Happy belated Typing Tuesday, Gentle Readers! First thing’s first, news (in an unordered list!):

• I had a short story accepted with Aoife’s Kiss! Yay! The story is “Ageveline,” and it’s a sci-fi retelling of James Joyce’s “Eveline.” It was, in many ways, the source material for Daughter of Earth (though it’s so, so different from it; different girl, different generation ship). I’m psyched to share it with you. It’ll be appearing in the March 2012 issue.
• I’ve accepted an Articles Editor position with Strange Horizons . . . double yay! I’ve been proofreading for SH for over a year now, and I’m so excited to take on a more active role.
• I have a vlog up at the Interroblog! Listen to me babble about Pamela Sargent’s Seed series, and look at my adorable mug!

Now that that’s out of the way . . .

I’ve read some terrific books over the past year, as evidenced by the recommended reads visible over on my sidebar. A lot of them were entertaining, juicy stuff–fun SF like Across the Universe or exciting feminist fantasy like Diana Peterfreund’s Ascendant. But while these books entertained me–while they were fun and enveloping and exciting–four stand out in my mind as challenging me. When I talk to people about my genre, and why young adult is awesome, thankyouverymuch, and why it’s just as exciting, deep and artistic as anything you’ll find on the adult shelves, it’s these books that I recommend, again and again.

These books are Feed by M. T. Anderson, The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff, and Liar by Justine Larbalestier. These four volumes are as different as they are similar. But they all challenged my own notions of what YA can, and should, be, pushing the boundaries of both kids’ fiction specifically and all fiction, generally.

It’s interesting: the one thing they all share is that they’re voicey YA. I don’t always like voicey stuff. I’m a hard sell when it comes to adults mimicking the voice of kids. Part of this is my own artistic sensibility (and, probably, my tendency to overwrite and go all flowery). But none of these books would work if they weren’t voicey–if they weren’t utterly immersive and framed within the limited world view of the narrators. And it’s fascinating to see how, rather than limiting the creations of these authors, the voicey perspectives allow them instead to do some daring, avant garde, and utterly exciting stuff.

Feed plays with form, and slang, and traps us within the uncomfortable perspective of a teenage boy who makes choices that few readers are likely to agree with. The Knife of Never Letting Go, while in some ways a traditional picaresque or boys’ adventure story, plays with language and font in a way that so utterly submerges you that you practically begin to feel you can read minds (and hear talking dogs) yourself. How I Live Now plays with form, too, and is recounted to us in such an honest adolescent voice that we find ourselves accepting the fantastic, terrible, frightening, and magical things that happen within its pages without even hesitating. And perhaps most impressively, Liar pulls the narrative rug out from beneath us completely. By making us a captive audience for a self-described liar, Larbalestier raises questions about the nature of storytelling itself.

All of these are genre novels. Now, if you know me, you know that that’s no pejorative. I’m a genre girl through-and-through, cut my teeth on McCaffrey and Lackey. I think there’s nothing easily dismissed about either science fiction or fantasy. But these books are so much more than what most people imagine when you say “science fiction” or “dystopian” or “magical realism” or “pseudo-contemporary-maybe-paranormal-I-think.”

By recounting these stories in accurate voices of real-sounding teenagers, these four authors create genre stories that you believe almost instinctively. The voice, grit, detail, and honesty make the unbelievable seem undeniable real.

If I sound slightly fangirlish as I say all of this, it’s because I am. This is the kind of writing that’s made me say that fiction is the closest thing we have to magic. There’s something amazing about an author that can make you believe in telepathy, among other things.

I said at the beginning of this entry that these books challenged me. That’s not to say that they were difficult to read–in fact, all four of these novels were insanely readable. Instead, they pushed the boundaries of what I thought is possible to achieve in either YA or fiction. It’s strange–I’ve read experimental novels before. And I used to write poetry, even dense, playful, speculative prose poetry. But I never really considered writing a novel this way.

And now I really, really want to.

I’m finishing up writing Daughter of Earth right now, editing and tightening and trying to make it the best book it can be. But I have to do that on its own terms, and I know it’s not a sprawling, messy, kooky, challenging, magical novel like one of these. But my next project? I think it’s going to be something special. I think it has to be.

This is why I think it’s important to read widely, to make sure that your reading pushes boundaries, to seek out books that make you feel freakin’ enthusiastic. Challenging writing makes us better. It pushes us to improve. It keeps us from getting complacent.

Time to step up my game.

I.

So there’s one way I can talk about this and it’s this: Jordan and I were talking the other day about how our values differ. Jordan values things like consensus, peace, getting along, happiness, puppies (he really likes puppies), and hugs.

I value excellence, honesty, and justice. Also, cats, fidelity, and tongue kisses. But mostly excellence, honesty, and justice.

Really. I realize that sounds ridiculous. But, were I to have a coat of arms, it would look like this:

Jordan says that my life won’t be easy with values like mine.

I’m inclined to agree.

II.

I’m thirteen or fourteen and I read the Star-Ledger every morning—the comics section, the entertainment news. One Sunday there’s a review by a guy named Jay Lustig where he pans a Hanson concert. He looks long and hard at the production values, the tinny quality of the music, the poor job these teenage boys did of lip-synching.

One week later, the paper prints a half-dozen angry letters written by girls my age. How dare he?! they demand. Just who does he think he is?! These are teenage boys! They shouldn’t be judged by someone who doesn’t make music himself! And so on. And so forth.

So I write the Star-Ledger a letter. I thank Lustig for respecting the Hanson brothers enough to review them as professionals, without cutting them slack because of their age. I thank him for being detailed and specific in explaining his feelings. I thank him for writing a solid, interesting review. And I write that I hope he doesn’t feel that all teen girls are incapable of appreciating excellent reviewing.

A few years later, one of my classmates brings me a newspaper clipping. She found it in a notebook at the back of her closet. She’d read it, and saved it. It’s my letter to Lustig. I never even knew it made it into the newspaper. My first piece of published writing. In praise of a negative review.

III.

It all went downhill when Arturo died.

Lustig’s name isn’t the only one I remember from that time. There’s Stephen Whitty’s pleasantly grumpy film reviews. And Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall. My Star-Ledger friends; my morning friends, what I woke up with before I drank coffee. Before there’s caffeine, there’s them, convincing me to take a step back and look at things a new way: yes, Sliders really wasn’t much more than squandered potential. Yes, Sports Night was much less awkward without the laugh track.

They make me appreciate these things more deeply. They make me think in a way I hadn’t before.

And I love it.

IV.

I’m a Siskel girl. I’ll always be a Siskel girl. He hates more things than he loves, and so it feels earned when he does love things, and so I understand him better. We have the same sonar, so to speak.

But perhaps Ebert is more relevant to this discussion. After all, Ebert wrote a screenplay. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. A finger in two dikes. A two-faced man. An artist (?), and a critic. The most dangerous kind of creature.

V.

Also Randall Jarrell. Also TS Eliot. Also Ezra Pound. Also my teacher, William Logan, whose Google alerts might be sounding in his mailbox right now. And Harold Bloom. And Stephen King. And Orson Scott Card, who I’ve heard reviews everything. John Gardner. There must be more.

You might say, wait, these men were or are institutions. They can say what they want.

You wouldn’t be wrong.

VI.

She's all like, please, bitches, can we just call a Utopia a Utopia?

Whose career would you emulate? Who is your model of ambition? If you had to travel a path which was not your own, which fairer road would you . . . ?

My answers are all women whose lives and work seem to exemplify the qualities I admire most: excellence, honesty, justice. Ursula K. Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, Nancy Kress.

Fearless, fearless women—and it’s well deserved, because their careers are shining examples of intellectual and creative excellence.

They have nothing to fear. What can anyone say that would cut them down? You can’t. They might as well be made of carbon steel.

VII.

You must understand that with all of these people, I don’t always agree with their tastes. But I respect and admire the way that they explicate them.

IX.

About the women, I guess you could say that they exemplify the traits seen as “bitchy” in our society too. I mean, I know bitchy. I was a Hillary supporter.

But was Jarrell a bitch? Eliot? Pound? William or Stephen or Orson or John? Are men bitchy when they stridently speak their minds, shamelessly striving for excellence? When they openly criticize and/or critique each other? Are men told, “You catch more flies with honey”?

And why do we police other women? Why do people seem to care if women have an opinion of one another’s work? Was Ebert told, well, go ahead and speak your mind as long as you never try to make it in Hollywood?

X.

People have given me criticism that was clever, cutting, and snarky. Sometimes it hurts. I rage, cry, gnash teeth, and rend garments. I have this good friend, Pat (hi, Pat!), who often tells me his thoughts on my books in the worst possible way.

After a few days of hating my writing, and kind of hating Pat a bit, I often realize he’s right. Or at least, I can see where he’s coming from—I know his tastes as a reader, and understand his perspective. He’s perceptive, even if I don’t agree with him.

Then we sit down and have beers together. You are not obligated to like everything I do in order to be my friend. In fact, I would find such obsequiousness kind of creepy.

I have a feeling it will go the same way when I’m published. I’ll rage, then burn, burn about the negative reviews. And then I’ll get over it, learn from it, move on.

And if I ever run into you, and you’ve panned me? I don’t know. I’ll probably have a beer with you. We’ll have a loud, passionate debate about something stupid. That’s how I roll.

One of the people pictured believed that my last book was not a novel. That's okay. I still love him.

XI.

Love.

As a long-time lover of books and reviews both, I understand that even the most cutting negative review comes from a place of affection, a place of love. Maybe not for the author, but for the book, and what it could have been, even if it was not.

I think in reading we seek out a sort of platonic ideal of a book. I think even the most jaded Siskel is actually saddened, deep down, when a work of art has not exceeded his expectations. Every new book is like a first date. Every review? A love letter of sorts. We want to share with the world the pain or the joy of a love either fulfilled or unfulfilled.

Sometimes it seems to me that, with GoodReads and book blogs and amazon reviews, the world is a scary place for authors now. It’s like your exboyfriend is telling everyone on the internet all the things he didn’t like about you. This is art, and not a private life, but still, I suspect it feels that way.

I think it helps that you understand that readers—professional or amateur—are doing this out of love. Maybe not for you, but for your book. They want to love your book. They want to be surprised. Sure, some of them are hardened, jaded, snarky, cynical. But they wouldn’t be reading it at all if they hadn’t, at some point, hoped to love your book.

XII.

A few weeks ago I visited my mother. She subscribes to O, and I read it in the bathtub, and there was a Jay-Z quote, which I’ll paraphrase: “I learned early in my career that it would be easy to be famous as someone else. I didn’t want that. It’s not worth it. I want to be famous as me.”

XIII.

None of what I say matters.

Some people will despise me. Some people will find me presumptuous, pretentious, and cloying. Maybe they’ll think I’m a bitch. Maybe they’ll think I’m destroying my career. Maybe agents or editors who don’t understand will shut their doors to me. But I hope there are agents and editors out there who understand. I hope there’s room for passionate, honest, and vocal people in the world of publishing.

At twenty-seven, I’m still young, but I’ll say this: reviewing has been good to me, and I love it. Fiction has been good to me, and I love it, too. For the time being, I still feel I must strive for the qualities I admire most in others and myself: excellence, honesty, justice.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

It’s nearly three a.m. on a Monday morning, and I will not be going to work tomorrow.

But the truth is, I don’t plan to go to work any time soon. A week ago, I turned down a completely fine offer for full time work. A job with benefits. Where I’d have perfectly nice co-workers, and a decent yearly salary.

I realized that I had a problem when I saw my voice mail early in the morning a few weeks ago, noted the phone number of the company in question’s HR department, knew, deep down, that they’d be calling with a job offer, then promptly went back to sleep and dreamed of getting turned down for the job. In my dreams, I was very, very happy.

Here, I have to note that I have a part-time job right now, one that is decently paying: I’m working from home doing grading for an educational testing company. It’s not thrilling work, and I won’t be rich, but it’s a living, or thereabouts, and it’s flexible work.

I asked them to give me time to think about the offer, and because they were generous, they did. So I thought about it, and asked for advice from those who know me on facebook.

Some of the responses:

work from home. no question about it. don’t even ask yourself again. just do it. i’d say this to virtually anyone weighing these option, but it especially applies to you.

More time home also gives you the time to work on art projects, which is better in the long run for you, I think.

Follow the ♥!

These people know me, so this advice meant the world. But that didn’t make the choice any less scary. Working full time has been the safe, mature, responsible decision in many respects–it’s meant security and stability. But it’s become increasingly untenable, if not just unpalatable, as I’ve gotten older, and particularly as my own writing’s become more and more important to me.

Because, when it comes down to it, no matter how fulfilling a job is, it will always just be a job to me. My work–my life and my passion–is my writing.

And my writing is enriched by other things that aren’t exactly job related: family, friends, road trips, television, music, art projects, adventures, long walks. And the only one of those things I’ve had time to work on over the past year was the walking thing, and only because I didn’t feel like paying for parking. Nearly all of my time was spent working, or writing. And it was frigging exhausting, and I can’t help but think that my writing–what really, really matters to me, the way that work matters for other people–suffered for it.

It’s been a week since I called up the very nice people who were kind enough to offer me work and turn them down. And right now, I’m at my mother’s house–a place I’ve visited only twice in eight months–and today I went to the city and the beach with my sister and my head is swarming with stories. I’ve realized that there’s something that urgently needs to be added to Seas Run Dry (I thought I was finished; perhaps not). And I’ve started to figure out not only the logistics of my new project, Trip, but also quite a bit about the characters and the settings. Individual scenes are beginning to materialize. It’s becoming palpable–a necessity for me to really be able to proceed. I’m itching to write, a feeling I haven’t had in awhile.

That’s not to say that pulling the plug on Full Time Work was easy. I’ll have to buy health insurance. I’ll have to perform well at my part-time job so that I can continue getting decent hours. I’ll have to manage a home office and not become a hermit.

But the worst part is the guilt, and the doubt. Despite Jewish upbringing, I was also raised with a strong pseudoprotestant work ethic. I worry that I might seem lazy, that my choice might be a self-indulgent one. I worry that it’s foolish to make such a choice without an agent, or a book deal, that with only a small handful of partials and fulls out I’m somehow tempting fate. I worry I worry I worry . . .

But still, I know that I have something that I want to share with the world. And I know that I need to honor it, and tend to it. I know that I can’t let it wither and die. This all sounds gradiose, I’m sure–though for some reason, it’s easier to make sweeping statements at three a.m., when one is sunburnt and sleepless. But I wanted to share these thoughts with you guys, as a sort of statement of intent, a manifesto, of sorts.

Way back when, my husband said, “It’s living in and writing your own story, and if it’s possible for you to do that, you should.” These words aren’t mine; I won’t tattoo them to my skin. But I’ll keep them in my heart and on my tongue, and I’ll do my best to be true to them. It’s that important to me.

I’ve been meaning to write a blog post on editing for awhile, but I’ve been busy . . . editing! Who would have thunk it?

I’ve said before that editing is hard work. That’s true. But I don’t think the phrase “hard work” really even begins to encompass the sort of hard work it really is. Last week, I was deep, deep, deep in editing hell. The eighth circle of editing hell, which is, I think, where writers who feel like frauds live.

I’d already added a few chapters to my novel and marked up the manuscript for line-editing, something I’ve come to think of, thanks to Saundra Mitchell as decrufting. Just marking up these changes took about two weeks in total, perhaps because the core of THE STONE SORTER was created in about a month for NaNoWriMo and was, therefore, a bit of a mess. To give you an idea, and because I always find this sort of thing interesting, here’s some snapshots of a few MS pages:

But about halfway through committing these pages to computer file, another beta reader finished the book. And suggested changes–big changes. And she was right. But what she was suggesting was a lot of work–ohgodthework–and I suddenly hit a wall, a flip-out wall, the first big one that I’ve hit since starting to write long-form fiction. It felt insurmountable. I was suddenly a hack, unable to see these things for myself–and how could I ever expect to get an agent and be published if I couldn’t see these things for myself?!

In her blog, Gretchen McNeil refers to this as the “Faux Suckitude Doldrums.” I think it’s a perfect name, she gives a completely terrific definition:

Faux Suckitude Doldrums -noun \foʊ sʌkˌɪˌtud ˈdoʊldrəmz\
A morbid state of self-imposed dejection whereby the writer/artist/musician has convinced his- or herself that they suck beyond all hope of redemption and the best and most effective course of action is to crawl under the bed and hide there until the zombie apocalypse of the coming of the Anitchrist, whichever occurs first.

Example: – “I’m thinking that I should just burn this manuscript and then cut off my hands so I can never inflict my pathetic excuse for fiction on the planet ever again.” – “Dude, put the machete down. You’re just suffering from FSD. Have some chocolate.”

In my feelings of terribleness, I decided that her writing about it was a completely great excuse to email her. So I did. And you know what’s great about YA writers, especially Gretchen McNeil? They’re really, really nice. She wrote me a totally reassuring and generous email back, the gist of which was: Quit worrying and keep writing. That evening, I wasn’t convinced. But I watched a few episodes of SuperNanny (perfect for times like these, when you don’t want to make any decisions for yourself but instead have the morality of a situation spelled out for you. Oh, those terrible parents!), slept on it, had a good conversation with my beta reader again the next morning, and realized what I had to do.

I had to keep at it, of course.

Which is where I am now. I’ve added another chapter, done some more shifting, have two or three more chapters to add, at least, before I think the knots will be untied, but I continue to press forward.

And improve. Which feels odd, in a way. After I finished this MS, I was all aflutter at how much I’d learned about novel writing in a year: that I need to know how the story ends, and the major stumbling blocks the characters face, and that I need to write a fairly clean MS to have any chance in hell of editing, and all of that. But the passages I’ve added are better written than what’s come before, and I don’t think it’s just on account of having more time to write them. Because I recently went back to a short story I wrote this summer and excised about 800 unnecessary words, easily. Editing, I realize, is a skill, too–and, like writing, one best learned by doing. Maybe that should have been self-evident. But at least now I feel okay going a little easier on myself (myself, mind you–not my drafts!), because I am, of course, still learning.

The Guardian recently posted some rules for fiction writing from fiction writers (Part One, Part Two). Some were terrific. Some I disagree with pointedly (what’s with all the internet hate? Any time I try to turn it off while writing, I just end up running to the computer every few minutes to “research.” The internet is as much a tool as it is a potential distraction). But it made me realize that I’ve learned a few things, too. I’m not full-of-myself enough to give you ten, but here’s five lessons I’ve learned the hard way:

1. Writing makes you a writer. Nothing else–not self-identification or delusions of grandeur or academic credentials. When people ask me about MFA programs now (and oh, do they ask!), I tell them that they’re a good place to make friends, drink, and avoid student loan payments. But they do nothing to make you a writer. Writing makes you a writer (and of course, plenty of MFAs don’t write any more while they’re in their MFA program than they do out of them. If you can’t write while working a desk job, you probably can’t write with a pile of papers to grade and friends urging you to go get smashed, either.)
2. A novel is a problem to be solved. Which is to say, your characters must face problems and solve them, but also you, as a writer, need to be actively engaged in resolving your characters’ conflicts too. Otherwise you just have a 300-page-vignette of word vomit, and the reader won’t care. Or this reader won’t, at least.
3. Novels are written in two places: while you have the manuscript in front of you, and at quiet moments when you’re doing something else, like going for walks or staring out the train window on your morning commute. Or in the shower. Give yourself time to be in it. This makes you a terrible guest at parties, but a much better writer.
4. Eventually, your characters will get away from you. Let them. This is scary at first, and will make you sound and feel like a 12-year-old fanfiction writer. But if your characters don’t have their own motivations, then you’ve failed to breathe life into them. Let them become their own people and shape their situation, not their actions, to drive the plot.
5. Write. When inspired, write. When in doubt, write. You’re smart enough to get through this, but smart isn’t enough. Talented isn’t enough. If you’re not working so hard it hurts, you’re not working hard enough.