Scene from my therapist’s office the other day:

Me: So when I think about my career and all the genres I write in, like YA contemporary and YA romance and romance in general--

Her: Wait, you write romance?

Me: Uh, yeah. (P.S. I write lots of different things under different names and I ghostwrite stuff…FYI I am super crazy talented.)

Her: *Laughs nervously* I guess I’m just surprised…you don’t seem the type. Those books are so…I mean, I can’t believe you write things like that! Oh, stable boy, stable boy!

Me: *Trying to wrap my head around the fact that my therapist just mocked my career* Um, I’ve never written about a stable boy…? I like writing romance. And reading it. All kinds of it.

Her: Wow. I just can’t imagine you writing anything that shallow.

Other people reading this might be shocked that this conversation occurred. I was not. When you write in the genres I tend to write across—young adult, young adult romance, middle grade, adult romance—you get used to people telling you that your work is somehow lesser-than all the stuff piling up in the “Literature & Fiction” section at Barnes and Noble. I remember one of my friends in college mocking me for reading Holes by Louis Sachar, the critically-acclaimed middle grade novel. “Why do you read all that junk anyway?” he asked. (Here I could go into a long rant about the unfair reasons why we judge certain genres of reading more harshly than others, but many other people have written on that topic far better than I ever will. I think I’ll just hold this rant to being annoyed by book snobbery in general.)

There’s a reason e-readers took over the world, and that reason is book snobbery. Romance novels hit sales high points after the Kindle came out, and this wasn’t an accident: people were finally able to read whatever they wanted without anyone judging their covers. I’ve gotten so used to book-judging permeating the corners of my life that I just accept it these days. Honestly, I probably won’t even drop my therapist. She’s helped me make some important breakthroughs regarding my teeth grinding habit and also I already know where her office is. The process of Google mapping another therapist just sounds exhausting. Plus it’s not like what she said hasn’t already been said by at least five other people I still eat dinner with on a regular basis.
 
Still, a message out there to all of you who think your books are better than the ones I choose to read and write: you’re ruining reading for the rest of us. Not for me, actually—I’ll keep reading whatever I like to read, thanks. I have no problem going between that MG novel on my bookshelf and the new title from the literature bestseller list and also a book filled with people who dare to fall in love and have a pre-determined happy ending (gasp). I have a Kindle to handle the likes of all of you. The real problem here is that you’re ruining reading for the people who need to read the most: CHILDREN.

Book snobbery is no less pervasive in K-12 schools and the homes of children and teens than my therapist’s office. Actually, it’s ten times worse. “You let your students read graphic novels? But those aren’t real books, are they?” “My kid reads a lot, but mostly just Diary of a Wimpy Kid, so I’m worried.” “I hope my kid’s teacher starts teaching some real books next year. You know, classics. Maybe Dickens.” I hope no one tells Person #3 that Dickens wrote most of his stuff in serial form. Stephen King does that too, you know!

For years we’ve been telling kids what not to read. What’s not hard enough or important enough or “smart” enough. Then we turn around and get angry when they don’t want to read at all and would rather play Minecraft or whatever game I am currently too uncool to know about. It’s a mixed message that’s definitely not doing us any favors. I don’t love to read today because someone handed me a steady diet of Truman Capote when I was seven. I love to read because someone gave me a Baby-Sitters Club book once and I didn’t stop until I’d read all of them. Then I just kept going.

Basically, what I’m trying to say here is this: if you’re a book-judger, you crush my soul. But more importantly, you are probably crushing the soul of a smaller human out there who just wants to read their comic book without being treated like they have leprosy. Nobody owns reading, except possibly Hachette, and even they know that people’s reading tastes are wide and varied and should never be limited by what someone else seems to be “the right reading.” In fact, they’ve made about a bazillion dollars off the idea that people like to read different things. No one in that publishing house is afraid of a stable boy or five.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go write a scene where some people kiss. And possibly find a new therapist.
               
                

For me, one of the best parts about National Novel Writing Month is that it forces me to write. When I don’t feel like it, when the muses aren’t singing, when my story ideas are terrible, when the words aren’t coming out. It forces me to set goals and hold myself accountable to them no matter what. 
 
And sometimes, even when the resulting writing is terrible, it turns into something not-terrible.
 
On November 1st of this month I started writing a novel that I’ve been plotting for a while. I felt only mildly excited about the story concept, but whatever. It seemed like I had possibly exhausted my creative juices on The Novel Just Before This, so I figured I’d give this idea a go and see what happened.
 
Five thousand words in, it was not good.
 
Eight thousand words in, it was terrible.
 
But I was writing. Regularly—which is something I have struggled to do since I finished my last manuscript. So whatever; I kept writing it. And around ten thousand words in, something excellent happened: the whole book went off the rails.
 
Around midnight on day six of NaNo I had an epiphany: the concept for the book was terrible and trite and had already been done twelve thousand times. I was utterly unoriginal. But wait! If I just changed this…and this…and this….
 
Now THAT was a book I looked forward to writing.
 
I awoke the next morning with renewed vigor. Some vim, even.  I did a Thing I Never Do and wrote a few scenes from this newly conceived book completely out of order, something author Holly Schindler suggested a while ago that I’ve been wanting to try. And guess what: magic happened. The characters made sense. They were not longer the cardboard stereotypes I’d been slowly writing them into. The plot had actual things happen now.

Of course, I am now four thousand words behind schedule because I had to go back and completely rewrite the entire beginning of the book. That's cool, though, because now those ten thousand words aren't absolutely the worst things I have ever written. I could not be more excited to have a book I am writing change its mind and decide it wants to go in a completely different direction. I’m so happy I kept writing this stupid thing even when I knew it was terrible. I’m so happy I gave myself a chance to let it un-terrible itself.
 
I mean, I could still screw this up. Who knows what I can do to the theme and setting and characters arcs in this baby as time goes on. But for the moment, I have faith in this manuscript again. I am going to apply myself to it with the same level of excitement that I apply to drinking a peanut butter milkshake (highly underrated flavor, fight me if you disagree) and see what comes of all this.
 
Good job, NaNo.  Way to make me hate and then love writing again, and all in the first week. I can’t wait to see where we are on day 30. 

It’s officially day two of National Novel Writing Month. Things that have so far occurred to me since NaNo 2018 began:

1. 1. It is incredibly cruel to start a writing challenge on a day when I am basically swimming in leftover Halloween candy. I’m only three chapters into this book and I’ve already eaten twelve packs of Skittles and more Almond Joys than anyone should readily admit to eating.


2. 2. For some reason, November is the month when we are all apparently supposed to accomplish something. Since yesterday the internet has challenged me to do the following in the next month: write a novel, de-clutter my house, achieve perfect mental health, and master Pilates. When did November get so ambitious?


3. It’s a lot easier to write a novel in a month when your muse is on your side.
4. Setting daily word count goals is more fun if you get Skittles when you meet then.
5. I am possibly going to have to buy more Skittles.
6. I am possibly going to have to sign up for more Zumba classes so I can eat more Skittles.

 
Happy NaNo, everyone! Hope your characters are cooperating and your settings are as beautiful on paper as they are in your head.  

​This tweet is my life, everyone.
 
I cannot tell you how many 10k manuscripts live in the graveyard that is the Documents file of my computer. There they sit, abandoned, crying out for attention. Will I ever get a second act? Whatever happened after that third major plot point? But is the MC’s brother’s cousin actually the villain after all?
 
Poor abandoned manuscripts. It was a bit of a rough writing year for me. I did a lot of editing projects and worked on some things with other writers, but my own work just kept falling flat. Every time I started something and got excited about it, that excitement died somewhere around the  8-10k mark and the poor book ended up in the graveyard of lost and loosely plotted souls on my computer.
 
This went on for about seven months. And any writer will tell you that seven months of feeling unproductive and creatively stifled makes you second-guess a lot of things. Like whether you’re cut out to write this long-term. Whether you’re good enough. Whether you’ll ever produce anything worthy of being read again.
 
Clearly I’ve had A Lot of Feelings for a while.
 
I took some time at the end of this summer and stopped trying to write anything new for a few weeks. I kept working on editing projects, but I actively stopped trying to create anything. I was worried my brain, and maybe my heart, needed a break. Some space from feeling like all I was going to do every time I sat down at the computer was create another new character who would be lost to my Google drive before they even became three-dimensional.
 
I struggled some more as I threw myself back into writing this fall, but recently things have been coming together again. I just hit 20K on a manuscript that I actively am really enjoying. I’m in that delightful stage of writing a new novel where I relish waking up every morning to write my next scene. What brought on this sudden bought of renewed creativity? I’m not sure. Maybe it was the time off. Maybe my muse and I were finally in the same room at the same time again. Maybe maybe maybe.
 
I wish writing felt more linear sometimes. I wish I could follow the trains and lines of my creative process with a better idea of where it’s going. But I can’t, and in a publishing world that’s as much of a roller coaster as the creative process, I know better than to hope for a linear existence in writing. It would be nice. But it’s not likely to happen anytime soon.
 
I teach college writing to freshman, and we talk a lot about embracing moments of struggle in the writing process. Working with them, not against them. Trusting that growth and improvement will come if you put in the work, even if it doesn’t come at the same rate as it does for the person sitting next to you.
 
So as I’m staring down the graveyard of manuscripts in my documents folder today, I’m trying to remember that each of these books were meant to die in the ashes of that folder. They have been part of my journey to improvement. They are not lost weeks and months of writing, as they sometimes seem to be. They are part of everything I will ever write in the future, every word I will produce on this computer, even if they never got their own second act.
 
To all the manuscripts I’ve loved before: thank you. Forget everything I said when I was swearing about how your secondary characters were flat and your plot had no focus.
 
You’re wonderful, even though you’re terrible. 

​Sherman Alexie, who I quickly fangirled all over. As one does. It’s basically just a miracle I didn’t cry as he signed my copy of WAR DANCES.