I have read many, many good YA books lately, but the one whose heroine made a sort of indelible impression on me is the female protagonist of Maureen Johnson’s recent thriller, “The Name of the Star.” The book itself is deliciously suspenseful and set in London, no less. But to me, the real greatness of the book lies with Rory’s character.

Reasons to love Rory:

She is simply the most grounded, down-to-earth fictional teen girl I have read about in quite a while. I love many types of stories, but I consider Rory a BA—and not because she can fight demons or demonstrates incredible physical ninja-skills or has a scheming brain or can slaughter monsters with the best of the boys (and believe me, I am a sucker for all those types of heroines in stories, and I definitely feel there is a place/need for them as well.) No, Rory’s kickass qualities are of a different type and infinitely relatable, which is why I think it’s so important to have characters like her out there. She is simply a teenager who has a very strong, centered sense of herself.

Examples:

When she arrives at boarding school and is confronted with girl cattiness, she holds her own without backing down—but she does so without becoming embroiled in the politics of the cattiness. She is understandably a little apprehensive about this new environment but does not equate her self-worth with how she is perceived, nor is she consumed with trying to fit in; she brings her quirky, funny self to the table and allows herself to think critically about the people and things around her. And she does not resort to viciousness or preoccupation with the catty girl. She just sees this girl for what she is, calls it for what it is, and goes on with her own life.

She has easy access to all her thoughts and feelings, and does not beat herself up for them. This is more important than it sounds, especially for women and girls, as we’re often so used to censoring ourselves it’s almost second nature. And I think it’s especially important when what is considered typically “strong” in a lot of media portrayal of female characters is women who “kick ass with the boys” and “don’t fall apart when things get rough.” I LOVE that Rory DOES emotionally react to things and does so unapologetically. Sure, she delves into the spectrum of emotions—confusion, anger, sadness, self-doubt, all the normal things to feel. But she isn’t consumed with trying to be otherwise, to prove herself, to be “better” or “other” than she is. She just is. She has an incredible amount of self-acceptance, which I found the most empowering of all.

As far as her romance with Jerome goes, this was another refreshing aspect of the story, another place where her very intact, independent sense of self comes in. I’ve never seen this in a heroine before: she likes Jerome, is attracted to him because of his fun, quirky, easygoing qualities—the way Johnson wrote him, he is as human as Rory is. And on Rory’s part, she doesn’t idealize him at all; she just likes him, thinks he’s interesting and enjoys his company. When she and Jerome kiss, she understands what her body wants and responds to; but not once does she confuse this feeing will lifelong love, and not once does she ask herself how she can live without him. I’m not saying it isn’t understandable to confuse hormones with lifelong love or grand hopes for the future, but I also can’t deny it’s refreshing to read about a teenager who has a slightly more down-to-earth perspective of her boyfriend.

So yes, these are the reasons I think Rory kicks butt, and is so very unique and likable and interesting. She LIKES herself—behold. So many of us don’t like ourselves as teenagers, and it is great and critical to have books to reflect that; but to have characters who also demonstrate what self-acceptance might look like is an awesome thing indeed.

Recently I got to go see some of the places that produced the storytellers who wrote things like Treasure Island and Harry Potter and Demian and Mary Poppins and the stories in the Brothers Grimm and Peter Pan and I could babble on and on….

So here it is: Sometime in mid-August 2011, arrival in London at 6am.

We manage to baffle a seasoned London cabbie by staying in a hotel no one has ever heard of. Check in to our elusive hotel is not till 2pm. Drag ourselves to a coffee shop, where we discover the phone that Sam spent a total of 12,000 hours configuring for European travel (GPS and whatnot) does not work.

Sam’s despair at this discovery:

In an effort to cheer him, I remind him that travel is largely improv and that I have spent countless sleepless nights in various train stations and airports in Europe due to my own poor planning skills. He regards me blearily. I remind him further that I did most of this fly-by-night European travel as a hapless young adult, and that we are considerably more resourced now. He does not look comforted.

We emerge into sporadic rain to walk around until we can check into our hotel about seven hours later.

Without thinking, Sam asks, “Would you like to pop into a shop and pick up an umbrella?” We are both delighted that he has acclimated so quickly.

Anyway. If someone had told me I could saunter along the Thames and see some of the most famous places in the Western world casually popping up along its relatively cramped banks, I would have been stunned. But there they were—

Westminster Abbey….

The Houses of Parliament….

Big Ben….

Which are all a stone’s throw from one another.

There were other London delights:

Trafalgar Square…

Amazing street art….

And the majestic Globe Theatre….

which is about as far away from Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey as my neighborhood post office is from my house. We have a distorted Americanese sense of space, you see, which makes it almost impossible to imagine that such famous historic sites could be sitting as closely together as some houses in my neighborhood cul-de-sac (only a slight exaggeration.) This startled Sam and I to our American bones. (Also I realize my phone-camera HDR has oddly superimposed this man’s face over the brick in the pic above.)

The next day we visit the Tower of London, the duly impressive site of, well, oh so much.

In its early days it served as a royal residence, then became primarily a prison—a fearsome castle with an inner village and lush green lawn where a moat once lay.

In one of the more stunning feats of human narcissism (in regard to the animal kingdom), exotic animals were imported from all over the globe to come stay in the English castle and entertain the royals.

The dogs and lions and bears of the Royal Menagerie were pitted against one another in the animal-version of gladiatorial games to delight the kings. The more powerful the menagerie of royal captive animals, the more powerful the king, or so the mis-informed monarchs believed. Turns out, some of these animals were unhappy and….my goodness…..bit people. In the 1800’s, because of this, the animals were transferred to the Regents Park.

Aside from the heinous crimes committed there against human and animal (the Yeoman Warders are very happy to tell you about the heads that rolled—literally), it was a work of pure wonder. We saw Henry the VIII’s suits of armor, growing successively wider over the years:

After a couple of days in London, we fly to Edinburgh, Scotland, one of my favorite places in the world. I mean, just look:

Edinburgh’s combination of beauty and its animated, warm, cheerful people made it feel like home.

On to the Germany portion of our trip—first to Koln (Cologne) to see the Kolner Cathedral. You simply cannot imagine the scale of this thing. Imagine three of the biggest cathedrals you’ve seen stacked one on top of the other. The most Gothic, dark, rich, haunting structure imaginable. Climbing to the highest tower will win you a view of the awesome belfry, a panorama of the city, and some hard-core vertigo.

Then on to the bucolic little town of Wierschem, where we strolled around our B&B for the evening breathing in the smell of horses and apples and gentle evening. I’m from Virginia and badly miss those smells.

The next day we were off to Burg Eltz, my favorite castle on earth. You enter a dense forest, wind down a path, turn a corner and there it is—tucked into a wild lonely valley, secluded and majestic, sitting on its rock. There is no manic tourist town at its base, no gaudy ticket center, nothing at all—just this timeless castle perched on its stone, surrounded by steep wooded hillsides. It is the Frog Prince’s castle, the castle of anyone who ever wished to retire quietly away and live happily, privately ever after.

Here is what it normally looks like (it was under construction while we were there):

And the inside! It’s not as opulent as some other castles, but its rustic beauty is just what I love. Some of the royal drinking-vessels also make you think steampunk originated here, right here in the bowels of this secret castle. Look at some of the king’s cups:

We drove south along the Mosel River on our way to Freiburg, and had one of those lovely spontaneous moments of seeing a castle on a hillside….

and one of us shouting, “What the heck? Let’s go look at it” and swerving off the road to find this was a castle one can officially tour—Burg Thurant, a mighty but intimate “Burg,” situated above a steep hillside vineyard and primed for battle. The courtyard inside was gorgeous….

and then, up in one of the towers, an actual torture chamber. Imagine—outside, this lushly tended garden rife with roses, and inside a human cage, a rack, a cross, and some horrible poker. Presumably to disembowel prisoner(s).

And in the backyard, a flame thrower. You know, just in case.

It is these moments that put our own history into grave perspective. There was a person in that cage once. And, you know, lots of people in the trajectory of that flame thrower. (Yes, I realize the medieval Europeans are hardly alone in their feats of barbarism, and that this barely compares to the cold remove with which we can deal destruction these days. But I’d never been in close proximity to something as specifically designed to torture as a rack. Within twenty feet of a rosebush, no less.)

Then on to Freiburg for a day, which was lovely.

Freiburg sits in my most beloved place on Earth, the Schwarzwald (Black Forest), where I spent many childhood wanderings and where relatives once told me that garden gnomes come alive at night to creep around the homes of their masters. I love the German word for ancient—”uralt.” And this is the most uralt place I can think of, in a fairytalish sort of way. We hiked, looked down upon glorious vistas, felt removed from time and modern life and like we were the first travelers in some of these enchanted groves:

In Gutach, I raked my toe across a raspberry bush and was needled by thorns:

We tried to take a shortcut back, and ended up surreptitiously trapped in several farmer’s fields and having to undo complicated locks to free ourselves (which we always put back into place) and scuttling down treacherous hillsides laden with more thorny bracken, of the area-around-Sleeping-Beauty’s-castle-variety. Sam’s chivalry was on display as he walked ahead of me whacking down thorns and checking upcoming fields for wild boars (or the Black Forest equivalent, possibly an errant unicorn.) The adventure was a welcome hiatus for both of us from our relatively soft and well-ordered lives; we both fancied ourselves frontierspeople by the time we emerged from the last of the tangled fields bruised, torn, and bloody. We were grinning like idiots and preparing to do the hapless-American act for some angry German farmer.  I think Sam almost hoped we would encounter something appropriate to the region, such as a troll or a talking owl.

Then on to Schwangau, in Bavaria. The closest thing to a real and living kingdom, majestic, silent, ageless. An Eden tucked into one small corner of the world, the Bavarian Alps.

My dream is to one day spend a long amount of time there, at least a month or so a year. My head flooded with story ideas, and I realized (painfully) how conducive to creativity environment is.

I get chills just thinking of it.

Then back to London to fly out. Much as I love London’s people, it was a shock to return not only to the English-speaking world but to the manic pace of a city. Sam and I, still acclimated to the pastoral wonders of southern Germany, sat on the Tube and stared at the city dwellers as though they were characters in some slightly dystopian fairytale.

We went to Stonehenge and tried to sift through some of the touristy feel around it to sop up the true glory and mystery of the place. I did learn that one of the sarsens weighs 45,000 tons, which is hardly conceivable, and that 1/3 of each stone is underground. The fields around Stonehenge are peppered with ancient burial mounds. Really, no one knows “haunted” till they’ve been in England.

Many hours and a freezing plane flight later, we alighted into the 110 degree Austin heat feeling utterly dazed. Only just now are we re-adjusting to wide roads, 24-7 pharmacies, the ubiquitous presence of fast food, and front lawns in danger of spontaneously combusting. (As soon as we got back, we watched Sound of Music, Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter in frantic succession, just to help remind us. Soon we’ll do the sensible thing and raid the BBC archives and begin watching German films.)

So. Yeah. It is all the more amazing to read old fairytales, having seen some of the landscapes that inspired them. For me, the tales and stories we grew up with have moved a bit more into the light.

There was so much, so incredibly much, about the Festival that was awesome, inspiring, hilarious, encouraging. I will try to distill this colorful list down to my own personal highlights (things I shall file away in my writerly toolbox):

Amazing YA author Sarah Dessen talking about her outlining process. She claims it’s not really an outline, but that she’s always got the first scene, climax, last scene, and first line down before she starts the rest of the book. As someone who barreled blindly forward when I began my first YA manuscript, I can appreciate Sarah’s process as wonderfully structured.

I did not get many pics, but here is one of Sarah in our local graveyard. Don’t be afraid, the location will be explained later:

My new fangirlish love for author Martha Hall Foose, a delightful Southerner I was unfamiliar with. She knocked the socks off the audience at the Literary Death Match. All the authors involved did a wonderful job of reading their work aloud for seven minutes. Martha blew us away—the delivery, the content, the humor. I will be purchasing Martha’s books just to read the language over and over.

The “Convergence of Souls” panel, for which over a dozen prominent YA authors gathered in the Texas State Cemetery and made up stories for audience members. In the graveyard. In the dark. Seriously, how cool is Austin?

And last but not least, the amazing, incredible Kate DiCamillo mentioning that early drafts (the first through fourth, I believe) of her book “Because of Winn Dixie” are online. Kate said it’s a gift to other writers to be transparent about one’s own early drafts. I looked and was fascinated….wonderfully encouraging to see that everyone begins somewhere, especially this literary great with her fable-like language. I think the next time I’m on a school visit and a child is discouraged about writing because they want to get it right the first time, I will direct them to Kate’s drafts.

A pic of Kate DiCamillo’s and Rebecca Stead‘s signing table. Author/editor David Levithan is on the right:

And…for way more great festival pics and a general round-up of events, Cynthia Leitich Smith‘s has a wonderful blog post on it. So does Shelli Cornelison here, and Donna Bowman Bratton here.

I got to thinking about this because I recently got married and I couldn’t help noticing a parallel between the pre-marriage steps and pre-publication steps.

While I very much appreciated the outpouring of congratulations around our big day, I guess I am a sucker for that delicious, behind-the-scenes stuff of life, the chaos and growth that happen in private, without a public face. Learning to trust yourself. Learning to trust another. The hilarity and gravity of dealing with your personal demons as you embark on the extraordinary adventure of marriage with another human being who is just as complex, nuanced, and idiosyncratic as you are.

The same goes for publishing—much, much emphasis and focus is on the big day when it Happens (and understandably so)—but the days leading there can often feel like a slog or a preamble. To me, it’s those small steps, the ones performed in quiet obscurity, the impressive ones that nevertheless don’t get parties, that really matter. Mailing out the first query; bearing the first rejection; meeting the first agent; connecting with the first author-friend; the fledgling author attending their first writing conference, and the precious moment they cast out their antennae to begin learning about this sometimes daunting industry. All the tiny milestones upon which the openly celebrated days stand. The ones where there is no traditional holiday on which hundreds of people chirp “Congratulations!” on your Facebook page.

As with the process of learning about a partner, there are many, many things to enjoy about the quiet, private process of making a book out of nothing. I would encourage authors who are not yet published to enjoy the luxury of writing without a deadline, in relative anonymity, without any kind of pressure other than the self-imposed sort. I think sometimes we are so intent on getting published—which I don’t blame us for—that we forget to savor what we have right now, the bliss of being intimate with our stories, just us and them, with no one’s hungry eyes on them yet. Every author who has written under pressure, saddled with expectations, probably yearned for just a taste of that freedom again.

Those are the kinds of things I mean—the little private joys and sorrows on the journey toward publication, marriage, having a child, graduating—all the things Hallmark deems worthy of notice. We have to remember that the things we do before and after are noteworthy and festive, and that it’s not up to anyone else to tell us when we’ve “arrived.”

Or, perhaps there ought to be a greeting card line solely for writers.

People have covered the subsequent uproar rather nicely, as has Twitter. Laurie Halse Anderson wrote one of my favorite (and very compassionate) response pieces, as did the incredible Sherman Alexie.

As for me, this article makes me sad. Really it’s nothing we haven’t heard before, but it creeps me out every time. And why?

Probably because I find the article’s assumptions about the parent/child relationship, and the child’s relationship to the world, rather eerie.

I think of teenagerhood as a window of time in which people are hungrier for experience and understanding than possibly any other time in their lives. I remember being a teenager, and I remember the lives and fates of classmates of mine whose parents either worked very hard to keep them as sheltered as possible from the dangerous, chaotic nature of the world, as well as kids whose parents themselves were depictions of that dark side (addicts, abusers)? In either case, these parents were disengaged. Checked out. Not there.

Teenagers understand that the world is nuanced, frightening, that there are dark corners that house atrocities and violence. Many of these teens seek out books, which offer glimpses into the lives of characters reflective of the teen’s experience, or who introduce him/her to an entirely new one. In healthy home environments, the parents of these teens are present to their children—they’re there to honestly answer the hard questions that books might raise.

But for some children, literature is one of the ONLY doorways into normalizing the truths of a world that is terrifying, unpredictable, random. For kids whose lives are darkness every day, the experiences shared in books are often the only things addressing the truth in the life of the child at all. If the adults in his or her life aren’t present, where is that child to turn? There are few to no classes in school that address these darknesses with any authenticity. There’s nowhere for the child to have his or her personal and very real experience normalized and validated. AND, the children who live in the darkness of having experienced abuse, rape, bullying, cutting, attempted suicide, and drugs are not relegated to certain socio-economic groups, as is often imagined; they’re everywhere—including among the very rich, the very white, the very elite. They’re there, with no one to talk to.

What’s the alternative to censorship? Self-education. Parents seeing good reason to educate themselves, and therefore their children, about what happens in the world every day. Parents having the courage and curiosity to wonder why children do things like cut or commit suicide or do drugs. AND, those parents no longer seeing their worlds as utterly separate from the “darkness” as it were, and understanding that their own children are exposed either directly or indirectly to some form of violence every day. And that their children are wondering. Their children are curious. Their children, if given the chance (and even if they’ve had limited exposure to trauma) would like to develop empathy as to what goes on in the mind and heart of a troubled child, a troubled neighborhood, a troubled community.

To me, that’s the very saddest part about all this. The terrible, false assumption that “darkness” and “trouble” happen over THERE. Away from HERE. In my experience, the children of parents who assume this are not happy, safe, free from harm, living in a light-filled world. Instead these children work tirelessly to house their personal darknesses all alone, because there’s No One There. Emotionally, they’re orphaned.

The author of the WSJ article naively assumes that parents are the all-knowing gatekeepers who alone understand that when teenager’s minds are exposed to “darkness,” they are instantly ignited with thoughts of self-harm or harm to others. This viewpoint suggests that the human mind itself, sheltered or not, is not innately curious. It’s a monstrous underestimation of capacity.

No human being is exempt from darkness. To assume that a light-filled and innocent state is one to be cultivated and then sustained does an incredible disservice to any child. By hook or by crook, a human being will find a way to explore his or her own darknesses. The ways in which this happens are as varied as people themselves. But all of us will do it—either with the wide-awake help and guidance of loving adults in our lives, or without. And the road is far darker without.

Most YA literature is written with more integrity and concern for the human experience than adult lit. I have never read a YA book in which hope was not a prominent theme, no matter what the issue at hand. YA themes reflect aspects of the psychological developmental process—individuation, family dynamics, identity, struggle, tragedy, coping skills, powerlessness, cultivating a moral compass, and often, the protagonist regaining/developing a sense of empowerment within his or her given world. Most adults would do well to be so preoccupied with these fundamentals of the human experience.

And here they are in YA, finally. If anything, we should celebrate. Far less teenagers, and therefore members of our population, will grow up repressed, forced to experiment with their budding sexuality and desire to be accepted in isolation, away from parents who shy away from subjects that make them uncomfortable—only to later make decisions reflective of people who have never been spoken to with honesty and courage. Children have the right to develop the tools to navigate this world—empathy, critical thinking, honed perception. And they need our help, and the help of books, to do it.

And I thought, “Maybe she has a baby elephant that she’s hiding back in her apartment at home, and her landlord can’t find out about him. And the only way to keep the elephant from trumpeting is to buy special elephant food from a store that’s only open from 7-9 am, and this morning on her way there her windshield wiper exploded, causing a minor scene and much delay, and she didn’t make it to the pet store. So now she’s depending on her unreliable neighbor Bert to keep the elephant quiet all day by watching elephant movies with it—which serve the double purpose of featuring lots of loud trumpeting that the landlord may hear and assume is just a film, should the real elephant join in. But the waitress still can’t be sure how it’s going, hence her terrible mood. She really is a very nice person, otherwise.”

Yeah. It helps.

It’s about rejection. Rejection is hard. No one knows this more than writers.

Every writer I know has an uncommon tenacity and the ability to simultaneously feel the horrid blows of rejection, all while putting on the blinders that allow us to barrel forward, slogging through self-doubt (and occasionally the doubt of our families, acquaintances and coworkers.)

I’ve known so many talented writers whose work will never see the light of day because, for whatever reason, the blow of rejection is too painful. I can’t judge them as I once did. I understand. Months and often years of rejection can break anyone down. Sometimes when I think about how painful rejection is, I marvel that anyone writes at all.

But here is where I think it’s so important to focus on the small triumphs, the mini-causes for celebration that all eventually add up to the dream coming true. If writers follows the simple formula of working their heineys (sp?) off to hone their craft, educate themselves about the industry, and behave in a generally professional and respectful way, mini-triumphs can’t help but follow. Note: It’s amazing how many people do not do these BASIC THINGS, which is why you deserve hugs and wine FOR doing them.

If you are working tirelessly to improve your writing, you have already triumphed. If you have the capacity to step back from your work, see it as an entity separate from yourself, critique it objectively—ALL WHILE loving it tenderly and being brokenhearted over it and praying every day that it bears fruit and cradling it like a baby—you are a remarkable human being. You have mastered the dual capacity to be detached and engaged. You adore your story, while standing back far enough to reinvent the thing and chisel it and listen to it. You are a needy parent letting your child fly. Don’t the Buddhists call this something?

If you are actually submitting this work once it’s ready, you can relish in this triumph as well. Really, take a moment. Don’t go straight from this monumental achievement to agonizing about possibly impending rejection. You are amazing, one brave, brave creature. You have shipped your child, warts and all, into the world, and are now willing to sit back and have strangers (whose eyes are cold and uncaring in your imagination, I’m sure) assess your baby and tell you where you’ve failed as a parent. Really, it’s like the worst parent-teacher conference in the world. “Your plot lacks dynamism” can sound a lot like “Johnny doesn’t play well with others.” But if you have mastered the previous step of honing your craft, you have already proved yourself to be someone who can hear another person tell you your story-child has warts. Who can hear the possible gems of truth and constructive advice in the criticism. You have a crazy, tenacious faith in your story-child. In yourself. More wine.

And then you may get some form rejections. You’d think writing was the hardest part, but I think often this is. Bearing it is just terrible. You feel like a faceless entity in a sea of successful authors, like a sad sap wandering around with a tattered story under your arm while the wind whistles on the pier. You feel you are shouting into a void, that the industry itself is an impenetrable fortress of suited, hateful story-hoarders. Ironically, the very strength you have worked so hard to cultivate—sensitivity, vulnerability—now turns its vicious flip-side onto you, and lets you feel every single arrow of every single rejection.

Am I not making this any easier? Well, here’s my point—you may want to shoot me for saying this if you’re in this phase, but being able to feel this pain will ultimately serve you. One day. It will either allow you to shape your story further, or help you develop empathy for struggling writers, or make you feel more like part of the world at large, of what it is like to fight and work for something. Of what it’s like to get out of your own way and separate your own self-worth from the mistakes in what you’ve created. Perhaps it will help you learn to be gentle with yourself, to pamper yourself during difficult times. These are lessons that will bleed over into your other life, your real life, where they will be invaluable. Whatever it will do, if you stick with pursuing publication beyond this phase, it will strengthen you. I am not just saying this. I have been there. Here, you may have a whole bottle.

And then you get personalized rejections. This is a call for an enormous woot-woot. You have managed to catch a busy, busy agent’s or editor’s attention and they have bothered to let you know that your writing caught their eye. Out of the hundreds of submissions they see weekly, something about your writing gave them pause. Do you know how amazing this is? How incredible? This ought to give you hope, if nothing else does. Take heart. Wine, please.

And then the requests to see more come in. Sometimes the story will ultimately get rejected, sometimes it will be bought; but regardless, by this point, you probably know enough about the industry, have probably been beaten down and whipped around and left for dead enough times by the wacky world of publishing, to know that it is your tenacity and perseverance that count, that it is your willingness to keep trying, keep going, keep developing yourself as a writer that did it. And you would probably offer similar advice to beginning writers.

Because, remember, all through this process of developing your story-world and researching and revising and editing your work, your real life is happening alongside. Your mundane, everyday, buying-pet food, changing-the-tire-on-the-car life goes on. And this life can benefit enormously from the lessons in pursuing publication. The whole process can take a long, long time. There are no guarantees, ever. You don’t want to look back and realize that one or three or five or ten years of your life have been spent in a self-loathing frenzy of trying to get published, without ever sitting back to truly celebrate your successes, small as they may seem. They’re not. If you allow the process to change you, then the subterranean space in which the stories happen will become richer, deeper, wilder and braver, too.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the shy, introverted author who finds it impossible to talk about his or her own work in any kind of tantalizing or even intelligent way. I seem to embody this trait to an embarrassing degree.

When discussing my work with people I don’t know well, I become painfully aware of how complex the concept of my story sounds. Of how deeply I myself struggled with its labyrinthine plot. Of how convoluted it may come across.

It feels impossible to pitch my work in a quick, savvy, slick way.

And so I freeze.

What NOT to do when pitching your work:

But despite this, in my heart, am I not as excited as anyone else about my novel-baby? Have I not slaved and labored over it and been exulted and challenged by it and am I not as eager to see its realization in the world? Do I not think just as much as the next author that I am (figuratively) pregnant with a gem—and that as I polish and slave and agonize and wrestle with this gem, it will come shining into the light of day?

The answer is yes. Yes, of course. So what makes me turn into a gibbering moron when asked what it’s about? What’s more, have I not spoken about it with glowing eyes and abandon to people I know and trust? So why not to perfect strangers?

First of all, we must establish why it’s even important to learn how to do this. Is it critical? Aren’t there multitudes of authors who have enjoyed illustrious careers while being hermited social rejects who hated other humans? Or aren’t there even just plenty of normal people who prefer not to share their story ideas?

Yes, of course.

I’m addressing those of us who WISH we had that skill, who frequent social circles in which possessing this skill would be invaluable, yet who still cannot seem to cultivate it.

*Note*: If you are not published, it is OK TO TALK ABOUT YOUR STORY even with people who ARE published. They are not seventeen tiers above you in human value. They are people who struggled to break into the publishing industry, as you are trying to do.

It is important to learn how to do this, people. But first, to address some inevitable fears:

Am I saying all shy and retiring authors must turn into you-know-whats of shameless self-promoting integrity-less goo? No. In my experience, such types are few and far between. It is PERFECTLY POSSIBLE to be openly excited about your story and a humble, realistic human being.

Am I saying we must forego our private, sacred intimacies with our stories in favor of exposing them prematurely to the garish eyes of the world? No. There is a time in the life of every story in which it must be organically protected, kept away from outside interference. This gestation period varies for every story and author. But AFTER THAT, when the story is ready for the world, it would behoove us to know how to discuss it.

Apparently authors—myself included—sometimes worry that sharing story ideas reveals everything about us as people. That the moment we open our mouths we are not only naked, but transparent. Please try not to worry about this. Talking about your story idea will not expose the darkest skeletons in your closet, thereby revealing you as Undesirable # 1. When people are listening to you, they are usually genuinely interested in your STORY. Chances are they are not judging you, and if they are, they’re not worth your time anyway.

If your story, like mine, feels impossible to condense into a two-sentence pitch, that is OK. I just heard an author explain the brilliant plot of his story for ten minutes and I was utterly engrossed the whole time. *Note:* If you are at a conference in which you are required to give a two-sentence pitch, that’s a different story, of course. Otherwise, if you speak about it excitedly, confidently, it will hardly matter if you go on for a few minutes.

Just think what you could be missing otherwise. Among other things, connections. It is lovely to connect with other authors, to ignite mutual interest and creative partnerships. If you are able to discuss your story unapologetically, bravely, standing by the genius of your idea, in love with the novel-child, you could easily find yourself with an invaluable new critique partner, advocate, and best case scenario—editor or agent.

Whether you are published or not, established or not, you have a right to glow when talking about your story. Whether your story is still in its gelatinous phases or coming to sweet fruition, you may exude joy. You just might connect with someone who’s been pining for the story that was brewing in you, in obscurity, the story that is working its way out of the birth canal (sorry for these analogies, they’re just so apt). Some of these people may understand your vision and hold it just as closely to their hearts as you do.

And if nothing else, practicing talking excitedly about your precious story is excellent psychological honing. It may be a powerful tool in keeping the faith that your story ought to exist out there, in the world, in many minds at once.

Just saying. This would have helped me to hear, and so I thought I’d share it.

The only other place I’ve been that’s as flat is Kansas.

Both are so flat you forget the planet is round. You imagine setting a Greyhound loose and that the poor dog will eventually keel over not from scaling treacherous terrain, but from the sheer exhaustion of not having anything obstructing its path for, say, twelve thousand miles.

Anyway. Such a landscape is conducive to lovely and voracious winds. Winds that buffeted our festival tent to dangerous heights and literally PULLED THE TENT STAKES out of the earth. Strong men had to grab them while shouting manly things to each other like, “This ain’t good….the whole thing might blow.”  The entire time I was terribly excited, as though we were part of the Flying Dutchman’s crew.

The kids involved were troopers and ran with it. Four-year-olds are remarkably adaptable. (Note the suspicious child in the front. I love that guy.)

The festival committee was amazing. Librarians converged from everywhere to make the whole thing possible. So down-to-earth and go-with-the-flow and deeply concerned with kids and literacy, of course, and with the fate of such programs under the budget cuts.

But not to despair! With such hearts devoted to kids reading, we shall overcome. We shall.

On Thursday, I got to meet amazing author/illustrators Don Tate and Keith Graves. Both are super sweet, amicable, fascinating folksies. I tried to convince them to visit the beach with me after dinner but turns out they had the mature idea of getting to bed at a decent hour. I can’t blame myself for the impulsiveness though; lovely as Austin is, we are landlocked.

Keith Graves, me, Don Tate

Norma Puente, wonderful elementary literary coach, and me

Don Tate and me at Neyland Branch Library

Awesome children’s reading room at the library

View from my hotel room. Corpus is home to the first Whataburger, I believe.

On Friday I got to meet author Carmen Tafolla. Don, Keith and Carmen are great inspirations. I really love other author/illustrators. We are always slightly bewildered by the whirlwind of publishing, no matter how savvy we might be. Commiserating together is nourishing. Especially while ingesting vast quantities of bacon-wrapped shrimp.

On Friday the lovely Paige Dinn of the festval committee took me over to present to the kindergarten-through-second grade of Crockett Elementary School. Among the questions I was asked—and bear in mind these were questions posed by people under the age of seven—were:

“How do you FEEL while you’re writing a book?”

“What makes you pick those colors?”

“Do you like writing or illustrating more? Is it frustrating to do both?”

Can we say brilliant? Can we say I’m not worried about Crockett Elementary’s contribution to the future of our species? Can we assume this school is churning out people who will help us evade the zombie apocalypse?

Then the lovely librarian presented me with a bouquet of tissue flowers and a copy of Tomie DePaola’s “The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush,” a book I have long loved.

Anyway. It was a great festival put together by amazing people. I feel very lucky to have been a part of it.