Lately--lately, in this instance, meaning always--there are some opinion pieces making the rounds comparing YA books to adult literary reeeeeal
books.
Sometimes my dad tells me that he likes my books and he thinks I have real talent, and he thinks I really could write a real book. He asks me when I'm going to write the great American nooooovel.
I'm currently a senior year English major. You have no idea how many people I know whose big goal is to write the great American novel. In class, I read great piece of literature after great piece of literature and I really, genuinely like some of them. I do. But when it's time for me to curl up with something I'm actually looking forward to? When stretched out on a towel on the beach or balled up crying on my bed and I need that book, it's Melina Marchetta or Amy Reed or Steve Brezenoff or David Levithan or Jaclyn Moriarty, to name a few. It's YA.
People used to ask me if I would write reeeeeal
books
when I grew up.
I am twenty-one-and-one-half as of last Friday. I'm not saying I'm ancient (I'll leave that to my infant girlfriend) but I'm unquestionably outside of the YA age group. I know I'm far from the only adult reading YA, and I don't know if it's my on-the-cusp age or my body of work or my major that has people so fucking confused by the fact that I care a lot more about stories about girls by their lockers than about men who want to fuck their sisters (what up, Faulkner, write a different book why don't you).
And see, that there is part of it. When my dad asks me why I haven't written that great American novel, I have totally told him, "Because I'm a Jewish girl."
There are some fucking fantastic literary ('what the fuck is literary anyway?' is a topic for a different post and a better writer) adult books written by women, but, um...where are they? Ohhh that's right, they're being ignored and shoved aside by literary purists just like YA books are! Come sit with us, ladies, our table is ever-expanding.
I've mentioned this before, I think, but I had a teacher in high school who once said to me, after Break sold, "I just feel like there's a level of depth missing in YA books, you know?" in this thoughtful voice like she expected me to agree.
Well, you know what? No, I don't fucking know.
There is a reason adults come back to these high school stories, and it isn't a reason I can figure out how to articulate. But it's the same reason people who very much aren't teenagers love Glee and Friday Night Lights. There is something enduring and universal about these stories.
And there is something twisted and weird and personal and so, so not monolithic. And while we're still working on the diversity-of-characters thing (and trust me I am giving myself a get-out-of-fucking-nothing-free card, I have written waaay too many books about white boys to get off scot-free--I mean, I love my books, but write a fucking Asian girl, hannah) we have a ever-changing, ever-evolving body of authors.
And I get that literary canon moves a lot slower. I get that.
But maybe it means literary canon needs to shut the fuck up a little bit. Because this isn't 1950 and writers aren't (just?) impotent men with typewriters and dark rooms and alcoholism and complexes. Writers are moms and teenagers and gay boys and black women and Jewish girls trying to tap out a blog post while the aforementioned infant girl watches RuPaul's Drag Race.
Maybe it doesn't have to be such a fucking art all the time. Maybe I shouldn't be getting a degree in this shit. Maybe I just don't get it.
Maybe I should go back to just reading my little YA books on the beach or balled up in my bed.
God, what a fucking waste that would be!
When I was a sophomore, a creative writing teacher told me that after he finished his
great
American
novel
he wanted to write some really commercial book about zombies. What a fucking joke, right! A real writer deigning to write about zombies!
Last month I ran into a girl from that class who has him again this semester. I asked if he'd finished his great American novel yet.
He has not.
My zombie book came out ten months ago.
(I love the taste of brains in the autumn. Tastes like legitimacy.)
At
night, the ocean is so loud and so close that I lie awake, sure it's
going to beat against the house's supports until we all crumble onto
the rocks and break into pieces. Our house is creaky, gray,
weather-stained. It's probably held a dozen desperate families who
found their cure and left before we'd even heard about this island.
We
are a groan away from a watery death, and we'll all drown without
even waking up, because we're so used to sleeping through unrelenting
noise.
Sometimes
I draw. Usually I keep as still as I can. I worry any movement from
me will push us over the edge. I don't even want to blink.
I
feel the crashing building. I always do. I lie in bed with my eyes
open and focus on a peak in my uneven ceiling and pretend I know how
to meditate. You are not moving. You are not drowning. It's just
rain. It's your imagination. Go to sleep.
That
pounding noise is pavement under your feet, is sex, is your mother's
hands on your brother's chest, is something that is not water.
It's
not working, not tonight. I sit up and grab my pad and pen to sketch
myself, standing. Dry.
Sometimes
the waves hit the shore so hard that I can't even hear the screaming.
But
usually I can. Tonight I can, and it hits me too hard for me to draw.
I need to learn how to draw a scream.
I
close my eyes and listen. I always do this; I listen like I am trying
to desensitize myself, like if I just let the screams fill my ears
long enough, I will get bored and I will forget and I will go to
sleep.
It
doesn't work. I need to calm down.
It's
just the wind.
Not
water. Not anyone. Go to sleep.
Some
nights the screams are louder than others. Some nights they're
impossible to explain away, like my mom tries, as really just the
wind passing through the cliffs. “Like in an old novel,” she
says. “It's romantic.” Her room doesn't face the ocean.
Fiona,
down on the south end of the island, says it's the ghost, but Fiona's
bag-of-bats crazy and just because we're figuring out some magic is
real doesn't mean I'm allowed to skip straight to ghost
in
an effort to make my life either more simple or more exciting, God,
what the fuck do I even want?
I
should figure it out and then wish for it and see what happens. Who
the hell knows? Magic island, after all.
Magic
fish, anyway. They heal.
That's
the real story, that's the story everyone believes, but it's hardly
the only one that darts around.
There
are creatures in the water no one's ever seen except out of the
corner of his eyes.
The
big house is haunted.
Maybe
we're all haunted.
I
only take the legends seriously at night. The house is rocking, and
the stories are the only thing to keep me company.
Stories,
me, and ocean, and however the hell many magic fish while my family
sleeps downstairs and my real life sleeps a thousand miles away.
At
home, I never would have believed this shit. I used to be a
reasonable person. But now we're living on this island that is so
small and isolated that it really feels like it's another world, with
rules like none I learned growing up. We came here from middle
America. We stepped into a fairy tale.
And
my brother is better but isn't well, so color me increasingly
despondent, magic fish.
Out
in the ocean, the shrieks continue, as high and hollow as whistles. I
get up and press my face against the window. My room is the highest
part of our kneeling house.
The
panes on my windows are thick and uneven. Probably the window was
made by hand. Even if it weren't so dark, I'd still hardly be able to
see. Everything's distorted like I'm looking through glasses that
don't belong to me.
But
I can just make out the waves, grabbing onto the shore with foamy
fingers and sliding back into the surf. I squint long enough and make
out white peaks in the dark water.
“Go
to sleep,” I say.
I
close my eyes and listen to the screams. I pretend it's my brother,
my little brother, who has cystic fibrosis and this fucked-up chest
and can't scream at all. Pretend this island has done the magic it
was supposed to do, and he's okay. And we can go home.
It's been getting really good reviews, which is pretty fucking cool. Look at these nice quotes!
"Moskowitz captures the teenage mentality and voice in this tender yet emotionally complex romance." - Publisher's Weekly
“Moskowitz, as usual, imbues her prose with a dreamy quality that makes every off moment feel monumental….Despite featuring the very real sniper attacks of 2002, this is as amorphous as the author’s Invincible Summer—not necessarily a bad thing for those inclined to float along with the lullaby rhythm. The theme of the randomness of tragedy (literalized here by 9/11, the sniper, cancer, and Craig’s 14 lost pets) is particularly well-handled.” - Booklist
So there's that, and that's awesome, but let's lay it on the line: this is my fourth book, and after four books it takes a lot to get my feathers ruffled (gross?) in either a good (yeah, it's gross) or a bad way. ANY review means that someone's picked up the book, and that's what's important to me at this point, and maybe that means I'm soulless, Supernatural or Zombie Tag-style.
Except the thing is...it's different with this one. Even though I'm pretty fond of that magic gay fish thing, GGG gets a special section of my brain all to itself. GGG is just very, very me. Both 'me' as a writer--pretty much every hannah-trope you know and hopefully grudgingly accept is in this book, seriously, make a drinking game--and as a actual, real human.
And it's kind of the end of an era. As of right now, this is my last male-POV fully contemporary YA book. This was me doing everything I love so much, wringing into one book, and letting it rest.
This was me closing a door, for now.
That's not really why it's special.
**
John Allen Muhammad, the mastermind of the D.C. metro sniper shootings, was executed on November 10th, 2009.
I was at Brown then, and a friend of mine had a blog where he wrote about political events and such, and he asked me to take a look at a post he wrote criticizing the death penalty with regards to Muhammad's execution. Because I was from Maryland, and also because I'm a bleeding heart liberal who was attending a bleeding heart liberal school and I assume he was expecting me to have a certain reaction to the news that someone had been executed.
In any other circumstance, he would have been wrong, but the thing was...
I'd been waiting for John Allen Muhammad to be executed for seven years.
Except, if you'd have asked me, I would have said eight. Because I would have sworn up and down that the sniper shootings and 9/11 were the same year.
I was young--ten for 9/11, eleven for the sniper shootings, so it makes sense that my memories get muddled. But I don't think that's the reason I was so sure that the sniper shootings were a month after 9/11, rather than thirteen.
I think it's a Maryland thing. A suburbs-of-D.C. thing.
They're linked for us. They always will be. We sat right next to a city that lost 125 people in 9/11, and we very obviously were NOT in New York. We weren't even in D.C. We were Maryland, uncomfortably close and uncomfortably detached, and thirteen months (feels like one month) later we, we fucking suburbanites, were the playground for two snipers and two weeks and ten casualties.
We have issues.
It's a Maryland thing.
So I was at Brown in 2009, and my friend showed me the blog post, and the way he talked about Muhammad's execution was...
normal.
He talked about it like it was any other situation, any other murderer. He used it as a support in a larger argument.
It just made so much sense.
And there I was, seven years out of it. Seven years of reading the Wiki page obsessively, of reading about John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo and timing the shootings and figuring out how far I was from each when it happened (not far, never far, and how the fuck could I use that as a reason something was important? People die all the time. Why the hell does it matter if I'm five miles away?)
Seven years out of running in zig-zags on my way to voice lessons and reading about a boy my age getting shot on his way to school. Seven years out of our chief of police crying on TV and our faculty members wearing orange vests and patrolling our grounds.
There was nothing else on the news.
People ducked while they pumped gas.
People talked, all the time, about 9/11.
Seven years out of it, and still shocked that anyone could think it made sense.
So I wrote a book.
(I did what I have to do to make anything make sense. I made a love story.)
So I wrote GGG over a few days a month after Muhammad was executed, during final exams, because I take my studies very seriously, obviously. And because I can't be objective about it. I can't. I can't let it go.
I love Goodreads too. I love it as a reader and as a drama-loving red-blooded twenty-year-old extroverted Aries, but I also love it as a writer.
I'm sorry that we've fucked up Goodreads.
I'm having a hard time writing this because I'm so fucking frustrated, and because I'm goddamn ashamed of how I've seen people behaving lately. I feel like this is Boy Meets World and we have to keep learning the same lessons every week and then we go back and make the same fucking mistakes.
I want to tell you that I get why there is vitriol towards YA writers.
We keep doing this shit to you, and I'm so sorry.
I'm not giving any links because this isn't an isolated incident, but in case you've missed what's been going on lately, the gist is that we invade reviewer space, whether on reviews of our own work or a friend's, and act like assholes.
While I don't support anyone's decision to act like an asshole, it's really stupid for us. I get that sometimes you want to take that writer hat off and be a real person, or be a reader. Hell, I still have internet spaces for real hannah, and they're not invisible; you can go friend me on Facebook and watch me exchange videos with my girlfriend and discuss Motion City Soundtrack with my mom and post half-naked pictures from Rocky Horror, you know? (Just drop me a note saying you're a blog reader so I know you're not a random creeper looking at my half-naked pictures from Rocky Horror, cool?)
But I don't really get to be a reader anymore, not fully, and that's just fucking reality. And maybe it's not altogether awesome, and maybe I miss it, but it's a pretty small price to pay for being a motherfucking author.
That doesn't mean I can't write reviews, even negative ones; I do sometimes, and there are some amazing combination writer/reviewers out there--Phoebe North, anyone?--but it does mean that if I go out there and comment on bad reviews with sarcasm and bitchiness and general asshole-dom, I make writer-hannah look like a fucking idiot.
What's more, I embarrass my fans, I disrespect people who support me, and I give YA writers a bad name, and that just isn't how this shit is going to go down.
I don't know why this is such a hard concept for some of us, and I'm so, so sorry that we're just not fucking getting it.
If we can't stand Goodreads, we shouldn't go there. But if we choose to anyway, it is fucking ridiculous of us to think that just because we get those sexy author profile pages Goodreads is suddenly our space to be assholes to people who are doing what Goodreads was made for: reviewing books and interacting with people who love (and hate) books as much as they do.
Don't get me wrong, I love that we have a space where we can obsessively refresh to see how many people have added our books and see what page people are on and read what quotes they've added (THIS IS MY FAVORITE THING IN THE WORLD) and cry over bad reviews and cry over good reviews and cry because this shit is stressful, damn it.
But we are guests here, and Goodreads is your space, and I'm sorry we keep being idiots about it.
Love,
hannah
P.S. to authors: I know that bad reviews can hurt. I know that sometimes bad reviews are objectively WRONG. Shut up anyway. If you're a decent person with a good book, your readers will defend the thing. And that's the dream. That's what Goodreads is for.
Mostly real-life hannah, but writer hannah makes her appearances too.
1. What did you do in 2011 that you'd never done before?
Had two books come out in one year. Started dating a girl. Went abroad with my family. Starred--twice--in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Wrote one, solitary book.
2. Did you keep your New Years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I kept almost all of them. I'll probably make some more.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.
5. What countries did you visit?
Just Spain.
6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
Serenity.
7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
April 19th, 2011--Invincible Summer!
December 20th, 2011--Zombie Tag. And that other thing. She's going to come up a lot.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Selling magicgayfish was really, really amazing, as was Teen Author Carnival and doing a panel next to David Levithan, oh my God.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Not writing.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
There was the exciting head-over-heels-down-some-stairs adventure that left me with a sprained ankle and a shitton of scrapes, and I had the flu in the spring. And then I tested positive for Lyme, despite having been tested and treated and cured four years ago, so I had to do a round of antibiotics which made me sick, and hell if I even know what's up anymore. I'm finally on meds for the arthritis and they're helping a ton. THIS IS BORING, I'M SORRY, I DON'T MAKE THE QUESTIONS.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
No contest.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
My magic gay fish, of course.
14. Where did most of your money go?
Clothes, as always.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Turning 20. Invincible Summer. Each semester to be over. Holidays, always. Rocky shows. The deal for Fishboy.
16. What song will always remind you of 2011?
"Carry on Wayward Son" by Kansas, because...yeah.
17. Compared to this time last year, you are:
Happier?
God, yeah.
Richer?
Yep.
Thinner?
noooo
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Reading, like always. Sleeping. Being calm.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Same as last year: "Freaking the fuck out."
20. How will you be spending Christmas?
At home with my family, and I can't fucking wait.
22. Did you fall in love in 2011?
Ask me in a few months.
24. What was your favorite TV program?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA come on. You know me.
(Supernatural.)
25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
No.
26. What was the best book you read?
SO GLAD YOU ASKED. There are six I read for the first time that I absolutely HAVE to mention.
BROOKLYN, BURNING by Steve Brezenoff
CLEAN by Amy Reed
JELLICOE ROAD by Melina Marchetta
THE PIPER'S SON by Melina Marchetta
STOLEN by Lucy Christopher
THE GHOSTS OF ASHBURY HIGH by Jaclyn Moriarity
27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Frightened Rabbit.
30. What was your favorite film of this year?
I saw Easy A for the first time on New Year's Eve last year and loved it, so let's count that.
31. What did you do on your birthday. And how old were you?
Twenty. We went out for fondue like we have for my last five birthdays. It was fantastic.
32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Not being in school.
33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
Cozy.
34. What kept you sane?
Twitter, Rocky Horror, Supernatural, the Musers, my mom.
35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
He's surprised by the question.
36. What political issue stirred you the most?
Same as last year, DADT.
37. Whom did you miss?
Everything and all the things all the time. But it's going to be okay.
Apparently I've never shared this excerpt, which surprised me!
From the magic gay fish book! Happy Tuesday, everyone.
--
“So I know where you came from, by the way,” I say.
“Humans and a house and all that. Yeah, I know.” Fishboy isn't even looking at me. His eyes are busy tracking something under the water.
“That house. The big one, right there.”
“You must think I'm an idiot.”
“What are you looking at?”
“I'm--” Then he dives and emerges with a tiny fish in his mouth. He spits it onto the deck. “Look at that! Check that out! Oh, man, Teeth is the king. Teeth is the king. I am the king of the seas. Look at that.”
I squirm away from it. It's flopping around like my brother during a bad night. “What is it?”
“Minnow. Oh, God, look at this minnow. Mmm. It's beautiful.” He kisses it and cuddles it against his cheek, then he neatly slits its head off with his teeth.
“Oh, Jesus, Fishboy.”
He looks up, a laugh, halfway through, frozen on his face. “What did you call me?”
“Fishboy.” But I didn't mean to. Shit. “It's, uh, what I called you in my head before I knew your name.”
He shrugs and nods a little. “Fishboy. Yeah, that's cool.”
Thank God. This would have been such a stupid fucking thing to fight about.
He's really grossing me out with this fish, licking the blood off its neck, so I shake my head quickly and say, “You know how I found out where you're from?”
“I don't care.”
“I made out with your sister.”
“What's made out?” He's looking at me with these huge innocent eyes.
“Kissed.”
“Ew,” he says. “You kissed a fish?” Then he buries his face in the minnow and rips it to pieces.
“This is so gross.”
He comes up with a mouth full of flesh. “Oh my God. Rudy, this is the best minnow in the world. You have to try this.”
“I'll pass.”
“I'll save you the liiiiver.”
At least now I know he's screwing with me. “Do fish even have livers?”
“You're a liver.”
“How do you know that word?”
“I'm very very smart.” He licks the skin clean. “Oh my God. Minnow. You are a beautiful minnow.”
“It's dead.”
“It doesn't speak English anyway. Oh, lovely, lovely minnow.”
“You're disgusting.”
“You're the one kissing a fish. Sicko.”
“Your human sister.”
“I knew what you meant. Seriously. You think I'm an idiot, don't you?”
I lie down on my back, as far as I can get from the remains of the fishboy's lunch. He's chewing on all the little bones.
Eventually he finishes eating, and I don't say anything, and he doesn't say anything. He reaches up to the dock and walks the fish bones back and forth like they're people. I half-watch his hands and half-watch the sky. It's the first time we've been absolutely silent together when it doesn't feel like we're fighting. It almost feels like we're tucked in to go to sleep. The silence must last nearly five minutes before he looks up at and smiles at me.
It doesn't matter what side I'm on and what side I'm on, for a minute. For a minute, it's just me and that smile. It's this kid.
“If you're done telling me my family history,” he says, “I have a mission for us.”
The first song on my playlists has to set the mood. Which usually means that it needs a really great intro.
There are few songs with better intros than "Turn Up The Sun."
I started listening to Oasis when I was about fourteen, and this was the first song of theirs I knew. I heard about it on a music blog I used to read, and it said that there was one correct way and one correct way only to listen to this song.
The advice was:
--Wait for a sunny day.
--Find a door, preferably a set of sturdy double doors, that you can push through to get outside. Something like the front doors at a school or the lobby of a theater.
--Get it as dark as you can inside.
--Put your headphones in.
--Count 37 steps back from the doors. Stand there. Press play.
--Slowly walk forwards. One step per second.
--At 37 steps/37 seconds, push those doors open and step out into the sun.
I don't blame you if you don't actually do that. I didn't. I still haven't. But every time I listen to the beginning of this song, I feel like I'm doing it anyway. I feel the dark and then the doors thrown open and the sun beating down like an attack. I feel grungy and grimy and I taste like sunscreen.
It's that good.
SAMPLE LYRIC: Yeah it's not about the lyrics.
CORRELATING PASSAGE:
"Up."
I'm sticking to the sheets with sweat, and the smell of Noah's sandals attacks my face. It is so summer.
At home, we each get our own rooms, but here, Noah and I share, even though there are enough rooms for us each to have our own. Part of the feeling of summer depends on waking up when he wakes up, or putting on a shirt gritty with sand and sunscreen that might not even be mine.
Ever since Wil Lowenstein's older brother Graham died a few months ago, Wil's spent most of his time fighting off imaginary zombies with spatulas in Zombie Tag, the Mafia/Capture the Flag hybrid he invented with his friends. What Wil doesn't tell anybody is that if he could bring his dead brother back as a zombie for real, he would. In a heartbeat.
So when Wil finds a way to bring back all the dead within five miles, he seizes the chance. But the Graham who comes back isn't the same. None of the returned are. At first they're just emotionless, apathetic - lifeless. But then some of the zombies slowly start to get one emotion back - anger. And Wil is going to have to find a way to fix zombie-Graham and turn him back into the angsty teenager he's supposed to be before it's too late.
Because some of the zombies are banding together and plotting something. And Wil isn't sure his mom's spatulas are really going to do the trick if the zombies really do want to eat his brains.
:)
Oh, and if this sounds like your thing? You can add it here. Just sayin'.
“So,” Josha said, his feet up on the railing of Beckan's balcony, his ass on the porch swing. They were watching the tightropers continue stringing their lines, and watching the fairies on the streets rushing around with their heads covered, like they were expecting rain. A news report blared from inside, where Beckan had left her father in front of the TV.
She knew what Josha was going to say, but she gave him nothing. She almost always knew what Josha was going to say. She loved him very much but had long ago given up hope.
“So,” Josha said. “Scrap?”
“He's teaching me to read.”
“How charitable.”
“Not really. Selfish. He wants someone to read his stupid stories. He's desperate.”
“Cricket won't read them?”
“Who?”
“His cousin,” Josha said. “They live together."
“I didn't know his name.” She had only seen him a few times. He was usually walking from room to room, usually with headphones jammed over his ears.
Josha said, “So you're really not crazy about him.”
“Scrap?”
“Either.”
“I told you.”
“Since you don't know his family or anything. Don't know anything about him.” He gave her a sloppy grin. “After all, you know me. So.”
She watched the trightropers instead of responding. Josha said “Cricket” quietly to himself a few times. “Must be a genius if he avoids the stories,” he mused.
“Cold-hearted genius, maybe.”
“A genius is a genius. I don't need another heart, anyway.”
Then the first bombs went off, and they sprang towards each other as if they had previously been stretched apart. Beckan felt some heat on her cheek, like the city was breathing on her, but she couldn't see where the bomb fell or detect any damage. From the porch of Beckan's house, at the bottom of the hill, it was hard to see much of anything.
I swear a real post will come at some point, but I needed something easy right now, so here is an end-of-the-year survey. I did it last year as well.
This is mostly real-life-hannah, if you're curious about her, but there's a lot of writing in here as well.
1. What did you do in 2010 that you'd never done before?
Wrote a fantasy manuscript--three of them, in fact. Took control of my health. Was single for the first time since I was 15, which *felt* like something I'd never done before. Wrote and sold two MG books. Wrote 4 books in a year, which I think is a record for me. Made new friends, which honestly feels like a new thing.
But all in all, not enough.
2. Did you keep your New Years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I kept almost all of them, actually, and I have already made mine for 2011. Largely writing-related.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
Yes.
5. What countries did you visit?
I visited absolutely no countries, but I did go to the West Coast for the first time, and I'm leaving for Spain in a few days.
6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010.
A new book on the shelves, obviously.
A new person.
7. What dates from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
I honestly can't think of a single one.
Pathetic.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Selling Zombie Tag and the other MG. And, honestly? Writing my magic gay fish book.
9. What was your biggest failure?
My answer is the same as last year's: College, college, college.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
The first one. Same old shit, really.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
Well, I paid to get my industrial piercing back, and I think that was the most exciting.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Every single goddamn muser's.
And my mother's.
14. Where did most of your money go?
Clothes and food. Thank God I get most of my books for free.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Disney World. SCBWI. Christmas, like always, because I'm five. And when I knew the book deal for Zombie Tag was coming but it still took a few more days to actually get it...that was torture.
16. What song will always remind you of 2009?
When I Was a Boy by Dar Williams
17. Compared to this time last year, you are: Happier?
no
Richer?
yes
Thinner?
yes
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Reading. Last year, I said my goal was 50 books in 2010. I clocked in at 28. Guh.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Freaking the fuck out.
20. How will you be spending Christmas?
I quote myself from last year: "Christmas is done, saun." I had an amazing Christmas at home with my family. We watched movies and made whoopie pies and played board games.
22. Did you fall in love in 2010?
I did not.
24. What was your favorite TV program?
Queer as Folk is still my favorite, but How I Met Your Mother emerged as a new contender. I love, love, love sitcoms.
25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
I wish my answer were the same as last year's. "Nah, I don't have time for that shit."
It will be soon.
26. What was the best book you read?
There are a few that need mentioning.
REAL LIVE BOYFRIENDS by E. Lockhart WHEN YOU REACH ME by Rebecca Stead THE DISREPUTABLE HISTORY OF FRANKIE LANDAU-BANKS by E. Lockhart (um, I love her.) BEAUTIFUL by Amy Reed THE DEATHDAY LETTER by Shaun David Hutchinson HER AND ME AND YOU by Lauren Strasnick
27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Dar Williams
30. What was your favorite film of this year?
How to Train Your Dragon
31. What did you do on your birthday. And how old were you?
Nineteen. I remember my roommate put play-doh on every stair down from my room. And I honestly don't remember much else. I'm old. I got mocked on twitter for being old, I remember that.
32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
I honestly don't know. Maybe knowing would have made it more satisfying.
33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
Scrubby, in general, but I started wearing a lot of jewelry.
34. What kept you sane?
The Musers. Same answer as last year. But also my mother.
35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Is Noel from the Ruby Oliver books a public figure? Let's say yes.
36. What political issue stirred you the most?
DADT
37. Whom did you miss?
I miss high school. And I sometimes miss who we used to be.
The excerpt two posts down is the first chapter of my NaNoWriMo project. Here's the beginning of chapter 2. Because I like how the bits fit together.
--
A few months ago, Micah started fucking my boyfriend. I'm secretary of the student government, and that plus lacrosse team meant I only had time for a date with Jackson once or twice a month. Meanwhile, we're turning eighteen in three weeks and Micah was still a virgin, so I figured pairing him and Jackson up was such a charitable act that I could practically put it on my resume.
It's worked out well. Micah's had a crush on Jackson for years, so he's as close as he ever gets to happy. And Jackson puts up with him, which is as close as anyone's ever come to liking him. He's known Micah and I since we were kids, so he knows enough about CIPA that nothing surprises him anymore, but it's still not his reality, so he can still laugh when Micah's watch timer tells him to use the bathroom and think of my brother, at least some of the time, as a superhero. To Micah and me, it's all just bullshit routine. So it's good that he has Jackson to be amazed.
And I'm not threatened. I know Jackson likes me more, and Micah would never, ever let himself love anyone.
It's the first Friday of the month, which is one of Micah's days with Jackson, but he comes up to me after school and says he's foisting Jack off on me tonight.
I haul my backpack out of my locker. “I thought you finished Hudson's paper.” It's a very easy paper, but most everything is now. We're in the same class as the fourteen-year-olds. Younger than that, there are hordes of them, but there just aren't that many kids our age left, and we all have this skinny desperate look of survived prisoners. The little kids only know the plague as the newest pages in their history books.
He says, “It took me five minutes.”
“Took me nine. I must be off my game.”
“I fell.”
I look at him.
He shrugs his backpack strap up his arm.“Before Science.”
“How'd you fall?”
“Tripped.”
“Someone tripped you?” I'll fucking kill them.
“Tripped on my shoelace, Gwen, Jesus Christ. Ask Jackson, he was there.”
“He saw you fall?”
Micah says, “He said the fall was uncanny. That was the word he used. Uncanny.”
“That's not a good word.”
“Not for a fall, yeah.”
I reach out and touch his arm, and he lets me for maybe a second before he rolls his shoulders back to squirm away. He always does that—waits just long enough to flinch away that he can deny it was a flinch. It was just a shift in weight. A trick of the light. Something. It's never made sense to me. Touch is the only thing he can feel, and he does, as acutely as anyone else. And he squirms away from it. I guess that's Micah in a nutshell.
He clears his throat and says, “So I'm going to go to the hospital after school, I guess, just to make sure.”
I should probably offer to go with him. But I don't go back to the hospital, ever. When I need shots or antibiotics, I go to the adult hospital, even though it's two buses and half an hour. I don't think Micah's ever gone, even though he hardly needs this fall as an excuse to visit the children's hospital; he's there ever week, convinced he's dislocated a joint or contracted meningitis. Our uncle's mansion is next door. There's no reason for Micah not to know, every second, that he's safe. It's an addiction he never tries to fight. And I'm not going to be the one to encourage him to fight.
“Be safe,” I tell him.
“Yeah. Look, I got to go.” He backs away for a few steps, then turns around walks out of the school. I guess I should be happy. That's the longest conversation we've had in weeks. Really, fucking the same guy is the closest we come to communicating.
NOTE: This post contains possibly incorrect spoilers of the following, many of which I know nothing about:
--Queer as Folk (US TV series) --Harry Potter (the whole series --Lord of the Rings (okay and I've only seen the movies but I'm pretty sure either format works for the example I'm using) --Twilight series (which I have not read, but know enough about to perhaps erroneously cite) --The Boyfriend List series by E. Lockhart (only very minor spoilers) --The Great Gatsby (also minor) --The Stranger (ditto)
You have been warned.
--
One thing I rarely talk about on this blog is--aside from my cries in the night for more strong male characters--what I like to see in stories, and how I try to write my stories. But when my dear friend Scott Tracey suggested I blog about Queer as Folk, I realized that the show (which is possibly my favorite show ever) highlights a lot of elements that can make or break a story, in my mind.
And they're all about promises you make your reader.
One True Pairing. This is a concept rooted, I think, in fanfic. (which, TANGENT: I adore almost as much as Queer as Folk, and even more if the two are combined. Some writers get all up in arms--and, in my opinion, up in their own egos--about it. Use a pseudo, don't try to make money, and write on, bitches.)
The concept of One True Pairing is that there is a couple you are rooting through throughout the entire book--or, commonly, throughout the entire series. This doesn't mean the couple is always obvious, or together through the entire work. There are bumps. There should be bumps.
But they should end up together.
I know a lot of people are going to protest this. They're going to talk about how books should resemble the real world, and the real world isn't always fair, and couples break up all the time regardless of how much they love each other, and it isn't fair to promote some kind of fantasy in our books, blah blah blah.
To which I say: bullshit.
I am 100% pro happy endings--see the next heading! But I don't think my definition of a happy ending is the same as other people's. Most of my stories have an ending that is bittersweet, but goddamn it, the couple stays together.
This togetherness doesn't have to be very overt, even. In Queer as Folk, Brian and Justin are set up from episode 1 as the One True Pairing. For the entire first season, they're not officially a couple. They go episodes at a time without seeing much of each other. Brian doesn't even like Justin that much, despite bringing him home in the first ten minutes of the first episode.
By season 2, they're as official as they ever really get. Neither of them is into monogamy or serious relationships, at least not for a while, so they are happy and very much, even though Brian would never admit it, in love. They break up twice over the series, and it's painful to watch, even though you know they will get back together.
And they do. You know why? Because the whole fucking thing would suck if they didn't. A book I really love broke this rule, and it was absolutely crushing. They spent the whole book trying to get together, then together and deliriously happy, and then they broke up in the last 5 pages. It was so sad, and the book lost so many points with me for that.
I want payoff. I want hope. I want promises fulfilled, and the biggest promise a lot of books give you is that One True Pairing. Your readers are trusting you.
Queer as Folk ends with Brian and Justin calling off their engagement (more on that later) and separating when Justin moves to New York for a while to work on his art. For me, this ending was not open. I was a hundred percent satisfied. They're still together, they're just living in different cities for a while. A lot of people didn't agree with me. There are huge sections of the fan base convinced that they ended the series broken up.
To which I say, again, bullshit! And recently, someone did an interview with the two creators of the show, one of which said, "I have no idea why people think they broke up."
So HA. One True Pairings win again. And I never had any doubt, because I trusted the creators the way I trust authors. I trust the good guys to win and the right people to make out. You never REALLY think Bella's going to end up with Jacob. If you're paying any attention at all, you never REALLY think Harry's going to end up married to Hermione.
And, to extrapolate a little on this point--
Give me a goddamn happy ending.
I get it, realism realism blah blah blah. But to quote Seinfeld, "If I want a long, boring story with no point to it, I have my life."
Your book has a goal. Achieve it. The ring gets destroyed, guys. Voldemort doesn't win. Even if Harry had died, which many people think he should have (holla) it would have been a happy ending because evil would not have triumphed. Guys. Evil can't fucking triumph. Come on now.
I'm crazy about books that make me think about life and the universe and the world at large. And I don't even everything to work out peachy keen. Think The Great Gatsby. Think The Stranger. Those are some of my favorite books, and both of them have someone kicking it at the end.
But there is hope. There is spirit. Evil isn't winning.
No evil winning. Your characters don't have to be making out in the sunset, but they have to at least be holding hands in the wreckage.
You're fulfilling a promise you're giving the reader. Don't be that asshole who's trying to teach the reader there are no promises in real life. You're like the Grinch right now.
The last few lines in the entire Queer as Folk series: So the thumpa thumpa continues. It always will. No matter what happens. No matter who is president. As our lady of Disco, the divine Ms Gloria Gaynor has sung to us: We will survive.
Excuse me while I wipe my eyes a little.
But before we get all sappy, we have one more promise you make your reader, and it's one that Queer as Folk very badly fucks up.
Character consistency. On a larger scale, this is valid more in a series than in a stand alone, though it's valid as hell either way.
When you introduce a character with a certain set of traits and abilities, you make a promise to your reader. And that promise is--if this character is changing from this thing I've set up from you, you will know.
By all means, your characters should develop and morph throughout the story. But the reader needs to see it happening. They need to understand why and how, or they're going to feel like they're looking at a different character at the end of the work than they were at the beginning. And that's not good.
E. Lockhart's The Boyfriend List series does a fantastic job of this. Roo is Roo, through all of them. Yes, you can see her growing and maturing and learning new skills to cope with her ridiculous life, but she is still very consistently Roo.
Now. Queer as Folk.
In case you missed it in the OTP heading, Brian fucking proposes.
What the fuck is that shit? We get that they love each other. We know. We've got it. We don't need to hear Brian say it, or see him fucking plan a wedding. It completely destroys the image we have of who Brian and Justin are. If they'd both just started quietly wearing wedding rings, that would have been one thing. But the last season of Queer as Folk turned Brian into some kind of domesticated animal, and a looooot of people are unhappy about it. He sent out fucking wedding announcements. He bought a house. What is this shit? This is not the Brian we were promised.
So if you want the reader to follow through with reading your whole book, you have some things you need to do to deserve that. Or to make sure, if they do finish it, that they don't end up throwing it at a wall.
There are of course a million ways to do all the things I've mentioned and still write a wall-throwing-worthy book. And there are ways to ignore everything I've said (except maybe the consistent character one...but you never know) and write something phenomenal. And in all honesty, if you're writing something you want analyzed in English class, you're probably going to need a less happy ending.
But, looking back, there are very few endings I've read that I've read that I would consider altogether too depressing. The only ones that I think really fit the bill are ones where the One True Pairing fails.
So guys. Less realism, more making out. End scene.
There's a lot of stress in this life. There are a lot of reasons to freak out. There are a few things that, pretty much without exception, suck. Full rejections suck. Bad sales suck. Bad dialogue sucks. There are things you can fix and there are things you just need to let push past and let go.
There are also things that you should not be worried about.
--People leaving publishing. I know that with Nathan Bransford's recent announcement, some of you are probably left feeling a little stunned. I am too! And remember how surprised we were when Colleen Lindsay told us she was going to stop agenting? And my second, incredible agent, Brendan Deneen, left to pursue a job as an editor (and is doing a fantastic job!) after we were together for just six months. (But glorious months they were, Brendan.)
It's jarring. It makes you afraid that someone's going to leave you in the middle of the process. It makes you wonder if publishing is going to shit.
Here's why you shouldn't worry. New agents are appearing all the damn time. My amazing agent, Suzie Townsend, has been in the game for just a little over a year, and she's made amazing sales since then (and seriously, if you don't know her name by now, you've got your fingers shoved in your ears). And she's not the only amazing agent we've gained this year. How about Mandy Hubbard or Taylor Martindale or Weronika Janczuk?
And there are still tons and tons of agents who have been at this for years and are showing no signs of stopping. And so what if they do? Just like there will always be new writers, there will always be new agents. Don't worry. Publishing might be changing, but it isn't going anywhere.
On that note...
--Paper books are dead, self-publishing is taking over, and it's the apocalypse. It's very easy to get sucked in to all the talk about how publishing is an outdated, dying model, and that if you have children in the next five years, they're never going to know what a book is. And they probably won't know how to write in cursive. Or how to read. Also books will be animated, Amazon will rule the world, and gay immigrants will start making out in our public schools.
Here's why you shouldn't worry. With the exception of that last one (which I am entrusting all you magic gay fish to ENSURE HAPPENS), none of this has to be your concern. Let someone else worry about all this shit. Shut up and write a book. They're not going anywhere.
--Celebrity books. They sell for huge advances. They're written by ghostwriters. They're not very good. They're cliche and pandering to an illiterate audience, so and so forth.
Here's why you shouldn't worry. Celebrity books sell for huge advances because they make huge amounts of money. Tuck away the jealousy and realize what this does for a publisher.
The more money they can make on sure things, the greater their ability to take a risk on new, unknown writers. In all likelihood, this means you!
Be proud of your publisher/a publisher you like when they buy a celebrity book. They're being fiscally responsible! It doesn't mean that the people there don't recognize good books. Trust me. They do. And if you don't like the celeb book, don't read.
--Twilight. It makes a lot of money, its merchandise fills the YA section, there are a million knock-offs of it, Edward is a pedophile, glitter sticks to your clothes.
Here's why you shouldn't worry. God, guys, this shit is old. No one cares anymore. We're the only ones talking about it. Move on.
--You get a small advance. So you're hearing about all these six figure advances, and even though you're freaking ECSTATIC that your book sold, you can't help but be a little disappointed by your three figure (for a small publisher), four figure or low five figure advance. You can't quit any day job for this kind of money.
You didn't have any delusions about writing making you rich, but you had a little inkling of a dream that maybe it would. And that's understandable.
Here's why you shouldn't worry. For a first book, a small advance can be a blessing. They're easier to earn out, and earning out gets you major props with your publisher, and they'll be more willing to take risks with you in the future. All that stuff about how hard it is to get off the midlist is scary, I won't lie to you, but it isn't a death sentence. You can always try out different age groups and genres, or you can win a bitchin' award, or you can chug away happily with your small advances and keep producing and producing and building a fan base. Your life is not over.
Hello, I'm Hannah Moskowitz, and I am midlist. And my life fucking rocks. So don't worry about it.
--Bad reviews. Son of a fucking bitch, it's not even that it's bad, it's that it's like they didn't even read the goddamn book. They spelled your characters' names wrong. They mixed up major plot points. They said they didn't get your main character's motivations, when nobody else had that problem. What the hell?
Or maybe it's a professional review, and they checked all their spellings and their plot points twice, but the guy who wrote the review must have been on his period or something, because he ignored all the best parts of the book and only focused on its faults.
Or maybe your book isn't out, or your book hasn't sold, but the idea of a bad review has you quaking in your shiny sexy writer boots.
Here's why you shouldn't worry. Yeah, they sting a little. But every book gets them, and everyone knows that. Go look up your favorite book on goodreads. There are people who hated it.
Then go look up books you hated, read the bad reviews, and laugh quietly to yourself. It happens. Learn to shrug it off and laugh at yourself. Don't respond, don't let it affect your writing, and, if you can--learn from them.
After a lot of reviewers commented on Break's weak ending, I started putting a lot more consideration into how I end my books. I hope it shows. And if it doesn't, well, fuck it. I can laugh it off. And then I can creepily go stalk books you liked more than mine and read all their bad reviews. It's a cycle!
Motif is easier than theme, and even less necessary. This is one that you can really ignore if you feel like it. But it's also a fun thing to play with if you like. It's something that I focus on a lot more in some books than in others, but it ends up creeping in most of the time anyway, and I bet it does in your stuff, too, more often than you might know.
The definition of a motif is really simple. It's a reoccurring element in a story that serves to tie parts of the story together. Cool?
A really obvious example of motifing (made that word up) is something like what I did in THESE HUMANS ALL SUCK, the manuscript that has been gently laid to rest. I did a lot with colors, particularly with the color blue.
If something was blue, you could pretty much bet that it was important. I didn't hit you over the head with it, I'd just casually mention that it was blue and move on. If you weren't looking for it, you probably wouldn't have noticed that blue was important. But it was there if you felt like it.
A more common example is a line or phrase that's repeated in the story. This is one I use A LOT. A character will say a line of dialogue early in the story that gets echoed in different ways--in the main character's thought process, in his own dialogue, something like that. And it immediately brings the reader back to the first time it was used.
Using your motif is like cross-referencing one part of your book to another. This is very much an English class element. If an AP English kid ever writes a paper on your book, there's a good chance he'll go in looking for motif. I'm not saying you should write your book with that goal or anything, but it's a good way to think of motif. It's something that works on an analysis level. If it's something that's very blatantly part of the story, it's probably too obvious.
I have weather as a motif in #magicgayfish. The mentions of the ocean are all in there to echo Rudy's emotional state. He projects his emotions onto the ocean (which is called a pathetic fallacy, if you're a fan of even more fancy terms). So if you were to go through and write down the different ways the ocean is described throughout the book, you would actually have written down Rudy's exact emotional arc through the book. Which is pretty cool, I think, and definitely not something I did unintentionally.
Almost done, but I want to do a quick reminder; I'm not writing The Great American Novel over here. I'm not writing anything that I could see a class analyzing in English. So this isn't something that you need to be writing literary fiction in order to worry about. Some of my YA books trend towards the more literary, and others towards more commercial, but they all have theme, motif, and allusions weaved into them, the same way they have plot and character and all that good stuff you're already used to thinking about.
Are these things I'm talking about comparable to plot and character in terms of importance? Well, it depends on the book you're writing, but almost definitely not. This is veering too closely to the literary/commercial debate for my taste (and I'm so, so sick of this debate) but just keep in mind that I'm not suggesting you stop writing dynamic, hooky plots and start writing stories of impotent old men staring out to the horizon or whatever. Write what you want. Be aware of your options.
Even my killing zombies with spatulas book has themes and motifs. And probably allusions, I can't remember. I'll talk about those next.
Hello, I am Ms. Moskowitz, and I will be your teacher today.
I'm fresh out of a long day of classes and ready to toss some words at you. Topics we will cover: theme, motif, and allusion. We're starting with theme.
Before I start, we have, as usual, a few caveats:
1. I am a sophomore in college. Just...yeah. I wouldn't be blogging this if I didn't know it, but it's something to keep in mind.
2. I'm sure people will have different definitions for some of these. They're words and everyone approaches them differently. These are my interpretations and my explanations, and God knows I have a weird way of explaining stuff.
3. The most important point: no one is making you think about these things. You don't need to think about theme or motif or allusion or anything else to write a good book. You don't even need to know what they are. There's a good chance that, even if you don't know these terms, this is stuff you've already been doing.
But knowledge is power. And whether or not you choose to use these things, I really do believe that you should be aware of them. It's good to have options, and if thinking about any of these things helps any of you (they help me) then I've done my job.
Let's begin! Class in session.
--THEME
This comes first and foremost, because, in my experience, it comes first and foremost. Well, almost. Theme is the second thing I think of when I'm formulating an idea. I start with characters, proceed to theme, and then put together a plot. That's all I need to start writing.
To put it in the most naked of terms: Theme is the message of the book.
Most books have several themes. Let's talk about uhhhh I don't know. Romeo and Juliet. Here are some things you could legitimately say are themes in Romeo and Juliet.
--True love transcends societal segregation. --Teenagers will choose their boyfriends over their families. --True love leads to death. --Teenagers are incapable of lasting relationships. --Love leads to death. --Teenage boys are full of hormones and fickle affections.
and there are a million other themes you could find in Romeo and Juliet. The truth is, if someone tells you that something is the theme of a work, it's very hard to prove them wrong. I could say the theme of Romeo and Juliet is "cats are better than dogs," and even though that's true, it's probably not one of the themes of Romeo and Juliet. Can you prove it?
And that's a very important thing about themes--they are very subjective. Because a theme is always, always, ALWAYS a full sentence.
For a theme to be a theme, it needs to be an opinion. It needs a verb. It needs to be something that you can find and identify and argue.
So "cat" could not be a theme. Cats are either in the books or they're not. No amount of arguing is going to change that. But I can argue that Romeo and Juliet has the theme "cats are better than dogs" until the cows get home, because theme is way more abstract than a simple world or two.
Let's talk about how this fits into your own writing. Your theme is the feeling that you want people to take away from the book. It's the question or the opinion or the decision that you want them to be rolling around in their brains when they close your book.
Don't worry if your theme sounds trite as hell. "Self-destruction doesn't work as a solution," is a theme in BREAK. Like, wow, hannah. Way to say something really fucking original, there. Here's your Pulitzer.
No. Themes are totally allowed to be simple, because it's still all about execution. If I were beating the reader over the head with my message (let's say for the sake of this argument that I did not do this) then it would be a different story, but if you have to suss out my theme from my 44,000 words, then I'm doing an okay job.
Theme's job is to answer the question so what? You have a nice story and some cool characters, but why do I care? What footprint are you leaving? That's your theme.
And please don't ignore that thing I hinted at two paragraphs up--you do NOT need to spell out your theme. At least 90% of the time, you shouldn't. At least 90% of the people who think they fall into the remaining 10% do not. Take out the part where you state your theme out loud, please. If your writing is strong enough, you don't need to say what your theme is.
Having a theme is NOT the same as having a moral. You don't have to be trying to teach you reader something, but your book should, in a sense, argue something. There's a reason you're writing this book. Sharing that makes the reader care too. But you've got to resist the urge to beat the reader over the head with it. Trust your reader!
Theme is your backbone, but you wouldn't go around smacking people in the face with your backbone. Keep that shit to yourself.
So class is over for today. I'll be back later with motif and allusion. They're simpler. But theme is first.
Now I have e.e. cummings stuck in my head--since feeling is first/who pays any attention/ to the syntax of things--appropriate, I think.
Anyway. I realize I'm spouting a lot of esoteric crap, here, so hit me with your questions/comments, please.
Okay. So I've had a lot of people ask me how the hell I managed to be nineteen and on my third agent. This is actually a topic I've been fairly quiet about, but I think it's helpful for me to be honest because my story is actually, in my opinion, a very good example of the kinds of problems and decisions you might have to make with regards to agents.
So. Here's what happened. I will not be naming every name, because the purpose of this post isn't to call out anyone but to take you through the thought process in choosing an agent, leaving an agent, and dealing with losing an agent.
This is a very long story, so I'm going to divide it into three posts.
PART ONE
I queried four different manuscripts for a total of a year before I got my first offer, which turned into four by the end of that week. It felt as if something had fallen from the sky and landed on my head. Something awesome.
I was sixteen and still fairly new in the online writing community (though not new to writing)
I talked to three of the four agents on the phone. I asked the fourth (actually, the first to offer) if she'd like to talk, and she said she didn't think there was any reason to do a phone call. The first phone call went well. The second went VERY well, and I was pretty sure that unless something unprecedented happened, I would be going with her. The third phone call was fine, but we didn't click, so I confidently went with #2.
Factors in my decision:
--My friend was with her and loved her. --We clicked on the phone. She was talkative, gregarious, and completely enthusiastic about my work. --She offered on another manuscript, while all the others offered on BREAK. I liked the other one more and liked the possibility of going out with that one first. We ended up going out with BREAK anyway, and the one she offered on never sold, so there you go.
Things didn't work out.
I feel like an idiot now, thinking about the stuff I let happen before the split. But my logic was really clear: I thought it was normal.
I thought it was normal that my agent didn't do a lot of contract negotiations or ask me for my input.
I thought it was normal that I had to send five to ten emails on a subject, spread out over a period of months, before I would get a response. I thought being on sub meant months of silence followed by, after extensive nagging, an email with every rejection she'd collected but not mentioned.
I thought it was normal that she'd promise edits on my manuscript and never send them.
I want to make two things very clear:
1. This was a legitimate agent. She did not charge any fees or do anything unethical. She didn't steal anyone's work or money. She successfully sold my first novel. She came from a well-known agency. She had many sales before mine and some after. Many of her authors have gone on to be very successful.
I was not cheated, victimized, or taken advantage of.
I just made a mistake.
Which leads me to point two:
2. I was not an idiot. I was young and naive, yes, but I was not in a bubble. I was an active member on AW and knew a fair amount of writers. The Musers existed even before I signed with this agent, and they were with me through this whole process. So the reason I thought this was okay wasn't because of a lack of information.
Really, it was the opposite.
Because this happens to so many people.
I know so many people who have signed with agents--agents that other people I respect have and love--and the relationship did not work for them. Many of them had the same problems I did: lack of responsiveness. There's a reason that I mentioned to both agent 2 and agent 3 that I was paranoid about them dropping off the face of the earth. It happens.
It happens more often than you'd think.
And people don't leave because they are so grateful to have an agent, because getting an agent is hard. And because everyone around them seems so fucking chipper, that they think the problem might be them. They have a great agent. They have the same agent as a celebrity or a friend of theirs or they have the agent that everyone's talking about over on AW. They do not have a bad agent. They wouldn't be that stupid.
No one wants to be the guy who leaves his agent.
When I was applying to college, one of my favorite teachers said to my class, a group of stressed out, hyped up, first semester seniors, "You know, you don't have to get it right the first time. Plenty of people transfer. It's okay."
And we smiled and nodded and uh-hmmed and in our heads we're all going, "Not me, no way, transferring is for other people."
I was the fucking queen of transferring is for other people. I applied Early Decision to the school I knew, absolutely knew, I was going to go to.
I left after a semester.
I am so, so happy that I did.
I left my first agent after 15 months. And I so, so wish I had done it sooner.
Which is why I want to run around spreading the gospel now.
I know what it's like to be happy with my agent. (Hey Suzie!) At the time, I didn't. I didn't know if it could get better.
If you're asking yourself if it can, it can.
Do not stay in a relationship that makes you unhappy. If you have an issue that you have broached that cannot be solved, it might be time to leave. If you two cannot see eye-to-eye on something important, it might be time to leave.
If you think it might be time to leave, it is almost definitely time to leave.
Obviously I appreciate the value of agents. Scroll down a post if you don't believe me. But all those things that I mentioned down there? I only realized they were true when I got with an agent who worked for me.
You need and deserve an agent who works for you.
And just because an agent is great does NOT mean she works for you.
The next post will go over what happened after I left Agent 1 and how I connected with Agent 2. I'll take any questions in the comments, as always, and please feel free to email me if you have any questions you don't want all over the internet (she says as she sprays her problems all over the internet).
So right now I'm on vacation at my beach house, where Invincible Summer is set. In my head, same beach, same house. So I thought I'd do an illustrated version of the first chapter, with pictures of the places I mean.
I'm no photographer, and you'll have to imagine these places not so empty, but...I hope you like it.
On an unrelated note, I've decided that, in the tradition of many great bloggers before me, I'm going to have to disable anonymous comments. I'm sorry to do this. I really do want to respect your privacy. But I need you all to respect each other and to respect this space, and if I have to insist that everyone has names and accountability in order to make sure everyone treats each other kindly, that's what I'm going to do. Disagreeing is fine. Disrespecting is not.
Without further ado:
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Gideon keeps falling down.
He and Claudia slipped outside to the beach and were out there for at least ten minutes before my parents or Noah or I noticed they were gone. They’re greasy and gritty now with sand and sea water, so there’s no point in dragging them back inside and getting everything dirty our first night here. Plus none of us feels like putting in the effort to chase them. My mother, who’s a little too old and way too pregnant to run around outside and parent them hands-on like she used to, drifts to the porch off the first floor to watch them and make sure they don‘t kill themselves, one hand on her stomach, one on the railing.
Noah and I linger by the windows on the other side of the family room, our foreheads pressed against the glass.
We’re moaning every time we see a particularly good wave roll by and looking at each other—maybe we should go out? Maybe we can? No.
Outside, Claudia is laughing loudly enough for us to hear. She always says she’s way too old to play with Gideon, and she’s not going to, no way, and if we want a babysitter, we can pay her. But she always ends up playing with him anyway, at least when we’re here. Here no one is too old. Except Mom and Dad. And Claudia and Gideon are the two youngest, so they get shoved together and there is no way to avoid it, even though Claudia’s eleven and Gideon’s barely six.
Dad says, “Aren’t you two going out?”
We can’t. Even though there’s sand stuck to our feet from the walk from the car, up the stairs, inside, and back, and back, and back, while we hauled in suitcases. Even though the carpet smells like old sunscreen. Noah and I know that it isn’t quite summer. Not yet. Summer can’t start at night, first of all, and it definitely can’t start before we see the SUV roll up outside the Hathaways' beach house. And until it comes, we’ll wait here. That’s tradition, and Noah and I do not kill tradition. If we get here before the Hathaways, we wait.
Dad says, “You boys are sticks in the mud.”
“Heathen,” Noah mutters.
Dad’s not pregnant, but he acts like he is, complaining that he’s so tired from the drive, that he needs to put his feet up. He sits on the scratchy couch—the one with years of our sand embedded between the cushions—and complains, like every year, that the renters have moved the furniture.
We’re totally not listening.
“Boys,” he says. “They’re probably not coming until tomorrow.”
“They always come the same day we do,” I say.
Dad says, “You’d be able to hear the car from the beach. Go outside and make sure Gideon doesn’t get dizzy.”
Making sure Gideon doesn’t get dizzy is one of our family duties, along with getting Mom’s slippers, thinking of a name for Chase’s song, washing the makeup off your sister’s face are you kidding me she is not leaving the house like that, and finding out where the hell Noah is.
Mom laughs from the balcony and reports, “He’s tipping over every which way.”
"Claudia will catch him,” Noah mumbles.
"Claudia’s catching him,” Mom calls in.
I can just barely see Claudia and Gideon if I crane my neck and press my cheek around the window. Noah laughs because I look silly with my face all squished , but I like seeing my little siblings, pushing each other over, spinning in circles, always getting up. I can see Claudia’s hands moving, but she’s too far away for me to know what she’s signing.
God, I can taste the ocean. I’m weak. “Let’s go out, Noah.”
He shakes his head and says, “We’ve got to wait for Melinda and the twins.” This is so weird, because usually it’s Noah trying to go somewhere—the movies, out for a run, college—and me begging him to stay, to wait, though I never have a specific thing for him to wait for.
Noah, Chase, come sit with me,” my father says. “You’ll be able to see the headlights, still, I promise.”
This is enough of an excuse for me to abandon our stakeout. I give Noah a little headjerk, but he frowns and, instead of staying where he is, shows how disappointing he is by heavyfooting into the kitchen to put away groceries. He could not act more put-upon if it were his job.
Whatever. I join my father on the couch and tuck under his arm while he strokes my hair.
I’ve just barely closed my eyes—the grain of the couch against my cheek, Noah’s malcontented grumblings in my ear—when I see the headlight glare through the windows and through my eyelids.
“Noah, they’re here!”
We run barefoot across the street to the Hathaways' and maul Melinda, Bella, and Shannon as soon as they step out of the SUV.
Their parents laugh, pushing back their sweaty bangs, hauling duffel bags out of the car. Shannon pulls out of my hug and taps his fist against mine, sticks his hand in my hair. “Welcome back, soldier,” he says.
“Welcome home, Shannon.”
“Can we make s’mores, Mom?” Bella asks. She’s clinging to one of Noah’s arms, which is kind of weird. I wrap the hem of Noah’s shirt around my finger until I have a good enough hold on him to tug him away from her.
He’s not even paying attention, because Melinda is milling by the other arm. She’s nineteen, older than Noah, and so thin that she always looks like a part of her is missing and the rest of her might be about to go find it. Her long fingernails close he gap between her hand and Noah’s wrist. I’ve seen Claudia do the same grip, when she wants Noah to do something.
Melinda is his sister in a different way.
“Of course we can,” Mrs. Hathaway says, with a laugh like a string instrument. “You boys want to get your family here?”
Noah says, “Chase, run and get everybody.”
I sprint across the street and straight onto the beach. I’m in the sand for the first time this summer. I always forget how cold it feels on your feet.
“Claude!”
Claudia’s wearing her first two piece bathing suit. She bought it around February, when they put the first bathing suits on the racks, and she’s been clamoring to wear it ever since. I pretty much hate that some company thinks her preteen body is capable of being sexualized, and that this—this night, this beach—is the time and place to do it. She screams, “Chase!” and tackles me into the sand, and she’s a child no matter what she’s wearing.
“Melinda and the twins are here,” I say. “Get dressed and we’ll make s’mores.”
But Claudia’s already running across the street. “Gimme a shirt, Mom!” she yells, and Mom tosses down some old t-shirt of mine. Claudia doesn’t stop running as she catches it and pulls it over her sweaty hair.
“Gid!” I yell. He’s deaf as a board, but he’s still spent all six years of his life getting yelled at. He’s watching me, asking me with his eyes and his hands where Claudia went.
Across street I sign to him. Come here. Don’t fall down. My ASL sucks, but the light’s so bad right now it doesn’t matter. Gideon runs over to me and I sign hold my hand before we start across the street. Either he sees this or just holds out of habit.
At the Hathaways', we make s’mores on the grill, pushing down on them with the spatula until they hiss. I sit with Shannon at the Hathaways' picnic table and we try to fill each other in on our lives since last August. During the year, I always feel like there are a million things I need to remember to tell him, and now nothing seems important but our siblings and our summer and the smoke from the grill.
Shannon keeps asking about my family—mostly Claudia and the baby yet to come—and I'm trying to pay attention, but my eyes keep going back to Bella. Was she this tall last summer? Maybe that’s why she was hanging off of Noah. I’m still waiting to hit my growth spurt. But I’m the one who’s her age. I hope she keeps that in mind.
I respond to one of Shannon's questions about Claudia with a quick, “I always forget how old she is,” and then clear my throat. “So what's Bella been up to?”
Shannon looks over at his twin. She dances in circles in the spots of moonlight that break through the Hathaways' awning. Her bare feet glitter. They're white and pointed, like something off a fairy.
He smiles. “She got the lead in the Nutcracker this year.” It’s his turn to ask about someone. “So how’s Gideon?”
Gideon’s hugging on to Mom’s leg, watching Claudia, probably wishing she were talking to him because she’s the only of us who signs well. The rest of us really only pretend we can, but, then again, so does Gideon.
“Deaf,” I say. “Melinda?”
“Grumpy. And she dyes her hair a lot. She's always sighing and mumbling about the universe.”
But right now Melinda’s at the corner of the balcony, talking to the dogs. “Mom?” she says. “I'm taking the dogs out for a run.”
Her mother is by the grill with my parents, where they’re laughing over a few beers, throwing coals down to the sand, touching Mom’s huge stomach.
Shannon says. “Chase? How’s Noah?”
“I’ll come with you,” Noah says, with a glance Melinda’s way, and he has the dogs unclipped from their leashes and free in no time, and he’s gone, chasing them across the street and onto the beach. I listen for the sound of them splashing in the water, but they're too far away. I am getting a headache, listening this hard.
I try to think about Bella again, and I don’t answer Shannon, but his father asks me the same question when I go over to the grill to collect my s’more. He claps me on the shoulder and says, “Noah excited for college?”
I want to tell him Noah doesn’t really get excited, but I don’t know how to describe my brother to someone who’s known him just as long as I have but doesn’t understand him any better. So I smile. It’s so dark, now, but the coals and the stars illuminate my siblings and Shannon’s siblings and our parents and make us all look permanent and important.
I say, “He’s kind of quiet about how he feels.”
“Yeah. Did he run off with Melinda?”
“I guess so.”
My parents exchange looks, like they were expecting Noah and Melinda’s flighty romance to take a hiatus this year, or something.
Noah does not ruin tradition. I could have told them that. And Melinda is his summer. More and more every single year.
So I just say, “He runs off a lot.”
Mr. Hathaway laughs and says, “Man, your brother’s a flight risk, isn’t he?” He serves me a s’more and says, “Still playing guitar, Chase?”
I grin and look down.
They drag their old guitar out so I don’t have to run home, and I make up chord progressions while Bella sings along in this ghost voice that makes me hyper-aware, like my whole body is made of fingertips. They smile at me in that way adults do when they’re drunk that makes you feel not so much younger.
We carry the plates into the kitchen, where the lights dazzle us into submission until someone has the sense to dim them. Once all the dishes are cleaned and stacked, the adults convince us to run down to the beach and try to find Noah.
He’s up to his waist in the ocean, the Hathaways' two dogs swirling around him like they’re trying to create a whirlpool. My brother is the eye of his manufactured hurricane.
“Get in!” he yells, and none of us need to be told twice.
The six of us splash in after him, screaming at the cold water, screaming at each other, screaming at every single foot of empty where the sky is and we aren’t. Bella’s on my shoulders and I’m twirling her around, Melinda’s holding her breath for as long as she can, everyone’s always yelling, “Where’s Gideon?” and pulling him out from underneath a breaking wave, yelling, “Where’s Noah?” and realizing he’s swum halfway out to sea.
Whenever there’s a split second of silence, we can hear our parents across the street, strumming the old guitar, laughing, clinking their beer bottles together.
Eventually my brother the flight risk comes and holds my head underwater until everything swirls, and, when I come up and sputter and blink, everyone’s skin is shiny and spotted from the stars. Bella and Claudia are running around on the sand, throwing handfuls at each other, shrieking, and Melinda’s squeezing the ocean out of her over processed, somehow colorless hair, her legs absolutely sparkling.
I want to be exactly this old forever.
“Y’all right, soldier?” Shannon asks me, his voice raspy from the salt.
I nod and count heads. There’s Claudia, Gideon, Melinda, Bella, Shannon. . . there’s everyone but Noah, who somehow managed to disappear in that split second I wasn't watching him.
So I look at Shannon and smile, and I try not to care, I try not to worry that my brother will leave me for good, because nothing is as permanent or important as the first summer night. Bella’s voice puts mine to shame, but I sing anyway, until Shannon dunks me underwater. When I come up, I hear everyone’s laugh—Shannon and Bella’s, as identical as they aren’t, Claudia’s, trying to be a woman, Gideon—that haunted sound that he doesn’t know he’s making—and Melinda’s. Twinkling into Noah's ear as he swims back, back to her and not to me.
--
NOW. Two other things. Both visual. Both very important.
YA/MG author with Simon Pulse, Chronicle, and Roaring Brook Press. Out now are four YAs: BREAK, INVINCIBLE SUMMER, GONE GONE GONE, and TEETH, and two MGs: ZOMBIE TAG and MARCO IMPOSSIBLE. To come: NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED and SCRAPBOOK. Publishing makes me frustrated and confused and indignant and I love every minute of it. At least most of the time.
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