystopian literature so they pass.

First, niece my friend, this happens ALL THE TIME. Perhaps that's a comfort to you? To hear that you're not alone? Example: Harry Potter came out, was a huge success, all the publishers were like, wait a minute, we need more middle grade fantasy series! They published a bunch of them. Most of them weren't hits. Publishers lost money.

Meanwhile, lots of people read Harry Potter and the subsequent fantasy series that were coming out and were inspired to write their own. Only they'd missed the swell. Publishers just weren't looking for them anymore. My own book THE GOOSE GIRL missed the swell. I'd been working on it for years, had no idea about any market and such, but by the time it was done and we were submitting it, the publishers were weary of all the fantasy series they were getting and all the major publishers rejected it.

This happened again with TWILIGHT. It hit big. Publishers began to gobble up vampire stories and then just all paranormal romance. Agents who happened to have YA paranormal romance at the time found it easy to sell them. An entire section of Barnes & Noble was renamed Paranormal Romance. Nathan Hale joked B&N was renaming themselves "Paranormal Romance 'N Things." And then, the inevitable happened. Readers grew weary of paranormal romance. Publishers lost money. They were no longer looking for it. All those writers who had been reading paranormal romance and were inspired to write it found they couldn't sell their manuscripts.

And then, again. HUNGER GAMES. DIVERGENT. MAZE RUNNER. etc. There's a bubble, the bubble pops.

When that bubble pops, it's not the end of the world. I've heard from agents and editors that they will take up any book that really, really sings to them, even if in the current marketplace it's far from a sure thing. THE GOOSE GIRL eventually found a home, for example. The key, the challenge, is finding just the right person who falls in love with your writing, even if dystopian is past its prime.

A few things you can do to help that happen:

1. make sure your book is amazing. No problem there, right? Easy peasy.

2. keep submitting until you find that one agent who just can't resist your voice, your characters, your style, what you've done to make sure your book is unique among all the others. Which means not giving up, querying everybody, attending conferences where you can meet an agent in person and hope that you click somehow with this one. To just keep trying.

3. write a new book

Because chances are, your first book will never sell. Even if it isn't dystopian. Most first books don't sell. Ask most published writers and you'll hear war stories of all the books we wrote that will never see the light of day.

Your goal as a writer isn't to get a book published. It's to make yourself a writer. Sometimes writers must write a lot of books as practice before our brains are good enough to write something new, original, exciting, interesting, unputtdownable. Sometimes you have to chalk this one up to a rehearsal and get moving on the next thing.

THIS IS NOT AN EASY BUSINESS. THERE IS NO SHORTCUT. TO WRITE NOVELS FOR A LIVING YOU MUST BE HARDCORE.

The second question the niece had was, should I just self-publish it?

My answer: maybe. I don't know. I've never self-published anything so I'm far from an expert. Indie publishing is a great resource for books that don't find a home in traditional publishing. I guess it depends on what your goal is here. To share your work? To make a living? I'd recommend seeking out blogs and sites about self-publishing for more answers. Note that self-publishing is not as simple as uploading your manuscript to Amazon. In order to have success, you'll have to educate yourself on the business, put in time and money. I've read that most first novels that are self-published never get into the black--at least the ones who hire professional editors, cover designers, etc., in order to do it all professionally. In other words, in order to self-publish, you must be hardcore. So it really depends on your skill set, personality, and desire. Do you want to learn about this business? Invest your resources in it? Put in the time?

So, niece, what kind of hardcore are you?

Do authors put in symbols and stuff?

Mette Ivie Harrison's tumblr post:

My teenage niece asked me about her high school English teacher who had been teaching her students to find symbols in novels and poetry. Since I am an author, she wanted to know if I really put that stuff in there on purpose or if her teacher (as she suspected) was making it up. It seemed hard to believe that it was real.

I told her that

1. It doesn’t matter if the author puts that stuff in on purpose. It can still be there. The work of the author is often to let the unconscious speak, and the author does not always control how the unconscious forms thoughts. Therefore, the author is often speaking for the culture rather than for one person.

2. Don’t ask the author what the book means. The author doesn’t know what the book means. That’s not the job of the author. The job of the author is to create. If an author says that a book means this or means that, do we take that as guaranteed? Of course not. If the author of a book insisted that there was no racism in it, but there is clearly racism in it, does the intention erase it? No.

3. The job of the critic is just as creative as the job of the author, and it is to find meaning where no one had seen it before. I talked a bit about Dadaism and how the point there was that anyone can be an artist, using ordinary kinds of text and image, and that the creativity was in bringing the same kind of vision to ordinary life as to that deemed “high art.”

4. Be kind to teachers of literature and writing. It’s a hard job and it’s an important one. I believe that art of every kind is important. As important as food. As important as shelter. I know not everyone agrees with me, but the ability to make life make sense matters a lot. Also, the way that we can change the world by first imagining the change in art is the way humans work. Why do you think that we landed on the moon after we imagined we did?

----------------------------

I agree with all that Mette says here. I will also add that like many writers, I am very thoughtful about the words I use and how I tell the story. I’ve had quoted to me ad nauseam the (apocryphal?) Robert Frost story about the woman who praised his poetry and told him all the deep meanings, allusions, and metaphors she found there, and he said that he didn’t put any of those things in on purpose. Many tell me this with the assumption that Frost just put down words and readers accidentally found meaning. But of course Frost was a thoughtful, careful poet. The fact that someone might make connections in his poetry that he didn’t intend doesn’t negate all the other thoughts he explored with purpose.

Readers can and should find their own meanings and truth in art, irrelevant to what authors intended. But that’s more likely to occur when authors take care, time, hones their skills, and reads widely.

1. Like Mette says, I don’t think that for readers, it should matter what the author’s intent was. Read and find what you need there. Study and learn what you can there.

2. For authors, I’d say write carefully, rewrite constantly, read and craft and learn and think and discover layer upon layer that you didn’t know would be there when you started out.

3. And thank you, English teachers! Careful analysis of texts taught me how to think, question, and find my own voice.

Can white writers write non-white characters?

This past week, a group started a campaign on twitter #WeNeedDiverseBooks that trended for days. Blogs, twitter, tumblr, instagram facebook were lit up with people sharing photos, stories, ideas about how diverse books are both wanted and needed.

Diversity just means "reality," i.e. books (and movies, etc.) work best when they reflect the richness and variety of the real world rather than only representing one sliver of it. But diversity most often connotes race. And so lots of race questions rise up in this conversation, such as, is it okay for writers of one race to write from the point-of-view of a character from another race? Lisa Yee wrote her thoughts about this, which I appreciated.

Here's my own experience. When I was drafting The Goose Girl, I originally was going to make Bayern an African-type continent, everyone there having a deep-brown-to-black skin, while Kildenree would be the European-type continent with pale skin. I was inspired by Le Guin's Earthsea books. But I quickly realized the story required Ani to hide in Bayern, so she couldn't look too different from the Bayern people. I could have chosen to make Ani dark skinned as well but I decided not to, out of misguided respect and fear. As a white person, I was hesitant to try to speak from the point-of-view of someone of another race, even in a fantasy setting. I felt like I only had access to the heritage of my own bloodlines. So I based Bayern on Germany, both because the tale was recorded by the brothers Grimm and because it is one of the lands of my ancestors. I'm not saying that was the wrong or the right choice (I don't believe there was necessarily a right or wrong here), but that this was my creative process.

When I began a new series with Princess Academy, again I felt that I only had rights to the lands of my ancestors, so I chose to base the setting on Scandinavia. And the research and writing was a lovely experience for me.

While I was drafting Book of a Thousand Days, I was also studying about Mongolia, because my parents were about to go live there for two years. And the more I learned, the more the research slid naturally into the story I was working on. Perfectly. As if that had been my intention all along. I had a moment of crisis. I wanted to base the setting on medieval Mongolia, but did I have the right to appropriate a land I had no blood or familial ties to for my story?

Eventually I decided, yes. I am a human being. I can take inspiration from the stories of our shared planet. It was a little easier for me to make this jump since I wasn't writing a true historical setting but a fantasy kingdom inspired by a historical setting.

Dangerous is my first young adult book not set long-ago-far-away but in our own world. I don't remember my exact thought process in deciding to make my main character biracial with a Paraguayan-American mother and white American father. There was reason to have a bilingual character and the choice seemed interesting for the story. The supporting cast also has a Russian-American, African-French, Korean-American, German-American, and African-American. These choices make sense in the story, but if this had been my first book, I don't know if I'd dared to make them. Again, out of misguided respect and fear, I might have been hesitant to try to embody the experience of a character who has a different race than me. I think that would have been a mistake. This story makes more sense, is richer, and is truer with the diverse cast. If I'd tried to write this story with an all-white cast, that would have been forced and untrue, because it wouldn't have reflected the actual world the story takes place in. Making creative choices from a place of fear (even fear mixed with loving and honest respect) is never a good idea.

I appreciate writers who are respectful of other cultures and experiences. And I don't think that every book needs to have a diverse racial cast. A book set in a town where everyone is white can exist. Those stories matter too. But I always want to make sure I'm open to what the story needs. And all stories (ironically perhaps, but especially fantasy and science fiction stories) need to have a foundation of truth in order to work. And the truth of our world is colorful, rich, expansive. I think it's wise, as writers, that we're always checking ourselves, making sure we're not just defaulting to all white, straight, able-bodied, non-religious, etc., characters. Not defaulting to Neutral. But keeping our stories open for the possibilities of diversity.

Are white, straight, able-bodied characters less controversial?

Here's a post I did on tumblr when this blog was down. Please also join me Thursday, May 1, 2pm EDT for the #diverselit chat on twitter with Tu Books.

It is easier to write Neutral characters (white, straight, able-bodied, non-religious, mostly male). Less controversial, strangely. If the major characters of all your books resemble the cast of Friends, you’ll get occasional questions as to why but no major protestations. Because we’re all used to it. It’s the norm.

If you write Specific characters (characters of color, with disabilities, who are religious or LGBTQ or have any other non-neutral traits), you will get more questions. Readers and reviewers who are like the character will challenge you. Will tell you that your portrayal disappointed them. Because the experience of the character wasn’t exactly like their own. Or representative enough. Or positive enough.

This will happen whether or not the author is like the character in question, though more often if a white author writes about a POC, or a straight author writes about an LGBTQ character, or an able-bodied author writes about a character with a disability, etc. Those who protest are engaging in important dialog. They need to have a voice. Their concerns are important. They help challenge writers to be respectful, thoughtful, and truthful in their writing.

But I worry that the concerns will discourage some authors from writing Specific characters. We must continue to do so, respectfully and as honestly as we can. Because it’s our job to represent humanity in literature. And humanity is diverse.

People are white and black and Asian and Latino and mixed. No one is truly able-bodied: we have missing limbs or chronic illnesses or mental illnesses or even glasses or allergies or freckles or fat or some way our bodies or minds aren’t exactly like some impossible transcendent ideal. People are different or weird or confused but always, always interesting.

Right now, the vast majority of characters in books and movies are Neutral, so when you write the rare character in a novel who isn’t, they stand out more. And people worry if the portrayal isn’t perfect (whatever “perfect” means). Because what if a young reader reads that book and it’s the only book they ever read about that kind of a person and they assume that’s how all people like that are?

It is impossible to write a character that should somehow accurately represent the truth of all people like that character. But I hope writers aren’t scared back into safer Neutral Land. The answer is more Specific characters. More and more till we more closely match the world we live in. And then those few Specific characters won’t have to carry the load of representing on behalf of all others like them. Then we can allow them to be their own unique, individual selves with flaws and all and love them all the same.

What do writers and mental illness have in common?

When a writer needs help, what do fellow writers do? We write! (Let’s be honest, it’s all we know how to do. We literally have zero other skills.) Due to his debilitating mental illnesses, fellow writer Robison Wells (Variant) and his family have crippling debt. In support of Robison Wells, his brother Dan Wells (I Am Not a Serial Killer) and Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn, Steelheart) have put together Altered Perceptions, a stellar anthology with contributions from 30 professional authors. For $10 buy the ebook, for $25 a hardcopy, with every dime going to the Wells’ family debt (Brandon Sanderson is swallowing all the overhead).

Please go to the Indiegogo page and pledge your money! Great stuff for a great cause! My own contribution is a short story. As of this moment, the only people in the world who have read this short story are my husband and Kiersten White. I hesitate to describe it for fear of spoiling it. But it’s safe to say my readers haven’t read anything like it from me before. I anticipate some people might be shocked by it, but I like it.

I wanted to participate in this fundraiser not only because I know and like Robison, but because mental illness is a personal matter for me. Like all of you I’m sure, there are dear people in my life who have to claw their way through every day battling a mental illness. It’s common. It’s biological. It’s not their fault. It’s not laziness or a bad attitude or a result of bad choices. It’s a disease like cancer or any other. I appreciate how open Robison is about his own struggles. He is helping to remove the stigma of mental illness. It’s something we could all acknowledge a little more.

One of Robison’s illnesses is OCD. I think this may be the most misunderstood of all mental illnesses. I hear people say, “I’m so OCD. I have to have my house clean” or such, as if OCD and cleanliness or fastidiousness were the same thing. In fact, OCD is a neurobiological disorder. If you don’t have OCD, you clean your house because you like it that way, and you feel satisfied when it is. If you have OCD, you are crawling with horrible feelings and compulsions, you have intrusive thoughts you wish would leave you alone but they shout inside your head over and over and over again, and you don’t want to wash your hands one more time or check the light switch twenty times before leaving the room or mumble a chant you loathe every time you have a certain thought, but if you don’t you feel sure that something horrible, horrible, horrible will happen and it will be all your fault so you do these things over and over again and worry that you’re crazy and don’t know how to stop and sometimes hate yourself for it all. OCD is a terrible taskmaster. OCD is frightening. OCD is exhausting. OCD is not a joke for those who suffer from it. The good news is there are treatments for OCD. Cognitive behavioral therapy and often medications can help put a patient back in control of their life. The bad news is mental health services aren’t widely available or affordable for many in the country, and the accompanying stigma of mental illness keeps many from seeking help. I hope we can change this, and I hope this conversation and this anthology is one small step forward.

I am not accessible

I just read through some accumulated emails that go to my public account, and quite a few said some variant of "I will no longer read your books if you don't answer my email." Some said it nicely (thank you, sweeties). Some were, frankly my darlings, quite rude. Like, shockingly rude and demanding.

A few years ago, I had a choice. I could 1. answer all my emails or 2. write more books. I chose books. I know that disappoints you and I'm sorry. I don't like disappointing people. But it is not appropriate to threaten and bully people into getting what you want. I generally ignore negative emails. I rarely am able to respond to any emails, negative or otherwise. But there were enough of these type of emails I thought the issue warranted an explanation in a blog post.

I am not accessible. I cannot be your penpal. I cannot be your writing mentor. Email and twitter and blogs and Facebook and tumblr do not paint an accurate portrait of life. I am not sitting on my computer all day, available to communicate with you. I am cleaning the house and reading to my kids and physically pulling my twins apart so they don't scratch out each other's eyeballs and throwing something together for dinner and shoveling the clutter into the corners and paying bills and putting away the groceries and doing my taxes and helping my kids with their homework and running over to see a neighbor and cleaning up a spill and taking my kids to the doctor and sweeping up broken glass and washing the sheets and putting all the books my kids pulled off the shelves back on and tweezing out slivers and putting on bandaids and generally doing what a mother with four young children does. A few hours each weekday I get to write books. And a few times a day I can briefly check twitter, etc., and my email, though I always have far more than I can read right then let alone answer so they pile up. I am not wealthy. I do not have a personal assistant. I do not have a housekeeper or full time nanny or personal shopper or whatever rich people have. I am a working mother. I don't expect my younger readers to understand completely what that means, but please believe me when I tell you part of what it means is that there are so so so many things I would like to do that I simply cannot, and answering your email is one of those. You are not the only one writing to me. I either have to answer everyone or no one. If answering the emails and editing the stories and responding personally to the questions of every one of my readers is the price of having readers then I give up. I can't do it. I can only do two things. I choose: 1. be a mom/wife, and 2. write books. I can't be everything else that you want me to be. All I can do is be the author of some books that you might like, and if reading those books isn't enough for you, then I'm not your girl.

If you hear an edge to my voice, please believe it is not anger or offense. It is simply overwelmedness. I am overwhelmed. To be fair, I do state right there on my website above my email address that I won't be able to respond. A simpler solution would be to shut down my public account permanently. But I keep it because sometimes I get the most delicious emails, like the ones I've been getting from parents of kids who read Ever After High and said, "They never read a book before but they read this one straight through!" What joy! I get to forward those on to my editors and others who share in that joy and know that our hard work is finding a home. So I don't want to shut it down.

Maybe instead what I need to shut down is all this darn caring. I do care if I offend people. If I disappoint people. If they feel a connection to me through my books and feel personally betrayed by me that I can't complete that connection. I wish I could not care what people think. But if I didn't, maybe I wouldn't have the sensitivity to be a writer? To channel characters and care, too, what they think and feel? I don't know the answer.

Except this. I cannot change my email and fan interaction policy. And I cannot stop writing. So we are at an impasse, my darlings. I hope you have real people in your real lives who can hear your thoughts, be your friends, support and comfort you, read your marvelous words, and love you. Go to them. I'll be over here, out of sight, pulling out splinters and shoveling legos, silently cheering you on.

The young adult book tropes that ate the world

From some people in the YA field (usually adults), I hear ongoing criticism of certain tropes in YA books. Enough love triangles. Enough falling in love with one person and then another. Enough characters falling in love instantly. Enough characters who can’t figure out what they want. Enough characters who discover they (or their crush) are changing, turning/can turn into a creature both more incredible and horrible than they ever imagined. Enough protagonist complaining/whining about his/her life (though let’s be honest, this criticism is usually directed at the “her” only). Enough conveniently absent parents so the protagonist can be free to have an adventure. Enough what we’ve already seen a hundred times.

But what I’m actually hearing is, enough teenagers.

These tropes in YA are tropes to begin with because they deal so directly and profoundly and metaphorically with the teenage experience. Which is what YA fiction is actually about. And when I hear them criticized so harshly and absolutely, I start to wonder if those critics are just tired of teenagers in general.

I’m not a parent of a teenager yet, so talk to me again in a few years, but I believe that teenagers need those years to get messy, to make mistakes, to fall in love all the time instantly and slowly with him/her, then him/her, to complain, to fight, to struggle for independence but then still need comfort and safety, to live an entire lifetime condensed into a few volatile, fascinating, difficult, beautiful years. That’s how their brains develop. That’s how they figure out who they will be. As adults, I think we need to respect the teenage years and help them live through the experience with as little permanent damage as possible, while still allowing them the experiences themselves. And as readers, I think we need to respect the stories that express those years. Sometimes demanding books that rid themselves of all teenage angst and tropes is like demanding that teens just grow up already and be adults.

To be clear, I think everyone has a right to not like any book for any reason. Reading is personal. And I think criticism is important and done right and received well, the voices can help challenge writers to write new and better things. So I’m not asking for the criticism to stop. I just think it’s worth adding these thoughts to the conversation.

The great thing about rules in writing is they can always be broken. What stopped working, what became hackneyed and overdone, can become fresh and exciting in the right story with the right author and the right reader. So let’s not close any doors on writers. And let’s not send the message to teens that the books they love and the stories that resonate with them have no value or worth. They get that enough from some adults about their very beings.

(reposted from my tumblr)

What's in store on squeetus in 2014 (spoiler: a lot)

2014 is going to be a crazy year for me. Some highlights.

January - I turn 40. Bring it.

February 11 - Austenland releases on DVD/Blu-ray.

March 4 - Dangerous publishes. This is the book I first sold with a synopsis in 2005. It was a complicated book, and I spent a lot of time and a lot of drafts on it, also letting the Austenland screenplay, Midnight in Austenland, and Palace of Stone come first while I untangled and rewrote. I'm so excited and so happy with this book. I've heard people call it "Hunger Games meets The Avengers," which is very complimentary IMO but I think does give a pretty good idea of what kind of story to expect. I hope you guys love this one. I'm incredibly fond of it. Always a risk to genre-hop but I'm so happy I did.

March 25 - EVER AFTER HIGH: The Unfairest of Them All publishes. This is the second EVER AFTER HIGH novel, cover reveal to come. FYI I don't have any part in the merchandise, i.e. dolls, clothes, etc., or the games and webisodes (I'm not that cool!). But I've really enjoyed writing the novels to help tell the story of the clever and playful world Mattel created. Here's a lovely article in Kirkus Reviews about the first book.

June 24 - SPIRIT ANIMALS 4 publishes. This is the series that started with Brandon Mull's Wild Born, and a different author is writing each book in the 7-book series. TItle and cover announcements to come!

July 15 - EVER AFTER HIGH 3 publishes. TItle and cover announcements to come! This one is going to be so fun. Dean has been helping me with Ever AFter High 2&3 (it'd be too much too fast for me to do alone) and we're having a blast with this one.

October 14 (I think) - The Princess in Black! The first book in my and Dean's early chapter book series, illustrated by the phenomenal LeUyen Pham (pronounced Lay-win Fam). I've seen the final art (full color illustrations each page, 80 pages long) and I'm trying not to FREAK OUT with excitement. Oh heck, I'll just go ahead and freak out. OHMYGOSHOHMYGOSHOHMYGOSHYOUGUYS!!!

So...yeah, five books in one year. I did work on Dangerous for years, completing it over a year ago, and Princess in Black is short. But still. I never, ever, ever after imagined I'd see 5 books in one year. I'll be on the road a lot in 2014, doing two book tours as well as conferences, festivals, etc., so I'll see many of you! Tours TBA.

ps. Princess Academy 3 (title and cover TBA) will probably pub March '15.

pps. I've got lots of TBAs so check back here. My new year's resolution: blog post each Monday. What's yours?

Hone your internal reader, not your internal literary critic

So, I have five books coming out in 2014 (two Ever After High books, Dangerous, Spirit Animals book 4, and the first Princess in Black). And I'm busy. Writing. Most of those are already written, but it's still busy! (I'm also working on the third Princess Academy, which should be out in 2015.) I usually try to blog here at least each Monday but I've been failing lately. Am recommitting now! And in the meantime, here's a three-year-old post that generated some discussion at the time:

 

From Sara Zarr's blog: "Richard Rodriguez says that the reader re-creates the book when he reads it." I completely agree, and you long time readers of my blog know my opinions about How to Be a Reader. No story is static. A book has no meaning on its own. Meaning is created for each reader as they read. I've been thinking about this lately as I've been hearing people's responses to the last book in a certain trilogy.

I think that whether you are a reader, writer, or both (if you're a writer you'd better be both), reading books is far more useful when we shed the need to be a literary critic and focus instead on the internal. It's been interesting to hear over and over again what readers imagined the author failed to do. And I keep thinking, that's such a useless response. Unless you're getting a phd in literacy criticism and doing your thesis on that author, that's not helpful to you. Speculation about what the author was trying to do, or whether or not she was "tired" of writing, etc., is pointless. We don't know. Instead, it's so much more beneficial to focus on understanding our own internal reader, and therefore ourselves. Where did the story fail you? Where did it work for you? So, what does that say about you? What were you hoping for? What did you need from the story? If you're a writer, what does that tell you about what kind of a story you want to write? For me, this kind of responding is just about how I think about the book. Instead of thinking, "The author really dropped the ball on the ending," I try thinking, "What did I want out of the ending instead of what I got? Why did I want that?"

I've become more and more conscious of this way of reading over the past several years. It stems from hearing really weird responses to my own books and hearing readers speculate about ludicrous reasons I did this or that and assert false motivations for my story choices. Realizing how often readers do that about my works made me realize how often I thought that way about other people's books. Sometimes the speculation is right, most of the time it's not, but regardless, I realized I was throwing away my reading experience. I've now become a much more selfish reader, perhaps. When a story bugs me, I'm not thinking about the author but myself. Why am I bugged? What do I want? I think I come away from books now with a better understanding of myself as well as a better awareness of story that I can utilize in my own writing.

Reading as a writer changed me completely as a reader. I find I can still appreciate books I dislike because I am learning through them how to write stories I do like. I don't mean everything I've said here to be a blueprint for reading and the only proper way to read a book. THere are lots of ways to read a book. But I hope to call into question the sometimes assumed idea that we read books to label them as either good or bad. To me that's as silly as getting to know people just so we can categorize them as either good or bad. It's not for me to judge and label people. And if my only experience with books is a judgement call, a rating of stars, then I would soon tire of reading. For me, reading is an exploration, a partnership, me and the author via her words off on an adventure. For my personal reading experience, some authors are better companions than others, but it's always an adventure.