Eight Years In, And Still In Love

(Warning: annual sappy post ahead!)

When I was growing up, my Dad gave me the same piece of career advice over and over: "Find something you love to do, because you're going to spend a lot of time doing it." (Fun aside: during my first year as an assistant in publishing, as he helped me over the phone with doing my taxes, I reminded my Dad of this comment. His response: "Well, I sure hope you love it, because you're not making any money!" Oh, publishing....) His advice was so very right, though. Life's incredibly fulfilling if you're doing something that you believe in, that you love.

Eight years ago, I started my first job as a Marketing/Publicity Assistant at Clarion Books, which I talked about here, this time last year. A lot's changed in those eight years, even though it's not really all that long ago at all! Somewhere in the eight years, I moved over to HarperCollins, and I was also finally able to make the shift from marketing/publicity into editing, which was so very worth all the scrambling and persistence and backtracking and side-stepping it took to get there. But beyond that, back when I started, publishing's landscape looked pretty different: there were hardly any blogs, there was no Facebook, no Twitter, and even author/illustrator  websites were a relatively new phenomenon. There wasn't daily talk of e-books, or e-readers, or digital publishing efforts, either. 

As we all are, eight years later, I'm currently watching this industry re-invent itself from the inside-out, and I suspect it won't be the last time I do so in my career. But the thing that mattered most to me when I started that job eight years ago is the same thing that matters most to me today: there were books, incredible ones. (And I got to work on them! And they paid me to do it!) And there were stories, as there always have been and always will be. And there was a long-standing community: a brilliant, welcoming, intensely passionate and intelligent community of authors and illustrators and librarians and literary agents and educators and booksellers and publishing folk and readers. Eight years later, I find so much inspiration and meaning in being a part of that community, and in this Dream Job of mine, which is so much about connections, about passions, about ideas, about children and teens and the books that shape them--and that shape all of us, too, as we go about making them.

This eighth year in publishing is an especially important one for me, because it's the first year in which books that I acquired as an editor (rather than ones that I assisted another, more senior-level editor on, or that I marketed/publicized, back in my previous role) will begin hitting the shelves. In months to come, as their publication dates approach, I'll be sharing some stories of acquiring those books, and of working with their tremendously talented creators--"editorial love stories," if you will, and I hope as readers, many of you will be as enchanted and thrilled and moved by reading those books as I've been during their making.

For now, though, I'm just quietly, abundantly grateful. This business of making books for young readers is one that I believe in with my whole heart, and I'm constantly proud and humbled to be a part of it. Thanks to all of you, who are part of it, too.

In which we get our Write On!

I have been a very, very bad blogger this summer. However, I'm attempting to make up for my wayward ways by getting involved in this week's WriteOnCon, from August 10th-12th.


If you haven't heard about WriteOnCon, go check it out. Basically, 7 kidlit writers found themselves wishing for a *free* online writers conference . . . and then, since one did not exist, and because they are Made. Of. Awesome., they went out and made it happen. (Note to self, never-ever underestimate the power of writers with a good ideaa...)

Seriously, take a look at the schedule, and poke around on the website. Instead of the in-person workshops and lectures and breakout sessions of a traditional conference, you'll find editors, agents, and published authors presenting via blogs and vlogs, talking about every element of the industry imaginable, from craft to querying. (Yours truly will be both vlogging and blogging, oh my!).

Wishing for something a little more interactive, or that allows your questions to be answered? Then take part in live chat panels every night (come say hi to me on Thursday evening! Be sure to read the instructions in advance to get registered).

And because a conference wouldn't be a conference without a chance to meet other amazing writers, there are forums for conversations and critiques and connections.

And it's all FREE. (A.k.a, no "what should I wear??" panic! You can wear your pajamas!) You can follow along in real-time if you're able, as the presentations go live, or you can catch up later by scrolling back through previous "sessions."

Sound awesome? I expect that it will be! My hat's truly off to the ladies who dreamed this up, rallied the industry to take part, and then brought it all to fruition in a matter of mere months. Once again, the children's book community proves itself to be quite an amazing, giving community, abounding with enthusiasm and possibility. So...hope to see you at the conference!

"Web 2.0 is like a pyramid scheme"

Some of the most fascinating relationships and discoveries of my professional life have come to me via social media over the last few years. If you were to talk to me in person, you'd hear me vehemently defend the real goodness out there, and the fact that I think social media's benefits far outweigh its flaws. Even just a few years into it all, I've got a closet-full of personal examples of friendships, insights, joys, opportunities, and true delights that have come my way via the internets. And the truth is, I kinda think that one of the points of life is to have meaningful relationships and make meaningful connections between them, and call me crazy, but I've found and made a good handful of those via the internet.

And yet, and yet... *whispers* sometimes, the internet, and twitter, and facebook, and goodreads and email and whatever the new social media invention-of-the-week is, and even this blog...and all the people they entail...it is all exhausting. Which is perhaps why this article, passed along by smart, thoughtful agent Holly Root, with the explanation of "why we're all more and less connected all at once" really echoed for me. I don't agree with everything in it (and if you're language-sensitive, be warned that there are some sailor-worthy swears in here), and I don't think I'm as fatalistic about it all as this article's author is, either, but there are more than a few truths here, to be sure.

Which parts rang true for you? And what do we do about it all, anyway? Lemme know your thoughts in the comments; this is bound to be an interesting conversation!

A Conversation on Resonance & Responsibility

Resonance and connectivity are things that I look for a lot as an editor, things that I ask writers to pursue in their storytelling, urging them to open up their stories as wide as possible. Doing so can lead to one of the most powerful kinds of writing, in my mind: when a book reaches beyond merely telling about a particular set of characters, and becomes a story that echoes as familiar and personal and true in the hearts and minds of all different kinds of readers. If, as creators of stories, we recognize and believe that stories are what connect us, then of course that potential for deep connection is one we want to make the most of, right? And if we're lucky, the connections do, in fact, emerge: between readers and characters, between readers and their classmates/friends/family members/fellow humans, and sometimes between readers and authors, too.

But what happens, once the connection is made? Do we talk enough--or at all--about what that can mean, especially for writers of deeply resonant and real (but also sometimes deeply painful) stories?

We talk a lot about "responsibility" in children's and YA books, and one of the fascinating things about that word is that, like any word, it means something different to different people. To some, it means militant safe-guarding of young readers from stories that may, ultimately, shape them, even in the slightest of ways, into a different person than they were previously. But to most of us working in publishing, whether as writers or industry folk, "responsibility," especially in the context of YA, usually translates best to "honesty."

Most of us remember what it was like to be a teen, and we know teens today, too. And the truth is, growing up is (still) hard, and (still) confusing, and it isn't always safe, and sometimes it's positively cruel, but every teen has to stumble through it somehow. And if there are books that might help him/her do so with a little more certainty or a little less loneliness, so much the better. In a way, it means we're all in this together: authors and agents, editors and publishers, librarians and teachers, with all the other invisible walls between our linked-but-separate professions broken down. We're all in it together for every single teen who might, just might, reach for a book while seeking to answer some variation of the questions that we still remember asking ourselves: How, exactly, do we learn to grow up? To become human? To survive the turbulent mess of fears and glories and heartbreaks and changes that any kind of significant becoming entails? To find out which things actually matter, to understand what part of everything is true?

My Jesuit university extolled an ideal that's at the heart of their mission/philosophy of education, and that ended up at the heart of me, too: cura personalis, or "care for the whole person." In other words, it's not enough to care for or feed a person physically, you must also look after his/her unique emotional, spiritual, and mental needs and hungers, too; we must offer a deep respect for everything that makes a person human. In this way, we can help others--and ourselves--them grow, by refusing to segment a person into only the elements we might feel comfortable seeing. Ultimately, if reaching outward, you cannot only give attention to singular aspects of a person's full humanity, or you have failed to truly care for them after all. It's a philosophy that I think can offer a deeper meaning to, but demand a deeper responsibility from, any profession: from doctors to social workers to teachers to writers of books for teens. Because we do care for those we encounter, and deeply: writers care for the teens who will read their books, and editors care for those teens, too--and also for the authors, caught somewhere in the middle of this chain of connectivity.

Which brings me to the question that Janet Reid is asking on her blog today. It's not a question that I have any answer to (would that I did!) but I agree with her that it's an important one for all of us to weigh, and to think about in terms of today's social media-driven world. What happens when a teen does find a story that speaks to him/her powerfully, and that book becomes a lifeline--when a reader reaches out, believing the author has the answers he/she is seeking, or wanting a continuation of what felt like a deeply personal connection? And then in turn, what's an author to do when that same sense of immediacy that we extol in writing for teens comes through in a reader's communications--when they email/blog comment/Facebook message/MySpace post/Tweet/etc, etc. an author offering their own story, brimming with vulnerability and then desperately--or even just hopefully--await an answer, a meaningful response, a deeper connection, a promise that there's a way past whatever moment they're in the midst of living? And how does an author begin to shoulder that responsibility, that hunger, that need on the part of readers, somewhere in the midst of the other work of being a writer?

Media is so often blamed when things go wrong in the lives of damaged, hurting, unhappy, teens. We blame tragedies on the influence of violent video games and movies; we blame magazines for encouraging hopelessly unrealistic self-images. In the resoundingly opposite direction, it's long been the stance of children's/YA book folks that the greatest thing we can--and do!--offer to teens is hope, in the form of stories. But social media has changed--or at least, slightly shifted--so many other aspects of publishing that I guess we shouldn't be surprised that it's changed the author-reader relationship in some regards, too. And I don't think that new-media-heightened hope for connection is an aspect of the job that a writer can simply chose to turn away from and ignore--I don't think writers of books for teens would choose to do that, or I don't think they'd bother writing for teens at all. So somehow, it seems that a writer's job isn't just to serve words and stories and characters anymore--it's also to serve the searching/freely-sharing/sometimes-broken readers who come barreling, virtually, into their in-boxes. And for writers, that fact is powerful and beautiful and utterly overwheming, all at once, or so I suspect.

So what's the next step? It's a two-pronged query, I think: one set of answers may spell out some ways writers can best respond to teens who, though virtual strangers, are craving connection in a way that validates/orients/respects/sometimes even rescues them. But the other part both precedes and follows that, and it's for all of us: How do we (agents, editors, publishers, fellow writers, booksellers, educators, and the children's publishing community as a whole) equip writers to receive the stream of stories teens offer in return for the books they've just read?

It's a big question. I welcome your thoughts.

You Tell Me: What Did You Discover in 2009?

Oh, dear. I seem to have fallen down almost completely on blogging last month (not to mention on my self-assigned monthly-photo journal "a picture speaks a thousand words" game). I blame the two nearly back-to-back sinus infections that arrived as part of my December joys, not to mention general holiday chaos. But ah, well. The New Year is about starting fresh with good intentions, not fretting about the past, right? Right! And, purely by coincidence, it turns out that this is my 50th blog post, which feels like exactly the right place to start the new year!

Speaking of the New Year, lots of people have been doing great, detailed year-end round-ups about 2009. In the interest of actually getting this posted sooner rather than never, I'm gonna skip most of the deep introspection, because one of my, deep, dark secrets is that I love making ponderous lists and if I let myself, I'll spend way, way, too much time thinking and rambling on about them. But suffice it to say that, for me, 2009 included both some "best of times and worst of times," as I'm sure it did for most folks. One thing that's solidly in the "best" category from the past year, though, is this evolution of this blog, its readers, and the outlet it offers me (and I hope others, too!) for "thinking out loud" about publishing, about the creative life, and about all the places art and life intersect and converge. So, if you're reading this, thanks for a being a part of all that. If you've contributed to the conversation at one point or another, or in many spots, thanks all the more. And if you're a reader who hasn't spoken up yet, please do! (Unless you're a spammer. In which case, please head out the door marked "2009" and don't come back, ever.)

One thing I do like to ponder at year's-end, though, is the question of how--and via what mediums--my life has totally altered in ways I wouldn't have even guessed it could. What things have become a part of the fiber of my daily life that I couldn't have imagined, even a year or two before, would become a part of my life at all?

Over the last few years, I must say, there have been an increasing number of tech-type things falling into this category. I'm not the earliest of early adopters, but I'm increasingly surrounded by early-adopter types, and I am opinionated, so usually* once I've heard about something a few times, I tend to want to try it out so I can have my own thoughts about it. And if I like it, I then tend to crow about from the rafters to anyone who will listen. A few examples from the past handful of years? Google Reader, which lets me to consume blogs in a completely different, and far, far more productive way that I'd ever have conceived was possible back when I first started paying attention to blogs. RSS feeds = brilliant. Etsy, the craft website that started taking all my spare pennies back around 2006, but has kinda made up for it by leading me to wonderfully talented illustrators. And, yeah, Facebook, which shook up my world in all kinds of interesting ways, too, just as its done for pretty much all of us. And on the decidedly non-tech side, I'll go with a few more luxurious discoveries, including tea-as-a-genuinely-pleasing-alternate-form-of-caffeine-to-coffee, the joys of knitting, and the knowledge that many museums in New York have recommended donation amounts, not carved-in-stone, exorbitantly-expensive fees.

Leaping to the more recent past, though...so what were my best discoveries of 2009? Four spring to mind:

1. My e-reader. E-readers have certainly complicated publishing over the past year (to put it mildly), but from a totally different perspective, i.e., the quality of life for your average publishing employee, wow. They've changed everything. I use mine primarily for manuscript-reading, and as such, it's no exaggeration that it's changed my life. I joke that it's even changed my fashion--I kinda feel like I'm suddenly inside an infomercial now, but the truth is, just a little over a year ago, I used to carry a separate bag to and from work, every single day, in which I would carry hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of paper. Often, I was too worn from simply lugging all that paper around to even want to read any of it on the subway or when I got home! And truth be told, I'm not sure how I would have survived this year's uptick of less editors/more books to edit, hurry, faster/more agents/more agented submissions to read, and hurry, faster, there, too, without the e-reader. Also, someday, I'll tell my own assistant how once upon a time, I used to read all my manuscripts on paper, and she will look at me like I am SO FREAKING OLD. (And then I'll cry.)

2. Twitter. I admit it, I held out on Twitter for quite awhile, but I ultimately caved and joined just around this time last year, because I wanted to see what it was like to follow the ALA Newbery/Caldecott Announcements in real-time. A year and 2,000+ tweets later, I have to say that the day-to-day dialogues, conversations, and connections formed via Twitter prove to be more valuable everyday. Twitter's constant steam of engaging conversation among smart, savvy people helps me to constantly THINK about new, interesting things in new, interesting ways, which I think is utterly essential in a time of change like our industry is facing. But there's a simpler side to it, too. The truth is, the world's full of fascinating/creative/thought-provoking/ hilarious people, and I love how many new ones I've found or gotten to know better via Twitter.

3. My $20 crockpot from Target. Yeah, I know, it's decidedly non-tech, and I'm several decades behind the curve on this one, but seriously? You throw in bunch of raw ingredients--pretty much ANY random raw ingredients you can think of--and then turn it on and go away/go to sleep/go to work and come back to, like, a week's worth of delicious-smelling meals? MAGIC.

4. Ireland. My trip to Dublin this summer, though brief, was a glorious checkmark on my life's to-do list, and a definite highlight of 2009. It's a whole land of storytellers--what's not to love? And seeing a new place and then coming back with new eyes to my own life anew (to paraphrase Marcel Proust a bit)? Priceless.

Okay! Enough nattering from me. (See, I warned you. List-making makes me ramble!) What were some of YOUR best discoveries in 2009? From places to tools to objects to books to tech-type stuff to...well, you tell me!


* ahem. Disclaimer: Most of the time. Or at least sometimes. And Occasionally I stubbornly swear-up-and-down that I'll never-ever try something, only to eat my words later. See also: Facebook and Twitter, and probably lots of other things I've conveniently forgotten about once protesting against.

You tell me: book evangelizing

Here's a question I get asked A LOT, in one variation or another. "What have you read lately that's good?"/ "What's your favorite book published this year?" / "What are you excited about?" Sometimes, those questions are the perfect lead-in for me to talk about one of the recently-published books that I've edited or worked/assisted on (and I like to think I've helped to sell at least a few books that way!), which is something that I never get tired of doing.

Other times when I get asked this question, it would be a bit gauche to mention books that I've had a hand in putting out into the world. Happily, though, I'm not the only editor whose authors have written great books, so quite often I also find myself evangelizing for other books and authors who I admire. And I think that evangelize (which Websters defines as "having crusading zeal,") is exactly the right word, because I think there's something in all of us readers that instinctively wants to share the goodness of books that we truly connect to/admire/find truth in. It's easy, these days, to click a button that makes you a "fan" of something, or to retweet someone else's praise--and these are good things, and important tools in today's world. But I don't think those sort of automatic, reflexive actions take the place of honest, person-to-person getting-worked-up-about-a-book excitement (though a great thing about today's world is that I don't think those exchanges have to happen in person anymore, thanks to blogs, goodreads, facebook, twitter, etc.).

I'm curious how spreading the word about books looks and feels to those outside the industry, though, as I know my perspective sometimes gets skewed by being surrounded by so many professionally bookish types. So think back to the last few books that you haven't been able to stop telling people about. What makes you talk about those books/give them as gifts/make your book group read 'em/lend out your copies/determined to spread the word about them in a zillion other ways? The floor's wide open in the comments--what books (or qualities about books, if you don't feel like naming titles) are you an evangelist for, and why? And how do you find yourself doing your book evangelizing?