Monthly Archives: March 2011

This is Not a Post About Sunshine

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As you might have heard, there’s been some turmoil surrounding the Wicked Pretty Things anthology.

The short version is that fellow YA author Jessica Verday was asked to change the central romance of her story (which features a relationship between two boys) to a heterosexual pairing, and she said no. Her story is no longer going to be appearing in the anthology.

A few weeks ago, I talked about how happy I was to be included in this collection with Francesca Lia Block. If I had to pick the one author who’s had the greatest influence on me, both as a writer and as a person, it wouldn’t even be a contest. I read her books at a time when I was still figuring out who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. She changed the way I thought about love and storytelling and what it means to be a human being.

Those of you familiar with Block’s work know that she’s never shied away from topics like depression or drug-use or sexuality, and in the mid-90’s, she was one of the few YA authors writing books that consistently featured LGBTQ characters. The one essential idea I took away from her work is that the most powerful stories are about love, and love comes in a lot of different forms.

And that’s why I’m choosing to withdraw my story “The Drowning Place” from the Wicked Pretty Things anthology. I would have been honored for my story to appear alongside Jessica’s. We need stories like the one she’s written. There are still people who will tell you that love only counts when it looks a certain way, and that’s not true. Love is love. It’s what matters.

This Is Not a Story About Boredom

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Okay, I lied. It totally is—but it is also a story about hope and curiosity and how under the right circumstances, an unsolved mystery can be like a metaphorical lighthouse. Yes, I just said the phrase metaphorical lighthouse.

For awhile now, I’ve had this tidy plan for my high school posts. It involved character development and narrative arc and me making a timeline on a piece of notebook paper and I was going to be very chronological and organized. Those who know me will understand how laughable this is. You will understand that it just couldn’t last.

So I’m taking a small detour, because I’ve stumbled upon something I want to talk about. And by stumbled upon, I mean it was handed to me again and again.

In the last month or so, I’ve gotten a number of emails from people who are currently in junior high and high school and who’ve had some incredibly personal and insightful things to say about a deceptively rough topic: boredom.

A lot of the correspondences involve frustration—people wondering how to stay sane and if it will get better and most especially, how to survive it on a daily basis. These are good questions and to be frank, I have no answers. Boredom is a tricky thing and it comes in a lot of different shapes and sizes. I can’t tell you how to beat it. But I can tell you what I did.

Here is an admission: for most of my life, I thought people who got bored were just lazy thinkers. I’d always been able to entertain myself, either with a book or a story I was making up, a long run with the dog or an impromptu living room dance-party with my sister. People who got bored just weren’t trying hard enough.

Then I started high school and boredom became my number-one hobby.

When people find out that I was homeschooled by hippies/gypsies/raised by wolves, a lot of times they’ll ask if public school was a big adjustment. I always say no. I tell them I adjusted well and adapted quickly and kept my head down.

And that’s true.

But there’s also another true thing, and anyone who’s ever worked with animals in captivity will spot the signs immediately.

Brenna at sixteen is restless—a fidgeter. She tears up looseleaf paper like a neurotic hamster and chews the erasers off her pencils and picks apart the layers of her pressboard desk. If she were allowed up out of her seat, she would pace just as tragically as the tigers at the zoo. She begins to wonder whether or not it is possible to die from boredom. Literally die.

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I Can’t Think of a Clever Title (inarticulate squealing just doesn’t translate to text)

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I’m back! With a huge to-do list and a mountain of laundry and the stupidest head-cold ever, but I’m back, and I’m motivated and slightly euphoric and entirely ready for spring!

-The Breathless Reads tour was excellent—nothing short of spectacular, really. My fellow Breathless authors were not only wonderful people, but highly entertaining, and it was amazing to actually meet readers face-to-face and get to know some of the teens and the bloggers I’ve crossed paths with around the internet.

-I’m probably going to be getting more edits for The Space Between in a day or two and we all know what that means: take-out Chinese food and pie-baking and terrible hair. Also, late-night conversations with the cat about character motivation, and putting the milk in the cupboard instead of the refrigerator because my brain is easily confused by storage spaces with doors and shelves.

-Now, on a less dire note, I would like to present to you Something Very Cool, which is this cover:

Wicked-Pretty-Things

Cue the happy dance! The happy dance! But don’t watch while I do it. Because I am a terrible dancer.

To elaborate, and so that I make sense: I have a story appearing alongside a whole list of phenomenal authors—not least, Francesca Lia Block, who is basically* my most significant writing role model of all time, and whose work is the main reason I decided at 19 that I was actually going to get brave and pursue publication. For real. And when I saw that she was going to be in this anthology, I immediately commenced bouncing around the house like the Gummi Bears! You remember the Gummi Bears, don’t you?

So . . .

I should probably step away from the internet now, before I start resurrecting other Disney cartoons of the 80s.

*By basically, I mean . . . just is.