Saturday, February 19, 2011
Saturday, November 13, 2010
YA? Why Not?
I used to get asked a lot why I was writing a book for young adults. Now, with the young adult market booming (have you seen how much space Borders now gives to its YA section?) I don't get asked so much. I think people assume it's because the market is there. Now, I'm grateful to be writing for this audience and happy that kids, teens, today are reading, especially after a friend of mine just told me that he has students at his college, and it's a good school, English Lit majors, who brag about how they get away with reading as few books as possible, and never the whole book!
I can't blame these students, okay, I can, but really they are the lost reader generation. You see (and, yes, I know I am aging myself here again) when I was a child, we only had 6 channels, well, really 5 because who watched PBS? Except for when the Electric Company was on. I'm too old for Sesame Street. We didn't have a lot of choice but to read when we were stuck at home and we needed an escape from the pressures of teen life or teen angst or just from our freaking parents who we thought were too old to get it, and “it” as in every thing. When I was thirteen my mother was only thirty-three.
It was different when we could go outside where we played in traffic and, I mean, literally we played in traffic. When it came to us kids, our parents had their long lists of things they pulled their hair out over — our using drugs, having protected or unprotected sex, planning the wedding after the rabbit died, making sure we ate fish on Fridays- but what wasn’t on their freak-out lists was when we played games like—see a car coming, jump into the middle of the street, and when the driver slams on his breaks inches away from your body, extend your right arm out in front of you, and sing, “Stop in the Name of Love.”
Like our parents once were, though we could never imagine it, we were city-kids and city kids played in the streets. When it was hot we swam in fire hydrants and when it was cold, and the pavement icy, we hitched on the back bumpers of city buses and slid until we lost our grips or the bus driver slammed on his breaks and cursed us away.
Yes, this was our version of snowboarding. Only we didn't need a snowboard. We probably needed our heads examined, and we certainly could have used helmets, but those were for people who did really dangerous stuff, like Evil Knievel. We were just kids having fun. And this kind of fun may have not kept us off the streets but it did keep us off drugs, well, for a few years anyway.
But on the days you stayed home sick, especially if your mom knew you were faking but she didn't have the time to argue because she was already late for work, you couldn't go outside and play in traffic, you had to stay home. And Grandma controlled the TV. Grandma and her Soaps--A woman is held hostage in September and nine months later when you turn on the TV that same woman is still tied up in that same room. Only now she's fallen madly in love with her kidnapper. You see that scenario once, twice, and well, it just gets boring. So what else was there to do but read? Sure, there were books for kids-- Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown-- but you were a teenager, a pre-teen anyway, and you want sex, drugs, and rock and roll, adult stuff to read about. If you were lucky, your mom had another book that she had bought that she hadn't read herself, or she wouldn't have left it right there on the shelf in between Betty Crocker’s Cook Book and the Dr. Spock book you thought was about Star Trek and was grateful when you finally did read it that your mother hadn’t. There was that book about where the small town girl goes running off to Hollywood to find fame but instead finds, bad men, drug addiction, and dies from either drugs or a broken heart. The ending was ambiguous. But you savored all 445 pages of it.
So we read, we read books that were age appropriate when we had to for school, but for pleasure we read books that should have been hidden in the back of our parents’ closets, so we wouldn’t see them, the same way our best friend Rita, and her three sisters, had to hide their Kotex pads way in the back of their closet so their one, and only, brother wouldn’t find them. In those days, boys were kept in the dark about menstruation until they were old enough to understand the meaning of, “I’m late.”
Then an innocent game that you played on a television console was invented and that was the beginning of the age of video-game addiction.
And when your grandmother got up to make dinner, well there was now so much more than just the one After School Special to watch. There was now television programming not just for babies, but for teens, and not just in the afternoon but at night, prime time—let’s not forget, The Not for Ready For Prime Time Players, which our parents let us watch because there was no school the next day and in those days there were no for adult audience warnings posted on the corner of your television. Besides, our parents weren’t watching Saturday Night Live anyway. Saturday nights were date nights. And then there came the mother of all inventions—the one thing that gave ever teen the ultimate reason to never have to read for pleasure again, CABLE. While I was in college trying to get through Freshman Comp, my sister and her teen friends were moon dancing to MTV. Remember? Before the commercials?
How could books stand a chance? I'm not saying kids of the generation(s) that followed soon after mine didn't read. Many did. Many wanted to, but they didn't have to for entertainment. They didn't have to read to get a taste of the forbidden, the stuff that peaked their curiosities and hormone levels, but were never discussed among mixed company, meaning their parents. They now had Pay TV and scrambled porn.
But by the grace of god and authors like Daniel Handler (pen name, Lemony Snicket) and J.K. Rowling who gave kids a lot of credit, who knew that kids wanted fantasy, but they also wanted characters that were real and who would take chances and do stupid things like jump into traffic and sing and who also suffered loss. Finally, there were books that could compete with cable, and Fios, and Nintendo. These books were written for them. And yes, books were again read not because they were assigned, but because they were fun and even sexy. Books are no longer for adults or nerds or that bored kid stuck at home with nothing else to do. Books are written for kids, teens, young adults, whatever the market wants to call them, and they are cool.
Here we are 1400 and something words later and I still never answered the questions I started with-- YA? Why Not? I did say, I had struggled with Freshman Comp. If this weren't a blog, and this was a paper for Freshman Comp, and I wanted at least a B, I would go back to the beginning and revise and do that inverted pyramid thing (am I mixing up composition terminology with cheerleader lingo again?). But, this is a blog, and according to the rule of blogging, as I understand them, I can just hit publish post.
I can't blame these students, okay, I can, but really they are the lost reader generation. You see (and, yes, I know I am aging myself here again) when I was a child, we only had 6 channels, well, really 5 because who watched PBS? Except for when the Electric Company was on. I'm too old for Sesame Street. We didn't have a lot of choice but to read when we were stuck at home and we needed an escape from the pressures of teen life or teen angst or just from our freaking parents who we thought were too old to get it, and “it” as in every thing. When I was thirteen my mother was only thirty-three.
It was different when we could go outside where we played in traffic and, I mean, literally we played in traffic. When it came to us kids, our parents had their long lists of things they pulled their hair out over — our using drugs, having protected or unprotected sex, planning the wedding after the rabbit died, making sure we ate fish on Fridays- but what wasn’t on their freak-out lists was when we played games like—see a car coming, jump into the middle of the street, and when the driver slams on his breaks inches away from your body, extend your right arm out in front of you, and sing, “Stop in the Name of Love.”
Like our parents once were, though we could never imagine it, we were city-kids and city kids played in the streets. When it was hot we swam in fire hydrants and when it was cold, and the pavement icy, we hitched on the back bumpers of city buses and slid until we lost our grips or the bus driver slammed on his breaks and cursed us away.
Yes, this was our version of snowboarding. Only we didn't need a snowboard. We probably needed our heads examined, and we certainly could have used helmets, but those were for people who did really dangerous stuff, like Evil Knievel. We were just kids having fun. And this kind of fun may have not kept us off the streets but it did keep us off drugs, well, for a few years anyway.
But on the days you stayed home sick, especially if your mom knew you were faking but she didn't have the time to argue because she was already late for work, you couldn't go outside and play in traffic, you had to stay home. And Grandma controlled the TV. Grandma and her Soaps--A woman is held hostage in September and nine months later when you turn on the TV that same woman is still tied up in that same room. Only now she's fallen madly in love with her kidnapper. You see that scenario once, twice, and well, it just gets boring. So what else was there to do but read? Sure, there were books for kids-- Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown-- but you were a teenager, a pre-teen anyway, and you want sex, drugs, and rock and roll, adult stuff to read about. If you were lucky, your mom had another book that she had bought that she hadn't read herself, or she wouldn't have left it right there on the shelf in between Betty Crocker’s Cook Book and the Dr. Spock book you thought was about Star Trek and was grateful when you finally did read it that your mother hadn’t. There was that book about where the small town girl goes running off to Hollywood to find fame but instead finds, bad men, drug addiction, and dies from either drugs or a broken heart. The ending was ambiguous. But you savored all 445 pages of it.
So we read, we read books that were age appropriate when we had to for school, but for pleasure we read books that should have been hidden in the back of our parents’ closets, so we wouldn’t see them, the same way our best friend Rita, and her three sisters, had to hide their Kotex pads way in the back of their closet so their one, and only, brother wouldn’t find them. In those days, boys were kept in the dark about menstruation until they were old enough to understand the meaning of, “I’m late.”
Then an innocent game that you played on a television console was invented and that was the beginning of the age of video-game addiction.
And when your grandmother got up to make dinner, well there was now so much more than just the one After School Special to watch. There was now television programming not just for babies, but for teens, and not just in the afternoon but at night, prime time—let’s not forget, The Not for Ready For Prime Time Players, which our parents let us watch because there was no school the next day and in those days there were no for adult audience warnings posted on the corner of your television. Besides, our parents weren’t watching Saturday Night Live anyway. Saturday nights were date nights. And then there came the mother of all inventions—the one thing that gave ever teen the ultimate reason to never have to read for pleasure again, CABLE. While I was in college trying to get through Freshman Comp, my sister and her teen friends were moon dancing to MTV. Remember? Before the commercials?
How could books stand a chance? I'm not saying kids of the generation(s) that followed soon after mine didn't read. Many did. Many wanted to, but they didn't have to for entertainment. They didn't have to read to get a taste of the forbidden, the stuff that peaked their curiosities and hormone levels, but were never discussed among mixed company, meaning their parents. They now had Pay TV and scrambled porn.
But by the grace of god and authors like Daniel Handler (pen name, Lemony Snicket) and J.K. Rowling who gave kids a lot of credit, who knew that kids wanted fantasy, but they also wanted characters that were real and who would take chances and do stupid things like jump into traffic and sing and who also suffered loss. Finally, there were books that could compete with cable, and Fios, and Nintendo. These books were written for them. And yes, books were again read not because they were assigned, but because they were fun and even sexy. Books are no longer for adults or nerds or that bored kid stuck at home with nothing else to do. Books are written for kids, teens, young adults, whatever the market wants to call them, and they are cool.
Here we are 1400 and something words later and I still never answered the questions I started with-- YA? Why Not? I did say, I had struggled with Freshman Comp. If this weren't a blog, and this was a paper for Freshman Comp, and I wanted at least a B, I would go back to the beginning and revise and do that inverted pyramid thing (am I mixing up composition terminology with cheerleader lingo again?). But, this is a blog, and according to the rule of blogging, as I understand them, I can just hit publish post.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
got yoga?
Well, it's been a month and half since I last posted. A lot of my time has been spent trying to get my writing out in the world.
There was a time when writers could write and just write or stress about not writing. Today a writer needs to know how to market and how to sell. And we need to know not only how to network but how to social network.
I started to blog because I was stressed about writing and trying to sell my writing, and now I'm stressing about blogging or not blogging? I think it's time to take a yoga class. Or would I just stress about breathing or not breathing?
There was a time when writers could write and just write or stress about not writing. Today a writer needs to know how to market and how to sell. And we need to know not only how to network but how to social network.
I started to blog because I was stressed about writing and trying to sell my writing, and now I'm stressing about blogging or not blogging? I think it's time to take a yoga class. Or would I just stress about breathing or not breathing?
Thursday, September 9, 2010
"I'm not EMO! I'm Poetic!"
My son, two days into middle school, says to me tonight--"I'm not EMO. I'm poetic."
I know where he gets his dramatics from. Both sides of his family have their many moments. But that confidence in his dramatic flair I only dreamt of when I was his age--hormones raging and every family dinner ending with me shouting, "NO BODY LISTENS TO ME!" Is that why I write?
I know where he gets his dramatics from. Both sides of his family have their many moments. But that confidence in his dramatic flair I only dreamt of when I was his age--hormones raging and every family dinner ending with me shouting, "NO BODY LISTENS TO ME!" Is that why I write?
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Why Do You Write? (An invitation to let it spill!)
You may have noticed that my last post was a link to another blog where the writer talks about why she writes and also about food! Writing and food have always been two of my great loves and why I write and why or what I eat and when I eat it have been two of my dreaded obsessions. The ones that on Saturday tickle you from your nose to your toes, just like you're favorite children's book. The same ones that on other days infect you like an investation of bedbugs--you want to stop thinking about it, you would give anything not to think about it, but the itching just won't stop.
(By the way, there are inexpensive ways to rid your place of bedbugs. My dad was an exterminator for years, so bugs may not be a love or an obsession for me, but definitely a hobby. If you want to know how to rid your life of these extrodinary creatures, and they are extraodianry, send me a note. Oh, and remind me one day to share my father's story of how he saved a women's life because of his bedbug extpertise.)
Along with your bedbug questions, I am inviting you to post on this blog. Let's get a dialog going about why we write and how we manage or don't manage to keep our writing lives alive. This is one of the places you don't need to worry about spelling, unless that's one of your obessions of course. Of course, if you want to revise and revise or just revise, that's great too. The point is, yes, I do get it eventually, I am inviting you to use this as a place where you can share and swear and hopefully find support to keep on going. Let it spill! Words, unlike oil, need some days to pour out.
So, tell us--Why do you write?
(By the way, there are inexpensive ways to rid your place of bedbugs. My dad was an exterminator for years, so bugs may not be a love or an obsession for me, but definitely a hobby. If you want to know how to rid your life of these extrodinary creatures, and they are extraodianry, send me a note. Oh, and remind me one day to share my father's story of how he saved a women's life because of his bedbug extpertise.)
Along with your bedbug questions, I am inviting you to post on this blog. Let's get a dialog going about why we write and how we manage or don't manage to keep our writing lives alive. This is one of the places you don't need to worry about spelling, unless that's one of your obessions of course. Of course, if you want to revise and revise or just revise, that's great too. The point is, yes, I do get it eventually, I am inviting you to use this as a place where you can share and swear and hopefully find support to keep on going. Let it spill! Words, unlike oil, need some days to pour out.
So, tell us--Why do you write?
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Here is a great blog on my two favorite subjects--Writing and Eating: The Whatever Cook: Why I Write
The Whatever Cook: Why I Write: "Friends & I saw Eat, Pray, Love last weekend & bantered while eating Italian food about what was our “Word.” In the movie, an Italian friend..."
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Costa Rica and Zombies
Tomorrow I leave for the airport at 4 AM Eastern Standard time. I am about to embark on a ten day adventure in Costa Rica. I'm both thrilled about the idea and sick to my stomach. This feels a lot like I do after I finish a piece of writing. When you write those last words of your story, the words you are positive are perfect and that no other word combination could make your piece any better, nothing short of shooting heroin can give you that same euphoric feeling. Well, I've never shot heroin and given my borderline-addictive personality I don't plan too, but friends who have, describe it as a ride you don't want to get off until you do, and then it's too late.
Too late.
If you're lucky you may get to relish in your sense of accomplishment (from your writing, not your heroin addiction) for a whole ten minutes before that nagging feeling of dread starts to eat at your brain. Yes, every writer has a zombie inside her--ready to pounce, rip open her skull, and eat away at her brain until any sense of joy and confidence she may have about her work is devoured--chewed and spit out. All that's left is this feeling that makes riding a broken merry-go-round, round and round and round, faster and faster, until you're projectile vomiting all over the onlooking parents screaming for someone to get the damn thing to stop. This did happen to me. I was eight.
Hence, my fear of merry-go-rounds.
I never used to think twice about getting on a plane and flying to some unknown place where not only didn't I speak the language but where there was usually some war going on. I never thought about checking a what-to-bring list. I never even made a list. Never worried about having a first aid kit with me or copies of my travel documents or even enough cash. I just got on a plane and let the good or the bad or whatever comes in between happen. It was all about the experience, which sometimes is just code for "How could I have been so stupid!"
But I'm older now. Too old? I hope not. Still, I haven't left this country in almost eight years, and I realize that has much as it almost brings tears of self-pity to my eyes, I have become domesticated. Those of you out there who know how I keep house, you can stop laughing. I'm not saying that I stay home home and cook and clean my days away, but this once world traveler prefers to stay close to her own bathroom. It's not that I'm afraid of taking risks or having adventures, I just don't have all that much interest in them any more--well. Or maybe, it's just that taking risks to me now means giving myself fifteen minutes lead time instead of twenty five minutes to get to the grocery store before it closes. I think you have to be a mom with a hungry kid to appreciate how daring this really is.
So, all this has me thinking, have I started to take less risks in my writing?
I just started a book about Stregas from the Bronx--Italian witches from the Bronx. A subject I'm curious about, but have a lot more to learn and explore if I hope to get the experience on paper close to perfect. And yet, when I was traveling the world without trying to safe guard myself from all that could go wrong, I would have never taken such a risk. I would have never even considered writing about a subject I didn't already feel I knew well.
Maybe as I grow old, I am taking less risks in life and more risks in my writing. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing or that thing that falls somewhere in between. But it is what it is. And tonight, before I lay me down to sleep, I will check my list of things to bring to Costa Rica-- not just once, but three times, and maybe even four.
All this means is that tonight I may sleep a bit easier, but it doesn't guarantee that when I arrive in Costa Rica and open my bags that I won't have forgotten something.
As long as it's not the imodium, and I avoid merry-go-rounds, I will be okay.
Besides, there really is no full-proof protection against the unpredictability in life and our writing, or from zombies eating our brains.
Have a great few weeks everyone!
Too late.
If you're lucky you may get to relish in your sense of accomplishment (from your writing, not your heroin addiction) for a whole ten minutes before that nagging feeling of dread starts to eat at your brain. Yes, every writer has a zombie inside her--ready to pounce, rip open her skull, and eat away at her brain until any sense of joy and confidence she may have about her work is devoured--chewed and spit out. All that's left is this feeling that makes riding a broken merry-go-round, round and round and round, faster and faster, until you're projectile vomiting all over the onlooking parents screaming for someone to get the damn thing to stop. This did happen to me. I was eight.
Hence, my fear of merry-go-rounds.
I never used to think twice about getting on a plane and flying to some unknown place where not only didn't I speak the language but where there was usually some war going on. I never thought about checking a what-to-bring list. I never even made a list. Never worried about having a first aid kit with me or copies of my travel documents or even enough cash. I just got on a plane and let the good or the bad or whatever comes in between happen. It was all about the experience, which sometimes is just code for "How could I have been so stupid!"
But I'm older now. Too old? I hope not. Still, I haven't left this country in almost eight years, and I realize that has much as it almost brings tears of self-pity to my eyes, I have become domesticated. Those of you out there who know how I keep house, you can stop laughing. I'm not saying that I stay home home and cook and clean my days away, but this once world traveler prefers to stay close to her own bathroom. It's not that I'm afraid of taking risks or having adventures, I just don't have all that much interest in them any more--well. Or maybe, it's just that taking risks to me now means giving myself fifteen minutes lead time instead of twenty five minutes to get to the grocery store before it closes. I think you have to be a mom with a hungry kid to appreciate how daring this really is.
So, all this has me thinking, have I started to take less risks in my writing?
I just started a book about Stregas from the Bronx--Italian witches from the Bronx. A subject I'm curious about, but have a lot more to learn and explore if I hope to get the experience on paper close to perfect. And yet, when I was traveling the world without trying to safe guard myself from all that could go wrong, I would have never taken such a risk. I would have never even considered writing about a subject I didn't already feel I knew well.
Maybe as I grow old, I am taking less risks in life and more risks in my writing. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing or that thing that falls somewhere in between. But it is what it is. And tonight, before I lay me down to sleep, I will check my list of things to bring to Costa Rica-- not just once, but three times, and maybe even four.
All this means is that tonight I may sleep a bit easier, but it doesn't guarantee that when I arrive in Costa Rica and open my bags that I won't have forgotten something.
As long as it's not the imodium, and I avoid merry-go-rounds, I will be okay.
Besides, there really is no full-proof protection against the unpredictability in life and our writing, or from zombies eating our brains.
Have a great few weeks everyone!
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