Category Archives: confessions

Dear Sugar Revealed and How I Guessed Who She Was

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"Sugar"—as we knew her until last night

As so many of you know by now (maybe in part because I’ve been feverishly tweeting about it), the writer of the brilliant, beautiful, wise, and often gut-wrenching anonymous column “Dear Sugar” on the Rumpus was revealed at her coming-out party in San Francisco last night. I wish I’d been there to cheer her on. I’ve been a fan of this incarnation of Sugar since her early columns—I still remember the day I first read “The Baby Bird,” such an astounding piece, and how I crumpled into sobs over it. Though calling myself “a fan” of Sugar’s sounds almost too casual. Parts of me have been utterly transformed by reading her—it goes beyond being her fan. I’ve cried more times than I can count, and yes I’ve worn the “Write Like a Motherf*cker” T-shirt (I wore it during my residency at MacDowell last year… hoping its magic would work; it sure did). And for most of that time, I did know who Sugar really was… I’d guessed the secret like many of us have. And it never changed my relationship to the columns or my love for her writing. In fact, I think that knowing who she was made me love her all the more.

So I’m excited that everyone can now know that Sugar is…

Cheryl Strayed! Author of the incredible novel Torch and the upcoming memoir Wild—which we should all go out right now and pre-order to support and celebrate her. It comes out March 20! PRE-ORDER WILD RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW!

Cheryl Strayed

Photo of Cheryl Strayed by Joni Kabana

How did I guess who Sugar was so long ago? It was her voice. Cheryl Strayed has such a distinct, unflinching, unforgettable voice—and story—and her essays and fiction have stayed with me for years. So it was that after following the “Dear Sugar” column for some months I realized that something was tugging at me… something felt familiar… It reminded me of one of the most amazing things I’ve ever read in my life (was it through a Best American anthology or The Sun magazine, which my mom has a subscription to? I can’t recall). It was this essay, “The Love of My Life,” originally published in 2002. And it also reminded me of a short story I read in Nerve years ago, called “Good.”

I’ve never forgotten those two pieces—THAT’S how incredible of a writer Cheryl Strayed is. To write something so distinct and so memorable that someone who’s read it a long time ago would recognize you years later. (Not to mention her novel Torch, which I loved.) Imagine being a writer like that—a writer so yourself that strangers would know who you are based on your words. That’s what I aspire to become.

So, yes, I had my guess about the true identity of Sugar a long time ago. I then admit I paid very careful attention to the online personas of both Sugar and Cheryl Strayed (both of whom I followed online) to see if they were posting around the same times of day, and if they were ever offline at the same time. When they both went dark / on vacation for the same week, I knew I was right. And I was thrilled. THRILLED. It made me love Sugar and Cheryl all the more.

One of my friends, Christine Lee Zilka, was equally enamored with the Sugar columns (should I admit we were obsessed?) and I confided in her that I thought I’d guessed who it was. I told her my guess. Then she went off and did her own sleuthing and devouring of everything Cheryl Strayed had ever published and agreed. It had to be her. Then my friend and I made a vow that we would not tell anyone else our guess. Not anyone. Even if they begged us. (And I have been begged! Multiple times! I never broke.) I know a lot of us have guessed—probably because they read the same essay and short story I had—and we’ve all kept it quiet for so long.

Today I’m simply excited that all “Dear Sugar” fans can support Cheryl Strayed as she so deserves. She has been so generous with us, so willing to expose her soul to all of us, and help those who needed help, and she never asked anything in return.

I’ve written letters to Sugar, but I never sent them in to her. I was too afraid of what she’d tell me. I knew it could hurt. I knew it would change my life. And I wasn’t ready. All I know is I’ll keep reading anything and everything the woman publishes, under every name.

Here’s a wonderful interview with Cheryl Strayed in The New Yorker online about being Sugar. What she says in answer to the last question is very true. I’m one of those “avid fans”—and I will continue to be. I can’t wait for her new book! And while I’m in California in April, I’m trying to go to one of her readings so I can meet her in person!

I know you need her book now. Let’s all pre-order Wild!

Wild

p.s. If you read about my summer writing fantasies, you’ll remember it was one of my fantasies to take a workshop with her. I can’t afford to this summer, but if you can, are you crazy?? If it’s not sold-out by now, sign up!

An Unwitting Time Machine

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Hi. So um. So… about an hour ago while trying to figure out why comments on old posts weren’t showing up (it was something I had unknowingly checked in the settings; I fixed it) I accidently updated an old post marked “private” from 2006… and it was not only no longer private, it was republished as if it were new. I deleted the automated tweet, but I couldn’t delete the post that was sent out via my feed. So if you subscribe to this blog via email or on a feed reader, you may have seen a post go through called “Glug-Glug (That’s the Sound of Me Drowning)” and perhaps you were confused. I would be.

Please know:

  1. I am not ghostwriting again. (The YA novel I mention in that old post was a work-for-hire project.)
  2. I am not that massively stressed out that I feel like I’m drowning.
  3. I am not publishing a new short story, even though I wish I were.
  4. And, oh, we no longer have that loft bed.

That was an old post from 2006. (Fine, I’ll link it here so you know what I’m talking about. It mentions Big Bird.)

But a weird thing occurred while I was rereading this post from my archives. I remembered how things used to be. For a moment, I’d time-traveled back to 2006, waking up psycho-early for my day job because I had to slip my writing time into a couple hours before my stressful copyediting job began, since afterward I came home to my brain bleeding and could only collapse in front of the TV. This was during the time I’d pushed my own writing aside, what I thought of as my “real” writing, and was doing work-for-hire novels for money, a time I was not very happy, when I thought I’d never make it here, where I am today.

I think things are hard sometimes? Ha! Talk about perspective.

(Also, I wouldn’t be anywhere near here without E. Obviously.)

And, so you know how the aftermath of that post turned out, I did drop everything to do the revisions to the story, and it was published. However it now occurs to me: It turns out that the work-for-hire novel and other ghostwriting projects were more important than the adult litfic short stories I was trying to publish. I mean, who gave me first real shot… the YA/kidlit community or the old guard of adult fiction? So, in a way, I was wrong way back in 2006. I was doing something really important and I had no idea.

Anyway, all is well. I apologize for any confusion.

(This post used to have a link to the old short story in question, but yes, I deleted it.)

Appreciating Where I Am

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I’ve been looking around lately at where I am, I think because I know I’m leaving soon. (I’ll be away for a month-long stay at an artists colony in the California mountains—and I leave in March!) I didn’t grow up here in New York City, but I’ve always been drawn to this city. Really I can’t imagine a better place for me anywhere else in this world. Maybe that will change when I see San Francisco for the first time very soon, but until then…

I think it must be in my blood to love this city, ever since both branches of my family came here through Ellis Island and settled here (Brooklyn, Washington Heights). The city lives in me beyond that, from when I was little, when my parents worked in Manhattan, and I’d come from the mountains down to visit at the factory, romanticizing every moment, even the guarded walks through the Port Authority to get to the top level of the parking garage where we always parked the van, even the thunder of the sewing machines on the factory floor and the soot-covered windowsill where at four, five years old I’d gaze down from far above at the flood of yellow cabs in the street and imagine one day getting to ride in one. (My father’s side of the family owned a small flag-making business near Union Square.) It was a longtime dream of mine to live “downtown”—and though E and I couldn’t make it come true when we moved here for six months when we were both 19 (the only apartment we could afford in Alphabet City was full-on frightening so we moved to a cheaper place on 100th Street), it did finally come true after grad school, when my cushy university-subsidized housing ended upon graduation and we abandoned Morningside Heights for Greenwich Village.

So now, here I am. And my walk-up apartment might be tiny and dark and more than we can afford even with the rent stabilization, but lately I’ve been thinking that I am where I’ve always wanted to be. I’ve been wandering the streets of my neighborhood—through all its layers of history, which I adore imagining and reading about—thinking of how happy I am to be here. How here I am: writing a book under contract; freelancing in book publishing and being a part of making other writers’ books come to life; writing in coffee shops, often with friends; walking absolutely everywhere so I rarely have to go above 14th Street.

And yes, this all may be temporary, because I can’t know for sure what will happen with my new book proposal (fingers crossed). And sure, when I think of our financial reality I get very, very scared… but here, in this moment, you could say I’m perfectly OK.

I’m just appreciating what I have right now while I’m here having it.

For now, for today, you will find me revising my novel here:

On Broadway in the Village, looking up at my writing space

Between Turning Points

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Hi there. I admit I’ve been off-screen, where you can’t see, having a rough week or two. I’m not going to go into it.

My revision is due at the end of next month. Also, next month is my birthday (I am not a fan of my birthday). I may not want to talk to anyone at all for the entirety of February!

But here are some good things:

My revision for 17 & Gone may not be done yet, and I may have an enormous amount of work to do by February 29, but I’m very into the book. Very, very, very into it. So there’s that.

I also found a photograph that goes with the book in my mind—no, authors can’t choose their own covers, but in my imagination this is it. I love this photo so much that I’m arranging to buy a print from the photographer, who happens to live in my hometown of Woodstock, New York, and is a high school friend of my sister’s.

And next month one of my Favorite Books of 2012 comes out… The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour. I’m interviewing the author and I’ll be giving away a copy of her gorgeous, thrilling, sexy new novel. Believe me, you want to read this book.

And I got good news this week, at a moment when I really needed it. And it made me think of how colony news always comes at just the moment I need that one thing to push me forward (like that time I found out about Yaddo after I’d just been moved to a cubicle at work and how that felt like a door had been opened).

Thank you, Millay Colony acceptance, for coming at the moment you did.

(Yes, I think I will be living with other artists and writers in that barn!)

I accepted the residency, and I’ll be there in the fall, even though I have no idea what my future holds for me in terms of upcoming book contracts, or day jobs, or anything really.

And yeah, this is going to be an interesting year. Because I’ll have two four-week-long writing retreats in 2012… I leave for Djerassi in just six weeks:

And while there I might be writing something you don’t know about yet. And I might be finding out that the Turning Point I thought I had a few years ago was only the first one. Because life takes you on many turns, doesn’t it?

Everything these other writers have said has resonated with me in one way or another: Gayle Forman telling me not to be bitter. Sean Ferrell telling me to stop making excuses. Eileen Cook on how you can’t know until you try. Christopher Barzak reminding me how much I used to love writing short stories. Saundra Mitchell telling me it is okay to walk away if I want to walk away. Eric Luper on not writing what I think the industry wants me to write. Gretchen McNeil on how everything happens for a reason. Julia DeVillers on taking the chance to write something uncomfortable because it just might be the right thing. I know these Turning Points guest blogs aren’t written only for my benefit… but some days it sure feels like they are.

A Moment of Feeling Free

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First off, thank you to everyone who’s come here for the launch of the Turning Points blog series this week! Thank you for making Gayle Forman and Sean Ferrell feel welcome and commenting on their amazing, inspiring, and brilliant posts. (If you missed these two opening posts—oh but you can’t miss them!—please just ignore my own boring blog o’ the day and go read Gayle’s guest post on overcoming bitterness and finding gratitude and Sean’s guest post on realizing the Writer never shows up.) The Turning Points series will be back next week. I’m taking the day off for MLK day, so look for a new post on Tuesday, and three posts in total next week! I love each of these posts and can’t wait for you to read them.

But if you’re still here, I’ll tell you a strange thing: Last night I had a delicious dinner (gnocchi!) with an editor friend, and I was talking about my publishing junk and I realized how light I felt about it all. Like… anything I used to worry about and strain myself over really didn’t matter so much anymore because I couldn’t control it, so there was no point in worrying. Even like some of the things I’d taken so seriously before were not really so important. Like things were fine. Like I was perfectly content and okay.

Yeah… strange moment, right?

Now why am I feeling this way? No idea. Maybe it’s that I love the novel I’m revising and the writing went exceptionally well yesterday. Maybe it’s that I finished a new draft of a proposal for a new novel and I’m proud of myself for turning that in. Maybe it’s that I have ideas for future novels and I just want to focus on getting to the place where I can write them. Maybe it’s my writer friends, who help more than they know. Maybe part of it is even how I’m spending time focusing on these new features on my blog: thinking about other writers and their books instead of mine. I love doing that. Maybe it’s simply that it’s a new year and feels like a fresh start.

So I woke up this morning feeling lighter than I have in a long time. As I said on Twitter, I feel like this:

Yes, that’s the morning Angela Chase woke up and discovered she was inexplicably “over” Jordan Catalano.

Now, in this analogy does that make the publishing industry my Jordan Catalano? That makes a terrible kind of sense.

I don’t know how long my good feeling will last. But it’s nice while I have it.

Come back next week for more authors revealing their Turning Points! (And I’m still giving away Imaginary Girls… you can enter here.)

New Blog Series: Turning Points (+ Opening Giveaway!)

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It’s a new year, and time for a new blog series here on distraction no. 99.

The theme of the new blog series is a meaty* one: Turning Points


I asked various authors this question: What was your turning point as a writer? And, I have to say, from the posts that have been sent in to me so far, I am humbled, thrilled, surprised, and most of all inspired by the great response that came from the asking of this question.

There are some truly incredible posts coming up—all about writing struggles, writing breakthroughs, the low points, the high points, the shocking points that changed everything… and much more. I can’t wait for you to read them.

Now, where did the theme of “turning points” first surface in my head? Sort of accidentally, when, in March 2011 before Imaginary Girls was published, I blogged a story about how I gave up writing adult fiction and began writing YA.

I said things like:

Not so many years ago, I had a turning point in my writing career. An “Aha!” moment. Something made me remember it yesterday and I wanted to share it here—to show how you might think you’re going one way down a certain path you’ve carved for yourself, but in fact there’s another path carved for you. There it is, waiting, glimmering in the near distance. It was your true path all along.

And:

…I remember very clearly looking up, straight into the sun shining through the office window, lighting up my new glossy wooden desk and the bright white proof pages, thinking, I didn’t know a YA novel could be like this! Thinking, What if—and this would be the first moment I’d consciously think this—what if I wrote a YA novel, too?

I’d only meant to tell my blog readers how I ended up writing YA, but that post seemed to resonate with a lot of people—and was featured on the WordPress “fully pressed” page, so more people than my usual audience here saw it and began flooding the piece with comments on their own turning points. Which I thought was pretty amazing.

[Click here to read the full post on my turning point as a writer.] 

So this got me thinking that many of us have these stories. Setting out to write and publish our books isn’t such an easy, well-lit path, is it? Not everyone knows exactly what they’re doing when they begin, and things very rarely—if ever—go as planned. In my case, things fall apart and stitch themselves back together in better, more brilliant ways than I’d originally intended. And once one turning point has been maneuvered, another comes around when it’s least expected. (I may be in the midst of one now, but I’ll need some distance to know for sure.)

The Turning Points blog series will be an ongoing feature on this blog, with about three posts a week, for as long as I have authors’ stories to share. There will be quite a few giveaways included with these posts, so keep an eye out for ways to win books, generously donated by their authors. [Keep checking back on the giveaways page to see all open giveaways on this site.]

The series is starting this week—on Wednesday, January 11 with a wonderful, inspiring guest blog by one of my favorite YA authors. Those of you who’ve been longtime readers of this blog may remember me posting about how much I love this author’s books. Who could it be? And what turning point might this author be revealing to us?

I think you’ll really want to come back on Wednesday to find out.

* I felt so weird typing that word, as a vegetarian. 

If you’d like to keep up with the Turning Points blog series, please add distraction no. 99’s feed to your RSS reader, or scroll down to the bottom of this site, on the left, and you will see a button to subscribe to this blog by email, so you’ll be notified whenever a new post goes up.

BUT WAIT.

I want to say this:

Hey, you. Yes, YOU. If you are an author—published or on your way to being published; YA or adult or children’s or nonfiction or comics or screenplays or poems; or even a person who worked toward becoming a writer and has since gone on to become something else—and this theme of Turning Points deeply resonates with you, I’d love to include your guest blog in this series. Just email me.

A note about the artwork: All the Turning Points blog series illustrations, like the one at the top of this post, will be by Robert Roxby. You can contact him directly for more information about his design work and illustrations (and check out both the “What Scares You?” and the “What Inspires You” blog series to see more of his amazing illustrations!). 

The giveaway is now closed. Thank you for entering!

 

 

 

 

 

See you back here Wednesday for the start of the series—with guest blogs, and more giveaways, and stories of perseverance, reinvention, and inspiration.

Time Travel, a New Year, and No Apologies

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Happy New Year! I spent the first part of 2012 going back in time, rereading and making edits to a book I first conceived in 2007, and wrote in 2008, and saw published in 2009. Fade Out (aka Dani Noir with a new face and new changes to the insides) will be coming out this year, in June, and I have the opportunity to make minor updates to it before it does. Now, I should say that I am restraining myself, I am. But there are some line edits I’m making and a new layer to the character that I’m lifting up into the light (it was there from the start, but buried for a middle-grade audience; it wasn’t difficult at all to bring it out now that the book is being reissued on the YA shelves, since, for me, this piece to my character was always there), and as I’m working this morning in my café it occurs to me just how strange this is:

I never reread my work once it’s published—except when I read pieces aloud to you, at readings.

I let go and I don’t look back.

So it’s a peculiar thing to be looking back. I remember writing Dani Noir, watching all those noir movies to get in the mood, and how much fun it was. I just finished rereading and editing the whole book, and I think it’s really cute. I like this book. It’s what I meant it to be. I’m happy that Simon Pulse is giving it a second chance as Fade Out.

Now, to return to 2012—our new year!—and into the deep, dark trenches of 17 & Gone. I’m already working through my New Year’s Resolutions, and part of that is living the life I’m living, being the writer I am instead of what I think anyone else wants me to be. I can’t be.

17 & Gone is exactly what I mean by this, so you’ll see soon enough once revisions are done.

This is the year I write solely for myself and no apologies. How freeing.

What’s different for you this year? Let’s make it happen.

And the Year Ends and I’m Still Writing

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The year is ending on a good note. Not that there’s any great news to report—I have no news, actually, I am utterly and entirely between bouts of news, since this is a quiet period of simply working hard and writing—but I’m ending the year with the knowledge that I’ve found it again. It­-it. My love of writing.

After a tough grumble of a year, most of which occurred behind the curtain, a year that included a faceoff with writer’s block the likes of which I’ve never had before (and, honestly, I never before truly believed “writer’s block” existed) and such a furnace of doubt raging inside me I’m surprised my hair didn’t catch fire, I have it back. The pleasure in writing again. That’s why I’m here in the first place. It’s all because writing—the act itself—brought me such great pleasure all those years ago before publication was even a possibility and I wanted to find a way to continue to do it for the rest of my life. With 2011’s writing struggles and hiccupping sense of inspiration, I found myself holding this small, urgent question inside me for a long time: Do I really want to be an author, now that I know what it’s like? Which led to another more urgent question: What am I if I don’t write? Which led to an answer: I can’t not write. Which circled back to tell me: I have to write because I love it, and I’ll always write books, no matter what.

It seems so obvious now.

So the end of the year is here, and I pulled through, and I’m in a wonderful place, revising 17 & Gone thanks to my editor, and tweaking my new book proposal for what could be my next YA novel thanks to my agent, and simply feeling better in general thanks to the generous people in my life (hi, Mom! hi, E!). All is well. My writing is going well, and I love that feeling.

If you’ve been struggling, I hope it passes. I hope you look back in your rearview once we speed ahead into this new year and see your struggles are long gone.

Happy New Year, writers and creative people! May we make good things in 2012.

2012 Writing Resolutions Photographed

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I’ve made my writing resolutions for 2012. I wanted them to be attainable goals, and by that I mean goals I could actually meet—without needing to rely on (or wait on, or hope on, or plead with) any other person outside myself. I do have dream-worthy things I wish would happen to my writing career next year, but they are just that: dreams. I have no control over if they’ll come true or not. Instead, I want to walk into this new year with actual things I can make an effort to accomplish, change, and pursue. I want to look back and see I moved forward on my own two feet.

So.

Some of my resolutions are very realistic goals.

Some will be very difficult.

One scares me.

Another is going to be really fun.

But here they are anyway—the seven writing resolutions I have for 2012, photographed as evidence!

What? Did you think I’d actually show you the resolutions before they’ve had a chance at coming true? There’s a little magic in keeping things close and giving them a chance to happen. So I’m doing just that.

I have seven unpublished photographs of the resolutions opened up so you can read them. I’ll show you each one and reveal what my resolutions were at the end of 2012. And by then I can tell you if I kept my word to myself…

…I don’t know if I can, but I’ll try!

Will you share your writing resolutions with me, even if I haven’t shared mine (yet) with you? I’ll wait a year if I have to!

All the Surprising Things That Happened in 2011

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At the end of every year I look back at this blog to see what happened to me—what I made happen, and what I had no idea was even coming. I tend to forget things, and confuse time and reorder events in my memory, and often the novels I’m writing seem more real than the life I’m existing in, so having a blog helps to remind me that I did do things. Things did happen. There were twelve months that just went by and, after this year especially, I’ve been changed as a person.

I ended 2010 having worked very hard to complete the very last of my revisions for my debut YA novel Imaginary Girls.

Here’s what happens next in 2011…

January:

I vanish into the woods… literally.

February:

I faint from blurbs.

March:

I recall my turning point as a writer—and why I began writing YA fiction.

April:

I feel exposed.

May:

I let go of old books.

June:

My book comes out and I interview a real girl behind Imaginary Girls.

July:

I admit how close I am to my book.

August:

I crawl out of my cave into the sun for the big SCBWI summer conference.

September:

I (finally) finish my first draft.

October:

I tell you what scares me. (And ask others to tell you, too.)

November:

I tell you what inspires me. (And ask others to tell you, too.)

December:

I revise, and I revise, and I revise 17 & Gone. (And I get the above fortune at a fancy dinner.)

There’s so much more that happened beyond the public sphere of this blog—and that’s one important lesson I learned in 2011: I can’t share everything with the world anymore, now that I’m living this parallel life as an author. I’ve had to start keeping a private journal again. And I need to thank a few of my writer friends for listening during some of the more dramatic moments. Thank you, CS, CZ, LB, MO.

I know a little about what will be coming in 2012. I’ll be finishing my revision of 17 & Gone, and revising some more after that. I’ll be asking other authors to write about their own turning points—come back for those guest blogs in a new series starting this January. I know I’ll also be vanishing for a little while. I’ll be writing on a mountain in California for a whole month this spring. By summer I’ll be celebrating the paperback release of two books with new faces: Imaginary Girls in paperback and Fade Out, aka Dani Noir. I’ll be seeing what happens with this new novel proposal I’m working on, fingers crossed. And maybe in 2012 I’ll hear some yeses, maybe I’ll hear some nos, but I’ll be hoping for the yeses—for me, and for you.

So how was your 2011? What happened to YOU?