On Breaking New Years Resolutions and Meeting Lifelong Goals

I made exactly two resolutions at the beginning of 2011: to rock the knee-high argyle socks off my job, and to read fifty books—five in each of ten categories I wanted to read more frequently. And, well… I didn’t do either of them.

I didn't do them, but in reality I did so much more. Rather than rocking the job that I had at the beginning of 2011, I came to accept that it wasn’t helping me get where I wanted to be, and I made the difficult decision to leave it for a much riskier but much more fulfilling position at Bancroft Press. And while I didn’t read all fifty of the books I set out to read at the beginning of the year, I read sixty-three books in total, including several manuscripts I provided editorial feedback for and a whole herd of books I read either to prepare for interviews or as a part of the new jobs I took in 2011.

In truth, 2011 was a year of accomplishments. I took a risk on a contract job in children’s books that taught me an immense amount and renewed my passion for the field, and from there I stepped up into an even better position in children’s books as the Assistant Marketing Manager at Bloomsbury & Walker Books for Young Readers. I not only survived the first two years out of college (someone once told me those would be the hardest two years of my life, and boy were they right), but I came out of them with flying colors. I moved to New York City, was tough as nails throughout a difficult apartment search and lease negotiation, and befriended roommates who truly make the city feel like home for the first time. I majorly increased the traffic to this blog and (in my opinion) upped the quality of its content, which has spurred enlightening conversations with wonderfully insightful readers all over the internet. And in less than five months at Bloomsbury, I’ve quadrupled the group’s followers on Twitter and helped brainstorm several innovative, exciting marketing programs and promotions for the company’s books, including a really exciting one for Fracture which I can’t wait to share.

2011 plucked me off every path I tried to walk down and plopped me onto new roads I never quite expected to take. It was a year that made me struggle to get a glimpse at my own future. It was often frightening or frustrating, and I was always aware that I should be controlling my own future and yet unable to do anything but hold my breath and leap or stumble forward. And yet, by its end 2011 saw the fulfillment of the goal I set for myself, however spectrally, in 2001—a goal I’ve been actively working towards since 2009.

I realized this late last November, when I stumbled across and reread my personal journal from 2009, the year I graduated from college. 2009 was a difficult year, as anyone who entered (or tried to enter) the workforce at the height of the financial recession can tell you. It dealt my self-confidence blow after blow, and I spent most of it struggling not just to heal my suffering self-esteem and decide what to do with my life, but also to feed and house myself in a city I couldn’t afford or bring myself to like. I remember it as a year of incredible downs, but I was surprised to find in my journal several moments of powerful hope. And, most poignantly of all, I found this moment of self-reflection from a week before I graduated from college and began that difficult journey:

I can remember back to when I was trying to choose a college, and I learned about Phi Beta Kappa and about Goucher's college literary arts magazine, and I told myself that I wanted to make it into Phi Beta Kappa and I wanted to be the editor-in-chief of the lit mag by senior year… I didn't think either of those things would happen… I can't explain how accomplished I feel, having fulfilled to two huge goals I set for myself a very long time ago, when I was a very different person, but just as driven. And I think that I will never stop being driven like that, and since I want to be in publishing so badly, I will never stop trying until I'm in.

And, what do you know, I am in.

It hasn’t been easy at all. A lot of times it’s been terrifyingly uncertain or incredibly painful. But everything I’ve done since graduating college has led me right to where I am now—happy, and doing the work I’ve always wanted to do. And whatever resolutions I’ve broken along the way, I’ve at least proven to myself, once again, that when I set goals I meet them. With flying colors.

YA Cover (and Cultural) Trends: Turning the Discussion Over to You!

Writer and Publisher Friends, do you know you are the BEST at commenting? I hope the ongoing discussion of the sad, sorry state of women in our cultural consciousness isn’t driving anyone else to drink. (Are you feeling down? Do you need a hug? Here, here is an adorable malamute puppy for your sanity-restoring pleasure—but my flatmates and I call first puppy-hugging dibs.)

The discussions on my last two posts have been so well-informed and genuinely insightful that today I want to turn the spotlight over to you. The following are some of the comments and responses that made me stop and reconsider my position, that followed me away from my computer and onto the train or into the office or to my feminist lunch hour with Regina (hopefully a new tradition?), or that added something to the conversation that I couldn’t have added on my own.


Seanan McGuire wrote an interesting post on her own blog that, in part, provides a response to the common “But the cover reflects something that happens in the book” argument:

I've read several of these books. Putting a wilted waif in a beautiful bower on the cover is the equivalent of putting a wilted waif in a beautiful bower on the cover of Sparrow Hill Road. Yeah, Rose is long dead when the series starts, but why is that the image we need to focus on? Why is that the moment that sells the book?

I feel Seanan put her finger on the exact reason that I’m complaining about dead girls on book covers, and not about girls dying in books (though who knows, tomorrow is another day). The books I posted are far more varied in their themes and subject matter than their covers reflect, and the common visual ground chosen to represent and sell these books tells me something about the culture that created them—about the images we find worthy of our attention and gaze. What do you think? Are the cover images really the right moments of the book to be illustrated?

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In both the comments on my original post and in her own forum post here, Ami Angelwings brought up another heartbreaking conclusion that can be drawn from the interest of girls in images that suggest their own deaths:

A dead girl's corpse is perfect. It's not going to get old, or get fat, or eat too much, or sleep with too many people, or the wrong people, or cheat, or be gossipy, or sinful, or talk back, or the million other things society demonizes about women and our passions, desires and appetites. We're just beautiful and nothing more, just like a woman should be. To be the perfect woman, you have to be dead.

She shares her experience as someone who has recovered from anorexia, but who used to struggle not only to reach a certain beauty ideal, but who rarely forgot that, once reached, that sense of perfection would only have to be maintained. Certainly that exact experience isn’t universal to all girls, but do you think it’s something that teenage girls in particular might be able to relate to?

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Along a similar line of thought, an anonymous commenter chalked these covers up to our cultural fear of aging:

Could it be that the dead girl on the cover of the books appeal to teens because it represents a state of physical arrest? These dead girls in pretty dresses aren't growing, they aren't changing. The image is of a perfect, pale and pretty girl, one who doesn't have to worry about armpit hair, cramps, zits, college, jobs, PMS or becoming her mother. Being dead is great not because they hate their teenage girlish bodies --it's because our culture is youth obsessed. Being dead is great because it means you get to stay young. That's why vampire books are romances, and zombie books tend to be horror stories. Because getting old and rotting is something to fear.

Put in those terms, I can certainly see how this source of fascination could be more universal to girls, and particularly relevant to girls during their teen years. What are your thoughts? Does this change how you feel about the trend, or convince you that the fascination with death is more a part of growing up than a product of our culture? Or does it seem like even more of a product of our culture when you look at the trend this way?

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Interestingly, the vast majority of the authors whose book covers appeared in my post said that they had never thought of their cover model as dead. Building on that, Aimee Carter tweeted, “I see life (or the fight for it, which fascinates me) in most of those covers,” and Holly Black weighed in with the opinion that the internal tension created by the questions these covers ask—either “is the girl dead?” or “will she survive?”—holds the viewer’s attention and makes the covers successful. What do you think? Do the girls on those book covers look dead? Does it matter, if the initial impression the viewer gets is one of death, or at least passivity?

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CuddleBug looks at what would seem to be the antithesis of the dead girl cover—the butt-kicking heroine cover—and finds a surprisingly similar trend of passivity. She calls it "waif-fu": the cover image that suggests an active heroine but, through skimpy clothing and a supermodel pose clearly designed to show off more than her biceps (in fact, what biceps? That might make her look less slender!). Looking at the slew of covers CuddleBug features, it's hard to convince oneself that the audience they cater to is free of male gaze. And though I prefer a living, albeit sexualized, girl to a dead one, it's hard to see these as better role models for teens. As CuddleBug says:

Our options for female role models would appear to be either beautiful and passive young women posing around doing nothing in a pretty dress, or a beautiful ass-kicker who looks like she should be a supermodel. Who also, may I add, is not doing anything.

In this case, I don't think what causes young women to be attracted to these images is as much internalized misogyny as internalized ideals of beauty. Of course, one could argue that it's six of one and a half dozen of the other, but an excellent commenter on my last post did point out that there's a difference between misogyny and antifeminism. In any case, though, it does allow me to talk not just about these images, but also about a character trope that crops up frequently, especially in speculative fiction: the BAMF. Most sci-fi especially seems to feature at least one character that writers or directors can point to and say "Don't look at me, I put a strong woman in my work!" These characters are powerful, yes, and pretty evidently in possession of lady-parts, which is clear from their skimpy dress. But these characters are powerful solely in a way that's considered masculine. And while there are many women in the real world who kick butt and take names like its their job, the existence of those character types as the only strong female in a particular story world implies that there is no other way to be a strong woman—which simply isn't true. What do you think? And, is this a trend that extends to YA, or do you think it exists mostly in the world of adult books right now?

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For Zoë Marriott, the fairy tale trope implied by a number of these images carries with it an even darker implication than what we explored in last week's post. To explain, she goes back to the origins of the Snow White and Sleeping Beauty stories, which existed long before the Brothers Grimm prettied them up:

What really happens is that a travelling prince, in the course of his adventures, comes across an apparently sleeping young woman who is unable to defend herself, and rapes her. Then he goes on his merry way. About nine months later, the girl gives birth to a child, and this experience (not surprisingly) finally wakes her from her slumber. And then (the part which always makes me feel the most squinky) the girl is so grateful for having finally escaped the curse that she goes after the travelling prince, thanks him very much for his random sexual assault, and ends up getting married to him.

This represents a fairly strong and very dark male fantasy - that of the unresisting victim. A girl who can't fight or struggle because she is incapacitated. A girl who, although unable to offer any kind of consent to sexual activity, of course actually wants it. A girl who will even thank you for it later on.

And that's an even more powerful and heartbreaking concept than what I originally tackled in my post about dead girls on covers and internalized misogyny. If these covers both imply and idealize not just death, but also rape... what does that say about our culture?

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Glitter and Gore looks at horror, a genre in which you might expect to see a lot of dead girl covers, and finds traces of the dead-girl trend in re-releases of some of her favorites. What’s more, she sees an overwhelming trend towards passivity in the girls pictured:

What confuses me most is that, judging by the few of these books I have read, the heroines inside their pages are NOT submissive. They're tough, resourceful, and intelligent. Sometimes selfish or a little naive, but for the most part, they aren't at all like the images in these covers would make them out to be. But the covers are what entice people to read books, or should be. They are taking strong young women and turning them into prettified zombies.

Rae Carson tweeted something similar: “I wonder if it's a subset of a larger trend of passive female protags on covers? So many look simply vacant & beautiful.” Is that the more applicable trend here? Certainly that does open it up to include even more images we typically see in the media. It even ties in with the fairy tale tropes we talked about last week.

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And finally, in response to my discussion of the fairy tale trope in last week’s post, Katherine Langrish came to the defense of fairy tales:

I'd just like to add that the fairytales most often cited in these comments - Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, with their obviously passive heroines, are not necessarily at all typical of fairytales in general, many of which have extremely vigorous and adventurous heroines: Molly Whuppie, the Master-Maid, Lady Mary and the heroine of 'Fitcher's Bird', both of whom see off the Bluebeard figures in their respective tales, and the intrepid heroine of 'East of the Sun, West of the Moon' who rescues the Prince. The fact that our best known fairytales are those with passive heroines is not a reflection upon fairytale as a genre, but upon anthology choices and rewritings made - often - in the early 20th century and perpetuated ever since.

I’m so glad she brought this up, first because I’d be insane to totally write off fairy tales as a genre, and as an absolutely vital part of the history of storytelling, and secondly because it brings up a ridiculously important point that I’ve only be tangentially addressing in my posts. That point is that the stories we choose to share, versus those we choose to silence or at least omit from our discussions, go a long way in reflecting or shaping the culture that we get to live in. The choice of which stories to anthologize—made again and again favoring stories with passive female protagonists—tells us a lot about the subconscious agenda of those making the choices. The choice to anthologize or retell the story of Snow White rather than the story of Molly Whuppie (much like the choice to illustrate the deal-girl scene of a book rather than any other) both reflects and shapes the culture to which it is told. And it’s a culture in which the stories of adventurous heroines aren’t told that allows passivity in women to be idealized in the first place.


Share your thoughts!

YA Cover Trends and the Fairy Tale Archetype

There were so many fascinating comments on my post about the dead-girl trend in YA book cover design that I hardly know where to begin addressing them. But as I ambled over to the coffee shop where I write these posts, something about the sight of winter branches and the feel of warm air that lies of springtime turned my thoughts to fairy tales, and from fairy tales back to this discussion.

In the comments on my cover trends post, Suelder called my attention to her own fascinating reading of these images:

I think you may be missing a possible archetypal answer… In fairy tales, the heroine often undergoes death (Snow White) sleep (sleeping beauty) or some other transformation (Swan Lake). In order for the heroine to leave her childhood behind, there often needs to be a symbolic death. It can be innocuous, such as Rapunzel cutting off her hair, or something more literal (Snow White again).

That’s an excellent point, but, regardless, I don’t believe that that interpretation negates my point about the internalized misogyny that these cover images suggest. If anything, I’d argue that an archetypal reading only adds complexity to the problem.

The fairy tale death archetype, in and of itself, is steeped in some troubling implications. Another commenter, Penni Russon, said it wonderfully:

I was interested in the comment above about death as a transitional state in the fairytale narrative. I still think there is a troubling trend there - Snow White and Sleeping Beauty 'die' and are reborn through being loved as beauty objects - they awake to marriage. Even Rapunzel's 'death' in removing her hair is a transition towards marriage. If anything in fairytale narrative when a woman dies it is the autonomous self who dies, the rebirth is marriage and a dissolving of self into (an arguably more powerful) other, not a reinstatement of that self. I guess I am someone who doesn't think that being a princess is particularly empowering.

In truth, the “transformation” undergone by Snow White and Sleeping Beauty can as easily be viewed as a transfer of ownership from the domination of a wicked stepmother to the (albeit more benign, but still ruling) leadership of a prince and husband. That message is no more empowering for young women than the call to action to leave a beautiful corpse. And the obsessive “Disney-Princessing” of American culture is all the proof we need that the fairy tale archetype is idealized and internalized by many a young girl.

What’s more, I don’t actually think the myths implied by the fairy-tale-death archetype are all that different from those implied by the concept of the beautiful dead girl.

Another super-smart commenter on Kristin Nelson’s post in response to mine over at Pub Rants, Lucy V Morgan noted that fairy tales actually provide some of our earliest and most culturally ingrained examples of the beautiful or poetical deaths we see in art and on book covers:

If anything, both within the text and on the covers, many of these girls entered a Sleeping Beauty/Snow White-style near-death (ie they don't actually die in the book). SB and SW are probably some of the earliest examples of this beautiful "death" Rachel Stark talks about--Snow White was even put on "exhibition" in a glass case. Both girls were woken by their Princes.

So we meet these YA cover girls in the near-death before their Princes arrive (which is usually the case for the story), the implication being that the girl is not truly alive until she meets her "Prince". She is just on exhibition...

In fairy tales like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, the Prince is usually moved to kiss the heroine by the beauty of her corpse—or rather, by the desirable qualities he projects onto her lifeless form. Sound familiar? If you recall Marina DelVecchio’s description of the dead women depicted in media as “merely a body, a vacant, empty, vessel intended to contain the needs of others—preferably men—and her body, which is the most desired aspect of her existence, perfect, lithe, smooth and hair-free, is open for interpretation and domination,” it might. Like the poetically dead girls of the book covers I called out, the fairy-tale heroine is the perfect blank canvas for a prince’s desire.

And just as the few men and boys who do appear dying on book covers tend to be depicted in an active, heroic pose, the men who undergo this death-as-rebirth archetype in literature tend to be much more active participants in their own transformations. To use the example that Suelder cited, Gandalf falls to his death in order to defeat the Balrog in the Mines of Moria, but he returns to a future that is drastically different from the futures of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. He returns as an independent agent, devoid of any of his prior doubts, possessed with a purpose, and not only powerful but also in complete control of his abilities. This, I’d argue, is an appropriate metaphor for the transformation from child to adult—so why is it that so few of the women who experience the fairy-tale-death archetype do so in this way?


The concept of death as a means of growth and rebirth is a powerful one in Western culture, and it seems particularly appropriate in literature for young adults, who are constantly shedding one version of themselves in favor of another, more experienced and mature self. Indeed, I agree with the many commenters who argued that death has an important place in YA. As writers, as readers, and as viewers, we shouldn’t shy away from images and stories of death. But, even as we recognize the transformative power of death—its nature as a doorway, as my roommate Victoria Schwab elegantly describes it—it’s important to examine how the nature of that transformation reflects and shapes our expectations surrounding gender.

Thanks again for all the great comments and the incredible discussion. More thoughts soon! In the meantime, tell me what you think of fairy tales. Is there a way to make the fairy-tale-death archetype a good thing? And on another note, how do you view death in stories? In YA in particular?

A Little Bit More on Twilight—And How About All That OTHER YA Romance?

Thanks to everyone who read my last post and joined in on the discussion. It’s been great to see the discussion shared around the web, and your comments have been so incredibly insightful and enlightening. You guys are awesome, and you give me all kinds of hope for this crazy world of books and readers.

This week I wanted to share and respond to a comment from a new reader, Reinhardt:

My concern over a larger swath of YA is the emphasis on relationships that can serve to reinforce co-dependence (abusive and otherwise). How many books can you think of that have the main female character pining, needing to be with a guy to feel fulfilled? I think this is a more insidious issue, in that this co-dependence (especially of teenage girls, but not exclusively so) is already normalized, and has been for a very long time. Hey, I'm a dude, and as one of the few who like reading "girl books”… I find the predilection of characters who can only find true personhood inside a romantic relationship as disturbing as Twilight-esque relationships. Really, they are the same, only with different degrees of creepiness.

In short: WHAT HE SAID, GUYS.

This is something I discuss a lot with my friends and colleagues, but not something I’ve posted about on here before. Reinhardt pretty well hit the nail on the head.

Experiencing love and heartbreak for the first time is an incredibly meaningful part of growing up and finding oneself, and thus it’s no surprise that it finds its way into so many of our books, whether for teens or adults. And I’m not against love stories—my very favorite book, The Great Gatsby, is a love story (though it is also much more than that), and it almost always moves me to tears with its revelations about the human heart. I’m certainly not against stories that have love in them, although when the romance in a story becomes the subject of all conversations about the book, nine times out of ten I’m going to duck out or show my Team Katniss colors. And, like with the Twilight series, I’d be a fool to write off all the teen romances out there, both because so many intelligent, talented, forward-thinking authors stand behind them, and because it provides a booming marketplace that helps keep the industry and the books I love alive and well.

But, by golly, I wish there were as many YA novels out there that featured female protagonists who don’t wind up in a relationship as ones that feature girls who do.

The Young Adult genre is essentially concerned with coming of age. By their very nature, YA novels take a character from childhood to adulthood, from trying different selves on for size to “finding oneself.” And because of that, these novels are usually structured so that the most exciting and important point in the plot, the climax, is also the moment at which the protagonist completes (or makes the novel’s most major step on) her journey from childhood to adulthood, from indecision to agency.

And because of that, I often feel that the climaxes of Young Adult romances, which always seem to be the moment at which the protagonist finally gets with her or his love interest, inadvertently convey the message that we are not whole—that we cannot find ourselves—until we are with another person.

What is more true is that we cannot be with another person (at least, not in a healthy way) until we have found ourselves. That’s why I always find that I enjoy stories about girls having adventures or living their lives more than I enjoy stories about girls getting the guy. Sure, a lot of the former do include romance; think of Malinda Lo’s Huntress, or Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy, or, for goodness sake, the Harry Potter series. But in these, like in reality, the developing romance is only one element of the much larger adventure that each character is living is her or his own life. And it is only one element of the story’s climax, or even a part of the falling action—the happy outcome that results from, rather than causes, the protagonist’s growth.

I firmly believe that the culture in which we live—and which we experience, understand, and perpetuate through the media we ingest—has a greater effect than any other factor on how we understand ourselves and the rules of the world around us. So I believe that, as long as such a huge percentage of the books targeted at girls in the YA sections of our bookstores or libraries revolve around the girl-gets-guy scenario, boys and girls alike will continue to internalize the belief that a woman needs a man to become whole and complete.

That’s why the books I want to acquire someday are the ones in which the girl fights the dragon rather than sleeping in the tower. I want to bring as many books as possible into the world that empower women to live independent lives with adventures in which they star. When I find romance woven into those tales, I want it truly to be one thread in a whole tapestry of real, human experience, which is just as meaningful and exciting and full of opportunity for women as it is for men. I want the girls who read the books I edit to be empowered to live whole, fulfilled lives, regardless of their relationship statuses. I want to normalize the diversity of human experience and shed light on the infinite ways in which teen girls—just like teen boys—can find themselves in this world. I want to balance out all the teen romance with all the teen everything-else that makes growth to adulthood so meaningful, so challenging, and so incredibly important.

What about you?

Oh yeah, and I can't resist sharing: Jen Hickman found these totally sweet images that are basically this blog post, but shorter, and illustrated (with R.Patt giving great face):









All praise Tumblr!

Waiting for the Right Monster to Come Along: On Twilight, Abusive Relationships, and YA Saves

I had barely finished formulating my beliefs about the YA Saves controversy when I found them being challenged. But the attack didn’t come from the friends with whom I discussed the controversy, the worried parents of teens, or even from the supporters of Meghan Cox Gurdon’s article. No, the challenge to my beliefs greeted me coyly from the top of my to-be-read pile. Because the first book I picked up after the YA Saves controversy began was Twilight.

To say I dragged my feet when it came to exploring the Twilight trend would be a gross understatement, and it probably doesn’t surprise anybody that I’m not one of the world’s biggest fans of the books. Still, I give them a lot of credit; the series made countless people, young and old, into readers. The books turned a lot of already avid adult readers on to the young adult genre, essentially doubling the potential audience for many of the books I work on. They made a profit for their writer and their publishing house, and by spurring an interest in teen paranormal romance they’ve helped a lot of other writers and publishers turn a profit, too, in an industry too often plagued by low or nonexistent profit margins. As a member of this industry, I can’t help but be glad when, whatever the inspiration, people are getting genuinely excited about books. We need that fervor, regardless of what stirs it up. And, despite myself, I found many parts of the first book (mostly the parts devoid of descriptions of marbled abs, beautiful faces, or snowing-because-it's-too-cold-for-rain [wth?] weather) really enjoyable.

But when I think about the vast throngs of teenagers who have read the series and swooned over Edward, it physically pains me. Because no matter how many times Edward saves Bella’s life over the course of the series, that will never change the fact that, on their first date, he tells Bella he may not be able to stop himself from killing her. It doesn’t change the fact that he follows her, threatens her, makes all of her decisions for her, cuts her off from her friends and family emotionally and physically, instills her with the belief that his murderous impulses are her fault (she “has to be good” and not lose control of her urges when they kiss, so as not to tempt him), and attacks her when she says she’s not afraid of him, just to make sure that she learns to be. That’s just in book one, and it sure doesn’t sound like any healthy relationship I know of. In fact, I’m not the first person to point out that Edward’s and Bella’s relationship shows all the signs of an abusive relationship.

And while I may have some doubts about Ms. Gurdon’s claim that dark young adult literature normalizes self-destructive behavior, I do feel that Twilight normalizes—no, glorifies—unhealthy relationships. A glance at the popular website My Life is Twilight, where fans of the series share examples of how their life mirrors their obsession, makes my stomach turn. Here are just a few reasons why:

• “Today my boyfriend explained to me that he wouldn't want to live in a world with out me, and that's why he's so over protective.”
• “Today, I woke up to see my boyfriend watching me sleep. I thought it was so cute and not at all creepy.”
• “I want to be loved the way Edward loves Bella. Does that even exist anymore?”
• “My boyfriend cut the brakes on my car! MLIT!”

Am I the only one who gets shivers just reading that? Or, for that matter, whose skin crawled reading some of Edward’s dialogue in the novels?

And I’m far more upset about this glorification of unhealthy love than I am about the darkness Ms. Gurdon spoke of in YA lit. Typically, young adult novels that tackle dark issues like rape, cutting, abuse, and drug use at least communicate the very real and incredibly heartbreaking dangers of those issues. Most offer a glimmer of light and healing in their endings, conveying not only that healing is possible, but also that healing is necessary after encountering these issues—indeed, by implication, that they are unhealthy. In stark contrast, Twilight presents a frighteningly abusive relationship as an ideal.

Out of low self-esteem, a lack of inexperience in love, or manipulation on the parts of their partners, many victims of emotional abuse confuse their partners' abusive behavior for exactly what the books make Edward's actions out to be: signs of intense devotion and passion. That the Twilight series seems to encourage that confusion breaks my heart.

Given the rather frightening statistic regarding teens in abusive relationships and the fact that at least one in three women will experience violence in a relationship during her lifetime—and especially because I've seen the devastating effects of emotional and physical abuse firsthand—I’m extremely uncomfortable with Twilight's idealization of abusive behavior. So if you asked me if I’d like to stop teenage girls from reading Twilight, I’d really, really want to say yes.

But I can’t be both against censoring dark content in young adult literature and for banning a particular series because it exhibits a trend I find scary. I can’t both believe that teenagers are smart enough to make positive decisions and accuse these books of brainwashing teens. I can’t believe that young adults need to be free to own their own destinies and then try to prevent them from learning for themselves what healthy love is. And I can’t deny that, in relationships like in everything else, those who are drawn to darkness are going to find it regardless of how others intervene, and only they can decide to look for a way out.

So while I won’t be recommending Twilight to any of the teens I know, I can’t and won’t argue that the series should be banned. Instead, I hope that those who are as concerned about the dangers of abuse as I am will use the books’ popularity as a jumping-off point for conversations about what healthy relationships look like. I hope many librarians will learn from YALSA’s L. Lee Butler, who uses the book as a tool for anti-domestic and sexual assault education. I hope that parents, friends, and teachers will talk to girls about their own experiences (both good and bad) in relationships so that these girls can begin to decide for themselves what healthy love looks like. I hope that writers will come together to depict more balanced relationships in just as alluring a manor, and that teenage girls will begin to migrate toward stronger female characters and model their relationships off of healthier examples.

It’s reassuring that the first five comments teens made on the My Life is Twilight post that worries me most all urge the person who submitted it to question the healthiness of her relationship and to seek help. Though it’s easy to get caught up in the dream world of fiction, I do have faith in readers to sort out (sometimes through the mistakes they will invariably make) the difference between fiction and reality. And I trust that teenage girls will be smart enough to listen, strong enough to survive whatever path they turn down, and powerful enough to heal themselves and to heal others when it's needed.

I have to have faith in that.

On YA Saves and the "Normalization" of Self-Destructive Behavior

On the weekend that Meghan Cox Gurdon published her now-infamous Wall Street Journal article decrying the darkness in Young Adult literature, I took a break from the #YASaves conversations on Twitter to have some fascinating discussions offline, with friends and roommates and publishing industry connections and anyone who would muse with me for a minute. I talked with friends about the article’s implicit assumption that YA as a genre belongs to privileged, protected young adults who can reasonably expect shelter from the horrors in many novels, not the many teens who are underprivileged and devalued by the very color of their skin or the neighborhoods in which they grow up (Sherman Alexie handled this brilliantly in his response to Gurdon's article, “Why the Best Kids Books are Written in Blood”). I talked about the tendency of adults to forget that children are actually capable of handling a great deal of sorrow—that they even seek it out as a natural part of growing up and forming an identity (something I wrote about back in 2009). I talked about how that article related to the book I was reading at the time, and I want to talk about that even more next week.

Mostly, I discussed my feelings about one section of Ms. Gurdon’s article in particular:

The argument in favor of such novels is that they validate the teen experience, giving voice to tortured adolescents who would otherwise be voiceless. If a teen has been abused, the logic follows, reading about another teen in the same straits will be comforting. If a girl cuts her flesh with a razor to relieve surging feelings of self-loathing, she will find succor in reading about another girl who cuts, mops up the blood with towels and eventually learns to manage her emotional turbulence without a knife.

Yet it is also possible—indeed, likely—that books focusing on pathologies help normalize them and, in the case of self-harm, may even spread their plausibility and likelihood to young people who might otherwise never have imagined such extreme measures. Self-destructive adolescent behaviors are observably infectious and have periods of vogue.

Ms. Gurdon's second article in defense of the original, published last week, went on:

For years, federal researchers could not understand why drug- and tobacco-prevention programs seemed to be associated with greater drug and tobacco use. It turned out that children, while grasping the idea that drugs were bad, also absorbed the meta-message that adults expected teens to take drugs. Well-intentioned messages, in other words, can have the unintended consequence of opening the door to expectations and behaviors that might otherwise remain closed.

Oh, how I turned that idea over in my mind! I want to disagree with the sentiment, but I can’t—not with my whole heart.

As a high schooler, I watched one friend of mine after another come to school with gashes on her arms. It happened over the course of a year; by the end of it, nearly half of my regular group was self-harming. I listened to discussions of where scars could most easily be hidden, how to acquire razors or scissors or sharp enough knives, and most of all what it felt like, why it was impossible to resist. My friends and I were dark teenagers, and our taste for dark books and films was insatiable. When I try to remember where we first encountered the concept of cutting, I don’t know which came first: the book I recall all of us reading, or the first person one of us knew who self-harmed.

Would we have encountered cutting outside of literature? Probably. Would it have seemed alluring, written in the scars on an acquaintance’s arms rather than the delicate prose of a book we treasured? I don’t know.

But do I think that the book “normalized” cutting, as Ms. Gurdon suggests? No. What I believe is that my friends, who were hurting immensely for all sorts of reasons, encountered what they thought might be a solution to their pain in those books.

Of course it was no kind of solution worth having. It was horrific. It made everything darker. At the time, if I could have saved my friends from going through that pain or stopped them from hurting themselves, I would have. But I couldn’t. So I waited. I hoped that things would get better, that they would find their way out of the darkness and into someplace lighter.

And you know what? They all did. They’ve become mathematicians and computer scientists and accountants and research assistants and neuroscientists and writers. They’re married or in relationships or single. Some of them make a lot of money, and some don’t. Some of them live with their families, some of them live with friends, and some live on their own. Some of them make art, and some make tools, and most of them somehow make the world a better place for a living. Last time I checked in with them, they were all happy. Isn't that what we all want for teens?

But we had to explore that darkness. If we hadn’t, we would have sat always in the sun, wondering, wondering what temptations the shadows might be hiding from our sight.

My mother called me a few weeks ago to talk about one of my teenage relatives. She was worried, she told me, by his behavior, the people he’s hanging out with, the hobbies he’s taken up. He’s dreadfully close to making a decision, she says, that could destroy his future.

“Let him,” I surprised myself by saying. “He’s smart. He’s going to realize, eventually, what a mistake it was.” I paused. “I mean, I did, didn’t I? And I’m okay.”

I believe that few mistakes are completely irreparable. And I believe that teens are going to make them, no matter what wisdom we impart, what measures we take to shelter them from darkness, and what rules we enforce about what they can and cannot see, think, and do. And I have faith in teenagers. I have immense faith in their intelligence, their capacity for survival, and their ability to heal. That’s what’s missing in these arguments about the darkness of YA lit: the faith in teenagers to navigate those treacherous waters—the faith that teens can and will find their way around to the right path, even if it means backtracking because they’ve gone the wrong way.

What are we so afraid of? That teens will make mistakes? Didn’t we?

And doesn’t every person deserve a chance to own his or her destiny?

They say that the only way out is through, and I believe it. When my friends and I think back on those dark times—and when I think back on the many stupid, painful, destructive decisions I made as a teenager and all the ways in which those decisions could have affected my future—I don’t want to go back and erase any of it. All that darkness became a part of the people we were growing into. It made us strong, it made us powerful, and it made us empathetic. It taught us where we didn’t want our lives to go, and in doing so it taught us what we did want, and who we were. And when our morbid curiosity lost its charm, and the horrific ways we found to patch up our wounds failed us, we started looking for a way out of the darkness. And we all found one, no matter how far in we'd gone or how many mistakes we'd made.

Because darkness lasts only until you seek out a place that’s light.

Edit: Maureen Johnson and Meghan Cox Gurdon herself continued this debate today on WHYY. If you missed the show, catch up here. I was glad to note that one of the callers brought up what I do in this article: that what's missing from the discussion is adults' faith in teenagers' intelligence and ability to make decisions.

Publishing After Barry Eisler: What Will the Industry Look Like When Its Bestsellers Go Rogue?

So, we all remember that a month ago Barry Eisler turned down a $500,000 deal in favor of self-publishing, right? He certainly wasn’t the first author to have the idea that he could make more money by taking his books’ publication into his own hands, but the numbers made his announcement, as Joe Konrath said, “one for the Twitter Hall of Fame.” It stopped the publishing world in its tracks for a moment. And it got me thinking about the future of publishing.

In conversation, Barry told Joe:

…The new generation [is] looking at self-publishing differently... The question—“Should I self-publish?”—[is] going to be asked by more and more authors going forward. And… over time, more and more of them were going to be answering the question, “Yes.”

This is exactly what’s happening now. I’m not the first example, though I might be a noteworthy one because of the numbers I’m walking away from. But there will be others, more and more of them.

In all honesty, I think Barry’s right—there will be more and more authors who choose to self-publish as time goes on, and especially as digital sales continue to rise. As he and Joe agreed in their interview, it’s a matter of numbers: by self-publishing digitally rather than publishing traditionally, an author makes more money on every single copy sold.

Before you scrap your query letter completely, though, let’s take a look at those numbers. As Nathan Bransford explained in an essential blog post on the math behind publishing decisions, in order to make from self-publishing exactly what he would have made from that six-digit deal, Barry Eisler is counting on selling at least 71,633 ebooks. Can he do it? Probably. Assuming he’s already selling that many copies (if not more) of each of his books, it’s a safe bet that his large readership will stick with him and keep his numbers high.

Well, that’s all well and good if you’re Barry Eisler, or Stephen King, or Dean Koontz, or Jonathan Franzen—especially if you can count on your day of Twitter fame to sell copies of your book for you, the way I bet Barry Eisler can. But what about the little guys?

See, Joe and Barry agreed in their interview that publishers aren't needed anymore. But, as a great many writers and editors alike will tell you, there are some definite benefits to working with a publishing house.

Perhaps the most important, especially as writers’ need for help with cover design, layout and printing decreases, is the benefit of a devoted marketing force. The average writer doesn’t go from a debut novelist to a household name on his or her own. Sure, it happens—you need look no further than Nathan Bransford’s post and his numbers for Amanda Hocking. But it doesn’t happen frequently, or without the author (or a devoted team close to the author) having a very special skill set.

Publishing doom-and-gloomers will tell you that it’s only a matter of time before all the publishing houses go under, that the internet will eliminate the need for "gatekeepers," and that anyone can and will be discovered through the internet. But really, I don’t think that e-publishing is going to save every writer from obscurity. It will certainly increase the number of writers who have access to publishing, but will it increase the number of readers, or even distribute existing readers evenly among all the writers being published?

I don’t think so. If anything, e-publishing makes good marketing and curation all the more important. With more and more books vying for attention, it’s going to become that much harder to stand out. Editors, "gatekeepers" if you must call them that, who have a strong eye for what will appeal to people, and marketers who know how to reach those people will become more important than ever. It’s a hard, hard world for the as-yet-unknown.

So when I think about the future of publishing in the digital era, I wonder not about what will happen to the New York Times bestselling author, but about what will happen to the debut author, the writer of literary fiction, and the quiet novel with a niche audience. Publishers have, for so long, financed their operations through bestsellers and hesitated to take on a riskier project with a potentially small or difficult to reach audience. But if the bestsellers break away from traditional publishing, will the industry fold, or will it redefine itself?

Perhaps the strength of publishers in a new era of publishing will be their ability to devote time and attention to niche audiences, to find new talents and voices, and to develop literary projects for the devoted reader. The profits would be smaller, and the industry would change significantly. It’s hard to imagine that the big four could make this transition smoothly. But it may be that small, independent houses are in the perfect position to consider it.

I don’t really know what form publishing will take in the digital era. I agree with Joe Konrath that “paper will become a niche while digital will become the norm,” whether that takes one year or ten. I certainly don’t want to see my job disappear, or the good work of editors, marketers and designers all over the world become valueless. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that publishers need to be flexible and adapt to their evolving roles as technology changes the media it delivers. And I think, if finding and promoting new talent and literary voices were to become the new role of publishers, I could be okay with that.

But that’s just one theory—what’s yours? What do you think will become of publishing in the digital era?

Favorite Passages: Yann Martel on Suffering, Faith, and the Universe

photograph by Dominic Kamp

Often during the most difficult times in my life—bleak nights when I realize that whatever outcome I've been fighting against is inevitable, and I fall out of myself, helpless—my mind wanders back to this passage from Yann Martel's Life of Pi.

It's one of my favorite passages from all contemporary literature, in part because it reminds me of what I have always known: that this world is wild and unpredictable and enormous and ultimately beautiful and good. Oddly, in reminding me that I am insignificant, it makes me feel powerful enough to carry on.

The moon was a sharply defined crescent and the sky was perfectly clear. The stars shone with such fierce, contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark. The sea lay quietly, bathed in a shy, light-footed light, a dancing play of black and silver that extended without limits all about me. The volume of things was confounding—the volume of air above me, the volume of water around and beneath me. I was half-moved, half-terrified. I felt like the sage Markandeya, who fell out of Vishnu's mouth while Vishnu was sleeping and so beheld the entire universe, everything that there is. Before the sage could die of fright, Vishnu awoke and took him back into his mouth. For the first time I noticed—as I would notice repeatedly during my ordeal, between one throe of agony and the next—that my suffering was taking place in a grand setting. I saw my suffering for what it was, finite and insignificant, and I was still. My suffering did not fit anywhere, I realized. And I could accept this. It was all right.

What quotes do you return to again and again?

What Do You Wish for as a Writer?

Hello, Writer Friends and Soon-to-Be Interns! I'm still planning a fabulous end to my series on how to get an internship in publishing, and I hope to have an action-packed post of epic proportions for you next week. Stay tuned!

Due to some unforeseen circumstances, though, I found myself not tying up the finale this weekend; instead, I had some down time to enjoy. Since the sun has finally decided to show its face again (even if the warmth is lagging behind), I took a long walk around my neighborhood. And just as I was returning, pink-cheeked from the wind and glowing from having discovered new pockets of magic in my much-loved city, I discovered this:


It's a tree of wishes! I don't know if it started as a school project, an inspired activity to pull our (sometimes tumultous) neighborhood closer together, or some bright-eyed artist's special little piece of whimsy, but it once again reminded me of why I feel so at home here.

And on the tree, I found this:

"I wish for everyone to feel loved even in their darkest hour. Hugs to you!"

And this:

"I wish my mother will get her life together so we can live a better live."

And all three of these:

"I wish the Republicans would shut the f*ck up."
"I wish the Democrats would shut the hell up."
"I wish we could have serious conversations about serious issues rather than resorting to political name-calling—Your political party shouldn't be rooted for like your favorite sports team!"

And finally, I saw a wish I know I'd like to echo:

"more trees of wishes"

What do you wish for?

In Defense of NaNoWriMo (Guest Post!)

This week we have a super-special guest post from my friend and coworker, Amanda. By day she wrangles late reviewers and herds books towards publication as an Editorial Assistant; by night she blogs about classic films at A Pocketful of Nickels; and for the entire month of November, she puts her nose to the NaNoWriMo grindstone and churns out 50,000 words with the best of them.

She took some time out from her NaNo novel (which is at 30,000 words, at last count—I'll give you a second for applause) to write this response to an article I tweeted at the beginning of the month. In the article, "Better Yet, DON'T Write that Novel," Salon's Laura Miller argues that a month spent writing novels in an already flooded fiction market could be put to better use by joining the dwindling numbers of avid readers who keep the publishing industry alive. The article spurred a lot of discussion at my office, where NaNo is popular, and I invited Amanda to share her response with us. So with no further adieu...

November is a time of leaves turning and pumpkin pie consumption, but for many people around the world it is also the time to dabble in to the art of writing. The article Rachel mentioned has stirred a lot of talk amongst those embarking on the adventure of spending a whole month writing a book. In fact, I’ve heard so much about that article and counter arguments to it, that what I really want to do in response is talk about writing.

I started National Novel Writing Month (or NaNo for short) last year and immediately fell in love. I had gotten away from my writing due to some difficult emotional times and then I just fell out of the habit and life; well, life just got too busy. At least that’s what I thought. But here this contest, involving this teeming mass of aspiring writers all pledging to write 50,000 words in the span of just 30 days, had a way of drawing me in. Suddenly I wanted to do it just to see if I could shake loose those writer’s hands and let the mothballs out of my creativity closet. And you know what happened? I wrote again.

I’ve been writing stories for as long as I can remember. It was part of a culture in my family, this telling and sharing of stories, and it was then as a little girl listening to my grandfather that I learned how storytelling is an ancient art. It connects us within our culture and allows us to share with one another our history and our dreams. It also requires both the teller and the listener; or in writing terms, the writer and the reader. Both are involved and both keep this culture of storytelling alive. We cannot have one without the other.

NaNoWriMo has helped me expand my writing life as well as my reading life. It was through the seemingly impossible competition that I met some great friends and also joined a book club. I’ve read more books since my first encounter with the contest than I had at any time previously. It’s wonderful! The more I write, the more I want to read. I found that I am continuously inspired by other writers, like my new favorite author, Richard Russo. I just read his book Empire Falls and fell in love with his ability to craft characters and such memorable depictions of life. To learn the writing craft, you need to study the masters. That’s a lesson true of everything from painting to music to really any of the other arts. Writing in a bookstore is perfect—what a wonderful way to connect with the masters who have made it to publication. While I’m there amidst the shelves of books, I pick up ones that I may not have otherwise noticed and read through them as I write. I’m engaging in both sides of the literary cycle.

Now, not everyone needs a competition like this to kick-start their writing lives, and I applaud those people who don’t (and envy them a bit). But what it all comes down to is the simple fact that writing is fun. Thousands of people sign up for NaNo every year. Do not judge their intentions, for one thing is common—they all have a crazy desire to create. That is the reason we write. Certainly we may all harbor a secret desire to one day be published, but that isn’t our driving force. Writing is a good way to channel frustrations, sadness, anxiety, whatever emotion that you might have trouble otherwise expressing. In some therapy centers, writing is even prescribed as a way to work out problems and understand emotions.

Writing allows us to be on the other side of the page, to appreciate what an author does to produce a work. I have far more admiration for writers after writing a few full length (and rather awful) novels of my own. And you know what? I have never met a NaNo writer who would willingly share his or her writing with me or anyone else. That doesn’t bode well for anyone with dreams of one day publishing their work, but does that really matter? I talk about my novel just as much as I write it; my friends and I are all familiar with each other’s plot and characters. The telling and the writing are part and parcel. No story is polished from the outset. Talking to readers and other writers will help, as will taking the time to revise and edit. As writers, we have to accept that there will be a lot of “crap” at first. Think of the first draft as a pile of cars in a junkyard and ask yourself if there is anything you can salvage. But we aren’t alone. Everyone goes through this process, even if we never see it: photographers, painters, choreographers, filmmakers, even journalists. In the ever-growing markets, it might seem bleak to think that your beloved novel may never see a bookstore shelf. People with poor writing skills have national bestsellers solely based on a brief brush with fame. Anyone who can make headlines can publish a book, but so many aspiring novelists cannot and thus will not. That is the grim truth of NaNo, and one we tend to put in a corner under a blanket to shut out of our minds. We ignore the fact that we are pouring energy into works that have little hope of surviving in this world.

So what should we do, we who want to write the stories as much as we want to read them? Do we take the philosophy that we should write for writing’s sake? Do we give up in desperation? Do we turn our backs on the cruel world of publishing and keep that blanket handy? Do we sit in a cruddy apartment in our bathrobe and stubbornly churn out two original stories a week that won't sell?* I agree that not everyone can be a great writer. Not everyone can be a great painter either, but should that stop anyone from picking up a brush to try?

I say we write. Yes, it is a selfish, lonely, narcissistic and sometimes maddening endeavor. But it can also be wildly entertaining and rewarding. For one month a year, let us give voice to our inner writers and set free all those thoughts, characters and adventures. Let us enjoy that freedom provided from being on the other side of the printed page. Most of all, let’s read and keep reading, to celebrate those who have made it to publication and to find the inspiration to tell our own stories.

*Yes, this is a reference to a movie because I’m pimping my own blog. Find out which movie here.

Thanks so much, Amanda!

Whether you're participating in NaNo or not, here are some great resources for both writers and readers:

• The NaNoWriMo webpage is a great source for NaNo resources, pep talks and community for participants. Use it to find write-ins near you, or meet fellow writers online!
• NaNoFiMo follows right on the heels of NaNoWriMo in December and challenges writers to finish long-untouched works in progress.
• Similarly, NaNoEdMo invites writers to commit 50 hours during the month of March to editing their novels—I can't say I know too many editors would would claim that time is wasted.
  
• The 10-10-10 Reading Challenge invites readers to tackle 10 books from 10 self-selected categories that they wouldn't normally explore before October 10th. Participants say it's a great way to broaden your horizons, find new favorite authors and genres, and support the industry.
• Plenty of writers and readers prefer to spend November (or August, in some cases) working on their NaNoReaMo goals and reading as much as possible.

Did Gutenburg Worry about Making Artists Redefine Themselves?

I just read this fabulous article on the Pictorialists, the rise of photography to the status of an art (which, by the way, I discussed in my first blog post), and the way Hipstamatic and other apps introduced for the iPhone recently have tried to recreate that movement's feel. The article did a great job of explaining how Pictorialism came about organically as a reaction to technological advances at the time.

Originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and championed in America by Alfred Stieglitz, Pictorialism was a movement in the art world that placed value on hazy, dreamlike photos which emphasized light and mood more than actual readable scenes. It's often wrongly assumed that photos from this time period look so different from today's ultra-sharp images because the artists were limited by the technology available to them. In fact, it's quite the opposite; with Kodak's release of the first handheld camera for amateurs, the technology needed to make high-quality narrative photographs had just become all too available. It was no longer enough for professional photographers -- already working hard to earn the art world's respect -- to own and know how to operate complex photographic equipment. Thus, photographers who wanted to stand out as artists in a field now overrun with "snapshooters" began tweaking photography to look as similar as possible to what was already considered a serious art: painting.

Reading about Pictorialism in The Atlantic, I couldn't help but compare the cultural changes that photographers faced at that time with the cultural changes that publishers and writers face today. With the popularity of digital technology like the Kindle, the Nook and the iPad and of e-publishing in general, publication of a sort is available to more writers now than ever. Anyone with a bit of design sense and some familiarity with technology can create e-books and print-on-demand books. And with the increasingly common creation of new initiatives and imprints like Kindle Singles and Odyssey Editions, it seems that the variety of works and writers hitting your e-bookstore of choice is set to get more varied by the day. Never has publication been so accessible to the amateur writer.

That said, there are some definite differences between our situation as writers, readers and publishers today and the situation of those early-20th-century photographers: most notably, the fact that writing was long ago established as an art form. If you ignore the fact that many genres and target audiences still fight to be considered legitimate literature, you could say that we, unlike Stieglitz, don't have to try to romance the art world in order to prove that we really are artists.

Still, I think that most artists do try to set themselves apart from the masses, and it sure seems that "the masses" just got a whole lot more massive. What do you think? Is publication by an established house still enough to offer the kind of status artists often seek? Or, will writers trying to establish themselves as artists have to work harder to separate themselves from the masses in the greater world of publishing? Leaving aside nay-saying about the supposed shortcomings of web content, do you think literary writing is going to change as a reaction to technology? Where are we going to see those changes -- in style, in format, in content, or somewhere altogether different? Please, Writer Friends, do enlighten me!

How Sad is Too Sad in Children's Books?

I’ve been pondering this topic lately because I finally read Bridge to Terabithia over Thanksgiving (I know, I know, just now!? But I had a bit of a one-track mind as a child, and because of it I missed out on a lot of great books the first time around. Fortunately, I get to relive childhood constantly as an intern, and hopefully one day as an editor). It's something I consider often, because as a teen I gravitated towards dark books, and as an adult I continue to find I admire authors who very truthfully convey sadness. Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now is one of the most devastating books I know, but it nonetheless is one of my very favorites. As a child, I recall crying through Where the Red Fern Grows and parts of Island of the Blue Dolphins. Heck, I even cried as an adult during the last three Harry Potter books.

However, the seeds of this post were actually sown several months ago. I had just spent the greater part of the morning curled up in an armchair, soaking up the perfectly whimsical ninth-floor view of the city and reading a manuscript. My supervisor was out for a few days, but she had left two neatly bound copies of a manuscript for my fellow intern and I to review. The two of us had fallen into a comfortable routine by then, and when 11:00 a.m. came around and I started to feel caffeine withdrawal, Sam was usually rounding the corner, asking if I was ready for a tea run.

Still, I believe the two of us were late for tea that day, too immersed in the story’s gentle lyricism to pull away, and when we finally trekked up to the cafeteria we were bursting with ideas we just had to discuss. We loved the manuscript; we saw so many possibilities; we couldn’t wait for the editorial discussion and for rounds of revisions. Sam and I agreed on many of its finest points, and on many of the places where it needed strengthening.

But while I emptied a packet of sweetener into my empty mug, Sam mentioned something that surprised me: “I wonder,” she said, “if this chapter isn’t too sad for children.”

She had a point; the chapter included some moments that were almost horrifyingly bleak -- moments that showed characters at their worst, with no hope to go on. Of course, I had found the chapter sad -- heartbreaking, even. But I also found it beautifully written and terribly true to life. In fact, I had admired how well the author had captured the many ways in which broken people confront sorrow. I had never thought that it might be too sad for children.

And really, what it comes down to is this: I don’t know if I think “too sad for children” exists. Because in real life, every child deals with sorrow. And some children deal with the sort of breathtaking sorrow that we’d hide from them forever, if there were any way we could.

Children’s literature serves so many purposes. Sometimes it constructs elaborate fantasy worlds in which we wrap our children up, protecting them from the evils that we can’t hide in our own world. Sometimes it instructs or encourages children to dream and create, to push the boundaries of their imaginations. Sometimes it offers a safe way for children to experience danger through someone else’s eyes. Sometimes it reassures children that the world is a good and proper place. And sometimes -- in my opinion, some of the most important times -- it shows children that they are not alone, and that no feeling lasts forever.

If there were no children who missed a parent or a sibling or a friend; no children who struggled to gain the love of those who should give it freely; and none who faltered time and time again while trying to find their place in the world, perhaps we would need no sad literature for children. But those children do exist, and they need to be able to find themselves in books. They need to be free to open a book and meet a character who hurts for all the same reasons that they do. And they need to be able to follow that character through the healing process -- to see that they won’t have to hurt forever, that even after all that awful sorrow, there is some joy left in the world.

The manuscript I read that day and Bridge to Terabithia, How I Live Now, Where the Red Fern Grows, and countless other phenomenal books for children and young adults, ultimately tell a story about one of literature’s most powerful emotions: hope. And I applaud them for tackling the depths of sorrow they have to confront in order to tell that story; I hope children experience them deeply and come out of them with a better understanding of life and its many battles.

Let's not aim to keep children from journeying into dark places; rather, let's send them there -- all in order to show them the way out into the sun.

Publishing: Giving Yours Truly a Sense of Purpose Since 2001

Yesterday, while driving back to my family's house after yet another interview (!), I listened to the end of NPR's interview with Jason Reitman, who directed Juno and, more recently, Up in the Air (which he also wrote, in collaboration with Sheldon Turner). I didn't catch much of the interview, but while discussing his latest project Jason mentioned something that had intrigued him -- and which, in turn, really struck me.

Up in the Air features a character who makes his living by firing others. While filming in St. Louis and Detroit, Reitman took the opportunity to put out an open casting call for people who had recently lost their jobs. He interviewed each of the hundred people who responded for ten minutes, and simulated their lay-offs on-camera, asking each of them to respond as they had on the day they were fired. The process was eye-opening, as you can imagine.

And what intrigued me about the interviews Reitman described was this detail: though he asked each of his interviewees what the hardest part of unemployment was, none of them answered the way he expected. He had thought people would say the obvious -- that finding money was tough -- but not a single interviewee mentioned that. Overwhelmingly, the unemployed people to whom he spoke responded that what they struggled with, each day, was finding a sense of purpose. "I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing," they told him.

Okay, so that's not the spot of cheer you were looking for to start your day. But I was really struck by the reality of that comment, and I can't help but draw parallels to my own situation as I look for a way into the publishing industry, and to the situation of those already in the industry as it changes and as it suffers from the economy.

Let's be honest -- none of us are in this for the money. The industry has taken a hit of late, but it's never offered the sort of career that makes many people rich. And that fact, in some ways, really defines the people who enter the industry, whether they do so as writers, editors, publishers, designers, publicists, marketers, or salespeople. The people who come to the industry, knowing it offers long hours and low pay, come to it because they have what everyone is looking for. They have an overwhelming sense of purpose.

When publishing struggles -- when you're worried about your career, or struggling to keep up with its changes, or trying to get your footing and find your way into that elusive first job -- it's more important than ever to take some time to remember that, and to hold on to it. So tell me, writer friends and editor friends and random followers whose presence here may or may not make sense: what makes the industry meaningful to you? What have your struggles been, and what do you do when you need to be reminded of why you keep on going? What triumphs have given you a sense of purpose?