TYPE A LITTLE FASTER

Travels with Steinbeck

2012-02-07T10:04:00.000-05:00

As anyone who follows me on Goodreads might have ascertained by now, I've got a bad case of reading ADD at the moment. My "currently reading" list has 5 or 6 books on it, and that doesn't include the books I have lying around that I pick up and peruse because I'm waiting to add them to the currently reading list. One of those is Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck.

I'm having a major mid-life love affair with Steinbeck at the moment, something I talk about today in a guest post at the Nerdy Book Club. This morning, I picked up Travels with Charley and on the first page found some words of wisdom that inspired me as I'm beginning the first draft of a new W-I-P.

A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality,uniqueness. A journey is a person itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing , and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the glass-bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this, a journey is like a marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.

YES! I thought. YES! YES! YES! Not just about the physical journeys. Not just about marriage (but a zillion times yes to that, too.)
But also, I thought, substitute a novel for a trip and that's how I feel every time I start writing a new book.

One of the aspects of craft I've been working very hard to learn more about is plot and structure, because I've always tended to be more of a pantser. In fact, another thing I'm doing today is starting an online plot workshop with the awesome (and hilarious)Rhonda Helms. The software program Scrivener is a practical tool that's helped me develop my plotting skills.

But ultimately, no matter how much I try to plot in advance, I still have to write my way into the book. That's why I've become such an ardent believer in the "write it as fast as possible shitty first draft." Because as much as I might try to control the thing in advance, I have set myself free to experience the journey before it finds me and reveals its personality.

Thanks again, John.

A letter to my "Wonderful Child"

2012-02-03T09:14:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I attended the wonderful retreat for published writers and illustrators,Kindling Words. I credit KW with saving my writing life back in 2006, when I was going through a case of the second book blues so severe that I wondered if I should give up this dream of being a writer after all and go get a "real" job, just like I'd done in my 20's and 30's because everyone said I should.

Kindling Words is a place where I go to rejuvenate, to be inspired, to learn craft, to commune with fellow creative souls. It's the perfect kick off for my writing year. This year I finished the revisions for my latest YA novel to send to my agent, while in the back of my brain the idea for a middle grade was percolating.

On the first night of KW, we always have an activity to get our creative juices flowing. Two years ago, it was a fantastic and fun African drum circle.

This year, we had an acting professor from Circle in the Square lead us in some exercises to get us in touch with ourselves and each other. I was a drama geek in high school, so I usually love this kind of stuff, but the minute he mentions "child exercise" I tensed.

The exercise was to find our "wonderful child." And I tried to do that, and I couldn't. And I ended up lying on the floor in the ballroom of a Vermont Inn sobbing. I told the professor that I don't have a Wonderful Child - but that I've worked very hard to be a Wonderful Grownup, and I like who I am now.

I have to apologize to Mary Lee Donovan, of Candlewick Press (Sorry Mary Lee!) because she had to do the next exercise with me, where we had to look into each other's eyes without speaking for many minutes, because the eyes are the windows of the soul. My eyes were all red and watery and I can't imagine looking into my soul at that point was a whole lot of fun.

The community at KW is so amazing. I had so many people come up to me afterward and tell me that I DO have a Wonderful Child. It made me want to cry all over again, but for a different reason.

The the next morning, I wrote this letter to my Wonderful Child, the one I couldn't find:

Dear Wonderful Child:

Last night I was sent on another mission to find you, and as usual, it ended in tears. I know you understand why I my already tense shoulder muscles went into spasm when I heard the words “child exercise” and acid production in my stomach went into overdrive, causing reflux my throat. You get it, because you were there. You know that when sexual abuse is perpetrated on a child so young they don’t even have the words to express what is happening to them, the post-traumatic stress effects last a lifetime, through drug use, a suicide attempt, bulimia, abusive relationships, and untold hours and too much money to want to think about worth of therapy. You might think that you’ve “dealt with it” but then all it takes is the student reaction to the story about a pedophile football coach in PA or hearing people making ignorant comments at Virtus workshop you have to attend in order to help out for your daughter’s musical theater production at the local Catholic church, or a guided exercise at a writing retreat and BAM! You’re right back in that place of horror and pain, the place where you’re a small, frightened child, scared in the darkness without a voice.

But the thing is, that’s not who you are now. Because you’re not a victim, you’re a survivor. You’ve worked hard. Even when all your bricks feel down and you had build them up again, one brick at a time, slowly and painfully, you never quit. And it’s paid off. Because now you do have a voice. That’s what finally , at age 38, allowing yourself to pursue your dream of being a writer gave you. And you use that voice in your political columns, to speak out when you see injustice, speaking for those who still might not have one. In your novels, you write for the kids like you, the ones who feel defective, like there’s something wrong with them that can never be cured, who feel like the wound that was inflicted on them, usually through no fault of their own, has left them too flawed and scared to ever find success, happiness and love.

You write because you want them to know that they’re wrong. You write because you want them to know that there’s hope. You promise to never lie to them, ever, because you know that denial is one of the most destructive weapons adults use on children. So you don’t pretend that the road will be easy, but you let them know that survival and, better yet, happiness, is possible.

You do that because in possibility lies hope. And hope will help them get through the hard times now, so they, too, can grow up to become adults they like better.

I might not be able to find my Wonderful Child in exercises like the one we did, but she's the voice within me when I write.

Dear Teens: A little advice about relationships and trust

2012-01-18T16:20:00.000-05:00

So there was this story in the New York Times today Young, in Love and Sharing Everything, including a Password. Apparently:

It has become fashionable for young people to express their affection for each other by sharing their passwords to e-mail,Facebook and other accounts. Boyfriends and girlfriends sometimes even create identical passwords, and let each other read their private e-mails and texts.

Already, I'm shaking my head and feeling all "get off my lawn", but I continue reading.

In a 2011 telephone survey, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 30 percent of teenagers who were regularly online had shared a password with a friend, boyfriend or girlfriend.

SMH. I am reaching for my Tums and my box of Clairol Perfect 10. But wait, there's more!

Rosalind Wiseman, who studies how teenagers use technology and is author of “Queen Bees and Wannabes,” a book for parents about helping girls survive adolescence, said the sharing of passwords, and the pressure to do so, was somewhat similar to sex.

Sharing passwords, she noted, feels forbidden because it is generally discouraged by adults and involves vulnerability. And there is pressure in many teenage relationships to share passwords, just as there is to have sex.

“The response is the same: if we’re in a relationship, you have to give me anything,” Ms. Wiseman said.

And the part that made me go "WTF? Seriously, what are these kids ON?!!":

“It’s a sign of trust,” Tiffany Carandang, a high school senior in San Francisco, said of the decision she and her boyfriend made several months ago to share passwords for e-mail and Facebook. “I have nothing to hide from him, and he has nothing to hide from me.”

“That is so cute,” said Cherry Ng, 16, listening in to her friend’s comments to a reporter outside school. “They really trust each other.”

Okay kids. Hold onto your hats. Auntie Sarah is about to rant.

Full disclosure: I am not an expert on relationships. I have been in...well, a LOT of dysfunctional relationships in the course of my forty-something years.

But let me give you the benefit of my many, many years of experience and therapy.*

Reading each other's emails and texts isn't intimacy. It's spying. It does not, actually imply that you trust each other. It reveals the exact opposite about your relationship.

Just like a fire, a relationship needs oxygen. It doesn't get that if you are stifling each other. Relationships work best when you are both your own person, confident in yourselves, each with your own interests and passions and your own private spaces. THEN you come together to share and reveal, slowly, gradually in a process that can take a lifetime if you are both thoughtful and evolving human beings. Therein lies the intimacy.

Anyone else find this article seriously depressing?

*This is one of the advantages of getting old if you get therapy. You learn things from your dysfunctional experiences as a youth and it enables you to live a happier life when everything is starting to sag and you're reaching for the Clairol Perfect 10 box.

Why I enjoy revising my will

2012-01-13T10:34:00.000-05:00

I met with my lawyer to revise my will yesterday. The last time I did it was in 2007, not long after my divorce was finalized. I figured given the acrimonious nature of my divorce, it probably was a good idea that I change my advance medical directive so that my ex no longer was the person who decided if they should pull the plug on me in the event I was incapacitated, or had power of attorney over my affairs.

When I signed that revised will, I was so happy. The lawyer and the person who witnessed it said that they'd never seen someone so thrilled to be signing their last will and testament, but I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from me, because I'd organized things so that if anything happened to me, I knew everything was organized for my kids in what I hoped would be the best way possible, and with the values I'd tried to teach them while I was alive.

I was prompted into this revision by two things. Firstly, a tweet from Neil Gaiman linking to old blog post of his about literary trusts . This was something I'd never thought about before. My literary legacy. When I did my 2007 will, I only had one book out. Now I have four out, not to mention eight years worth of published political columns, several essays, and many archive boxes full of unpublished work. So the literary executor became something I really needed to consider.

The other thing was that The Awesome Boyfriend, who I'd only been dating for a short time when I revised the will in 2007, is now a permanent and important part of mine and my kids' lives. We aren't married, but if anything happened to me, I wanted to make sure that the courts recognized that.

Looking back over my old will and thinking about the changes I wanted to make, made me appreciate how much my life has changed for the better in the last four years. It's easy to get overwhelmed by the crises that hit on a day to day basis (because OMG, they do) but sometimes it takes revising your will and looking death the face to make you realize that you've actually come a long way, baby.

If you haven't made a will, please don't put it off, especially if you have kids. It's SO important.

A little rant from the mom of an Aspie

2012-01-05T15:25:00.000-05:00

On Boxing Day, the New York Times published a really lovely article about two college students with Asperger's Syndrome, Jack Robinson and Kirsten Lindsmith, and how they are navigating the difficulties of a relationship in which both of them have similar problems reading social cues. I don't say "lack of empathy, because as the mother of an Asperger's son, I've found him to be extremely empathetic. It's just that he has a hard time reading faces and social cues, so he doesn't always know when you're upset unless it's VERY CLEAR. (Crying hysterically is usually a dead giveaway, but I try not to do that in front of my kids too often.)

I mean let's face it. It's hard enough to manage relationships when you're allegedly "neuro typical." How many of us have misinterpreted our partner's expressions or actions? *raises hand*

When my son was going through the diagnosis processes at age five, I pretty much knew it was Aspergers because it explained everything I'd been worried about since he was 18 months old perfectly. I read everything I could get my hands on, and although in some ways it was comforting, because I finally knew what I was dealing with and could take action to help him, instead of having all these amorphous worries, in other ways it created a whole host of new anxieties. I woke up at 3am, crying, and asking my now ex-husband, "Do you think he'll ever get married?" It wasn't the actually married part I worried about - it's that I want my son to have connections, because to me, human connection and relationships are the most important part of being on this planet, and I could already tell from observing him on the playground at school that unlike kids perhaps further along the spectrum, my son wanted them but couldn't figure out how to initiate them.

So I loved this article. It gave me hope.

But then I started seeing people making jokes about a correction that the New York Time posted afterwards.

Okay, I admit. It's kind of funny to see a "My Little Pony" correction in relation to a front page New York Times story.

BUT...here's the thing. I don't think the a lot of the people who are laughing about this understand why this correction is so important to Kirsten Lindsmith, who referred to Twilight Sparkle as the character she visualizes to cheer herself up when she feels sad or anxious. What they need to understand is that a person with AS could perseverate about a mistake like that for days. Months. For my writer friends, imagine you were featured on the front page of the New York Times and they got the name of your book wrong! Do you think you'd be laughing? I think not. I can just imagine the angsty phone calls to publicists and agents. "THE FRONT PAGE OF THE NEW YORK FREAKING TIMES AND THEY DIDN'T EVEN GET MY BOOK TITLE RIGHT!!!" *sobs* *reaches for tissues and chocolate*

So imagine you're Kristen and you have this safe place, a strategy that you have to help calm yourself and you just told the world about it and then...some reporter effed it up!! And now people are laughing about it when you try to make it right.

All I'm saying is, it's okay to have a chuckle. But at least while you're chuckling make an effort to understand.

Why Google's algorithms are sexist and FAIL

2011-11-28T12:43:00.001-05:00

I was sick and tired of getting the same ad from the same wealthy "I'm going to try to buy the CT SEN election again" politician on EVERY. SINGLE. WEBSITE I visit, so I clicked on the Google Adsense button to see if there was some way I could opt out of receiving it. And boy, did I learn some interesting things about myself and Google's algorithm from that experience.

Here's what Google thinks about me:

Yep - apparently, based on my searches, I am a male between the ages of 55-64. On what would Google possibly be making that assumption, I wonder? Because I'm searching Finance? News and Politics? Science? C'mon Google... I've got some "womanly things" like "Books and Literature" and "Arts and Entertainment". What would it take for me to convince you that I'm a female, Google Geeks? Searching for the Kardashians? Justin Bieber? Breast implants? Shoes?

This makes me furious - because it's so inherently sexist. Why does a keen interest in politics automatically make me male? Women often bear the brunt of the political policies wrought by men for ideological reasons - be it cutting social services, defunding Planned Parenthood, or...well, I could go on. We need to be politically aware and active to protect ourselves and our children's futures.

As for finance - well, look what a smashing job the Old Boys Network has done with our financial infrastructure. Is it any wonder that I take an interest in what's going on when the future financial stability of the country has been in the hands of people who are so grossly dishonest, greedy and incompetent, presided over by an enabling Congress?

If that makes me a man, well, send me my Man Card. And while you're at it Google Geeks, how about you guys do the dishes and cook and do the grocery shopping and laundry and all many things I do as well as my "manly" interests, while working my freelance jobs and raising two children with better values than any of these so called "men" appear to have.

And PS Google Ad Geeks: - I'd really like to not see that ad again. Even if it is from a woman.

Innovation, creativity, and humanity - what I learned from reading Isaacson's Steve Jobs

2011-11-28T07:27:00.001-05:00

Last night, just as my daughter was coming in to say goodnight to me, I turned the final page on Walter Isaacson's fascinating biography on the late Steve Jobs. My daughter, who is, like me, a big Apple fan, asked me, "So did it change your opinion of him?"

The answer is complex, as it must be for a very complicated man.

There are many things I admire about Jobs, both as a creative person, and someone who studied business administration (I hope this becomes required reading for MBA courses).

The first, and perhaps the most important is that Jobs had a fervent belief of the importance of the liberal arts and humanities - as exemplified by the slide at the end of his product presentations showing the intersection of Liberal Arts Street and Technology Street.

"It's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough. We believe that it's technology married with the humanities that yields us the result that makes our heart sing...We think we have the right architecture not just in silicon, but in our organization, to build these kinds of products."

Compare this thinking with that of Tea Party politicians like Florida Governor Rick Scott, who wants to drastically cut funding for higher education in the liberal arts in favor of the "STEM" disciplines. Scott should read Isaacson's book, pronto, in hopes that he might gain some understanding why his approach is moving us back to the past rather than preparing us for the future.

Steve Jobs was a great example of the term "Synthesis" - he drew ideas from different, disperate sources, many outside the field of technology and from them was able to originate a new way of looking at an issue.

Isn't that what we need more of in our society, in business, education, and government? There's so much pressure on kids to focus, focus, focus, so they can get into the "best college" (but is it the "best one for them?) and then get out there and make money. But we need more polymaths -people who can see beyond the balance sheet and profit and loss. People who can draw inspiration from other cultures instead of fearing them, because like it or not, we are a global society and there's no way to turn back the clock, no matter how much some people appear to wish to do so.

One of the most fascinating things for me from a business management perspective was Jobs' unique understanding of how the very culture of a business is shaped by the design of its' headquarters. (p.430-431).

"Despite being a denizen of the digital world, or maybe because he knew all too well its isolating potential, Jobs was a strong believer in face-to-face meetings. 'There's a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat,' he said. 'That's crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they're doing, you say 'Wow', and soon you're cooking up all sorts of ideas.'"

The Pixar building, therefore, was designed around one central atrium in order to promote just those kind of serendipitous encounters. The front doors, main stairs, and corridors all led to the atrium, the company cafe and mailboxes were there. It was the hub around which Pixar gravitated. And it worked.

"Steve's theory worked from day one" [John] Lasseter recalled. "I kept running into people I hadn't seen for months. I've never seen a building that promoted collaboration and creativity as well as this one."

But like many geniuses I've read about, Jobs was not an easy man to be around. He clearly had disordered eating, if not an actual eating disorder. He appeared to exhibit many symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. Perhaps the best example of this comes late in the book (p.543). Isaacson is talking about Jobs' "complicated but always loyal" relationship with his wife Laurene Powell, who, early in their marriage, cofounded and launched College Track, an organization that helps disadvantaged kids graduate high school and get into college.

While Jobs paid lipservice to her work: " What she's done with College Track really impresses me," he never actually visited her after school centers.

So here's the woman who has supported him, loved him, looked after him, raised his kids - yet he couldn't even put himself out to visit the centers that are important to her? Sorry, that's husband fail on a grand scale. One of the most poignant parts of the book was an interview Isaacson had with Jobs' middle daughter, Erin, in which she made excuses for her father's inattention to her:

"He does his best to be a father and the CEO of Apple, and he juggles those pretty well...Sometimes I wish I had more of his attention, but I know the work he's doing is very important and I think it's really cool, so I'm fine. I don't really need more attention."

Erin...for the record - I just want to say that I think YOU are really cool and I think you are very important. I bet you'll do some pretty cool stuff yourself someday.

So in answer to my daughter's question about if reading the book changed my opinion of Jobs - I think it made me respect his ideas and genius more, but him as a person less. Could he have been one without the other?

Isaacson's conclusion is that Jobs could have controlled himself if he wanted to. "When he hurt people, it was not because he was lacking in emotional awareness. Quite the contrary: He could size people up, understand their inner thoughts, and know how to relate to them, cajole them, or hurt them at will."

But on the other hand - even the people who he bullied acknowledge that he pushed them to do things they never thought possible.

My final line to my daughter: " He was a genius and a brilliant businessman, but I wouldn't want him as my husband or my father."

The Universe. And Car Talk

2011-11-12T22:12:00.001-05:00

I've been feeling pretty down about human nature recently, what with the happenings at Penn State and idiotic conservatives making awful "jokes" like these in defense of Herman Cain.

Hardly surprising that the Wall Street Journal columnist would make insensitive sexist jokes. When I worked on Wall Street it was a cesspit of sexism and harrassment.

But sometimes, just when you're ready to hole up on your sofa in a Snuggie with a huge supply of chocolate and avoid the rest of the human race until it runs out, G-d , the Universe, Fate, or whatever you want to call it, sends you a much needed reminder that there are really good people out there.

So Friday afternoon, I got in the MomMobile, a dented, scratched, but regularly serviced SUV with 130K plus miles on the clock, and set off for Lititz, Pennsylvania, home to the amazing Aaron's Books.

Unfortunately, in order to do this, I had to brave what Son and I refer to as The First Circle of Hell, otherwise known as the New Jersey Turnpike. (It used to be the Second Circle of Hell, but because of what I'm about to relate, it has been promoted to First.)

I'd just pulled off the Turnpike onto I-78 when, upon checking my rear view mirror*, I noticed white smoke emitting from my exhaust pipe. As a big fan of NPR's Car Talk, I knew that this was not a good sign. I went to get off at the next exit. As I went down the exit ramp, my power steering went. Then I noticed my brakes weren't so well either. At this point, you didn't have to be a Car Talk fan to know that things were seriously FUBAR. But as if I needed any more clues, white smoke started pouring out from under the bonnet. This car was smoking.

I managed to pull the car into a gas station forecourt across from the end of the exit ramp. Turned it off because I was afraid it was about to blow up. I asked the attendant if he could help me. He was more pissed off that my car was leaking some kind of fluid on his property. But then this wonderful man came out from the convenience store where he'd been buying a snack. His wife had seen me in trouble and she told him he had to help me. His name is George Gibson and he owns Gibson Auto Repair, right around the corner from where I rolled up in my smoking MomMobile with no brakes or steering.

Mr Gibson could be on Car Talk himself because he REALLY knows car repairs. He stuck his finger into the liquid and immediately ascertained it was transmission fluid. He figured it was a hose that had snapped. But then he got worried because there was also green/blue fluid, which looked like a different problem, maybe the radiator.

Meanwhile, the gas station guy is still freaking out that my car is leaking on to his forecourt, so Mr Gibson helped me back the car off the forecourt onto the street - by this point so much transmission fluid had leaked out that the car wouldn't move forward in drive, only in reverse. Then he and his employee Marvin towed me around the corner to his garage.

At this point I'm totally panicking, because I have this crazy weekend schedule that involves much driving - book festival, visiting Son at college, then Philadelphia for Awesome Boyfriend's big family birthday celebration on Sunday afternoon. And now my car is kaput. To the rescue comes Mrs. Gibson, who drove me, the bagels I'd bought for Aaron's Books, the presents for Awesome Boyfriend's family, the 2 dozen chocolate chip cookies I'd baked for Son, my laptop bag, my weekend bag, and my presentation stuff (I wasn't exactly traveling light because I thought - "hey, I'll just THROW IT IN THE CAR") to Newark Airport so I could get a rental.

Mr and Mrs Gibson and Marvin didn't know me from Adam. I was just some random author in distress who rolled in (literally) in a smoking (and I don't mean that in the OMG wish I owned one sense) car. But they couldn't have been kinder to me at a time when I was panicked and stressed and after a week when I hadn't been sleeping well because off all the stuff triggered by Penn State. I also have to mention the guy at Hertz,Newark, who saw me schlepping all the aforementioned stuff trying to locate my rental car and asked me if he wanted him to go and get it. He also helped me load it all in the car, and when I tried to tip him he refused, and just told me he hoped my day got better.

I was so touched by the kindness of these people I didn't even know, and it helped heal some of the scabs that have been torn open by the PSU stuff.

And then this morning at breakfast I was blessed to met Sharon Robinson. Hearing her speak so passionately about her deeply personal connection with winners of the Breaking Barriers in Sports and Life Essay contest made me so profoundly grateful that we were brought together at this particular time. Because I needed reminding that for every Mike McQueary, Joe Paterno, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, there's a Sharon Robinson, a Mr and Mrs Gibson, and a Marvin.

There's hope for us yet.

*My fellow Americans, particularly those who stick in the left lane holding up traffic: I urge you to do this on a regular basis. Far more regularly than you apparently do. It could save your transmission.

Albus Dumbledore on Joe Paterno

2011-11-11T23:01:00.001-05:00

I've not been sleeping well this week. When you've been sexually abused as a child, you can do years of therapy and think "okay, I've dealt with that and I'm 'cured'" but then when you least expect it, something will happen that triggers this reaction from your reptilian brain, the one where the trauma was imprinted when you were young and scared and voiceless. I wrote about that here.

So ever since I heard about the Penn State sexual abuse scandal, it's been one massive trigger after another. I wrote this initially, but watching the PSU students riot in support of Coach Joe Paterno was incredibly disturbing.

And then I read this piece by Joe Posnanski, Paterno's biographer.

Here's the part that really got me:

Joe Paterno has lived a whole life. He has improved the lives of countless people. I know — I’ve talked to hundreds of them. Almost every day I walk by the library that he and his wife, Sue, built. I walk by the religious center that tries to bring people together, and his name is on the list of major donors. I hear the stories, the countless stories, of the kindnesses that came naturally to him, of the way he stuck with people in their worst moments, of the belief he had that everybody could do a little bit better — as a football player, as a student, as a human being. I’m not going to tell you these stories now, because you can’t hear them. Nobody can hear them in the howling.
But I will say that I am sickened, absolutely sickened, that some of those people whose lives were fundamentally inspired and galvanized by Joe Paterno have not stepped forward to stand up for him this week, have stood back and allowed him to be painted as an inhuman monster who was only interested in his legacy, even at the cost of the most heinous crimes against children imaginable.

I've been thinking about this a lot, and although I realize my perspective is colored by my experience, I still disagree with Posnanski and here's why. I'll let Dumbledore explain, because he is so much wiser than I am:

"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets JK Rowling

When I teach writing workshops, I always start with character, because to me exploring the human character is the most interesting part of writing a novel. When we talk about plot, I explain the need to throw create tension by throwing stumbling blocks in the way of our character, because that forces the character to make choices, and it's through choices that the character experiences growth - or, conversely, exhibits the fatal flaw that leads to his or her downfall.

When I think about Joe Paterno, I think about the decent, good man that Posnanski sees, who had superlative abilities and indeed helped many young people. But who nonetheless had a tragic flaw.

Why did he make the choice he did? Is it because he was concerned about his legacy? Was it out of loyalty to a colleague whom he'd worked for years? We don't know the truth yet. But what we do know is that he made a despicable choice, for as yet to be ascertained reasons. And no matter what Joe Posnanski says, despite everything that has gone before, Joe Paterno deserves a tarnished legacy. Because our choices DO show what we truly are.

Do I dare disturb the Universe?

2011-10-04T10:56:00.000-04:00

There will be time, there will be time, To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— (They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”) My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— (They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”) Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume?

When I speak in schools, particularly to high schools, about my path to publication, I talk about "my first mid-life crisis" at age 38 when I realized I didn't want to be in my nursing home at the end of my life thinking "What would have happened if...?" and finally gave myself the permission to pursue the lifelong dream I had of being a writer. I made myself a secret promise that I would get a book contract for my 40th birthday, and sold my first book, CONFESSIONS OF A CLOSET CATHOLIC almost two months to the day after I turned 40.

I tell them that I believe in having a mid-life crisis at least once a decade, if not more. Not the kind of mid-life crisis where you leave your spouse and elope with your much younger secretary and buy a Ferrari (although yes, I am divorced and I do have a thing for fast performance sports cars.) What I tell them is that at least every 10 years - if not more often - you should do something that you've always really wanted to do, but that scares you. Challenge yourself. Push the boundaries of your thinking and your actions, so you never get to the point of "I'm too old" and "I can't."

The quote above is from one of my favorite poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. It's in my mind at lot at the moment, because recently I took my own advice and did something about which I thought so many times, "Do I dare?" "How should I presume?" It scared the heck out of me to take action: it felt like jumping off a very tall cliff. But in the end, I would rather disturb the Universe then end up drowning from indecision and timidity like Prufrock. So...here's to scaring yourself once in a while. May the fright be with you!

In honor of Dad on World Alzheimer's Day

2011-09-21T12:31:00.000-04:00

Today is World Alzheimer's Day, and I want to honor a very special person in my life who is suffering from this awful, soul destroying disease, that affects not just the person who is diagnosed with it, but the entire family who loves them. That person is my father, seen here with my dog, Benny, someone who can still bring him joy and comfort just by showing up.

I was in therapy myself when I first started worrying about Dad. His side of the family has a strong family history of Alzheimer's, or dementia or whatever you want to call it. My grandma Mollie had it, her mother Clara had it, her brother, my great uncle had it.

Back in 2005 or 2006, I started noticing that my father, who was extremely eloquent and never at a loss for words, suddenly was. Our conversations during those years under President Bush were usually about politics. Dad was a lifelong Republican and I'm a "recovered Republican" - or what critics of my political columns call variously "an America-hating communist, a socialist, a terrorist -lover" or my all-time favorite, someone who is "using the American way of life to destroy the American way of life and the rest of Western Civilization in the process!" But I noticed during those conversations - which inevitably devolved into arguments - that Dad would suddenly pause and struggle to think of a word - a word that normally would have tripped off his tongue easily. The kind of vocabulary that someone with his background in government would have to hand as easily as we writers would have manuscript or revise or adjective. And given the family history, it scared me.

It's hard to talk about this stuff though, to the person and to other people in the family. "Uh, hey guys, I think Dad's losing it." I was fortunate that I was in therapy, because I could talk it through with my therapist, and she was able to tell me something very important - that if we got Dad on some drugs like Aricept early enough, it might prolong the onset of the more serious cognitive decline. She also gave me the name of someone at Greenwich Hospital who specialized in elder issues, who my parents could go and see. It was that knowledge that gave me the courage to mention my concerns to first my brother, then my mom, and finally Dad.

I took him out to lunch at the Bulls Head Diner, and told him that I was worried about him. And he admitted that he was worried about himself. It turns out that everyone was worried, but no one wanted to worry anyone else. We were all living on own little islands of anxiety, until finally one of us swam across the sea and brought it out into the open. The thing about bringing the worry into the open is that you can DO something about it. While there's no cure for Alzheimer's, I'm convinced that getting Dad on those drugs early slowed his decline, giving us a few more years, particularly precious for my kids so that they can remember Grandpa (or "Grandpoo", as he's affectionately known) more as he was than as he is now.

Towards the end of last year, however, the decline started to accelerate. We had to deal with the very painful issue of his driving, which I talked about in a column here. Understandably, he was upset and angry about having his license taken away. He still talks about it sometimes.

Earlier this year, there was another marked decline - this time involving a personality change and violence. The day we'd been dreading, but thanks to my brother's foresight, he and I had been planning for financially for over a decade, arrived - when we had to make the incredibly difficult decision to move Dad to assisted living. I remember visiting my Grandma Mollie when she was in a nursing home, and it was so awful and depressing - I couldn't bear the thought of Dad being in a place like that. But we found somewhere that is different - for what it is, it is wonderful. The rooms are light and sunny and there are always activities going on. Dad had been going there for outpatient adult day care for a few months, so he was already familiar with it.

But still...it's not home. And he might be out of it, but he still knows that.

A week or so ago, the awful Pat Robertson said yet another awful thing, for which I will never, ever forgive him: Divorce your spouse with Alzheimer's. It made me furious beyond measure, and to me, is yet another example of how sometimes (not all the time) those who follow the letter of the Bible's laws completely miss the spirit, and end up being some of the most godless, least compassionate people on the planet.
Last Friday afternoon they had a Dog Show for all the residents where Dad lives. Although Benny isn't an "official" therapy dog, he certainly brings joy to Dad's life and a smile to the faces of all the other residents he encounters. I brought him for the dog show and he won "Waggiest Tail". Dad was VERY proud.

Right after we took this picture, they had a singalong of Patriotic songs in honor of Constitution Day. My dad spent decades working for the US government, and he served in town government when I was growing up as a Republican. He is one patriotic dude, let me tell you. He used to know every word of every patriotic song there is. When we started singing, he was proud - so proud that he had tears in his eyes, and saluted every few bars. But HE COULDN'T REMEMBER THE WORDS. It made me want to cry, but I didn't want to cry in front of him. But that's what Pat Robertson doesn't understand. My dad is NOT walking dead. He may not remember my name. He doesn't remember my kids' names. He remembers the dog better than he remembers me most of the time. But he's still at his core, who he always was - a patriot and a man who loves his country. And his face lights up every time he sees me. He still loves me. Alzheimer's has just robbed him of his words to express it. I'm grateful to G-d that I still have mine so that I can express my love to him, and that, Pat Robertson is why you are so very wrong.

On September 11th...

2011-09-11T10:41:00.007-04:00

Ten years ago today, I was in Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, CT, after taking an overdose of Valium and almost ending my life. I was supposed to have been released the previous Friday, until the psychiatrists realized I'd was doing what I always did - donning The Mask of Coping. They called me on it and so I was still in the hospital, due to be released that afternoon.

Just before that nine that morning, I went into the phone booth and called my friend Barbara, who gave massages, because after 10 days in that place, I really need a healing touch. There was a glass door on the booth, and as I was speaking to her, I glanced out and saw the TV in the common room.

"Oh my G-d! The World Trade Center is burning!" I said to her. She didn't have a TV, so she couldn't see what was happening. I hung up with her and walked into the common room where a few other people were gathered around the TV. They told me a small plane had flown into the WTC.

I don't know if it's because of my father's background in intelligence, but my first thought, the first thing I said was, "It's terrorists."

People started arguing with me. They said it was a small plane. The guy must have had a heart attack. Or lost his bearings. I argued back. "It's a clear blue sky. No clouds. How could he lose his bearings?"

We were still arguing as we watched - horrified, shocked, disbelieving - the second plane hit the South Tower. And then there everyone knew. It wasn't accident. There was no heart attack. No one lost their bearings. It was a deliberate. It was intentional.

Then we heard plane hit the Pentagon. It wasn't just a terrorist attack, it was a terrorist attack on a grand scale.

One of the women in the hospital with me was there from MA. She wanted, more than anything at that moment, to be with her family, to hold her children close. As she cried, I tried to comfort her, telling her we had to be strong, because if we panicked, if we fell apart, they'd achieved their objective.

Kind of ironic coming from someone who was in a mental hospital for, well, falling apart.

The Powers That Be at Silver Hill were trying to figure out how to deal with something this enormous and help us deal with it. Although they were experts in the field of mental health, this wasn't something that hadn't been taught in med school.

They called us into a meeting where they discussed limiting our access to the TV, because it was distressing some patients, which only upset and stressed out the news junkies amongst us even more. People cope with stress differently. Some want to turn off, wanting some form of escapism. Others need to know more, wanting details, seeking knowledge. Neither one is "right," to each their own. But I'm definitely the latter.

In the end, they decided to take us to the gym so we could work off some stress. In the van on the way down there, we heard on the radio that the South Tower collapsed.
And that's when my Mask of Coping finally slipped, fell, cracked and broke. Because all I could think of was the people still in that tower. I started crying hysterically and repeating over and over, "All those people, all those people." The same woman who I'd comforted earlier took me in her arms and held me. She repeated back to me the same words I'd said to her earlier.

In the gym, I went straight for the heavy bag, pretending it was the faceless enemies who'd flown the planes, punching it over and over until I was sweaty and breathless.
I'd just started on the treadmill when I heard the North Tower fell.

Later, one of the male nurses, or "techs" as they called them, walked those of us who wanted to pray over to the non-denominational chapel. He turned to me and said, with no small amount of anger in his voice, "You tried to kill yourself - but would you change places with anyone in those buildings?"

It's a question that gutted me then and has haunted me ever since.

What drove me to take those pills was the thought on that different awful day in 2001, August 28th, was that my life was a long, dark tunnel with no light of hope at the end, and that most of all, my kids would be better off without me.

I know better now. I'm grateful to G-d, to my family, to my friends and my therapists for the fact that I was given a second chance, one that those in the buildings and on the planes didn't have. I'm blessed that I've lived to see my children grow up to be the wonderful, bright, kind, empathetic, loving, thinking human beings that they are. When I listened to the young people at the 9/11 memorial event this morning talking about the things they missed about their parents it made me weep, but it also made me realize how very ill I was to think my kids would be better off.

It took four hours this morning to read the names of the all the victims. As I heard each name and saw each picture, I thought of the complex web of lives behind them that have spent the last 10 years trying to rebuild their lives from loss, or as one relative put it, living without "the missing puzzle piece in our family."

Edited to add: I'm reminded of lines from Psalm 126 that gave me so much comfort while I was in the hospital: “Those who sow in tears shall reap with songs of joy.” Ten years later, that has certainly been the case for me.

I'll end this with the words of a mother who lost her son at the WTC:

"To the world he was just one person, but to me he was the world."

Congratulations to Plainfield Public Library!

2011-08-26T15:43:00.003-04:00

Thanks to your rockin' YA Librarian, Joe Marcantonio, a set of FIVE signed copies of WANT TO GO PRIVATE? will be heading your way, to help kick off a book discussion group.

That's assuming this big bad lady doesn't blow me and my post office away in the meantime.

Hurricane Irene - One day ago

According to the latest updates, she's supposed to hit CT as a Category II, at high tide. I was supposed to head down to the PAYA festival in West Chester, PA tomorrow, but regretfully had to pull out an hour ago, when I heard that the entire Metropolitan Transportation System is going to shut down at noon tomorrow. That means the New Jersey turnpike is going to be a parking lot.

Anyway, when the storm passes, I'll be getting the books in the mail, and everyone else who entered will get signed bookmarks. Stay safe everyone who is in the path of the storm!

Boycott or Mob Justice? My answer to the Casey Haters

2011-08-16T10:02:00.000-04:00

On July 21st, I wrote a column for Hearst Newspapers which I am reproducing in full below because as the author I contractually own first rights after publication.*

DANGEROUS REACTIONS TO THE CAYLEE CASE

A young-adult-author friend of mine received two disturbing emails through her website earlier this week.

The first read: "I am sending you this email in reguards to the justice Caylee Marie Anthony didn't receive...This child was failed by our justice system...The supporters of Caylee don't want her mother becomming Rich off of her Death... The word is out that Trident is working on a deal to have her write her story... There will be many emails and phone calls from the supporters of Caylee... Please help in this fight to keep Casey Anthony from becomming rich off the Death of Caylee. Robert Gottlieb, Chairman of Trident Media Group, made the statement in USATODAY that she's entitled to tell her story and Trident would be interested ."

The second was even more disturbing: "This is to inform you that you books are now blacklisted due to your working relationship with Trident Media Group. Trident is offering to pay Casey Anthony for her story. Promoting a child killer is unjust. These are the people you have chosen to publish your stories. Good luck with sales now."

Leaving aside the fact that my friend is no longer represented by Trident, and that Trident Media is a firm of agents, not "publishers," there's a much more pertinent question here. Why on earth is an author who has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with a capital case in Florida, in which the accused was acquitted of murder, being sent threatening emails that might potentially cause damage to her career?

It's a symptom of the mob justice insanity that has surrounded this case and continues to be whipped up by irresponsible people in the media.

Florida author and parent advocate, Sue Scheff, who purports to be one of the "top 5 Parenting Experts to follow on Twitter" has written pieces encouraging her readers to join the Facebook hate groups "I hate Casey Anthony" and "F*** Casey Anthony." She justifies this irresponsible "journalism" (and I hesitate to even use the term here) because she has determined - probably from watching Nancy Grace, who with this trial proved that she's crossed the line from journalist to carnival barker, that the jurors, "didn't have a full understanding that circumstantial evidence is evidence [and] ... that they didn't understand the jury instructions."

It couldn't possibly be that they saw and heard all the evidence and she didn't, or that the prosecution bungled the case. Just this week, the The New York Times reported that the prosecution might have withheld exculpatory evidence from the jury. No, Ms. Scheff is online tweeting links to the FB hate pages to her followers, repeating the mantra "Accept not respect" and using the hashtag #idiotjurors.

I started following Ms. Scheff on Twitter because she writes about online safety issues for teens, and was thus appalled to see someone who warns parents about the dangers of cyber bullying doing exactly that. In a series of tweets, I said as much to her: "With all due respect, isn't this modeling cyber bullying for teens, which you have written against? Our kids look at our actions, much more than they listen to our words. Liking `hate' pages undoes everything we've told them. There are much more positive ways to express your outrage. Give to charity. Volunteer at a shelter for abused kids."

The fact she didn't reply speaks volumes.

Casey Anthony was judged by a jury of her peers in a court of law. We might not like the verdict. Our hearts break for Caylee Anthony, whose life was tragically cut short. But as citizens of the United States, we either respect the law and behave like civilized human beings or we turn into savages, led by Nancy Grace. I chose the former.

Clearly this piece is making its way around the Casey haters, because last night I started hearing from them on Twitter:

and

From TYPE A LITTLE FASTER

I should known from my experience as a political writer not to engage, but it was late and I was tired and yeah, I'd had a glass of montepulciano while I was cooking the bolognese earlier. So I tried to reiterate in 140 characters why they were being unfair to my author friend.

AmySum1 then lets herself off the hook with this:

Um...how does she know? I've never mentioned the author by name. And with this napalm approach to boycotting, the Casey haters are going to be catching many innocent people who have nothing whatsoever to do with her crimes in their crazy net of vigilante vengeance.

Oh wait. You think I'm unfair for saying they're a little over the edge in their hatred? Read this tweet:

This morning, I got another round of tweets:

I know these ladies are working together, so I'm going to attempt to answer all their questions here. This is my final word, because I've learned from 8 years as a political columnist that further engagement is futile. Therefore I will not respond to any comments you might leave, so don't even bother. You can just complain about what a "pinhead" I am amongst yourselves.

Elizabeth: You ask "Should professionals that are represented by an agency that represents a person found guilty of murder be punished." And you feel that "people have a right to believe a company is behaving unethically and to withhold money from all people associated with co."

and TMHCO says that I don't "understand what a boycott is."

I understand full well what a boycott is. I'll even give you a definition so we make sure we're all on the same page.

BOYCOTT: to refuse to have dealings with (a person, organization, etc) or refuse to buy (a product) as a protest or means of coercion.

But here's where you ladies and I differ. I strongly believe that a boycott should be directed only at the people who are responsible for the perceived wrong. So no, Elizabeth, I don't believe you should boycott professionals who are signed with an agency whose head mentions that he MIGHT sign Casey Anthony.

Because let me tell you a little bit about publishing.

These authors might have been with that agency since before Caylee Anthony was even born. I don't know how old Trident Media is, but in the case of my agency, some of the authors could have been there before CASEY Anthony was even born. These are long-standing relationships, kind of like marriages. There are contracts involved. But more than that, there are relationships involved. An agent is the person who guides you, helps you navigate the stormy seas, listens to you cry on the phone about how you're such a loser and then tells you to shut up and go write another book. It is not "Easy :)" to move, as AmySum1 seems to think. If I told you ladies to get divorced and find another husband tomorrow "Easy :)" what would you say to me?

Well, telling an author to get another agent is a similar thing. And let me reiterate in case I didn't make it clear enough to you. A BOYCOTT SHOULD PUNISH THE PERSON OR COMPANY WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ACTION AND ONLY THAT PERSON OR COMPANY.

So if you don't want to buy Casey Anthony's book, fine. If you want to write threatening letters to the head of Trident Media so he doesn't represent her, Fine. But for you to write threatening letters to authors who have nothing to do with her case? SO NOT FINE. That is not a "boycott." That is mob mentality. And like it or not, you, ladies, are a mob.

PS: back to the crazy hater thing...Right before I posted this, I got another tweet

From TYPE A LITTLE FASTER

So anyone who knows me personally for a microsecond knows how much I love kids. Or even some of the 770,500 viewers of Q & A, the animated video of the StoryCorps interview between my then 12 year old son and me who don't know me personally get that idea.

Because I don't HATE Casey Anthony, Porcelain10 now assumes I don't love kids? There are more nasty tweets since then, but case closed, people. I have nothing further to say, because these "ladies" have just made my point for me.

*I would like to point out here that this means that NO ONE other than Hearst Newspapers of Southern CT and me have this right. Under Fair Use, you may copy a small portion of the article and link back to this blog or to the Greenwich Time, Stamford Advocate or CT POST websites. YOU MAY NOT REPRODUCE THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN FULL ANYWHERE ONLINE WITHOUT MY EXPRESS CONSENT. (or, paying me). THIS IS THE LAW, KIDS. If I find you have broken it, I can, and will sue you.

My Life is a Sitcom (or why the truth is often stranger than fiction)

2011-08-15T15:09:00.004-04:00

I was just emailing ubercool author and editor Dan Ehrenhaft this morning about how real life is often stranger and more humorous than anything we authors can make up.

And BINGO! As if to prove my point, life decided to throw another example my way.

I'd emailed Dan from the very long security line at LaGuardia airport, where I was dropping my daughter off for her flight to visit a friend in Florida. It was her first unaccompanied flight so we were both a bit nervous, and the airport being a complete zoo did nothing to assuage our anxiety. But her flight got off fine, and I headed back to CT.

We'd visited my dad yesterday and he was very upset because his watch strap broke. Dad is suffering from Alzheimers and has been in a residential facility since March. I took his watch and promised I would get it fixed and return it to him as quickly as possible. Ten minutes later he would pat his empty pocket where the watch had been and start to tell me about how upset he was about his watch and how he couldn't understand how he'd broken it. I'd reassure him that I'd taken it and would get it fixed. "Don't worry, Dad," I kept telling him. "I'm on this. It's all under control."

So on the way back from the airport, I went straight to NAGI Jewelers in Stamford (great service, use them!) The man in the service department was able to fix the watch in less than a minute. Then I hit the hardware store for some bulbs. Finally I made it to the residence where Dad lives and signed in. They were having a music and dancing for the residents, and everyone was enjoying "Roll out the Barrel," which always kind of cracks me up when I hear it in the nursing home for some reason. Dad saw me right away and was so excited and relieved to get his watch back.

But as I'm hugging him, one of the nurse aides who happened to be standing behind me taps me on the shoulder says, "Did you realize you've got a huge split down the back of your pants?"

It took me a minute, because, you know, "Roll out the barrel" was pretty loud and my dad was talking to me at the same time, because he was so happy about his watch, but when it finally clicked what she said, I reached behind me and felt...BARE BACKSIDE.

Because (and forgive me if this is TMI) I was wearing a thong, and the split was indeed big, and my forty-something year-old, not particularly shapely butt was there hanging out for the world - or at least all these seniors with various degrees of memory impairment to see.

See what I mean? You cannot make this sh*t up.

Because my entire day up to that point suddenly replayed itself before my eyes, but this time with my ass hanging out. LaGuardia airport...CROWDED LaGuardia airport. The very nice jewelry store, where the guy didn't charge me for fixing Dad's watch. The hardware store. And now, the nursing home, with all these elderly people with frail hearts.

O.M. FREAKING G. Can I JUST DIE NOW!!!!

Dad's still thanking me for fixing his watch but all I can think about is my butt. I feel my face starting to flame. Fortunately, the very nice nurse offers to get me a garbage bag to wrap around my waist.

I talk to Dad with my back against the wall, trying to explain that I'm going to have to go home and change because I have a wardrobe malfunction, but I'm glad he's got his watch. Nice Nurse comes back with the garbage bag and I try to wrap it around me, which is really confusing my father who can't understand why I would want to wear a garbage bag. I try to explain again about my trousers ripping and my butt hanging out, which makes him smile (at least one of us is laughing) and Nice Nurse makes sure I'm all covered. Then I kiss Dad goodbye and head home to change.

Actually, I think the garbage bag look is kind of stylish. Maybe I can just pretend to be all hipster about it. "I wore Hefty Bags BEFORE THEY WERE COOL."

Winners: Shelf Awareness Contest WANT TO GO PRIVATE?

2011-08-09T16:59:00.003-04:00

Thank you everyone who entered the Shelf Awareness contest to win a copy of WANT TO GO PRIVATE?

Random.org has picked three lucky winners:

1) Loreli Stochaj

2) Melissa Stumpe

3) Jessica Fujita

But all is not lost! I'll be sending a signed bookmarks to everyone who entered.

And please check out the dedicated book websites, wanttogoprivate.com and chezteen.com for more information about the book and Internet Safety. A comprehensive curriculum/discussion guide that can be downloaded as a PDF will be available in the next day or so.

I'll post the link here and on Twitter and on Facebook as soon as it's posted.

TEEN AUTHOR READING NIGHT: tomorrow!

2011-07-05T22:44:00.004-04:00

How cool is a library with a TURRET?!

As a kid, I would have dreamed of creeping up to the top of the turret with my library books and being able to read in the window seat of a round room.

But tomorrow night, I get to read at this awesome edifice. Not in the turret, unfortunately. Downstairs. But to make up for the lack of turretosity, I get to read with these amazing authors:

Tara Altebrando, Dreamland Social Club

Matt Blackstone, A Scary Scene in a Scary Movie

Christopher Grant, Teenie

Alissa Grosso, Popular

Blake Nelson, Recovery Road

Gae Polisner, The Pull of Gravity

Nova Ren Suma, Imaginary Girls

Melissa Walker, Small Town Sinners

The festivities start at 6pm, Jefferson Market Library, 425 Avenue of the Americas (off 10th Avenue). Hope to see you there!

And the winner is...

2011-06-09T07:51:00.005-04:00

So I went to Son's graduation yesterday prepared for a deluge:

After all,it doesn't take a lot to get me going. I once cried watching a McDonald's commercial.

The entries ranged from a low of 5 (Peter) to a high of 2,650,000 (Gae - It felt like that much emotion, but would have needed a much bigger handbag for all those tissues!)

I think the number would have been much higher, if Son's speech hadn't been so darn FUNNY. I was laughing and crying at the same time! See for yourself. I think the kid has a future onstage. As Mr. Oncale, one of his amazing and influential teachers at Winston, said when giving him one of the drama awards, "He's always played old people but very, very well."

I ended up sobbing and laughing my way through a grand total of SEVEN tissues.

And so...*drum roll* the winner of the OMG WHERE HAS THE TIME GONE GUESS THE TISSUE CONTEST, with the closest guess of SIX tissues, is SHARI GREEN!

EDITED: I checked the entries on FB and this blog but forgot that Aurora M was having blogger issues and Tweeted me her entry of 7, which was SPOT ON! So I will send out not just one, but TWO copies of Life, After!

Congratulations Shari AND Aurora!! DM me on Facebook with your snail mail address and your signed copy of LIFE, AFTER will be on its way. I promise NOT to send you the soggy tissues as a souvenir.

The OMG, Where did it go? LIFE, AFTER Contest

2011-06-06T08:31:00.007-04:00

I was talking to someone last week and she observed, "You have a lot of transitions this year." I'd been feeling very stressed and unsettled recently and ascribed it to any number of things but that was one I hadn't pinpointed. But it's true. It's been a year where I've had to confront some very major life issues - like realizing I'm really in that "sandwich"generation part of life when we had to take the very difficult decision to put my dad, who has been suffering from Alzheimers (how I HATE HATE HATE that disease) into an assisted living facility in March. On my birthday. Happy Birthday, Sarah. You are really ARE middle aged.

And then there are the happy, joyous moments, like when my son turned 18 recently.

We had a big barbecue for his birthday, with family and his friends. His college and high school age friends played soccer and video games easily with his 1st grade and nursery school age cousins. It was a wonderful celebration. As I posted on Facebook that morning, "Eighteen years ago today, after 48 hours of labor, this smart, handsome kid was born. Like all really meaningful things in life, I had to work hard for him."

On Wednesday, Josh is graduating from high school. I keep hearing my Grandma Mollie, whose amazing singing voice I did NOT inherit, singing "Sunrise, Sunset" in my head, as teen me accompanies her on the piano.

Four years ago, in what I feel was a gift from G-d, but was probably more the vision of Executive Director Scott Bezsylko and Head of School Beth Sugerman and the wisdom the the school's Trustees, Winston Preparatory School decided to open a campus in Norwalk, CT.

When Beth told me that Josh was admitted, I started crying, so great was my relief that my son would finally be at a school where I thought his strengths would be appreciated and his areas of weaknesses supported. And most importantly, where he could feel safe. Things had gotten so bad that about a month before the end of 8th grade, I pulled him out of his middle school and said said I wasn't sending him back until they could provide him with a safe environment. The school's solution? To have him complete the year by doing independent study in the guidance office, thus further stigmatizing him.

Attending Winston Prep changed his life. It's not to much to say that it saved his life. When he was being bullied every day, his grades suffered. He was so depressed he was on medication that, it turned out from a later neuropsych we had done, slowed down his cognitive functioning, but it had helped him get through the pain of living through each day at school.

He touched on the both the depression and the bullying when he asked about "life is hopeless" and "mortal enemies" in our now famous StoryCorps interview, which was when he was in 7th grade:

The environment at Winston has allowed Josh to thrive and grow into the young man he is today - someone who really cares about what is going on in the world, who has been following the Arab Spring as avidly as some other teens follow the World Series or the World Cup, who will greet me first thing in the morning with "Did you see what is going on in Misrata?" or "Who do you think is worse, Gaddafi or Assad?"

His teachers have inspired him, helped him, pushed him, and coached him through the social issues that he needed to work on. Since his junior year, he's been taking classes at Norwalk Community College, to further broaden his education and to help him learn to transition to college and learn to start advocating for himself in a college environment.

On Wednesday, he's graduating. I've spent a lot of time over the last few weeks thinking about all the work it's taken to get him here. The PPT's when he was in the public school system where getting every accommodation was like fighting a battle with Goliath - particularly the one in third grade where the Vice Principal of his elementary school sat across the table from me and told me that his problems in school weren't because he had Asperger's Syndrome, they were because I'd been hospitalized with a nervous breakdown. (I'm looking at YOU, Damaris Rau, you EVIL woman, who should never, ever, be allowed near special ed children or parents). When we left the meeting, the psychologist who'd done the neuropsych eval of Josh asked me if I was okay, and said she'd never heard anything like that in her entire career.

It's been a long road, and it's been a very hard and bumpy road at times, like that PPT. But when I look at my son today,I am so unutterably proud. And happy. And sad. Because I'm going to desperately miss his morning political reports next year. And his hilarious, sardonic one-liners, delivered in that deadpan English accent.

So you're probably wondering by now, where's the contest?! Didn't she mention a contest?! I thought I was going to win a book and I get all this freaking mushy stuff!

WELL, HERE IT IS!

Josh is giving a speech on Wednesday at graduation. I am going to cry.

GUESS HOW MANY TISSUES I WILL GO THROUGH AT JOSH'S GRADUATION.

The closest answer wins a signed copy of LIFE, AFTER - if you already have LIFE, AFTER, you can wait till WTGP comes out and I'll give you a copy of that.

Enter in comments. If you tweet contest +1 entry. Make sure you @sarahdarerlitt so I know.

Thoughts on being a 2011 Scholastic Arts and Writing Juror

2011-05-23T12:29:00.002-04:00

This year, for the second time, I was privileged to be a National Judge for the 2011 Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards. I was particularly excited to be a judge in a category that resonated so much with me in both my author and political columnist lives, the new Creativity and Citizenship: Art for Social Change Award.

Here's what the award is about:

From the women's suffrage movement to the civil rights movement to saving the environment, Americans have used the arts to create an awareness of history and promote social change. Teens in grades 7 – 12 are encouraged to submit their works of art and writing that address contemporary social issues important to them. Three winners will be selected to receive $1,000 scholarships and select works will be included in the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Teen Exhibition in June 2011. This special award is presented in collaboration with the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

It was such an honor to be a judge for these awards because of the feeling of hope I felt reading these works. They were as diverse in style and subject as the composition of our nation itself. These were not the voices of teens who are only obsessed with celebrity and Jersey Shore and who is going to win American Idol. These writers were keen observers of what is going on in not just in the US but in countries across the globe. Whether they chose poetry, script writing, persuasive essay, personal memoir or fiction, the teenagers in this category were concerned with deep issues of social justice,losing a valued cultural heritage, the mistreatment of women, feeling displaced in one's own neighborhood by gentrification. Their writing made me cry, made me angry, made me want to reach through my computer screen to hug them and tell them "Don't give up! Your words give you a voice, and having a voice gives you power!"

I wanted to tell them that as a columnist, I've learned that when you write about social and political injustice, you will not always be popular. In fact, sometimes you will receive hate mail, letters and emails that make assumptions about you as a person that have absolutely nothing to do with the subject you have tackled in your column. No matter how thick a skin you think you've developed, there are times when it can be pierced - deeply. But remember: these letters mean your words were powerful enough to provoke a reaction. I've learned that the people who agree with you don't always write - but when you bump into them in the supermarket, or at the library, or at school open house night, or on the street, they will thank you for giving them a voice. So don't ever give up. Keep observing, and keep writing. There is so much injustice in the world yet there are unsung heroes in every day life, who work day in and day out without fanfare to try and make the world a better place - you have the gift to put the spotlight on both.

My sincere thanks to the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers for inviting me to be a judge this year.

Today at 12 noon, you're invited to join me and several other national writing Jurors including two of my favorite writing peopleOlugbemisola Rhuday Perkovich and Courtney Sheinmel. Tune in to: http://tweetchat.com/room/JurorChat

Why I write

2011-05-15T15:14:00.009-04:00

I am not a NYT best-selling writer. While my books have won awards and made lists, when it comes to publishing, I'm "mid-list". Sure, I hope that some day I will "break out" into the big time. There have been plenty of difficult and frustrating moments when I've thought "If I only could be inspired write about vampires/wolves/faeries/paranormal romance" or whatever the publishing phenomenon du jour happens to be. But alas, it doesn't work that way. I write best when I'm writing about a subject that fills me with passion. Maybe it comes from starting my professional writing life as a political op-ed columnist.

I've also been told that I'm hard to "brand" because the subjects of each of my books have been so vastly different. It makes it harder for readers to know what to expect when they pick up a Sarah Darer Littman book - unlike say a reader of Sarah Dessen or Ellen Hopkins.

LIFE, AFTER is my quietest book to date. It was well reviewed (well, except for Kirkus, but my reviews from Kirkus grow progressively worse with each book, so I'm expecting to be prostrate in bed with a chocolate IV drip after I read the one for WANT TO GO PRIVATE?) and was awarded a 2011 Sydney Taylor Honor. But it wasn't picked up by the chains and it hasn't set the world on fire.

Sometimes I get sad and discouraged, because I really love this book and it means a lot to me for so many reasons. But then, on Friday, I got an email from someone who had read it. She'd immigrated to the US with her family about five years ago* and identified so strongly with Dani, the main character in LIFE, AFTER that she thought that Dani's story was really my story, and asked me if I still kept in touch with the characters in the book, and how I dealt with my father. She told me that I was "a courageous woman" for sticking up for Jon with the bully.

It really touched me that anyone would identify with my characters that strongly. I wrote back to her, explaining that I was born in the United States, but having moved to another country and been teased for my accent and using the wrong words for things, I did draw on my personal experiences for Dani. I told her that my son had been badly bullied in middle school, and that I wished there had been a person like Dani who had the courage to stick up for him when other kids were mean to him. And I told her that I know both how it feels to be depressed myself, and how debilitating it is for the entire family to live with someone else who is depressed and angry and refuses to seek treatment. So while LIFE,AFTER is a complete work of fiction, I drew on all of those things to write it.

I also wrote to her: I hope that Dani's courage will always inspire you to stand up for anyone you see being treated unfairly. It's not always easy to do what is right, but it is so, so important. Edmund Burke, a famous British statesman and political theorist said: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." That goes for women, too. (He lived a long time ago, when women weren't as liberated).

I thought I was writing to a teenager. But she wrote back to me today and told me more about herself. She is working at a job she was told by her father was the job that was available to her. But her mother (who I want to celebrate and hug) has been encouraging her and her sisters to study and learn and be independent. So she is studying to get a degree in what she really loves, while working at the job she was told was the only option.

She wrote that her mother has told her that "education is very important for everyone and especially for women. Books are the gateways to this world."

Her mom sounds like one wonderful and wise woman. I wrote back to her, telling her how my dad told me I would "never make a living as an English major," and how I worked at a job I didn't enjoy for years until I finally started doing what I loved when I was 38 years old. My message to my own children - and to the kids I speak to in schools - has been very different - that yes, it's important to make a living, but they should try to make a living out of their passion.

I thanked her for the gift of writing to me, asking her to keep in touch, and told her this:

My books might never be NYT Bestsellers, but I feel like my life has been a success when I receive a letter like yours, telling me that my words have resonated with and helped to give hope to another person.

This is why I write. The rest is gravy.

*I'm changing some details slightly to maintain privacy

Help us stop dangerous practice of "weight grades" on report cards - and enter to win a copy of PURGE

2011-04-30T11:03:00.008-04:00

I've struggled with distorted body image for most of my life, and was actively bulimic as an adult in my thirties. My novel, PURGE, while a work of fiction, is based on my very real struggle to overcome the voice in my head that told me that I was fat, ugly and worthless.

The response to PURGE from both teens and adults has told me that I'm not alone in this struggle. So many of us struggle with negative body images and issues with food, even if it isn't at the stage of being a full blown eating disorder. Young teens are especially susceptible; eating disorders and body image issues (including self-harm) are on the rise.

Dr. David Rosen of the University of Michigan says epidemiologic studies show the numbers of children and adolescents with eating disorders increased steadily from the 1950s onward. A recent analysis by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality says hospitalizations for eating disorders increased most sharply -- 119 percent -- for children age 12 and younger from 1999 to 2006.

Now there’s something that will make this worse – many states are now sending “weight grades” and BMI scores home on students’ report cards. Can you imagine the affect that will have?

Cheryl Rainfield, author of Scars and I were having a discussion about this on Twitter and we were both so upset about it that we had to take action. We decided to start a petition. We hope you'll join us in fighting this very dangerous practice.

To help encourage you, I'm giving away two copies of PURGE. To enter, sign the petition and tell me you have in the comments. For extra credit entry, tweet about the petition and tell me you've done that, too. I'll give away the first book on May 31st and the second book on June 30th.

UPDATE: UPDATE:

Now you can win 1 of 2 signed copies each of Scars by Cheryl Rainfield, Purge by me, Hope in Patience by Beth Fehlbaum, and I’m Not Her by Janet Gurtler just for signing the petition! Let us know on here or on Cheryl's blog , and we’ll be picking winners May 31 and June 30.

Thank you for caring!

Live Strong and Be Healthy...

Sarah

Celebrating National Library Week: Why Authors LOVE Libraries

2011-04-11T10:09:00.004-04:00

It's National Library Week and what better time to celebrate the places that are havens of learning and community for all citizens and the wonderful,incredible librarians who make it all possible.

Libraries have been a beloved part of my life for as long as I can remember. Being able to go to this magical building where kindly, people would hand me books, encouraging me to discover new worlds, opening my young mind to new ideas, but best of all, making friends in the characters who stay with me to this day.

Now, especially, when library funding is under threat, we need to be vocal and active in our support for this beloved and necessary institution.

I recently joined the ALA's Authors for Libraries The ALA asks each author who joins to write a quote about why they love libraries. Here's mine:

Libraries are an essential cornerstone of our democracy. But my love of libraries began as a young girl, before politics held any meaning for me, when these wonderful people helped me find books where I explored new worlds and made lifelong friends. Libraries made me a writer, but more importantly, they made me a thinker."

The ever energetic Katie Davis has worked incredibly hard to put together an amazing Podcast O'Love for National Library Week. I forgot to say my name, but I'm the one who talks about the Marylebone Road Library in London.

Please help spread the word about National Library Week - and support your local library however you can!

Typing the 10K

2011-04-06T22:19:00.003-04:00

Every time I start a new project I go through the same panic. That same sick feeling of dread and insecurity, that same voice in my head that asks: "What if the previous book(s) was just a fluke? What if I can't actually DO this?"

At first I thought it was just my second book blues - and boy did I have a dreadful case of them, probably not helped by the fact I was going through a lengthy and horrible divorce.

But despite the fact that I've now written and published three, soon to be four, novels there's still that anxiety whenever I start a new one that I won't have what it takes to pull it off again.

I heard the incredible Laurie Halse Anderson speak about writing a while back, and it gave me comfort when she talked about finding the right tools for each book.

I've kept those words close, because for me they're so true. When people ask me about my "writing process", the honest answer is that it changes with every book. There are certain things that have evolved and are consistent. I've learned to try to write the first draft as quickly as I can - I aim for 1,000 words a day when I'm in the first draft stage. I've started trying to outline more or at least write a synopsis - something I had to do for the books I've sold on proposal.

Today I hit the 10,000 word mark on my latest WIP, the one I'm calling The Funny YA for now. I'd been struggling to hit my 1,000 word a day stride on this one, partly because of family craziness and partly because it's told from four POV's and it took me a while to get a handle on the voices. But in the last week, as I approached the 10K mark, my characters started to come alive. And they started misbehaving, the rotten miscreants. I went back and looked at my outline and realized that they've already deviated in a big way, but I like where they're taking me, so I'm just going to hitch a ride for now and see what happens.

Looking back, it's about this point - I think it was 11,000 words - that I realized that I needed to completely rewrite WANT TO GO PRIVATE? from third person to first person. Something wasn't working, but the minute I made that decision and started rewriting in 1st person, the book came alive and suddenly I figured out a structure that made sense and added tension and suspense.

During my Second Book Blues phase I used to feel really bad about myself, because I'd hear about authors getting three book deals on a two page proposal. (That was back in 2006. Maybe things are different now.) But I need to write to figure things out. I spend a lot of time researching, thinking and taking notes before I start writing. I can try to make outlines. But it's not till I get my butt in the chair and struggle through those first ten thousand words that I have any idea where the novel is really going.

This is the one thing that's consistent through all my books, and I've learned to accept and embrace it as an essential part of my process.

How I end up getting from the 10K to the end is a another story, which I'll save for a different post.

And we have a winner!

2011-04-04T23:01:00.003-04:00

Congratulations to: "Moriah D" (hylianvampire at hotmail.com) and Natalierisk04 at yahoo.com! You are the two tributes from District 10 who will receive copies of THE GIRL WHO WAS ON FIRE!

Thanks to everyone who participated in the contest. You all had such great books and now my TBR pile is even longer than it was before! You should be hearing from either me or SmartPop asking for your address shortly!

Why I disagree with Cory Doctorow - Thoughts on the ALA/OIF Youth Privacy Conference

2011-04-04T13:18:00.001-04:00

Is privacy dead, or do kids just use a different vocabulary to describe it? How can we as adults help to give kids the information they need to make informed choices about privacy, and encourage them to think critically about privacy issues in all aspects of their lives, both online and offline?

These are some of the issues we grappled with at the ALA/OIF Privacy and Youth Conference, held in Chicago March 24-25th. Those of you who follow me on Twitter might have noticed the stream of #youthprivacy tweets.

The conference was the kickoff to a new phase of privacy initiatives from the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom following the success of the annual Choose Privacy Week (May 1-7, 2011). For over three years, ALA/OIF, assisted by two grants from the Open Society Institute, has been focused on creating a national conversation around privacy. The Youth and Privacy conference came from the following realization:

The future of privacy advocacy and protections in the United States really depends on young people’s awareness of the long-term importance of personal privacy protections (particularly regarding use of the Internet and social media), and how government surveillance of citizens’ activities poses a chilling threat to our nation’s future. Libraries are ideal places for youth to learn about privacy and see it in action, given our long history of protecting the freedom to read.

David Levithan suggested I go (thank you, David!) because I've written extensively about the Patriot Act and FISA in my political columnist life, and also because my upcoming book WANT TO GO PRIVATE? is about a high school freshman who develops a relationship with an online "friend".

When I was at Scholastic for the NY Teen Author Festival, the On Our Minds Blog asked us me why kids (and adults) should read every day. This was my answer:

That was an important part of this conference for me. It was also how I got into an argument, via Skype, with Cory Doctorow. Yeah, *that* Cory Doctorow.

So here's the thing. I have used monitoring software on both my kids laptops since 2006, which I found out that my daughter had been the victim of a cyberbullying incident. One of her 5th grade friends was mad at her and created a website called "Ihate_______"(insertdaughter'sname). I didn't find out what was going on until the situation had been going on for well over a month and a half, and my daughter had responded to the friend with a serious of emails.

When I did find out, I had a long talk with my daughter, and even though she had initially been the victim, I revoked her Internet privileges for several weeks. Why? Because I told her by retaliating instead of coming to me, she hadn't used good judgment and further, the way she'd responded in those emails wasn't the way I'd brought her up to behave.

I'd expected a fight when I took away her computer but she handed it over without a peep. I honestly think she was relieved.

What blew my mind, after talking to the parents of the other kids involved, was the level of denial. One mom said, "Oh, but they're such good kids, I can't believe they'd do anything nasty." I wanted to forward her some of the emails her little darling had been sending, filled with foul language and vitriol - IN FIFTH GRADE!

I'm not saying these weren't good kids. They are all "good kids". What I am saying is what we all know - that even "good kids" can behave badly online. Look at the way adults behave on any newspaper comments section.

I never wanted to be blindsided by a situation like that again. A few years previously, I'd taken part in the Citizens Police Academy run by Greenwich Police Dept, so I called the Detective who'd talked to us about Cyber Crime and asked him for advice. He recommended the monitoring software that I've been using ever since.

I told both my kids I was putting the software on their laptops. It's never been a matter of me being sneaky and conducting secret surveillance. I just said that it was a condition of them being on the the Internet until they were legally old enough to take responsibility for their own actions. Because let's face it - I'm the Parent with a capital P. I'm the one who is legally and financially responsible for anything that they do until they reach majority.

At the conference, I met two representatives from the National Youth Rights Association, Jeffrey Nadel, President, and Alex Koroknay-Palicz, Executive Director. Alex was part of my discussion group, and it was from him that I got first shocked, horrified, expression when I said I used monitoring software. That was the start of the belief-challenging exercise.

It continued the next morning when Cory Doctorow Skyped in from London to address the conference. Cory went so far as to say that when parents are using monitoring software on their kids computers, they're giving them the message that privacy isn't important, and thus this leads to a generation that accepts government surveillance as "good for them".

Well, it's not easy to get up and argue with someone like Cory Doctorow, but at that point I was mad enough to do it. Because, frankly, I think that's bunkum, and I still do. Maybe it's true if parents are secretly using spy ware, but my use of monitoring software has always been part of the wider conversation about online use, etiquette and safety. It's helped prevent at least one potentially dangerous situation and created countless teachable moments about what is and is not appropriate to do online.

My son is turning 18 soon and he's getting a new computer for college. He knows that the new computer will be monitoring software free, and we had a conversation about what he's learned from the talks we've had. He also knows that he will now be legally accountable for himself. No Mommy to fall back on.

One person at my table asked me if I'd ever read my daughter's diary. "Of course not!" I answered. Alex asked me what's the difference between reading my daughter's diary and using monitoring software.

Here's the difference and I think it's REALLY important: My daughter's diary is in a notebook somewhere in her disgustingly messy room. But that room is contained in my house, which is protected by a security system that is linked to the Greenwich Police Department, and I know personally everyone who comes in and out of that room.

BUT: The minute she turns on her laptop the situation changes. The entire world gains access to my daughter's room. Any stranger can enter. And because my daughter feels safe because she is in her room, in our house, she'll feel more comfortable interacting with them than she would if she were at a shopping mall or on a city street or in a dark alley.

Hence the monitoring software. I view it as the online version of the burglar alarm I have to protect my home, until my kids are 18.

For those who would say that this destroys my relationship of trust with my kids, I cannot tell you how wrong you are. The opposite is true - because I've always been open with them, because we discuss things and have these important conversations, we trust each other implicitly.

As for Cory Doctorow's argument that it's teaching my kids that government surveillance is okay, that's where I get really pissed off.

I'm a political columnist and my kids have heard me railing against the Patriot Act since the day it was passed in 2001. I've read them the hate mail I've received from angry readers after some of my columns were published, the ones that called me an "America-hating Terrorist lover", or telling me that I was "using the American Way of Life to Destroy the American Way of Life and the Rest of Western Civilization in the Process". They've had to deal with us having an unlisted phone number because I started getting nasty letters at our old house and I didn't want people to know our address after we moved.

I truly believe that it's false argument that a parent who openly monitors their child's Internet activity because they want to keep them safe (not to mention that they are legally responsible for their child's actions until the age of 18) is teaching them to accept government surveillance. Because it's ALL ABOUT THE CONVERSATIONS. It's something I say over and over again. It's called PRO-ACTIVE PARENTING. Monitoring the kids has allowed me to be proactive rather than reactive, like I was when the cyber-bullying incident occurred. There are plenty of fires happening offline when you have teenagers that you have to deal with re actively on a day by day basis - but the Internet is just too big of a risk to take. It's like an elephant. It never forgets. And one little mistake can travel worldwide.

Let my kids make their mistakes in their offline lives, where they have the privacy to do so.

And Cory - your child is still in day care. Let's revisit this argument when she's a teenager. I'll be interested to see if you're quite as sanguine as you are now.

The Reaping: District 10 The GIRL WHO WAS ON FIRE Giveaway

2011-03-31T00:01:00.002-04:00

I thought it ever so appropriate that I was chosen to represent District 10 in Smart Pop Book's Panem-Style Reaping Giveaway for the new anthology THE GIRL WHO WAS ON FIRE - Your Favorite Authors On Suzanne Collins'Hunger Games Trilogy.

After all, I'm a former farmer's wife who spent 10 years in South West England amongst the cows in the beautiful Bride Valley in Dorset.

Cows grazing in the Bride Valley, Dorset (Photo: Ben Pentreath)

I was thrilled when I was asked to be a part of this anthology, because it gave me a chance to expand upon a blog post I'd written about my take on the political undertones in MOCKINGJAY just after I'd finished reading it. Politics and YA fiction. It doesn't really get a whole lot better than that. You can read an excerpt of my essay, The Politics of Mockingjay, here.

And now I get to give away TWO COPIES of the anthology to YOU! And that means ALL of you, wherever in the world you might reside. No ethnocentrism here!

Here's what you do to enter: The BookPage blog asked Suzanne Collins: What do you hope these books will encourage in readers?

Her answer: I hope they encourage debate and questions. Katniss is in a position where she has to question everything she sees. And like Katniss herself, young readers are coming of age politically.

In the comments, tell me has a book has ever inspired you to think about and maybe challenge the status quo?

Winners will be picked by Random.org

The Politics of MOCKINGJAY (contains spoilers!!)

2010-08-29T18:49:00.001-04:00

In addition to writing books for teens, I’m a columnist for the Greenwich Time/Stamford Advocate. Perhaps it’s because of my admitted political geekedness (I also majored in political science in college) but for me, the focus of the Hunger Games series was never about Team Gale or Team Peeta: the romance was a subplot. For the record, I started a Gale fancier and ended up firmly convinced Katniss would be emotionally destroyed by a relationship with him, and could only find happiness with someone like Peeta, for reasons I’ll explain later. For me, reading these books was always more about the system – a political system that would allow – not just allow but require - children to fight to the death in televised games.

I had a lot of time in the car driving along the highways of Pennsylvania on college visits with my son to think about Mockingjay, and I while I don’t know Suzanne Collins or her political views, I don’t think it’s any accident that this series was published when it was – after seeing the decisions made by our own government, and watching, with amazement and no small degree of horror, the debate in our own country about the tactics used in fighting the so called “War on Terror”.

According to the Christian Science Monitor
Collins said she drew her inspiration from imagining a cross between the war in Iraq and reality TV, after flipping through the channels one night and seeing the juxtaposition between the war coverage and “reality” programming.

I started as a regular columnist for the Greenwich Time in January 2003 on eve of the Iraq war. It was, perhaps, an inauspicious time to be a critic of the Bush administration in a largely Republican town, one where George H.W. Bush had grown up and the Bush family still had roots. Yet looking back, it was the right time, both for the paper and for me. The mail I got received the paper that my columns generated a strong reaction, both positive and vehemently negative. As for me, I was learning to find my voice as a woman and as a writer. Learning to deal with hate mail, where people made assumptions about my personality, personal life and character, based on a 700 word column, was great preparation for being an author.

What resonated so much for me when I read Mockingjay, what has stuck with me and been buzzing around my brain for days after, is that I felt I was reliving through Katniss some of the helplessness, frustration, anger, confusion and sense of looking at my country in Through the Looking Glass that I felt during the Bush administration’s “War on Terror”. When I read about American citizens being designated as “enemy combatants” and held for years without the right of habeas corpus. When I read about our government using water boarding a recognized form of torture for which we prosecuted Japanese officers after WWII, yet using the Orwellian doublespeak of “enhanced interrogation techniques” in an attempt to ameliorate their crimes.

But more than that, I was reminded of the letters I received after I wrote a column decrying our governments use of such “techniques” and after the abuses at Abu Ghraib were exposed.

When I wrote the column about water boarding I received letters from readers calling me, amongst other things, an “America-hating terrorist lover”. One woman actual wrote to me asking me how could I say it was torture since it left no physical scars – “it was just water.” And after all – these were terrorists we were talking about. The ends clearly justified the means, in these writers’ minds.

Here’s a paragraph from a column I wrote back in 2004 after news broke about abuses at Abu Ghraib prison:

“As for President Bush, by framing this conflict as a struggle of good vs. “evil”, he rationalized the “anything goes in the War on Terror” philosophy, pushing this country down the slippery slope that led to the horrors of Abu Ghraib. I still find it astonishing how so many otherwise intelligent Americans believe it acceptable for the U.S. to hold prisoners indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay. Because once the principle that international law is for other people (but not us) is established, it’s not such a big leap to the “serious violations of international humanitarian law…in some cases tantamount to torture” documented by the ICRC. History proved that when you start to consider others as untermenschen, humanity goes out the window.”

Let’s take a look at what I think is a pivotal passage in Mockingjay, one where it became clear to me that Katniss would never end up with Gale:

p.185-186: “This is what they’ve been doing. Taking the fundamental ideas behind Gale’s traps and adapting them into weapons against humans. Bombs mostly. It’s less about the mechanics of the traps than the psychology behind them. Booby-trapping an area that provides something essential to survival. A water or food supply. Frightening prey so that a large number flee into a greater destruction. Endangering offspring in order to draw in the actual desired target, the parent. Luring the victim into what appears to be a safe-haven – where death awaits it. At some point, Gale and Beetee left the wilderness behind on focused on more human impulses. Like compassion. A bomb explodes. Time is allowed for people to rush to the aid of the wounded. Then, a second, ore powerful bomb kills them as well.”
“That seems to be crossing some kind of line,” I say. “So anything goes?”
They both stare at me – Beetee with doubt, Gale with hostility. “I guess there isn’t a rule book for what might be unacceptable to do to another human being.”
“Sure there is. Beetee and I have been following the same rule book President Snow used when he hijacked Peeta,” says Gale.

Gale’s response reminds me of some of the mail I got after the Abu Ghraib column. I had one letter asking me how I, as a Jew, could feel badly about what happened at Abu Ghraib when Nicholas Berg, a Jewish contractor working in Iraq, had recently been beheaded. To me it was a non sequitur. The murder of Nick Berg was horrifying in the extreme. I would have found it equally abhorrent had he been a Christian or a Muslim, a Sikh or a Hindu or an atheist. But that in no way excused the behavior of the U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib, or not the culture, from the top down, that enabled it.

There is no “rule book” but across all faiths and creeds there is some version of “The Golden Rule” - “do unto others as you would have done unto yourself.” In modern times, in response to some of the worst atrocities in the first half of the 20th century, we created a system of international laws and treaties in an attempt to prevent the recurrence of the worst abuses.

To me, Mockingjay is a brilliant book for our time, because it raises difficult, eternal questions of war and humanity, grief and revenge.

Gale and Peeta in my view, represent two very different styles of dealing with grief. Gale wants revenge at any cost, by any means necessary – and ultimately that cost is very, very dear. I’ve been very angered by reviews where Peeta’s called a wimp, because I actually think he’s the braver of the two. Why? Because Peeta’s the one who, despite everything he’s been through, is able to retain his essential humanity. Peeta’s the one who, unlike Gale, recognizes there is a line that should never be crossed. That’s why he’s the one that Katniss has to end up with, in order to stay true to herself and to allow herself to heal and find some measure of happiness that Gale could never have provided.

Some of the people I admire most in the world are Marianne Pearl, the wife of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, whom I was fortunate enough to meet last year, and Judea Pearl, Danny’s father. Ms. Pearl and father in law, are people who could so easily have gone down the Gale path, and it would have been hard to blame them. But instead, through the work of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, they work towards cross-cultural understanding.

What results from the revenge path, as Katniss observes to the mineworker on p.215, “It just goes around and around, and who wins? Not us. Not the districts. Always the Capitol.”

And not just The Capitol. We’re meant to think that Snow and Coin are opposites, but as we learn by the end of Mockinjay, Coin’s name was no accident. The leaders are, as the old saying goes, two sides of the same the same coin.

Which brings me to another point that’s really surprised me about some of the reviews I’ve read – that people think Katniss’s shooting of Coin was either a last minute decision or an accident. The vote for the Hunger Games of retribution is such a revealing, heartbreaking moment. Coin makes it clear that “if we do hold the Games, it will be known that it was done with your approval.” Like Snow, she’s trying to manipulate the Victors for her own purposes until the end.

p.378

Johanna: “It seems very fair to me. Snow even has a granddaughter. I vote yes.”
Enobaria: “Let them have a taste of their own medicine.”
Peeta: No. “This is why we rebelled! Remember?”
Annie: “I vote no with Peeta. So would Finnick if we were here.”
Beetee: “No. It would set a bad precedent. We have to stop viewing one another as enemies. At this point, unity is essential for our survival. No.”

The decision comes down to Katniss & Haymitch. Anyone who thinks shooting Coin is an accident or a misfire should reread this passage on p.378

Was it like this then? Seventy-five years or so ago? Did a group of people sit around and cast their votes on initiating the Hunger Games? Was there dissent? Did someone make a case for mercy that was beaten down by the calls for the deaths of the districts’ children?... All those people I loved, dead, and we are discussing the next Hunger Games in an attempt to avoid wasting life. Nothing has changed. Nothing will ever change now.

I weigh my options carefully, think everything through. Keeping my eyes on the rose, I say, “I vote yes…for Prim.”

“Haymitch, it’s up to you,” says Coin.

A furious Peeta hammers Haymitch with the atrocity he could become a party to, but I can feel Haymitch watching me. This is the moment, then. When we find out exactly just how alike we are, and how much he truly understands me..

“I’m with the Mockingjay,” he says.

I didn’t realize when I first read it what that passage meant, and was shocked by Katniss’ vote because it seemed so antithetical to everything we knew about her character beforehand, but afterwards it made perfect sense, and it was clear that she agreed for the purpose of setting up Coin.

The BookPage blog asked Suzanne Collins: What do you hope these books will encourage in readers?

Her answer: I hope they encourage debate and questions. Katniss is in a position where she has to question everything she sees. And like Katniss herself, young readers are coming of age politically.

Thank you, Suzanne Collins for this wonderful series, which has this middle-aged political geek thinking and questioning and slacking off on her own writing to ponder all this. I hope it encourages younger people to do the same. Our country is in dire need it.

Hellooooooooooo!

2010-08-22T21:44:00.003-04:00

For those of you who've been reading me over at Livejournal, planning to gradually transition here. I'll be posting in both places for a while.

Just wanted to let you know about a few exciting things going on. First of all, a bunch of us who write contemporary realistic YA have banded together to form THE CONTEMPS.

Here's our press release:

AUTHORS TEAM UP TO SPOTLIGHT CONTEMPORARY REALISTIC FICTION FOR TEENS
“The Contemps” are Keeping it Real with Outreach, Resources and New Releases

Twenty-one authors have banded together to put real life in the spotlight and to keep readers up-to-date on the latest in contemporary young adult fiction.

“There are so many wonderful authors writing contemporary realistic fiction,” said Contemps co-founder Lisa Schroeder. “As much as we love other genres, the marketplace can feel dominated by paranormal, fantasy and dystopian novels. We want to celebrate the unique way that contemporary stories help teens feel they’re not alone in this real world.”

“The Contemps” officially launched on August 17 with a mission to help teens, booksellers, librarians and publishers connect with books that feature real-life settings, characters and situations. Group members range from debuts to veterans with several titles on the shelves, and all have new releases coming out between September 2010 and August 2011. They hope to not just build buzz for members’ books, but to create excitement and appreciation for the contemporary realistic genre in general.

In an August 6, 2010 article in The NY Times about the rise of Young Adult fiction, historian Amanda Foreman said, "Good Y.A. is like good television. There's a freshness there; it's engaging." The Contemps write about real teen issues in real-life situations with the energy and grittiness and passion of that age.

That means that The Contemps' corner of the web (www.thecontemps.com) will be a little more self-disclosey than others. A number of activities are planned, including sharing from the authors' own teenage years, giveaways, spotlighting other contemporary realistic authors, and multi-author events. You might find a few naughty words thrown in (right next to the shiny clean ones). There may be stories about hanging out, making out, parents, best friends, sexuality, homework, high school bloopers, teachers, bullies, racism, parties, and pop culture. Look for some odd and lively mash-ups!

“We’re reaching out to a variety of audiences,” said co-founder Lindsey Leavitt. “We want readers, teachers and librarians to know about the wealth of awesome books out there. And we want the industry to know about the authors who create these books. There’s a strong market for contemporary realistic fiction, and we plan to demonstrate that.”

The members are: Brent Crawford, Hannah Harrington, April Henry, Kirsten Hubbard, Denise Jaden, Kody Keplinger, Jo Knowles, Lindsey Leavitt, Sarah Darer Littman, Michael Northrop, Sarah Ockler, Micol Ostow, Lisa Schroeder, Elizabeth Scott, Mindi Scott, Emily Wing Smith, Courtney Summers, Kristen Tracy, Melissa Walker, Sara Bennett Wealer, and Daisy Whitney.

I hope you'll head over to join in the conversation. We've also got a Facebook group and you can follow us on Twitter.

The animation of my son's StoryCorps interview of me, Q & A, is going to be on TV! Check out the listings of your local PBS station for this coming Tuesday. It will be shown at the beginning of the program POV. If you haven't seen the newest animation by Rauch Brothers Animation and StoryCorps, Danny and Annie, than you are about to see one of the most beautiful love stories in the history of the world. I'm not exaggerating. Just make sure you have a tissue handy.

Danny & Annie from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

As Time critic Richard Corliss put it:

"I'll just say that if Danny and Annie don't touch your heart, seek immediate medical attention, because you might not have one."

Meanwhile, I've been working at the Voracious Reader, working on a book proposal, getting steamed about what's happening in New York, planning a belated book launch party for Life, After (September 21st, 7pm at Just Books in Old Greenwich), taking my son to visit colleges and wondering if I will ever see the bottom of my desk and my filing tray again.