Today I’m thinking about chasing long-held dreams and finally stopping all the excuses and the, “I’ll do it tomorrow.” Or “Next year.” Or the vague but still hopeful “One day.” You see, this is a thing I do to myself, and have been doing for years. I have dreams of writing certain novels. Of moving … Continue reading Chasing Dreams, Literary Magazines, and Why Not Now?
confessions
Facing The Handmaid’s Tale Today
I first read The Handmaid’s Tale when I was 12 years old in the late 1980s. I discovered it on my mother’s bookshelves, and I was fascinated by the story, not scared as much as I should have been but stilled by possibility, intrigued. I surely didn’t understand a lot about the book (much as … Continue reading Facing The Handmaid’s Tale Today
Look
Look, it has been difficult to write much of anything that feels worthy lately, living in this world. This morning the news is a child suicide bomber who killed 50 people at a wedding. The suicide bomber was no older than 14. There is flooding, and people have lost their homes. There are fires, and … Continue reading Look
Finding My Place
My career has felt like a long series of searches, and nothing is ever illuminated until I am practically standing right on top of it. Trying to get published, to get an agent, in the beginning, was crushing. I slipped back in my archives to see if I should share a post, found something painful, … Continue reading Finding My Place
The End of an Extraordinary, Wordless Year; Some New Hopes for 2016
At the end of every year, I have hope for the new year. Every year, I think of all the things I could make happen… all the things I want to try for, all the ways I might do better, do more... I am extremely ambitious, many times blindly and to my detriment, and it’s my ambitions … Continue reading The End of an Extraordinary, Wordless Year; Some New Hopes for 2016
When to Resurrect the Dead Manuscript Under Your Bed?
I’m struggling with something, an ongoing thing I’ve been struggling with for years. It’s about the novels that live under my bed. The two unpublished novels I wrote before I almost gave up writing, and then discovered ghostwriting, and, soon after, YA. Two novels totaling eight and a half years of my life. Two novels … Continue reading When to Resurrect the Dead Manuscript Under Your Bed?
The Teaching, the Inspiration, the Chupacabra, the Not-Writing
This has been my most public year, ever, in my life. It's been wonderful... and it's also been somewhat of an adjustment for a shy person like me. So much of 2015 has been about teaching. I really made this goal a priority to have better balance in my life—the ultimate goal was to get … Continue reading The Teaching, the Inspiration, the Chupacabra, the Not-Writing
The Surprises, the Failures, the New Chapters in This Author Life
When I entered the YA world in 2010, with the impending publication of Imaginary Girls (before that I didn’t feel a welcome part of it because my debut was middle-grade), I looked around at all the authors and thought there was one single kind of career to aspire to, the Best Kind, and of course … Continue reading The Surprises, the Failures, the New Chapters in This Author Life
Filling the Well
I hear this advice often—I think I read it first from Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, one of the books I borrowed from my mother’s bookshelf way back when. Artists need time to “fill the well,” or replenish our creative resources, especially after we’ve completed large, all-encompassing, energy-draining projects such as novels that … Continue reading Filling the Well
What THE WALLS AROUND US Means to Me
My new book, The Walls Around Us, was published today! I would be so thrilled and honored if you considered buying it this week from your favorite independent bookstore or ordering it through your local library—first-week sales do help authors so much, that’s the truth. But most of all, however you may get your hands … Continue reading What THE WALLS AROUND US Means to Me
