Things Left Unsaid

Let's get one thing clear: the YA Contemporary manuscript I'm shopping right now is NOT a memoir.

But...

The basic narrative events draw heavily on personal experience. Which means that, almost inevitably, people will "recognize" themselves in certain characters (some with more reason than others), since they, as people, stood in a similar position to events as various characters do to the events in the story.

Which begs the question: how much you owe the real people in your life if you choose to write?

If the best friend in my story is influenced by one of my own high school friendships, do I have to give character-her a totally unique appearance? Different traits? Different speech patterns? Or is it better to make her an obvious riff off the real person, since character-her is being drawn through a totally different series of events than real-life-her ever was?

Would you be more flattered to find a version of you in fiction, or more offended?

And if a character in a story who you previously thought looked like you does something you don't like the looks of, is that me (the author) being unfair, or just honest? Or is it totally irrelevant, since this isn't you, it's just someone with a few of your tics and the same hair color, like approximately 27 million other people worldwide?

To some degree, it's all moot: I can't help drawing on people I know for my characters, if for no other reason than people I know are the only fleshed-out models I have of how-people-are.

Of course my mom influences how I think of moms--I only ever had the one. My sisters are going to seep into sisters in stories, because they're the only way I've ever experienced that specific incredibly-close-and-often-still-annoyed-with-one-another relationship.

Maybe it will make people feel better to hear that basically every character I write, ever, has some element of me in him or her (sometimes most of the elements of me). I'm always the first and last primary source I choose to plagiarize.

But that sounds, to me, like self-justification. I want to know, from other writers and from non-writers, how you deal with this (from both sides, as a potentially-violated original or as a thief of all your relationships and experiences).

Would you be okay with seeing bits and pieces--or even whole swathes--of you in someone else's story? Or would you be pissed off, since chances are that, if you keep popping up in someone else's fictional worlds, eventually you won't show to advantage?

And beyond that, should it matter? Should I worry whether people like what they see in my stories when what they see is themselves? Or should I just hide behind the flimsy-looking veil of "it's fiction?"

New Essay on Young Adult Review Network

Usually I'm snarky, or sarcastic, or otherwise deflect-y, because THAT'S HOW PEOPLE DEAL WITH EMOTIONS, RIGHT?

Well, some people. 

Today, though, I wrote an essay for the Young Adult Review Network about one of the many absurd events that orbited around my dad's death. A version of this moment made it into my young adult novel, It Could Be Worse (still looking for representation, possible agent soul-mates!). I'll give you the classic teaser paragraph here; I'd love you to continue reading it there! 

Our Father, Who Art in Heaven (Maybe...)

Note: while I’ve tried to be as honest as possible in this essay, it’s just one person’s memory of very complicated events. It’s not “the” truth, just one version of it. -Jilly

We’d already done the hushed-voices, bedside consultation about whether it was time to pull the plugs.

We’d already suffered through the shock—in one of the endless meetings with the doctors during that last week—of learning that P., the woman we thought of as my dad’s girlfriend, had in fact secretly married him about a week after the attacks started, and in the four months that followed, had told no one. Which made her my secret-stepmother. Which  thought made the inside of my stomach itch.

We’d even managed to make it through the last, agonizing moments, after they pulled out the ventilator that had been keeping him alive; the gurgling, gasping, knocking sounds bubbling up from his weakened lungs as they tried—and failed—to draw breath; the moment, just like in the movies, when the heart monitor’s syncopated rhythm collapsed into a single, drawn-out note, filling the space where my dad used to be with its agonizing, unending screech.

Somehow, it never occurred to me to dread the meeting with the priest.

Naïve, naïve, naïve.

Read the rest at the Young Adult Review Network, an awesome spot for young adult readers and writers!

How To: Get Through a Seemingly Endless Friday

Note: these are only suggestions, and may not work for everyone:

* Induce an extreme allergic reaction without an epi-pen handy.

* Paint eyeballs on your eyelids and train yourself to sleep upright, facing your computer.

* Pretend like the floor is hot lava, and the only safe spots are your chair and the tops of peoples' desks, and the only way you'll make it to the bathroom alive is by rowing your chair with a rudimentary paperclip-based paddle or somehow parkouring between various work stations, then drink a lot of water.

* Weep. At your desk. Loudly.

Just cry it out...

* Form a murder/suicide pact with everyone who shares your cube.

* Create paper dolls of all your co-workers, surreptitiously leave them on their desks when they step away and act confused when they ask you about it. Create a decoy one of yourself so that you can commiserate with them about how "strange" and "creepy" and "prosecutable" it feels later.

* Cat videos.

* Run all your company literature through a translator, then translate that text back into English, then call a company-wide meeting to present your findings on how your company is losing the Tagalog-speaking market.

* Drink.

UPDATE: Practicing what I preach: 

Grown-Up Reactions to Kid Lit: Harriet the Spy

My friend MK is a high-school librarian, so both of us read a pretty remarkable amount of kid lit. In this maybe-semi-regular-feature, we discuss it!

Jilly:  Okay, so how awesome is Harriet the Spy?

MK:  Honestly I was having a hard time getting into it. That's why I was pretty much reading two pages at a time at first.

Jilly:  Oh no! thanks for hating ALL THE GOOD THINGS.

MK:  I never said I HATED it. There are things I like about it a lot. But I'm realizing that I get easily frustrated by narrators/protagonists who don't understand things that are obvious to the reader. Which obviously is a problem when you're an adult reading a kids' book, but I think a modern young reader would also be all "Duh, Harriet" at various points.

Jilly:  That's fair. Like not knowing that the kids are building an anti-Harriet club?

MK:  That's probably the best example. Her reaction to Ole Golly having a relationship and the shrink also fall in that category. Honestly if this were a book written today, I would not at all be surprised if it were marketed as a(nother) book about an autistic kid.

Jilly:  Or as a young middle grade book. She feels like a very young 11 now; 8-9 seems to make more sense for her worldview.

MK:  Absolutely. On some level the other kids are the wrong age too, though- it's not like she's the only one who's immature.

Jilly:  No, they're all young for their age, for sure. I'm reading A Wrinkle in Time right now, and mis-aging is even more apparent there. Meg is what, 14? But she feels about 11.

I think there must be a couple things happening in these books: A.) They were written 50 years ago, and kids were kids longer.

MK:  Oh sure.

Jilly:  B.) The idea that kid lit should shield kids from growing up, rather than reflect the actual experience of it, might have been more firmly entrenched?

MK:  Oh that's an interesting idea.

Jilly:  That attitude still definitely exists—maybe it was more dominant then? Like "kid lit is meant to keep kids kids."  The idea that an 11-year-old would be more tuned in than that would be threatening to the idea of childhood.

MK:  Hmmm. That makes me want to analyze the Newbery winners over time or something.

Jilly: I also think there's the persistent idea that kids will only read "up" not "down," so Harriet's 11, but she has to reflect 8-year-olds.

MK:  Right.

Jilly:  What did you make of all the hilariously open references to shitty marriages and drinking and awful parents?

MK:  "Mr. So-and-so was totally stoned.”

Jilly:  RIGHT??? I presumed she meant drunk?

MK:  Probably.

Jilly:  Even so. Just wasted-ass parents all over the place

MK: This seems relevant:

 From the always-awesome xkcd.com. Now Jilly will never see any phrase with –ass in it the same, ever again.

Jilly: I also love that the takeaway is "you should lie more."

MK:  That's one of the things I love about the book- so few books for young people manage to be morally ambiguous.

Jilly:  Agreed. You have to learn a lesson, and it has to make you a better person. Harriet’s makes her a better-equipped person, yes, but morally, arguably a worse one. I also really liked that the parents didn't get hung up on the wrongness and cruelty of kids taking her diary. It's such a throwback way to parent: "so what, you still shouldn't ______"

Also, she missed enough school in the book that she would now be obligatorily held back.

MK:  You'd be surprised!

Jilly:  I guess I would. Damn. I always thought 10 days of absences was a tipping point at most schools

MK:  It probably should be, but we have kids who miss an appalling amount of school.

Jilly:  that's depressing. In other depressing news, I saw a graphic yesterday that 1/3 of people never read another book after graduating high school, and that over 40% of college grads never read a book again post-graduation. Part of me shriveled up and died.

MK:  I saw that too. There was also a really alarmist "report" from Common Sense Media that basically equated to "young people don't read anymore and screens are taking over our brains."

Jilly:  untrue, although kids who self-report reading for pleasure is apparently way down

MK:  Right, but a lot of definitions of "reading" aren't encompassing the kind of reading that many kids (and people) are doing for pleasure.

Jilly:  that's true. I do think there's something lost if kids aren't reading novel-length stories; whether they're in graphic novels or comics isn't important, but sustained storytelling does seem important to me.

MK:  I think it's important for everyone to at least experience a variety of formats/lengths. People are going to gravitate toward the ones they like best, but they can't if they're never exposed to them.

Jilly:  Agreed. And kids need to be encouraged to read anything that interests them. Trying to force the "right" kinds of books down their throats is what makes people think they don't like reading

MK:  Yup! Which is why I think high school English curricula need to be waaaaaaay revamped, but that's maybe another topic.

Jilly:  Almost certainly another topic.

On the sidelines...

To date, I think I've met maybe three writers who fully make their living off their novels.

One of them had worked as a professor for something like 20 years before FINALLY being able to quit a job he saw as a necessary evil (let me note here that this guy is probably one of the top-3 names in modern Indian fiction, so...bummer).

Another had worked for years in order to make it work, and it relied on a combination of hustling the things you can do because you're an author that aren't actually authorial (for example, school visits) and being willing to live pretty low on the hog.

And...nope, that's it. I don't know a third person.

Basically, even the incredibly-talented, well-received, totally "making it" authors out there aren't making much. Which means that in order to support your writing habit (which includes supporting your caffeine and bourbon habits), you have to hold down a day job.

Some people manage to do this with a lot of flexibility. In my critique group, I'm actually the only one currently working a 9-5, and I've only been doing it for a year (before that I worked retail in order to have as much free time and mental space as possible).

Some people have their irons in enough freelancing fires to keep afloat that way.

But while writing for eHow.com and a local newspaper and maybe, if you're lucky, an article or two a month in major publications (that pay actual money) may seem closer to the goal of being a full-time writer, it's worth noting: if what you want is to author novels, that version of a "day job" is just as much a job as any other. It's not you writing the thing you're passionate about, it's not getting you any closer to the goal of publication (well it may be, tangentially, but  unless you're writing exclusively on topics you plan to one day novelize, it's just as likely to do nothing much for you), and every minute you spend doing that is a minute you spend not working on the other thing, the passion thing, the weird-addiction-to-masochism thing.

So here's my question: do other creative people manage to find real satisfaction at their day jobs? I'm lucky enough to have a day job where I occasionally get the chance to work on really cool things (see: my version of company literature), but that doesn't magically transform it into my passion.

What do the rest of you do to deal with the passion/pencil-pushing dichotomy?

Seriously, I need suggestions...

Why do you read?

So I'm currently in the agent-querying phase with my novel. For those of you who have no clue what that means, I have three keywords: waiting, opacity, and rejection.

(For those of you who DO know what that means, you could probably add a few choice words of your own, no?)

Anyway, a big part of trying to find--and connect with--an agent that's a good fit for your work is finding one who reads like you write (which for me, at least, means finding one who reads like I read, too). 

There are agents who love "fast-paced plots that get my heart racing."

There are agents who like "unexpected twists with serious consequences."

There are agents who want "a world I want to come back to over and over."

There are agents who prefer "ideas I've never seen on the page before."

It starts to make you wonder, what draws YOU to a book? I think for me, I've whittled it down to two (main) things*:

1. Character
2. Unforgettable moments

*Besides the obvious: "good writing"--that's just a prerequisite

Every author wants to have characters "that breathe" (whatever that means), and to write scenes that are perfectly-pitched, that capture all the qualities of your characters and all the themes of your book, and are funny and tragic and poignant and true to boot. 

But not everyone READS for those. 

Do you read to know what happens to her, or to know HER?

When I think about books I loved versus books I just read, it always comes down to whether the people on the page are people I know, or at least COULD know. Could I guess what they'd order off a coffeeshop menu, or what they'd think about current politics, or whether they watch all of the sports? 

People are supposed to ask that about the characters they create, I want to know it about the ones YOU create. 

And when I describe a book, I might sum up the plot, but whether or not I LOVED it depends on your ship-in-a-bottle moments. I read plotty books, too, but I don't really care whether or not a plot is really driving the story--or whether it's even really present, particularly--if each of the moments you spread out before me individually suck me in. It's why I love Nabokov and Vonnegut and why I've never really gotten into mysteries. I don't care about whodunnit nearly as much as I care about why they'd ever want to do it in the first place.

It absolutely seeps into my writing; I'm confident that I can put together a really well-done scene (and as a writer, for me to say I'm confident I can do ANYTHING well means it must be a particularly strong suit), but plot never feels as vital to me. 

Do other people read this way (here's hoping some of the agents I'm querying do...)? I'd love to know what makes a book "can't miss" and what makes it "can't remember" for everyone else...

Why do we want people to "settle down?"

I was talking to my sister the other day, and a mutual friend who'd had a serious, semi-scary "party phase," and with whom I'd recently reconnected, came up.

"He really seems to have settled down," I said.

I meant it as a positive commentary on the fact that his life now involves far fewer drugs and far more stability than it used to.

But it got me to thinking about the words we use to express that (because what writer wants to take words at face value when instead she can get confused and upset and obsessed by their iceberg natures?): "settling down."

Isn't it kind of sad that at the root of the idea that someone has found a long-term romantic prospect, or reached a good place in her career, or moved to a city that's he can see himself calling home indefinitely, is the word "settling?"

And both senses of the word are kind of depressing; it's not just the connotation of giving up and saying "good enough, I guess" that bugs me, it's the idea that you're losing your forward momentum, "settling" into place, forever relinquishing the potential of the other slots in life's roulette wheel that you're no longer skipping past.

Obviously plenty of people who settle down ARE settling. They're too tired, or scared, or worried about what other people will think to say "I can still do better."

But I hope that's not everyone. I certainly hope it's not me.

So next time I talk to you about the mutual acquaintance who seems to be drinking less and fitting in more yoga, don't get confused if I mention that I'm so happy she's "continuing forward" or "growing sideways" or even just "making positive choices."

Assuming all those things are true, the one thing she's NOT doing is "settling."

Good Morning to Everyone, Good Morning to Everyone!

That's the standard greeting of my favorite man on the bus.

Now anyone who knows me is well aware that I'm not a sunshine, puppies, and rainbows kind of gal (in fact, anyone who knows me well is laughing at the idea that I even have to mention that). But that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the sunny-side-of-the-streeters on their own terms. Even if the only thing I notice is that my glass has a chip in it, and jesus, is that an ant floating in the bottom, how did I miss that?, I still appreciate the folks who see every glass as half-full, even the empty ones. They force me to pretend to be a better person, primarily because I feel guilty presenting myself to them in any other way.

Never underestimate the attitude-changing power of shame, people.

Anyway, I may not be Susie Smiles, but I AM deeply obsessive-compulsive (Olivia OCD?), which means I tend to make it to the bus station at almost exactly the same time every morning, which means that I often see the same cast of characters on my bus rides.

"Good morning to everyone, good morning to everyone!" man is the best of them all. He's tall and skinny, and while I'd guess he's in his early 60s, the cane he uses to get around, and the limping walk that goes with it, make him seem older. Some days he refuses a seat, standing at the front of the bus and chatting with the driver. Sometimes he's less steady.

Every single day, he opens with the same greeting and, on his way out the door, reminds everyone to "have a blessed day!"

He also plays the harmonica.

Last week, in the subway station, he beckoned me over. We'd never spoken before, but I'll admit it: I was pumped.

"You listening to my music?"

"No," I said, "but I'd like to."

At that, he pulled out a banged up harmonica from a leather pouch in his pocket and started playing--not particularly skillfully, but VERY enthusiastically--as we slowly walked towards the bus stop together.

This morning, though, when he sat down in the seat next to mine, he didn't immediately say anything to me. I assumed he forgot the encounter; probably if you're a happiness-spreading harmonica guy, you have dozens of moments like that every day.

Then he leaned over towards me...

"Do you like music?"

"I do."

"Lemme play you some music."

For the next 15 minutes, he played the harmonica, laughing, asking me if it was making me happy to hear him play. He told me he was going to Georgia soon, and asked me what the hell I was doing in New England if I was from a nice place like Minnesota ("I ask myself that every day," I told him--it got a big laugh, but I'll admit it was an easy crowd), and finally, after the third or fourth song, asked my name.

"Jilly."

"JILLY!" I've never seen anyone this excited about my name. It was like I'd told him my name was "Here'sYourFreeIceCream."

"JILLY! That's great. Jilly Jilly bo-billy, fanana-fanna! Ah, that's great!"

Then he sang the name song to me a few times.

Before he left, he asked me to give him a hug.

I never, EVER thought I'd hug a stranger on a bus. Until I did.

I may never do so again (unless "Harmonica Man," the name he told me he usually goes by, sits down next to me again), but today it made my glass seem a lot fuller.

Take My Advice...

Some of you may know, one of the many random writing projects I've undertaken is giving advice. Because I'm so qualified to pass judgment on the lives of others, right?

No need to respond to that.

Either way, I do it, and it's set up so that people can submit questions anonymously (or not) through forms, not direct emails. Because maybe you don't want me to know that you were the one "asking for a friend" about whether you need to confess to anyone about that night on the yacht...

So ask away! And check it out on Saturdays at BDCwire. Who knows, you may learn something...

No need to respond to that, either.

"There is no reading..."

"...only rereading."

Thanks for making me feel deficient in yet ANOTHER way, Vladimir Nabokov.

Of course as with so many of his pronouncements, I think Vivian Darkbloom was onto something here (a name I would never have known for an anagram the first time I read Lolita); the first time we read a book, we're plowing ahead for plot, trying to understand the fundamentals of character, and otherwise focusing on what's HAPPENING...it's only later that we can appreciate the minutiae of any really great work.

But what about only-maybe-great works? Do they benefit from this kind of careful attention, or would they shrivel up and die under such intent, scrutinizing light?

I'm especially scared to not-read-but-reread some of my childhood favorites.

The ones I've gone back to over and over throughout the years, of course, are safe--nostalgia has built a wall of "always gonna be awesome" around them (I'm looking at you, Lord of the Rings series).

But what about all those books I tore through at 8, 10, and 13--the John Bellairs novels that defined my 3rd-grade experience? Or the Victoria Holt romances my mom (possibly ill-advisedly) put me onto in the 5th-grade, and which made me feel so desperately grown up? Or all the "aren't I so SMART" real-literature-books I dutifully worked my way through in middle and high school?

I'm afraid to go back to those, and also desperate to--there was a period between ages 15 and 19 where I actually thought I liked Ayn Rand because it was a "grown-up" book I understood. I needed those four years to realize that simply identifying an author's dear-god-with-a-sledgehammer messaging wasn't the same as agreeing with it (or enjoying the prose).

...but I needed to reread it to realize that.

I'm having the thankfully fantastic experience of liking Harriet the Spy even more than I remembered right now--what other "classics" (or even just "ubiquitous offerings") hold up as well when you're an adult as they did when you were a kid?

Maybe more importantly, which ones don't?

Things Worse than Monday

I just got back from the NESCBWI conference, and it was awesome. And occasionally disheartening. And inspiring. And a little terrifying.

All things that are important to the writing process, basically, so I'll just call it a resounding success.

But the weekend of working WAY harder than I ever do at my job has made this Monday even more terrible than usual. Which made me wonder, what could be worse than doubling down on Monday?

So far I'm thinking:

* If one of my coworkers were replaced with a colicky infant
* A world without bourbon
* When you can't find out where that smell is coming from in your kitchen
* Genocides
* Also war
* In fact, let's just put all atrocities in a second, "actually terrible things" category
* When you're in a very public place, and a very private part starts to itch...badly
* Wrecking perfectly good cake with toasted coconut
* Watching young children play baseball
* The horrible truth that, in the end, we all really die alone

Thankfully, Monday's almost over. So it's just the rest of these things I need to worry about...

Belief Systems

I feel like a big part of growing up is discarding, or trading up on, previous beliefs. You realize, for example, that the bag of baby teeth in your dad's nightstand drawer is related to your regular installments of tooth-cash. Or--much later if you're me--you start to understand that toilets don't just magically stay clean.

I was thinking about some of the truly inane things I used to believe earlier today, things that lingered longer than they should have. Am I the only one who thought that:

* You have a pre-determined amount of hair, coiled up in little hair-spools inside your head, and at some point, you'll run out, just like with Hollywood Hair Barbie.

* If you're so unlucky as to sneeze when your eyes are crossed, enjoy a hellish life of permanent cross-eyedom.

* Velveeta with ketchup on it is perfectly acceptable "food."

* Bloody Mary is actually in that mirror. I still believe this, honestly, at least enough not to try my luck.

* This one I'm 99.935% sure no one else has, because it involves my 6-year-old memory of a monster in a specific episode of the Ghostbusters spinoff Saturday-morning-cartoon series...but basically, don't sleep with your hands outside the covers. Don't even spend much time with them out in the air, grabbable, when you're rolling over. Just...trust me.

* There are healthy candy bars, like Pearson's Nut Rolls, that frankly you should be eating more of.

* People are interested in the content of your dreams. 

* It's only the flu if you throw up.