A Common Sense Constitutional Argument for the Legality of Same-Sex Marriage in the United States

Most of this is pretty obvious (and/or was established by the Prop 8 decision in California), but I decided I wanted to write it all out for the next time I argue about it with someone from high school on Facebook. I am not a lawyer, clearly, and if someone with more expertise in civil law than I have can disprove these statements legally, please, don't spend your time leaving a comment:  The pro-Prop 8 lawyers need you, and you should get in touch with them instead.

1. The First Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

2. Because we do not have any officially established religion, whether Christianity or Hinduism or Islam or Shintoism or Wicca, our government's laws are not and should not be dictated by any religious laws or prohibitions.

2A. We have a civil government and not a religious one.  

Opinion: This is right and good for everyone, including religious people, because it enables multiple religions the freedom and protection to flourish, and also frees people to choose not to practice any religion at all. Certainly each religion may believe it is the only right and true one; but it must win influence through speaking to the hearts and minds of individuals, not through imposing its will upon everyone.

Opinion II: Do not bust out that the "Founding Fathers were Christian" stuff. Many of the Founding Fathers were Deists at most; all of them were well aware of the corrosive influence of religious and denominational wars in Europe (because, indeed, many of their ancestors came to America to escape those religious conflicts or persecution altogether); and if they did intend the United States to be governed by Christian law, for some reason they did not write it into the Constitution, which means it's not part of our law now:  "no law respecting an establishment of religion" is.

Opinion III: As I understand it, the Judeo-Christianist opposition to homosexuality arises almost entirely out of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, which declares "men lying with men as they do with women" "detestable" or "an abomination." While the exact translation of these verses is much debated, I think it's perfectly fair for Christianists and their fellow fundamentalists to use them to judge others' behavior . . . so long as they hold to that same ancient Leviticus standard in their own behavior, meaning they should not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material (19:19) or cut their sidelocks or beards (19:27), and women should be considered unclean and isolate themselves during their periods (15:19-33). [Ideally in this scenario, adulterers would be put to death (20:10), but our civil law prevents that.] Otherwise, these fundamentalists are being inconsistent in their application of the law. I do not see many non-Hasidic people, and especially many Christianists, abiding by these standards. 

3. While a marriage may be conducted under or ratified by a religious body, it has civil and legal ramifications regarding rights, property, and responsibilities.

3A. Therefore it can and should be regulated by civil law (and indeed, for heterosexuals, it already is). 

4. The Fourteenth Amendment reads, "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" (emphasis mine).

5.  Right now, our federal civil law grants only heterosexuals the right to marry the people they love.

6. This means that gays and lesbians are being denied that equal protection of the law, and having their privileges abridged.

N.B. Two LGBT people who wish to be married love each other with the same strong romantic feelings as two heterosexual people who wish to be married. (Opinion:  I include this because the Biblical focus on sex often means that people opposed to this appear to ignore the love; and they should consider what it might feel like to have the government prevent them from legally uniting with the person of the opposite gender whom they love, and thereby gaining all the rights that marriage grants.)

7. As this is a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, same-sex civil marriage should be legal.

8. No heterosexual person's rights will be infringed or marriage will be diminished or damaged by this.

9. As per the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, the government cannot and should not force religious bodies to conduct same-sex marriage ceremonies. 

That is all. 

All-Blogging August (Plus Ask Me Anything)

This year has been a whirlwind where I've flown somewhere every single month, edited a bunch of books, ran a half-marathon, spoke at five writing conferences, attended three weddings, and started planning my own. It's been a lot of fun, but my dear and beloved blog has definitely been a casualty of this busyness, as I've barely been able to keep up with one post a month, much less the one a week I aim for. And that "dear and beloved" isn't sarcasm; I subscribe to E. M. Forster's doctrine that "I know what I think when I see what I say," and I've missed my opportunity to think out loud here.

But I am going to be home in New York for all of August! So I'm trying something slightly crazy for me:  posting every single day of the month. I want to catch up on writing about some great new books that came out this year, explain the specification experiment from June, talk about repetitions, do some Quote Files, recipes, and poetry, fulminate, ruminate, extrapolate. If you have any questions you'd like to see me answer about writing or publishing (or heck, anything else), please leave them in the comments or send them along via e-mail to chavela_que at yahoo dot com. . . . I can't promise I'll respond to everything, but I appreciate the prompts. 

Here is the best thing I saw today, just outside my building on my way to work:

A young man rides his bike on the sidewalk toward me and an older lady.
Older Lady: You should NOT ride your BIKE on the SIDEWALK! You're supposed to be on the STREET! Our traffic laws give you your own lanes -- on the STREET! 
Young Man, as he rides by: Okay, Officer!
Older Lady:  I'm not an officer, I'm a concerned citizen! SCOFFLAW!

In honor of this awesome lady with the admirable vocabulary, I challenge you to use "scofflaw" in a sentence.

Book of the Moment: GOLD MEDAL SUMMER by Donna Freitas

As I write this, five teenage American girls just spun, leapt, flipped, backflipped, somersaulted,  cartwheeled, rounded off, back layovered, front walkovered, kipped, pirouetted, cried, hugged, and stuck the landings on their way to a gold medal. It was extremely awesome. And I felt like I knew a little bit more about what they were going through on the inside, thanks to this book:



Gold Medal Summer is the story of Joey Jordan, a fourteen-year-old gymnast who's struggling to focus in the midst of a welter of distractions:  a coach who doesn't appreciate her style; a best friend who's thinking of quitting; a cute new boy who's just moved to town; an older sister who's a past National Champion (comparisons much?); and parents who aren't exactly Aly Raisman's. But even with all of this, Joey loves her sport and works hard at getting better at it, as she dreams of having her gold medal summer.

Donna competed in gymnastics herself until she was fifteen, and thus it's filled with true-life descriptions of what it's like to do a kip on the bar or tumble through a floor routine in a minute flat. It's also got a wonderful emotional heart about learning to stand up for yourself, even when it's scary, and believing you can accomplish what you want to do. It is exactly the book I would have wanted to read when I was ten years old and daydreaming about gymnastics -- all about friends, doing flips on the beach, and waving from that podium at the end of the day:  so spirited and fun and sweet, it can't help but leave a smile on your face. If you have the chance to pick it up this Olympics, I hope you enjoy it!

More acclaim:
  • Rebecca Stead said of it, "This book is like a perfect cartwheel--immensely fun and satisfying."
  • And (fellow former gymnast) Linda Sue Park said, "I loved the gymnastics in Gold Medal Summer, but I was even more impressed with the relationships."
  • Donna blogged about the book and the Olympics for the Scholastic blog and did a great Q&A with NYMetroParents.
  • And it was seen on the Today Show last week!
  • You can hear a sample of the audiobook here.
 Buy it from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound

A Second Specification Experiment

Longtime readers of the blog may remember this Silly Specification Experiment -- later discussed in Second Sight -- where I asked you all to watch a short video and then write a sentence or two describing what I was doing, with the results later analyzed here. Now I'm interested in doing that again, this time with a still:


The assignment:  Without looking at anyone else's entry, spending no more than ten minutes and 250ish words, and writing in your natural voice, describe this accumulation of objects, and leave your answer in the comments. I know the picture is dark, so I'll list the items included here (in no particular order) in case identification is useful:  a pepper shaker; a container of sugar and fake sugar packets; a doily; a glass votive with a lit candle; a mechanical pencil; a salt shaker; and a vase with a rose in it. How you describe, arrange, and elaborate on those objects in prose is entirely up to you.

As with the previous experiment, the hypothesis and rationale will be given at a near-future date; in the meantime, again rest assured there are no wrong answers here. And thank you to all who participate!

Two Programs that Keep the Internet from Eating Your Soul + Giveaway Winners!

"Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet." -- Zadie Smith's rules for writers

I worship Ms. Smith in all things (and she has a new novel coming this autumn -- hooray!), and I would gladly take her advice here. But I also need the Internet frequently for things that are still related to my job:  title and author research, fact-checking, Thesaurus.com. So while I can't disconnect my computer completely, there are two programs that I've found incredibly effective in helping me get away from the Internet and stay focused while I'm working; and I thought I'd write a little about them here, just in case you haven't discovered them yet.

1) Freedom. Download this and you can lock yourself out of the Internet completely for a set number of minutes. If you need to get on the Internet before the set time expires, you'll have to restart your computer. As the site observes, its effect is as much psychological as it is practical; you know you cannot be distracted by Twitter, say, and therefore it's easier to concentrate on the offline work to be done, because Twitter (and all of the Internet) is simply not an option. (The same software designer also has a program called Antisocial that will lock you out of social networking sites, but still access the Internet for research. It is Mac-only, however.) My author Lisa Yee is a proud user of Freedom, and she did a great interview with its creator last year.

2) Leechblock. Rather than being a standalone program like Freedom, this is a plugin for Firefox, which allows you to establish set periods of time during which you cannot access certain favorite sites. It's fairly easy to override your own blocks, though, unless you use the advanced lockdown, at which point it will actually kick you OFF these sites at the set time and then keep you from accessing the override. For instance, I have it set that I can't use Twitter after 10 a.m. on weekdays, so if I'm typing a tweet at 9:59 and the clock ticks over to 10, BOOM -- Twitter is done for me till 12:15 (I let myself look at it again on my lunch break). The fact that it imposes the discipline on me makes it even more useful than Freedom, which requires my active thought and will to quit surfing.

Someday, we will all be Zen monks of writing and time and thought management and not need programs like these. (And writers, if there are any other programs your fellow procrastinators should know about, please leave them in the comments.) Until then, I am grateful to the software purveyors for making these programs available, and I wish all of us the best with our work.

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The winners of the giveaway from my last post are Eliza T, GraceAnne, Clifton, Diane, Darshana, Pat Zietlow Miller, Jen, and Tina Radcliffe. (They were selected randomly by my fiance, after I ordered him to give me eight numbers between one and twenty-eight and he obeyed. We still don't know where we're going on vacation.) Winners:  Please e-mail me at chavela_que at yahoo dot com with your addresses and any title preferences you might have, and I'll try to get the galleys out this week.

And you know what? I never picked a winner for this giveaway back in February! James just picked the winner here too, and it's DustySE. Dusty, send my your address likewise, and I'll send you a real book. Thanks to all for participating!

The Scholastic Fall 2012 Librarian Preview + Giveaway

Now live and in your computer! It's your chance to see me and many of my Scholastic colleagues talking about the books we're publishing and love. Here's the whole thing, just under an hour long:



Or you can go to the preview page to view the preview by age range or formats. My books are, in the middle-grade section:
  • Stealing Air by Trent Reedy (with a special appearance by Trent himself!)
  • The Encyclopedia of Me by Karen Rivers (a book that came to me as a SQUID!)
  • The Savage Fortress by Sarwat Chadda (presented jointly with Arthur, who represents Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities by Mike Jung)
And in YA, Amber House, by Kelly Moore, Tucker Reed, and Larkin Reed, a very smart mother-and-daughter team.

I'll give away two galleys of each of them, to eight commenters chosen at random. Your task, commenters: Tell my fiance & me where we should go on vacation this summer. We can't decide.

Diversity in Children's Publishing: Some Conversations

For the past couple of years, I've had the privilege of being involved with an amazing group of editors discussing issues of diversity in children's literature. This group became an official Children's Book Council committee last fall, and this spring, we've had a series of events to mark our official debut. You can read more about the history and goals of the committee in this great Publishers Weekly article, and better still, you can hop over to the www.cbcdiversity.com website, and read the words of the committee and our guest bloggers there. This past week was an especially interesting one, with a series of posts entitled "It's Complicated!", from:
  • A writer: Cynthia Leitich Smith, offering an impassioned plea for writers to recognize the need for diversity in their books
  • An agent:  Stefanie von Borstel, who writes about her search for diverse authors to represent, with a couple of success stories
  • An editor:  Me, talking a little (and eventually at length) about parts of my acquisition processes and issues of believability
  • A reviewer:  Debbie Reese, whose posts on child_lit and her American Indians in Children's Literature blog are consistently thought-provoking.
If you hop on over there, as I hope you will, do please also check out the archives, where the members of the committee write about the paths that got them into publishing, and the conversations in the comments -- on this week's posts especially.

My Two Favorite Writing Things This Month

I was talking with a writer a few weeks ago, and she noted that one of her favorite writing lessons had come from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park and The Book of Mormon, among many other imaginative and foul-mouthed productions. After she described the principle, I went and looked up Messrs. Parker and Stone talking about it, and found this fantastic video from MTVu:


I like their advice on moving on at 2:40 -- when you stop learning from a project, it's probably time to stop fiddling with it and try something else. But I love, love, LOVE what they say around 3:58 about "Therefore," "But," and "And Then." As I wrote it out for my recent Plot Master Class (giving full credit to the gentlemen):

So much as it is possible in a manuscript, every scene should be followed by another scene that dramatizes either a “Therefore” or a “But,” not an “And Then.” So if, in one scene, a girl has intimate eye contact with a beautiful male vampire, the next scene should either dramatize the consequences of that eye contact, which will likely raise the stakes or escalate the emotion—THEREFORE she kisses him; or introduce a complication/obstacle—BUT she remembers she hates vampires, so she drives a stake through his heart. If they continue to stare into each other's eyes, or maybe they just get some tea, that’s an AND THEN—nothing new is happening, because it’s at the same level of emotion as the previous action, and so while movement is occurring in the plot, it isn't necessarily dramatic action. And action is ultimately what keeps readers reading:  change, challenge, consequence, growth, for a character in whom they're invested.
 
(There is one other category here, which is "Meanwhile": If, MEANWHILE, the girl’s werewolf best friend was running shirtless through the woods, and came upon a rabbit and ate it, that’s an acceptable followup scene to the eye contact, because you're following a different plotline. But the rabbit scene would then need its own BUT or THEREFORE, and I would hope to heaven that you ended the eye-contact scene in an interesting place, so that readers will be excited to switch back to that plotline and find out what happens there.)

My other Favorite Writing Thing of late is DAVID MAMET'S MEMO TO THE WRITERS OF "THE UNIT," which I put in all caps because by God, this is an all-caps document. This applies more to TV writers than to novelists, who do not have the camera to convey information. But every scene in either medium should involve a character's desire, for certain, for an object or something emotional from another person or an answer to the internal question that he's trying to work through; and it's very useful to identify that desire when you're going back to revise a scene, and then show how the character has that desire satisfied, changed, or denied through the course of the scene's action.

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While I'm here, a little conference stuff:

I will make a guest appearance at the Highlights Revision Retreat and Critique Group Recharge at the end of May. Spots are still available if you'd like to join for the week!

Since I was not a winner in the New York City Marathon lottery, alas, and hence will not be running three-plus hours on the weekends in the autumn (though why I feel "alas" about this, I'm not sure), I have an opening in my schedule this fall, and would be up for a conference or my Plot Master Class in either September or November, should anyone still be looking for an speaker.

And I'm also on the faculty for the pretty damn amazing-looking Speakeasy Literary Society Retreat next April in Lake Tahoe, California.

Egomaniacal Link & News Roundup

Because it's all about me and my books; because I haven't posted in forever; and because ... I'm sorry, my creative/essay/thoughtful-blog-post-writing muscle seems to be taking some time off for the time being. This may have to do with the fact that I've been exercising all my other muscles a lot -- training for some long runs -- and also writing a lot of editorial correspondence; and also sharing a lot of my immediate thoughts on Twitter (meaning, if you follow me there, this post might be quite boring for you. But I'll throw in a joke to make it worth your time). Thank you for stopping by as ever.

(The physical training paid off, I must say:  This morning I ran my fastest 10K ever, in 57:57! I give all credit to Rihanna and this extremely earwormy song.)

Erin Saldin's wonderful The Girls of No Return is reviewed in the New York Times today! Elissa Schappell calls it "A smart, absorbing story about damaged girls realizing how hard it is to connect with other people when you don’t trust anyone," and damn straight. It's racked up another starred review, too, from the BCCB.

Trent Reedy and I recently talked about writing across cultures (and editing books written across cultures, like his Words in the Dust) for the website Women on Writing. Words in the Dust also recently won both the Christopher Award and a Golden Kite Honor Award, and I know I speak for Trent when I say how much we appreciate his hard work being recognized. (The lovely Uma Krishnaswami also did a terrific in-depth interview with Trent on the subject of writing across cultures last summer: Part 1 and Part 2.)

This checklist of Ten Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism & Sexism is another great resource if you're trying to write or read books outside your culture. And Teju Cole's thoughts on sentimentality and "The White Savior Industrial Complex" are worth keeping in mind as well.

Guus Kuijer won the Astrid Lindgren Award! His The Book of Everything is a wonder -- one of those books people still discover and then write to thank us for publishing it -- and an adaptation of it will open on Broadway later this month.

This Tor.com review of Above, by Leah Bobet, made me do a fist-pump on the street, because it fully appreciates the magnitude of what Leah accomplishes in that book, and that is an exceedingly rare thing for a review to do, sadly (sometimes because of space issues, sometimes because of reviewer-book chemistry). (Beware major spoilers, though.) It also got a starred review in Publishers Weekly, which called it "a dark, dazzling tale." When my thoughtful-blog-post-writing muscle comes back, I'm looking forward to talking more about this novel, which you should check out in stores now. 

Vicky Alvear Shecter shares a deleted scene from Cleopatra's Moon and a little bit of the editorial/authorial thinking that went into it being deleted. I'd add to what she says that it's not just about tone, it's also about pacing, and this scene came very early in the book, when the young Selene was just starting to become aware of the conflict between Rome & Egypt that will shape the rest of her life (and the novel). And it felt more important to me as a reader/editor to get into that conflict quickly than to have what is definitely a very sweet moment. If the scene had come later in the book, at a moment when the action was already humming along nicely, we might have kept it there.

My alma mater, Carleton College, interviewed me and fellow alum Kathleen Odean about the Meghan Cox Gurdon foofaraw last summer. (Or was it a kerfuffle? Both, I think.)

And the super-interesting and smart blog The Whole Megillah asked me some insightful questions about Second Sight, writing, and revision. Which I then answered.

The joke: What do you call a dyslexic agnostic insomniac? A person who stays up all night wondering if there is a dog.

I recently received copies of the second printing of Second Sight -- yay! -- and the book was mentioned by commenters on Jennifer Crusie's website as a recommended writing book -- double yay! (And many thanks, Robena, if you're out there.) Jennifer Crusie is one of my very favorite writers, so it was a thrill to see my book on her site. ("My name and book title went through her brain!" I think. "Even if it was just in cutting and pasting the title in! Wow!") 

Here's a non-me link: If you're looking for a writing skills tune-up, I bet Ms. Crusie's forthcoming series of online writing workshops, The Writewell Academy for Wayward Authors, will be pretty amazing.

And another one, if you need inspiration:  Dear Sugar/Cheryl Strayed's excellent advice to "Write Like a Mofo." I'm reading her memoir Wild now, and it is terrific.

Other things I've been loving:  the return of Mad Men; this recipe for spaghetti with Brussels sprouts; 21 Jump Street -- an unexpected delight; this list of "Lines from The Princess Bride That Double as Comments on Freshman Composition Papers" (or Manuscripts); string cheese.

There, now it is no longer about me. Go forth and write like mofos.

Making the Leap

I posted a link to this on Twitter, but it was so delightful I wanted to share it here too:


Not only is it a scene straight out of a middle-grade novel, but what a perfect metaphor for the courage it takes to do so many things -- to start off, or speak up, or stay still -- and the pleasure and accomplishment of moving through that fear. My goal today:  to be as badass as this fourth-grader.

A Blogiversary!

Today is March 4, and that means it is the seven-years-and-one-month blogiversary of Brooklyn Arden. I will allow these fine gentlemen to express my feelings on the occasion:


Some other things to celebrate:
  • Words in the Dust by Trent Reedy was named a Golden Kite Honor Book for Fiction by the SCBWI!
  • My Plot + Structure Master Class for the Inland Empire SCBWI went well on Saturday, and while my brain felt finely fricasseed afterward, it has now recovered!
  • I just ordered a second printing of Second Sight!
  • It is Sunday night and I just watched an episode of Sherlock I have never seen in full! (It was "A Study in Pink," and it was delightful.) 
Here's wishing you all many Kool, exclamation-point worthy good things this week.

Q&A: Erin Saldin, author of THE GIRLS OF NO RETURN

I'll let my Goodreads review of this book start me off here:
The usual caveat:  I edited this, I'm biased, la la la.
Actually, I'm more biased than even usual here, because Erin was in the only creative writing class I ever took, our senior year at Carleton College. While I produced odd metafictions based on my personal theories about reading and writing, leavened with pre-graduation depression, she wrote infinitely better stories about believable teenage girls, always with terrifically jagged, smart, sad, sardonic voices. Even in college, she was in control of her ideas and the effects she wanted to achieve, and the edges of that voice cut.

So when I became an associate editor in 2003 and was first feeling my power (ahem), I sent her a letter suggesting that she write a YA novel. And she did -- after finishing an MFA, publishing several short stories, and having agents fight for the right to represent her. The book she produced is worth that fight, and my years-long wait for it. She still has that jagged, smart, sad voice, but it's now applied to a story and a place that are rare in YA fiction, focused on the relationships among a trio of teenage girls at a wilderness boarding school in Idaho:   strong Boone, glamorous Gia, and Lida, who is torn between the poles they represent. This book *gets* female friendships/crushes/enemyships and their complexities, and as each of the girls has secrets that can be used as weapons, the book builds constantly in tension as we wait for those knives to come out and be used. At some point, I want to talk about the ending publicly with Erin, because it grew out of her own reactions as a teenage reader to YA fiction and is fascinating in light of those; but I can't do that until more people have read it and might join in the discussion . . .

So please do! And you don't have to take just my word for its quality:  It has two starred reviews now, one from Booklist, which said "this psychological mind-bender is raw, gripping, and deftly rolled out by a writer-to-watch," and another from Kirkus, which called it "a smashing debut."
And because this is my blog, by golly, here's my chance to talk about that ending publicly! And ask Erin a few other questions along the way:

1. You grew up in Idaho, and you obviously love the wilderness there. What was your most memorable trip in the Rockies? Have you had any notable wildlife encounters like Lida does in the book?

I do love the Rockies! This is going to be extremely sappy, but my favorite backpacking trip was just a year and a half ago. My husband and I got married on a lake in Montana, and we left the next day on foot for a backpacking trip in the mountains. The lake where we were married butts up against the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, which is this HUGE, grizzly-infested wilderness. We’d packed our hiking boots and gear when we were packing for the wedding, and our friends tied tin cans to our backpacks to send us off. It was gorgeous, and a great way to start the marriage. But, we didn’t see any bears.

I did have one wildlife encounter, however, that was VERY similar to the one Lida has in the book. I was living in the woods in Oregon for about 6 months, doing a wilderness writing residency as I finished up some revisions on the novel. There was nothing at this cabin: no people, no electricity, and only solar panels for hot water. It was a two-hour drive from civilization. I was sitting on the rocking chair on the cabin’s porch one afternoon as my dog, who was with me, “hunted” lizards (i.e., stood in a corner of the porch with his back to the world, staring at the corner of the floorboards where he’d once seen a lizard appear). I don’t know what made me look up (let’s call it my primal instinct), but I glanced up and looked straight at a full-grown mountain lion that was walking down the dirt road toward the house. It was about fifty feet away from me. And I know they say that mountain lions always see you first, but this one did not appear to notice me at all. Until I stood up and waved at it, that is. It really was like a silent film. The lion turned and ran away. I sat back down. My dog continued to stare at the floorboards.

2. You spent two years in the Peace Corps—how did that experience inform your writing?

I think that the time I spent in Togo, West Africa was crucial to my writing. For one thing, trite as this might sound, it provided me with a sense of the world as much larger and complicated than I’d imagined possible. I also learned that there are different ways of communicating. The official language in Togo is French, though there are over 60 dialects spoken throughout the country. So, I was an English-speaker, trying to explain myself in French, and my friends in the rural village where I lived spoke Kabye, but had to try to respond to me in their second language, too. The result was that we all had to distill our reactions to things. There was a lot of: “I’m happy.” “I’m sad.” “I don’t understand.” “You are funny.” “I like babies.” That kind of thing. Facial expressions were important. In some ways, this made for more genuine and heartfelt friendships. It just wasn’t possible to talk around a problem—I learned how to be direct. So, while my characters don’t often say things like, “I’m happy. I like babies,” I do feel like I have a better sense of their essential emotions.

3. As a writer, what did you get out of doing your MFA program? What do you get out of teaching?

I think that the greatest gift of an MFA program is the fact that it gives you two years in which you basically just have to write. I was lucky, because I also had amazing professors at the University of Virginia, and some of my fellow graduate students are still the people I send my work to first, before I submit it anywhere. Graduate school also provides you with deadlines, which I think are necessary for writers. Otherwise, we might spend the rest of our lives playing around with one sentence.

Teaching has been wonderful, because the students are just so excited about reading and writing and talking about literature, and I think that enthusiasm is infective.

4. The Girls of No Return is unusual in contemporary YA fiction in that it focuses so strongly on the friendship and enemyships of three young women, with a guy only peripherally involved. Was this a conscious choice on your part -- to focus on the girls' bonds -- or did it just happen as you were writing?

Well, because this novel began as a short story that I wrote in graduate school, I already knew what the setting would be (an all-girls’ school in the wilderness). I also knew what the novel would explore: the difficulty of friendship, as well as the way that—especially when we’re younger—all of the lines that we think will be so clear, such as those between friendship and desire, jealousy and affirmation, or love and hate, can blur so easily. I didn’t think those themes would come out as easily if there were lots of guys kind of flitting about. I also didn’t think that the addition of a bunch of male characters would change Lida’s journey at all. She’s at an in-between stage in her life, in terms of her knowledge of herself as both an emotional and sexual person, and the girls’ school seemed like the right place for her to begin coming to terms with who she is and who she wants to be.

5. Which of the characters changed the most -- in your head or on the page or both -- in the writing of the book?

Hmmmm. That’s a good question! I can tell you who didn’t change: Boone. She was definitely the clearest character to write, because she was always essentially herself. Gia did change a bit, though she, too, was always a very clear character in my mind. The trick, I think, was to make her a little less clear. I guess I would say that Lida changed the most as I was writing the book. At one point, I remember you asked me to think about where Lida is at the end of all of it—after everything has happened—and to then think about how she gets there. That was hard, but a good exercise.

4. How did you arrive at the unusual Epilogue structure?

Funny you should ask that! The Epilogues were the way that I conceived of responding to your question about where Lida is at the “end,” and how to show the journey she’s taken between the time she spends at the school and the “present.“ Because the novel is in the first-person point of view, it always felt like it was very much Lida’s story to tell, but when I was revising the novel, I wanted to make it even more immediately hers. By placing Lida at the desk with the pen in hand, I allowed her to tell the story in what I felt was a realistic way, while still allowing the reader to see her now, and to get a sense of how she’s changed since her time at the school. I used Epilogues throughout the book because she literally is writing them at the end, with a perspective and knowledge that the Lida in the “regular” chapters doesn’t yet have.

6. The conclusion of the story is truly unexpected. Why did you choose to write it that way? (Spoiler alert, somewhat, so highlight the lines below to read.)

Well, I guess this, too, ties in with the idea of the Epilogues. When I started writing the novel, knowing I wanted it to be for Young Adults, I knew one thing I didn’t want to do: I did not want, under any circumstances, to tie up the ending neatly with a bow. I do really love YA literature, but the novels I’ve liked the most are the ones that resist the tendency to clear everything up at the end. That’s not how it works in life, and it’s especially not how it works in high school. I was especially interested in exploring the idea that we make wrong decisions, that we sometimes give our hearts to the wrong people, that sometimes, in fact, we don’t learn from our mistakes at the opportune time, and we end up having to work damn hard to make things right. I’ll admit: it’s not the most light-hearted approach. But it seemed like there was something missing from a lot of the books I was reading at the time [as a teenager], and that thing was consequence. Not consequence like, I accidentally broke my mother’s favorite bracelet and now I have to come clean about it!, but consequence like, here is something I’ve done that I’ll live with forever, and I have to keep talking about it in order to understand why I did it.

7. What is your daily writing routine like? Your process?

I write every morning. I wake up, make coffee, take my dog on a walk, and write until 11 or 12. When the writing is going well, I turn off my internet connection and just enjoy it. When the writing is more difficult, it’s a challenge not to constantly check Facebook or my email account. At this point, though, I know that, once I’ve logged onto Facebook, my writing day is basically over. 

In terms of my process, I’d say that every writing project is different. Generally, though, I start by writing short scenes in my notebook. I have a stack of spiral-bound artist’s notebooks—unlined—and I usually begin by writing random things in the notebook before transferring them to the computer. Once I start working on the computer, I try to find connections between the things I’ve written, and that’s when the story begins to really take shape.

More about The Girls of No Return:

How I Spent My February Vacation

Thanks to the magic of frequent-flyer miles and my good friend Donna Freitas, I ran away to Barcelona! If you'd like to see pictures, you can check them out here.

(The lovely thing about the Internet for vacation photos:  I can enthuse about Gaudi and goofy Catalan words for as long as I like, and you can ignore me as much as you like. We both win!)

A brief video of a brooch I would not want to wear, from the Dali museum in Figueras:


And, for the hell of it, another video of some food I did actually eat. The restaurant was called the "Buffet Giratorio," which I found delightful. It was amazingly hypnotic just to sit there and watch it go by.


(These video selections, and this post as a whole, are brought to you by my jetlag. Also my smartphone, which is why the quality is not great.)

I read Bossypants by Tina Fey, a short biography of the aforementioned Gaudi, and about 150 pages of The Art of Fielding on the trip. The Gaudi biography was disappointing, because I wanted it to go inside his head and explain his bravery and vision and imagination, and it's well-nigh impossible to do that with a genius. But Bossypants is terrific about all the joys and contradictions of being a woman in the modern age, even if (especially if, I suppose) you're as awesome as Tina Fey, and it's hilarious as well.

The business part of the trip:  Donna is the author of this also thoroughly delightful book, coming out in June, edited by moi. It is exactly the book I would have wanted to read as a preteenager obsessed with gymnastics, and our "business" consisted of discussing the fact that not one but TWO Newbery Medal winners have now blurbed it. Yay!



If you'd like to win a galley of it, let's see -- tell me what international city you'd most like to run away to and why, and I will do a random drawing before the end of the month.

Now it is back to work for me. Here is wishing you unexpected joys like mosaic-covered dragons and all-you-can-eat raw fish on conveyor belts wherever you are.

"The Joy of Writing," by Wislawa Szymborska

(July 2, 1923 - February 1, 2012)

Where is the written doe headed, through these written woods?
To drink from the written spring
that copies her muzzle like carbon paper?
Why is she raising her head, does she hear something?
Perched on four legs borrowed from the truth
she pricks up her ears from under my fingertips.
Silence--even this word rustles across the page
and parts the branches
stemming from the word "woods."

Above the blank page, poised to pounce, lurk
letters, which might spell trouble,
penning sentences
from which there will be no escape.

There is, in an ink drop, a goodly supply
of hunters, eyes winked,
ready to charge down this steep pen,
circle the doe, and sight their guns.

They forget there is no life here.
Different laws, black and white, hold sway.
The blink of an eye will last as long as I want,
allowing division into little eternities
full of bullets stopped in mid-flight.
Nothing will happen forever here if I say so.
Not even a leaf will fall without my go-ahead,
nor will a blade of grass bend under the full stop of the hoof.

Then is there such a world
where I rule fate unfettered?
A time I bind with strings of signs?
Existence without end at my command?

The joy of writing.
The prospect of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand.
        
            -- Translated by Joanna Trzeciak in the collection "Miracle Fair"


_________________________________________
Other Szymborska poems on this blog:
"Some Like Poetry" and "Some People Like Poetry"
"A Word on Statistics"
"Miracle Fair"
"Under a Certain Little Star"
Her Nobel Prize lecture, "The Poet and the World"

SCBWI Winter Conference Links Roundup & Submissions Guidelines

Whew! I had a terrific time teaching at the SCBWI Winter Conference yesterday. In my presentation, I mentioned or included links to the following:
Because two sessions of my presentation didn't leave time for any questions, I told participants that they could send general questions about writing, revision, editing, publishing, etc. to my website e-mail address, chavela_que at yahoo dot com. I will collect these questions through February 14, then answer ten of them here on my blog shortly afterward. If you're sending a question, please put the number of revision techniques covered in my workshop in your subject line, so I know you were actually at the session, and include your name with your question in the body of the e-mail. Thanks.

I also said that I would announce my submissions guidelines here once I had figured them out -- and I now have! If you were in one of my sessions, you may submit to me in the following manner:
  1. You can see my general "What I'm Looking For" at the Submissions page on my website. I will add to that I tend to acquire far more novels than picture books, and my list is pretty stuffed with great YA right now, so I'd love to find some more great middle-grade to balance it out. That doesn't mean I don't want to see terrific picture books or YA if it seems right for me! I encourage you to check out the Books page on my website and the "Books I Edit" label to the right to see more about the kinds of things I publish.
  2. Writers who attended my sessions may submit one manuscript within the next six months.
  3. When that time comes, open up a new e-mail to CBKEdit at gmail dot com. Up until this point, I have accepted unsolicited submissions solely through the post, but I decided this was a great opportunity to experiment with e-mail submissions. (Alas for the U. S. Postal Service, denying them one more source of support...)  If I like it, I may continue to use it for future conferences or even general unsolicited submissions, but right now, these guidelines apply to the SCBWI Winter Conference only. Agented submissions should continue to go to my work address.
  4. At the beginning of each of my sessions, I listed three key principles we work toward in revision. Put one of these principles in the subject line, followed by the title of your manuscript and your name. That is how I will know you actually attended my sessions. (I gave those of you in my third workshop a code word; you can put that code word in place of the principle if you like, but either works.) If you do not include a correct principle or code word in the subject line, your e-mail will be deleted unread.
  5. In the body of the e-mail, please include the following elements in this order:
    1. Your name
    2. The title of the manuscript
    3. The format/age/genre of the manuscript. To keep this simple, include any of these options as appropriate:  Picture Book / Easy Reader / Chapter Book / Middle-Grade / Young Adult / Nonfiction / Fantasy / Mystery / Romance / Paranormal / Historical / Poetry
    4. Your query letter, including your contact information, and a flap-copy-like summary of the work as a whole.
    5. A portion of the manuscript as follows:
      1. Picture Book: complete text
      2. Novel (whatever age): the first chapter
      3. Nonfiction / Poetry Collection / Etc.: the first ten pages
    6. If you are an author-illustrator with a picture book text that you want to illustrate, I suggest any of the following methods: (a) paste the full text here, then include one sample illustration in the body of the e-mail; (b) paste the full text here, then put a link to your website in the query letter  so I can see your style; (c) if you have a full dummy available online, simply include a link in your query -- no need to paste in the text.
  6. I am able to read HTML submissions, which will retain manuscript formatting; I am also able to read plain text, whichever you send and prefer. Please do not send attachments. I do not care about any formatting questions beyond the inclusion of the elements above in the order I specified them, so please don't ask them.
  7. You will receive an automatic reply letting you know your manuscript has been received. It says that you will get a response within six months, and I will do my best to keep to that. I have often failed to stay within these expectations in the past, which I regret, but I'm doing the best I can. 
  8. As with my submissions through the regular mail, if I am interested, I will send you some  personal response; if not, you will receive a form letter. Due to the demands created by the many manuscripts I receive and edit, I will not be able to correspond further than this if I am not interested. 
Thank you for attending my sessions, and your interest in sharing your manuscript with me. 

Editorial Palavering: Martha Mihalick, Editor at Greenwillow Books / HarperColllins

(Second in an extremely occasional series of interviews with my editorial friends and colleagues.)

1.  How did you come to be a children's books editor? What were the biggest lessons in your editorial education, or what are three of your guiding editorial principles now?

I realized that children's book editor was a job sometime around sophomore year of college. I was looking around publisher websites for internship possibilities, and came across a description for an editorial assistant in a children's division. And I instantly knew that THAT was what I wanted to do when I graduated. So, two years later, during the summer right after graduation, I attended the University of Denver Publishing Institute, and patiently waited all month for the children's book lecture, which was given by Virginia Duncan, Greenwillow's publisher. Very fortunately for me, I got to talk to Virginia, and she was just beginning her search for a new editorial assistant at that time. And now I've been at Greenwillow for ten years!

Biggest lessons...hmm. Every day I learn something new, either from one of my colleagues or one of our authors! So perhaps the biggest lesson in my editorial education is that in the creative process everyone has to be open to continuing to learn.

Before I was in publishing, I also never realized just how important the page turn is. In picture books, it's a huge part of the pacing and build of the story, of course. But even in novels, that turn from end of chapter to beginning of chapter is important. Another big lesson is that it isn't necessarily an editor's job to know HOW to fix a problem in a story, but to know WHAT needs to be fixed.

2.  What kind of books do you do these days? (All picture books or all novels?) What are some common themes or ideas or motifs that run through books you acquire? How might those connect to your childhood reading or your own life?


Lately I have been acquiring mostly novels, but at Greenwillow, we all get to work on every book in some way, so I also see a lot of picture books every day. I love having the wide range of books to work on, and the fact that I don't have to pick one age group.

I've noticed that I'm very attracted to stories that involve significant--often heartwrenching--choices for the characters. And ones with strong friendship or sibling themes. And looking back, these do connect quite a bit to the themes that appealed to me in my childhood reading, as well. Robin McKinley's and Tamora Pierce's books were among my favorites, as were The Secret Garden, Matilda, and A Wrinkle in Time. I also seem to go for stories in which the child or teenager discovers or creates their own spaces, away from the parents or other authority figures. There’s something very magical about that, even in books that don’t involve any actual magic.

3.  What is your general editorial process like? How did you learn/develop it?

The first time I read through the manuscript, I try to do it straight through without picking up my pencil (this doesn't always work!) to get a sense of how the entire story plays out. Then I go through again, pencil in hand, jotting questions or thoughts in the margins as I go, and making notes on larger issues on another piece of paper. I use those notes to start my editorial letter, and will go back through the margin comments to pick up anything else that seems like it needs called out in the letter. Often, I'll talk to the other Greenwillowites who've had a chance to read the manuscript, and we'll discuss what we like and what we think needs attention, and I'll tweak the letter after those conversations. In later drafts, the balance usually shifts to heavier line editing and shorter letters. But every manuscript and every author are different, so the editorial process is a lot about finding the best way to work for each project.

Editing is interesting...on the one hand you're always learning, but on the other, it never feels like a process you're being taught. For the most part, I learned how to do it by because as an assistant I wrote reader's reports for the other editors, and then I was the one who xeroxed their editorial letters and marked-up manuscripts. So of course I read them as I xeroxed! A lot of it is experience, too, of course. The more manuscripts you work on, the more you know what has worked in the past and what hasn't. And there is always the instinctive part of it, too.

4.  You're very involved in social media, with your own blog and Tumblr, a strong role on the Greenwillow blog, and Twitter. As an editor, what do you get out of doing that?

Social media's been a really great way to make connections with agents, other editors, and writers. I've certainly gotten submissions because of something I've mentioned on Twitter--it's been a new channel to show what my taste is. And it's been a terrific way to get to know booksellers, librarians, and bloggers, too. I love hearing them talk about books, and I learn so much about their perspective from the blogs and twitter. Added bonus? There's nothing more warm-and-fuzzy-feeling than seeing people whose opinions you respect talking positively about one of your books!

Plus everything online give us so much access to such a wide array of information, and the people I follow through various platforms introduce me to articles I might not have found on my own but find incredibly interesting.

5.  I have to ask: What is it like to work with Megan Whalen Turner? And can you tell us anything at all about the next Gen book?

Well, Virginia is Megan's editor, so it's a better question for her! Megan is, of course, amazing, and I consider it a gift to have watched the last two books take shape.

I will tell you everything I know about the next Gen book: She's writing it.

6.  How many hours did you work in the past week? (Include time spent editing at home or reading manuscripts.)

Cheryl, you can't honestly expect me to tally that up! That would ruin the illusion that I have a life.

7.  How did you come to acquire and edit The Girl of Fire and Thorns, which was nominated for the Morris Award? Do you do a lot of debuts? What did it mean to you to have a book nominated for the Morris?
 
Oh, this is an exciting story! Rae Carson's agent, Holly Root, called me late one afternoon saying she had a manuscript that reminded her of Kristin Cashore and Robin McKinley. I said SEND IT OVER RIGHT NOW! Which she did. And I read it overnight. By the end of the next day, Rae and Holly had accepted our offer to publish it.

I have done a lot of debuts in the last couple years--Entwined by Heather Dixon, Mistwood by Leah Cypess, A Touch Mortal by Leah Clifford were all debut novels. And there are a few more coming in the next couple years, too! It's really inspiring as an editor to help launch an author's career, and know how many more books they have in them for all of the readers out there.

Having The Girl of Fire and Thorns named a finalist for the Morris is such a thrill, and an honor. Rae is an absolutely beautiful writer and the story she has to tell took my breath away. I'm so excited to know that others felt the same way, and am beyond happy for her!

8.  What book do you have coming out next, and why do you love it?

Bethany Griffin's Masque of the Red Death is coming in a few short months. It's a reimagining of Edgar Allan Poe's story, and it is breathtaking. Romance, despair, a fight for hope, a little touch of steampunk, and a destroyed society--all with that gothic tone that's so delicious in Poe. It's the first of two books, and definitely not one to miss! I was completely swept up in this story; it's another that I read in basically one sitting.

Then there's The Crown of Embers, coming out next fall. That's the sequel to The Girl of Fire and Thorns. And let me just tell you that you can't wait.

9.  What are three things you'd like to tell beginning writers / you never get to tell writers, but wish they knew / you find yourself telling writers over and over again? (Take your pick!) 

I pick "tell beginning writers."

* Write the story you HAVE to tell, not the story you think someone else wants to hear.
* Don't be too stiff in your writing. Stay loose and let your voice shine. Be YOU, not "An Author." That's how you'll stay true to your originality and unique perspective.
* Writing is an art, but being an author is a job. Make sure you learn how to balance the two and always be professional in your interactions with the publishing world.

Thanks, Martha!

New Talk! "Some Observations on Electric Eels"

A week or so ago on Twitter, I promised that once I crossed the five-thousand-followers mark, I'd put another of my writing talks up on my website. Here it is:


The title comes from one of my favorite quotations ever, from the delightfully eely Dame Edith Sitwell: “I am not eccentric. It is just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of goldfish.” To that end, it's about being an eel in a pond full of goldfish, about the ways we tell stories about eels and goldfish (because everyone thinks of themselves as an eel, no one as a goldfish), about the levels at which readers can connect to -- suture with -- characters in stories, and how to survive if you are an eel -- or a lonely kid, or a bullied one, or a writer or artist.

(What I really love about Dame Sitwell's quote is the "It is just that" -- that simple statement of fact, from her point of view, magnificently switching the locus of power over from anyone who would call her "eccentric" to herself and her own aliveness.)

Hope you enjoy!

Revision Techniques: Anything to Share?

I'll be speaking this Saturday at SCBWI National on Revision, giving a yet-again-revised version of my talk "Twenty-Five* Revision Techniques *(Subject to Revision)," which also appears in Second Sight. (If you're signed up for the session and you also have Second Sight, yes, it involves more than what you can read in the book, and will thus still be worth your time.) I feel pretty good about the talk, but I'm curious:
  •  Those of you who have read Second Sight or heard me give this speech: Which techniques did you actually try? Which were useful to you? Which were duds? (This will help me to know which to keep and which to cut this round.)
  • Anyone: What's your process? What strategies or techniques are most useful to you in revising these days? Any you'd like to share? (Fair warning:  If an idea sounds good to me, I may use it. But I will credit you, I promise.)
Thank you very much for the feedback, on both fronts. 

A Quick Ramble: The Power of Young Adult Reading

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. -- John Rogers
I saw this quote in the comments on Ta-Nehisi Coates's blog this morning (in a post on Ron Paul, for context), and wanted to throw it up here to save because it ties to one of my pet theories:  that the book you fall in love with between the ages of twelve and fourteen has a defining effect on the entire rest of your life. For me it was Pride and Prejudice, and I've written before about where that's gotten me now. (The quote above is very male, I have to observe. And I bet a lot of people in their twenties now would say simply "Harry Potter.") Did you all have a book like this when you were a young teenager? What was it, and how has it played out in your life since?

I also went through an Ayn Rand phase, actually, where I loved Anthem and The Fountainhead, though I never quite got around to Atlas Shrugged. I never believed in the books' economic or cultural theories, partly because I spent nearly every Sunday morning of the prior sixteen years in church, and Jesus's words about loving your neighbor were planted far deeper in my consciousness than Ms. Rand's screeds against it. (I read The Fountainhead on a youth-group mission trip, which is probably the single most ironic place possible to read an Ayn Rand novel.) But her ideas about identity and self-knowledge and self-reliance had a major effect on me -- for instance, that "To say 'I love you,' one must first be able to say the 'I'":  that concept that it was important to have your own strong, whole sense of self before you could truly commit that self to another person. And also the idea of work as a basis for and expression of identity . . . Both of these things spoke powerfully to my burgeoning feminist intellectual self. I have no use for most of the rest of what she's written, and I'd doubtless sniff at the prose style today (and I remember thinking, "Goodness, these speeches go on for a while" and skimming when I was sixteen), but I'm grateful to her still for in part making me who I am.

And we do teenagers too little credit sometimes, I think, in worrying that they can't filter ideology from real life as I did. But probably this depends on the teenager. And I can't explore that idea in more depth now because I am, in fact, running late for my lovely, liberal, love-your-neighbor church . . . Which shows you truly which idea won out.

Kidlit Drink Night at SCBWI

Betsy and I are no longer running Kidlit Drink Night, but a terrific crew of whippersnappers* has taken up the banner, and they've planned a fabulous event for the upcoming New York National SCBWI Conference! To wit:

What: Kidlit Drink Night
When:  Friday, January 27, at 8 p.m.
Where: The Public House at 41st and Lexington (a new location, please note)
Why:  Tradition! Also fun, and by popular request.
Who: Anyone and everyone attending the conference or with an interest in children's/YA literature. 

I will be speaking at National SCBWI this year, so I'll definitely be there. (And copies of Second Sight will again be available in the conference bookstore if you want to pick it up.) Come by and say hi!

* I use this word because I am old. OLD. Compared to the whippersnappers, anyway. (Also it is fun.)