Diversity in YA Tour!

Next Saturday marks the start of the Diversity in YA tour, an awesome event featuring twenty-five authors who write about characters of diverse ethnicities and sexualities, appearing in six cities across the U.S. My lovely author Francisco X. Stork will be part of the Boston lineup on May 12, and I'll be moderating the New York panel on May 14, where my lovely author Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich will also appear. Huge, huge props and kudos to Cindy Pon and Malinda Lo for organizing such a terrific lineup and effort as a whole -- making the change happen that they want to see in the world. Please come out and support everyone!

Writers: What Are Your Rules?

Want to know a secret?

Everyone who buys Second Sight gets not only the book, not only my never-before-published talks on character, principles of plot, and voice, not only my full list of Twenty-Five Revision Techniques in one handy place, not only some so-terrible-they're-funny pictures of me -- but, at the very end, a link to a secret page on my website where I'm compiling more resources like the ones in the book. While this does include links to all my past talks and a quasi-index by subject to this blog,  these resources aren't just things that I've written. Rather, it's craft stuff that I find all over the Internet that I think writers should read. I've basically indexed Jennifer Crusie's website, too, and I should do the same for Nathan Bransford, and then there's this great post by Erin Murphy on how to define success . . . I like having this page as a list of all the resources I return to again and again; having it available to Second Sight readers is just an added bonus for everyone.

Anyway, I started a new section tonight called "Other People's Principles." Basically, I'm trying to put together a list of all of those "Rules for Writers" articles by various famous writers, for instance:

• Kurt Vonnegut's 8 Rules for Writing Fiction
• Elmore Leonard's Easy on the Hooptedoodle
• Janet Fitch's 10 Rules for Writers

I always love reading these and occasionally adopt a rule or two for my own, though at the same time, I think those principles are best applied to the work of the writers who espouse them. . . . Contra Monsieur Leonard, sometimes books need prologues. Anyway again, in looking at this list, I realized that everyone I have on here is a writer of adult fiction, and indeed the only people who tend to write these kinds of lists are writers of adult fiction, because generally writers of children's and YA fiction aren't accorded the literary respect that would lead to their being asked "Hey, what are your rules for writing fiction?" by a major media outlet.

And you know what? That is stupid, because God knows the children's/YA world has as many smart writers with interesting principles as the adult world does, and indeed the peculiar nature of writing fiction for children and teenagers should require our principles to be more interesting than, say, "Don't use adverbs." (Which is a good principle, but one that needs to be thoughtfully qualified, as it can lead to deadly dullness.) (And you see what I did there . . .)

Anyway again again, I'm asking:  Authors of children's and YA fiction:  If the New York Times came to you and asked you to write a "Writers on Writing" essay like Mr. Leonard's, what would you say? What principles, large or small, guide your storytelling? What are your ten rules for writers? I'd like to know, and I bet other writers would as well. And I think it's a fascinating exercise always to dig down and find your unconscious lodestones. . . .

So, if you want to participate, feel free to write up and post your list of principles on your blog/LJ and put the link in the comments below; or, if you don't have a blog/LJ, you can write the principles themselves in the comments. (If you're reading this on Facebook, please click this link to post the comments on the blog post itself and not in Facebook comments; that way everyone can read them.) I will be excited to see what people say, and I hope all of us can learn new things from one another.

Thank you for your interest and participation!

If You Like It, Then There's Only One Thing You Should Do.

So last Saturday morning, James and I decided to go for a run around Prospect Park, as we often do on weekends. We got dressed in our running clothes, and I noticed he was wearing a jacket over his long-sleeved shirt and exercise pants. "Aren't you going to be hot in that?" I asked, since it was sunny and the temperature was in the fifties.

"I can just tie it around my waist," he said.

I shrugged, and we locked up the apartment and set out for the park. We stretched on the plaza just behind the farmers' market, then ran along the north side of the park with our respective iPods. (That day I was listening to the greatest hits of Bruce Springsteen: "Badlands," "Thunder Road," "Hungry Heart.") I was still transitioning back to running outside after the winter's treadmills, so I was determined to complete a whole loop without stopping to walk.

One of my very favorite places on Earth

As we ran down the west side hill, James said, "You know, I think we should take this cross-country route my brother showed me." I said sure, and we turned left on the road that cut east through the park above the lake. As we approached the first bend, he said, "Let's go up this hill."

I said, "No, I want to do the whole loop."

He said, "You really should see the view from the top."

I said, "No, I've seen it before, come on."

He said, "It's a shortcut, just trust me on this." (Which I didn't, because I've been running around the park for at least as long as he has, and I knew that running up Lookout Hill was no shortcut.)

But we went up the hill, with me grumbling at climbing the stairs. ("It's good for our glutes!" James said.) The path switchbacked to the west, and I said, "You do realize that we're going backwards now, right? Not the direction we want to be going?" He just nodded and encouraged me to keep running. We went over a terrace and ended up at the circle on top of Lookout Hill, the highest point in the park. I figured we'd go round the circle and run back down to continue the loop.

But as we started around to the left, a man in Victorian dress and spectacles hailed me: "Hello, fair lady!" Cheerful greetings from people in eccentric costumes are not that unusual in New York, so I figured he was some kind of actor doing street theatre in the park, and stopped to hear what he had to say. James slowed down alongside me. The man in costume pulled out a scroll and read from it: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of . . . more fortune!" And he went on to deliver a speech liberally laced with Jane Austen quotes, all demonstrating his avarice. He ended by suggesting that we speak to his friend a little farther on, "Though I warn you--the stupidity with which he was favored by nature guards his courtship from any charms."

I felt both delighted and deeply confused by this turn of events, so I looked at James and said, "Do you know anything about this?" It was his turn to shrug. The next man, in similar costume and with a similar scroll, offered a similar speech, including "In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love -- myself."

About midway through this fine peroration on his own charms, my brain started thinking, This has to be what I think it is. Is it? Oh my, is it really? This gentleman concluded by looking around for an additional list of his good qualities. James held up a scroll of his own and said, "Is this it?" The man examined it and said, "No, I think you should read this one."

And James did, quite nervously and sweetly. I won't share everything he said, but he got down on one knee (as mandated by my favorite movie), and he also invoked one of my favorite descriptions of marriage of all time, from John Stuart Mill's On the Subjection of Women, in saying that he hoped it's what we might have as well:

On the contrary, when each of the two persons, instead of being a nothing, is a something; when they are attached to one another, and are not too much unlike to begin with; the constant partaking in the same things, assisted by their sympathy, draws out the latent capacities of each for being interested in the things which were at first interesting only to the other; and works a gradual assimilation of the tastes and characters to one another, partly by the insensible modification of each, but more by a real enriching of the two natures, each acquiring the tastes and capacities of the other in addition to its own . . . When the two persons both care for great objects, and are a help and encouragement to each other in whatever regards these, the minor matters on which their tastes may differ are not all-important to them; and there is a foundation for solid friendship, of an enduring character, more likely than anything else to make it, through the whole of life, a greater pleasure to each to give pleasure to the other, than to receive it. . . . What marriage may be in the case of two persons of cultivated faculties, identical in opinions and purposes, between whom there exists that best kind of equality, similarity of powers and capacities with reciprocal superiority in them -- so that each can enjoy the luxury of looking up to the other, and can have alternately the pleasure of leading and being led in the path of development -- I will not attempt to describe.

And with such a prospect before me, dear reader, I said yes!

James gave me his late mother's engagement/wedding ring, which was just my size; and the last week has been a flurry of informing friends and family, accepting congratulations, and starting conversations about dates and locations for the grand party we hope to throw for those same friends and family. (I'm from the Midwest, he's from the Bay Area, and we live in New York, so we have the entire United States open to us.) The two gentlemen in costume were friends of James's, unknown to me; James wrote the scripts with all the Jane Austen references to please me, featuring characters with defects (greed and vanity) that would highlight his own suit in turn--"classic literary foils," he says. He rented the costumes for them from a shop in Midtown.

Mr. Avarice and Mr. Vanity

And James had to wear the jacket because it carried both his proposal and the ring! (I've forgiven him for making me run up the hill.)

My Weasley and me

Thank you for your good wishes, all!

"Since the Majority of Me" by Philip Larkin

Since the majority of me
Rejects the majority of you,
Debating ends forwith, and we
Divide. And sure of what to do

We disinfect new blocks of days
For our majorities to rent
With unshared friends and unwalked ways,
But silence too is eloquent:

A silence of minorities
That, unopposed at last, return
Each night with cancelled promises
They want renewed. They never learn.

______________
(N.B. I: Adding this to the other good breakup poems previously featured here: "You Must Accept"; "A Color of the Sky")

(N.B. II: I came across this poem because of the Reese Witherspoon / Vince Vaughn movie "Four Christmases." Seriously.)

(N.B. III: Those who like poetry, children, and/or the combination thereof should check out Greg Pincus's awesome Kickstarter project "Poetry: Spread the Word," which raises money for Greg to go into schools and share poetry with kids.)

Thank You, Jimmy Fallon

I have never seen a complete episode of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon," but I now owe him for two of my favorite TV moments of the past year (both of which I actually watched on YouTube, natch). First the terrific opening to the 2010 Emmy ceremony:



And then, from this past Friday, Stephen Colbert singing Rebecca Black's "Friday" with assorted guests (infinitely better than the original):



I love the way the delights just add up and cascade over in both of these videos -- first the cast of "Glee," and then Tina Fey! And Jon Hamm!* And Hurley! Or Stephen Colbert, and then the poker-faced Roots, and then the rapper guy and Jimmy Fallon, then the first mystery musical guest . . . And the performances also embody two of the things I love most about musical theatre in general: a whole community working together in glorious harmony, and the perfect balance between unfettered expression of an emotion and planned-down-to-the-second choreography. Sigh.

* Emily and I were discussing the news that Mad Men won't be back until early 2012, and she posed a terrifying conundrum: What if Season Five of Mad Men and Season Two of Downton Abbey are on Sunday nights at the same time? Which group of complex, lusty, class-driven, fabulously dressed characters would I choose to follow through their complicated, often backstabbing, money-drenched, totally character-driven plots first? I've known the Mad Men people for longer (and there's the whole mystery of who that newly important character actually is deep down that we'll need to discover), but Downton Abbey has both World War I and Bates's wife coming, and all those hats. . . . Sigh deux, with the sincere wish that such a soul-rending choice can be avoided.

A Ramble: Invisible Ink

(Continuing my series of monthly posts in which I write for an hour about more or less whatever is in my brain at the time.)

This has been a very good month--"an epoch in my life," as Anne Shirley would say--thanks to Second Sight and several other events. Trent Reedy's wonderful, world-changing Words in the Dust, previously featured here, has been named as the next book in Al Roker's Book Club for Kids on "The Today Show." You can read an excerpt of the book here if you haven't already seen it. (The campaign from that blog post raised $300 for Women for Afghan Women, by the way, and Trent and I both thank you for your support.)

And then Erin McCahan's I Now Pronounce You Someone Else was named as a finalist in two categories in the Romance Writers of America Awards: Best Young Adult Romance and Best First Novel (where it's competing against big old mean grown-up books too!). This really is a terrific recognition for a totally swoonworthy romance about what happens when you realize life can't always be lived as a totally swoonworthy romance. Plus other nice recognitions for Operation Yes and Eighth Grade Superzero and Marcelo in the Real World . . .

And then, yes, Second Sight came out at last, and was greeted with an ice-cream cake from my lovely boyfriend, many kind e-mails from people who have received it, and a ginormous sigh of relief from me. (Though the typo count is now up to four--grrr, arrgh.) Also a new kind of tension, though. I was talking with a writer at the wonderful Whispering Pines conference this past weekend about what it feels like to be an author; and having gotten over my terror at the book's initial release (or perhaps it's just mutated into this), the thing that keeps giving me pause now is that I like being invisible, often, and books are the opposite of invisibility. They are a claim staked, a space claimed (even if that space is just 5.5" x 8.5" x ~.8" in volume), principles declared, a flag planted, making oneself present in rooms where one has never been.

And this scares me for a very specific reason. . . . There's a talk in the book called "Morals, Muddles, and Making It Through," where I describe what happened when my best friends in fourth grade grew up much quicker than I did in fifth grade. I felt left behind, isolated, bewildered, all alone in a social world that suddenly seemed to be full of jokes I didn't get, focused on interests I didn't share. And I responded by doing my very best turtle imitation, avoiding anywhere I'd have to engage in social interaction, hiding in the library whenever I could (or the bathroom or a back bedroom if I had to go to a party--preferably a bedroom with a bookshelf). I don't have an Invisibility Cloak, but I long ago learned all the tricks available to Muggles for the same purpose: Know where your exits are at all times; don't look at the thing you're trying to avoid, because attention draws attention; wait for a burst of laughter, a noisy conversation, something to distract everyone, or better yet, leave the room at the same time as someone else, if the someone's bound for the bathroom or some such; move quickly and quietly, head down, eyes on your destination; don't look back. And then the deep breath once you're out, the return to the safety and lack of pressure of being alone. While I'm now a much more comfortably social person, someone who doesn't mind public speaking and can navigate a cocktail party pretty decently, my years of playing ghost gave me a taste for the freedom of invisibility . . . which is its own cage as well, I suppose, freedom being just another word for nothing left to lose and all that. But I was also thinking earlier this evening that one of the reasons I love New York is that it provides invisibility via sheer numbers: There are so many things to see and people to watch that it's very easy to hide in plain sight, all of us Purloined Letters of our own stories. . . .

(I really am rambling all over tonight; I feel almost lightheaded from tiredness but I want to try to finish this.) Anyway, again, putting out a book is the opposite of invisibility. And visibility carries responsibility, and I like to travel light, for fear of getting something wrong or hurting someone somehow or just because of everything I'm carrying already. (If a book is published and no one reads it, it still makes a sound, through its influence on the author and its physical existence if nothing else; and when people are reading it, then goodness--who knows how far that whisper might travel?) Maybe eventually I'll get used enough to this that I'll stop thinking "Oh, my, someone else is reading this now," with a little hitch of my heart, at every kind message or book sale. Do know I'm very grateful to every person who causes my heart to hitch.

(This has NOT been a passive-aggressive plea for compliments, by the way, should it come off that way; I meant the rumination on invisibility sincerely, and there's more to say on it later. Maybe April. Writers: Do you like being invisible? Or is what you love about writing the opportunity to plant your flag?)

For the record, if anyone wants to offer me a $500,000 advance, a la Barry Eisler, or a cool $2 million like Amanda Hocking, I'll take it. I'm liking self-publishing, but I'd be happy to sell out to the Man for the right price--especially when, heck, I am the Man, albeit in another market. And given the choice between true invisibility and flight, I'd go with flight, all the way.

The Quote File: Secrets

"Most of us live in a condition of secrecy: secret desires, secret appetites, secret hatreds and relationship with the institutions which is extremely intense and uncomfortable. These are, to me, a part of the ordinary human condition. So I don’t think I'm writing about abnormal things. ... Artists, in my experience, have very little center. They fake. They are not the real thing. They are spies. I am no exception." — John Le Carre

"Most writers are secretly worried that they're not really writers. That it's all been happenstance, something came together randomly, the letters came together, and they won't coalesce ever again." — Nicholson Baker

"My story is important not because it is mine. . . but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is yours. Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track . . . of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity . . . that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally . . . to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but spiritually. I not only have my secrets, I am my secrets. And you are yours. Our secrets are human secrets, and our trusting each other enough to share them with each other has much to do with the secret of what it means to be human." — Frederick Buehner

"Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction, and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed. If a writer doesn't give away secrets, his own or those of the people he loves, if he doesn't court disapproval, reproach and general wrath, whether of friends, family or party apparatchiks... the result is pallid, inanimate, a lump of earth." — Michael Chabon

"Good books don't give up all their secrets at once." — Stephen King

"It's hard to explain how much one can love writing. If people knew how happy it can make you, we would all be writing all the time. It's the greatest secret of the world." — Andrea Barrett

"Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein." — Zora Neale Hurston

"Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity." — Lord Acton

"Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal: my strength lies solely in my tenacity." — Louis Pasteur

"The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made." — Jean Giraudoux

"It is not what you say that matters but the manner in which you say it; there lies the secret of the ages." — William Carlos Williams

"The secret of joy in work is contained in one word — excellence. To know how to do something is to enjoy it." — Pearl S. Buck

"In the midst of all the doubts which have been discussed for four thousand years in four thousand ways, the safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret we can enjoy life and have no fear of death." — Voltaire

"Perhaps the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company." — Rachel Naomi Remen

And More Fun Interviews!

The Cheryl B. Klein Media Blitzkrieg continues with:

• A Publishers Weekly Children's Bookshelf Q&A, with an explanation of the title Second Sight and some thoughts on the continual anxiety of publishing
• An interview with some writing reflections by Shelli of Market My Words
• And a self-publishing and social-media-focused chat with Greg Pincus at the Happy Accident

One fun fact about the book that has not yet come up in any interviews:  I'm Cheryl B. Klein on the book because there's another Cheryl Klein who's a writer, blogger, and editor:  the West Coast director of Poets and Writers, who has already published two novels under our joint name sans middle initial. My website is cherylklein.com; hers is www.cheryl-klein.com. I blog here; she blogs at breadandbread.blogspot.com. I love New York; she loves L.A. We both run, wear glasses and love Sondheim and carbs, and I'm convinced that if we ever met in person, the universe would explode a la matter and antimatter. OTOH, I kind of wish she would write a book for me, simply for the mindblowingness of it all.

All Aflutter

This has been a good and busy week, and promises only to get more so. Some quick things, first non-booky (for a change) and then all-booky:

• I finished "Downton Abbey," and oh my goodness: What period, characterful, conspiracyful, Englishy goodness! Someday I aspire to wear dresses like Lady Sybil and bite off words like the Dowager Duchess. (And more immediately to write a blog post comparing the series to "Mad Men" for all the things they have in common: a large ensemble cast; of multiple social classes, with the attendant conflicts and resentments; on the cusp of (or even in the midst of) gigantic, sweeping societal changes they don't quite grasp, even as they inadvertently bring them about; also on the cusp of a war whose seriousness they cannot possibly foresee; with many buried secrets revealed over time, and liaisons right and left; all while wearing teeth-gnashingly envy-inducing* clothes (though really I suppose I should remember: corsets).)
• * This phrase courtesy of Joanna Pearson's The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills, out in July. You read/edit a book enough times, its phrases naturally leap into your brain and writing. . . .
• I'll be teaching a Master Class on Plot at the Kansas SCBWI conference the first weekend in May. There are, I think, exactly six spots left as of this writing, so book quickly if you're interested!
• My other upcoming appearances: the Mid-Atlantic SCBWI Novel Revision Retreat in June, and Lit Day at LeakyCon 2011 in July. The Lit Day lineup is insane -- insane! -- and features Arthur's first appearance/speech at a Harry Potter fan convention ever, so it's well worth attending if you can make your way there.
• And I loved, loved, loved the new "Jane Eyre" adaptation, partly for the fabulous period clothes and design, yes, but mostly because Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender bring terrific passion and intelligence to the roles of Jane and Rochester, and make Charlotte Bronte's sometimes unwieldy or ethereal dialogue sound perfectly natural in their mouths, sweeping us viewers up in their passions as well. When I reviewed the Keira Knightley "Pride and Prejudice," I contrasted what I called Romantic and Rationalist romances, and faulted that P&P for shooting a Rationalist romance as if it were a Romantic one. Well, "Jane Eyre" is a Romantic romance par excellence (and the film gives that all the brooding atmosphere it warrants, to delicious effect) -- but I had forgotten, till I saw this adaptation, how much it is a Rationalist romance too, how much its unique intensity derives from Jane's absolute control over herself, and how much hotter the love burns for it. I want to see it again already; get your own taste on the movie page here.

Now the Second Sight stuff:

• When I go home to Kansas City for the Kansas SCBWI conference, I'll also have a public book party in Belton, Missouri, on Thursday, May 5th; e-mail me at asterisk.bks at gmail dot com if you're interested in attending.
• Jennifer Bertman interviewed me for the Creative Spaces feature on her website, where I talk about my writing process, my workspace, and the regrettable lack of a magic bullet for making someone a good writer.
• Donna at the First Novels Club and Kate Coombs at Book Aunt each reviewed Second Sight and said some kind things.
• Apparently people have started to receive their books! I hope you enjoy them. If you find typos (sigh), please e-mail me with them at asterisk.bks at gmail dot com. (I've found two, which I regret, but so it goes.) Also, if you had trouble ordering via Mybookorders.com earlier, there's now a direct-order phone number available on the order page, and copies should be available to ship from Amazon.com within the week.
• And to end on a yummy note, James, my darling boyfriend, got me a cake to celebrate the publication of the book; here I am with it in my office.

Happy (and Scary) Book Day to Me!

Today, March 11, is the official publication day of Second Sight! (And there was much rejoicing in the land.) Books are in the fulfillment warehouse and will start shipping out today, and I have many books in my apartment as well, should you like one hand-delivered in New York. (Would you like to know how to order one? Allow me to oblige you.) There have also been several more kind reviews lately, from Chris Eboch here and the King of Elfland's Second Cousin here; and the book has a Goodreads page as well, where it currently stands at five stars. (Based half on my own review, I admit. But also half on Martha Brockenbrough's.) If you get the book and you use Goodreads or another service, or Amazon, I very much appreciate any and all reviews.

I will be honest: There is also much terror in the land, or at least in my apartment, at seeing the scope of this project I've undertaken made real. So many books with my thoughts in them! That must be sold to recoup an investment! That will be read by others! That will be judged by others! And who knows how any of that will go? I am trying to take deep breaths, to calm down and remember publishing, reading, writing, is always a long game, not a short one, that Second Sight is just out today, that I am really proud of the book even if copies malinger here forever; that it is my true thing, as true as I could make it at the time, and that's all that a writer can do. And all of that is also true, and I am mostly succeeding at talking myself down. But for any of my authors or friends who have ever felt disturbed at my seemingly irrational calm in the face of your feeling of seemingly absolutely justifiable anxiety: I get it now.

So, today is about deep breaths and terror, but also remembering how far the book has come, and how much I like it, and that wonder of making that "Sunday in the Park with George" expresses so well: Look, I made a book -- where there never was a book. (And therefore, also, for both halves of the emotional spectrum: Today should obviously be about chocolate.) Thank you all for listening, and for your support.