In the 1990s and early 2000s I was an ardent supporter of Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone; he’s the only candidate I ever volunteered for and there were throngs of misty-eyed 20-somethings who wanted to do so, because Wellstone was the most progressive and honest candidate who’d been elected to higher office. When he died in 2002 I attended a memorial service for a colleague who was one of his closest advisers and died on the same ill-fated flight, which was one of the saddest in my life. And at that memorial service, talking about Mary, I remember saying something positive and hopeful about Hillary Clinton one day being president, because I felt that she would carry the banner that Paul and Mary had carried, particularly her interest in healthcare and education.

Why am I reflecting on that now? Because at the time there seemed to be little question among a group of progressives that Hillary Clinton was “one of us,” and somehow in the intervening fourteen years she’s become the establishment and even the enemy. I’m wondering why that is, and whether it has anything in particular to do with her politics or if it’s an imagined splintering. It’s not hard to imagine Wellstone, had he lived, running the same kind of fiery campaign of truth as Bernie Sanders is now. But as a Wellstone supporter I sure never saw Hillary as an opponent. Bill had his critics, but Hillary was admired. People had bumper stickers that said “I would vote for Clinton but she’s not running.”

Yet, when Hillary running became a reality, and not a bumper sticker joke, the tone changed. What surprises me isn’t the contempt from the right, but the contempt from the left. A lot of it is vague and dismissive.

I supported Obama in 2008 but it was with no hard feelings for Hillary Clinton, but I think that particular primary race exposed a virulence on the American left… both racism and sexism became a part of the open dialogue, especially because social media was becoming a part of a presidential election for the first time and the filters were off. But as that endless primary wore on there seemed to be more and more enthusiasm for, if not Obama himself, for the idea of Obama — that an African American with a funny name and “exotic” background could win the presidency told a better story about America than the forty-odd white men who preceded him.

How come that same spirit has not gathered around Hillary Clinton? Why are white liberal men suddenly “feeling the Bern” instead of finding the same call to make America more like the land of opportunity it is rumored to be? How come the idea of Hillary Clinton hasn’t inspired men the way the idea of Barack Obama inspired progressive white people?

I think that there is a failure of progressive spirit in the sudden enthusiasm for Sanders, to keep finding excuses not to vote for a woman president. To be frank, I think men are happy to get off the hook. They can vote for an avatar instead of voting for a woman. To be equally frank, that must have been at least a part of my enthusiasm for Obama in 2008.

True, there is some resentment for Hillary that’s borne of her long history and familiarity. In a way it’s like an organization turning down an inside candidate who has labored for forty years inside the company and risen to a minor executive position in favor of a man with a shiny resume from elsewhere. You can have a long list of minor grievances (and no loyalty) to a woman you’ve worked with and for, but a new person is a blank slate, presumed to have all the right opinions, especially when he promises to fix everything. I think men are allowed to have their faults, to win out over Mr. Tabularasa, but women are not. It’s one of the quiet ways the glass ceiling remains intact.

Obama was Mr. Tabularasa in 2008, and he knew it. In The Audacity of Hope, he wrote in the prologue that he had become, “a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” I think he even knew that he benefited from the resentment of men — including liberal men — for women who rise above their station. Mind you, I think he’s been a fine president and is a good person. But he unarguably benefited from sexist backlash in 2008, even while withstanding and prevailing against racist backlash.

Now I think it’s time for American men to man up and elect a woman. I’m not satisfied with the dismissive attacks on Clinton as an explanation for voting against her, or the promise from a guy that he’ll support a woman president when Elizabeth Warren or some other Ms. Tabularasa runs, somebody with enough ideological purity to deserve the support of men, like a political Virgin Mary without original sin. A fundamental difference between men and women is that men are allowed to have warts. Heck, that other Clinton was wartier than a professional toad handler and we elected him twice.

And if Clinton does get passed over for Mr. Tabularasa, I think there needs to be a little soul searching on the left about why women are our biggest voting bloc and take on a lioness’s share of the volunteering but aren’t qualified to lead.

Remember when I said I was teaching this class and hoped people would sign up? That was way back in November. Now the class is only two and a half weeks away!

The Art of Growing Up

01/27/16–03/16/16 | Wednesday | 6:00-8:00 p.m.

Ages: Adult

Location: Open Book-Loft Classroom (1011 South Washington Ave., Minneapolis, MN 55415)

Reg $280.00 | Mem $252.00 | Low inc. $196.00

In this class we’ll revisit two iconic middle-grade series: Beverly Cleary’s Ramona and Judy Blume’s Fudge. These series chart the milestones of growing up without dead mothers or anyone needing to save the world. In the first part of each class, we will discuss two or three crucial moments in the book under discussion and how the comparatively low stakes can feel high in the hands of a skilled author. We will also have a sustained discussion about why such books matter—how “quiet” books that chronicle the lives of ordinary children can be comforting companions to young readers. In the second half of each class, students will bring their own writing and/or favorite books into the discussion. Each participant will have at least one opportunity (and obligation) to do so.

Students are encouraged to read or re-read Ramona the Pest,Ramona and Her Mother, and Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, and Superfudge by Judy Blume.

Sign up here!

A beautiful, frosty day in Saskatchewan, Canada.

The post Polar Poetry appeared first on Cathrin Hagey.

Hey PubCrawlers! So, you participated in NaNoWriMo. First, congratulations on what you accomplished, even if you didn’t (technically) finish. That takes a lot of work, a lot of guts, and a lot of stubbornness. So…what’s next? Let me start by telling you what I’ve learned over my years of participation (and also as a literary assistant).

1. Sometimes the book you’ve written isn’t one you end up loving enough to keep.

It can hurt to write that many words, only to realize it’s not a story we want to show to the world. But it’s okay to feel this way – every word written is important, regardless of what happens after. Even if it stays in a drawer for years, you accomplished something that helped you grow and learn as a writer. Even the most prolific writers learn something new about themselves every time they write.

A lot of us have this tendency to believe that everything we write should be work-shopped and queried and edited and shaped. But I’ll be honest – I have at least two NaNo novels that have never seen the light of day. They’re not great – structure-wise, they fall apart halfway through. The characters are inconsistent. The story is so-so. And I love that I am the only one who has the privilege of reading them and seeing just how far I’ve come.

Getting to know who you are as a writer is never a bad thing – it’s one of my favorite aspects of this contest.

2. Don’t query the book on December 1st (or even in December, period).

This one comes from the agency side of my experience. Agents get an influx of queries those first few days after NaNo and it’s usually a sign that a writer is querying his/her NaNo draft fresh out of the contest. I get it – finishing a novel is incredibly excited, and lots of us are guilty of querying too early, NaNoWriMo or no. But if you decide to revise the book and query later, querying too soon means rejections, which means you’ve crossed a handful of agents off your query-able list when it comes to that project.

3. When revising, an outline works wonders, even (or especially, if you’re a pantser) when the draft is already on paper.

When you write 200 pages or more in a matter of weeks, plot lines can get crossed, characters can disappear, motivations can get muddied, and epiphanies can change the entire trajectory of your book. But what can you do? If you want to finish, you have to keep writing. That is, after all, what NaNo is about – disengaging the part of your writing brain that tells you to edit as you go, and getting the words on paper.

When you outline after the fact, you can see where the events you might have missed should go, where the characters who faded away might re-emerge (or that they aren’t needed, period), and where the dead-ends can be smoothed back into roads.

This tends to be the first thing I do with NaNo novels – it’s the easiest way for me to get on track with revision.

4. Apply what you learned to future projects.

Before finishing my first NaNoWriMo years ago, I had a hard time finishing a novel. I constantly went back on passages I had just written and edited them, making them absolutely perfect. I felt like, if I could just make this chapter perfect, the rest would follow more easily than if I just wrote anything and everything on my mind.

I was…not entirely correct. Because I spent so much time smoothing and perfecting and correcting, I lost sight of the story itself. Writing another chapter became even harder, because suddenly nothing was as perfect as the chapter I’d spent all that time fixing. So I’d spend just as much time fixing the next one. And the next. And the next. Until finally, the process became boring and tedious and I’d give up.

NaNoWriMo gave me the freedom to simply do what I had to do to finish the race. To get the words out. To write “The End”. And I realized that editing and perfecting and smoothing is so much easier and so much more satisfying when you’re doing it to a finished product. Sometimes you end up rewriting half the book. Sometimes you don’t. But until you make that lump of clay, there’s really nothing to shape anyway.

5. There are whole communities of people who want to write with you.

And you don’t have to stop when NaNo ends. If you have trouble finding beta readers, critique partners, or just other writers to commiserate with, NaNoWriMo is a wonderful place to meet people. In person, in forums, as buddies, whatever. Whatever you’re comfortable with – the set up is tailored for introverts and extroverts and extroverted introverts alike. Going to a write-in can be so helpful – not only do you got words into the draft, you have the opportunity to exchange information with other people looking to hang out with writers.

6. It’s okay to not finish the race.

Seriously. This year, I ended November with 35,000 words, and I’m more than okay with that. The most important thing is that you’ve challenged yourself as a writer. Challenging yourself is the whole point of the contest – and for some people, that might mean finishing 10,000 words or 120,000 words (yes, I know some people who manage insane word counts and it boggles the mind). Whatever you’ve achieved, that’s exactly what it is – an achievement. Don’t ever worry that you’ve achieved less than someone else – one word written is still one word more than zero.

These are just a few of the things I’ve learned from participating in NaNoWriMo. I’m intrigued – are there any lessons you’ve learned or wisdom you’ve attained from participating? I know there are a lot more insights than the ones I’ve listed above, and I’d like to hear about them!

The last two Saturdays I was out and about in my own neighborhood! First I read along with authors Sarah Warren and Shannon Gibney and literacy advocate Chad Kempe at The Warren Arts Habitat which is about one hundred yards from our back door (I’ve never measured). This event was extraordinary — Sarah and Shannon were fantastic to read with, and there was a wonderful group of people, many of them in the neighborhood. I even met a guy from the D.R. who was really interested in my latest baseball novel (which I read from). I had a warm happy feeling about this for days.

Today was one of the coolest events I’ve ever done — I did a book talk at North Regional Library (two blocks from B’s school!) followed by a robot demo by the Herobotics club at Patrick Henry High… it was like the characters in my novel Winter of the Robots had come to life! (The littlest person is my assistant, not a member of the team).

I talked about my favorite robot books from Asimov to Yaccarino, then the Herobotics club showed some of their creations. Byron got to operate a robot! At both events my wife had a great robot craft for the kiddos. Even the herobotics team took a break to make paper bots.

I received a Minnesota State Arts Board grant to support my latest work, and these events were done to fulfill my obligation to the voters of Minnesota. But after doing them I realize the events are really what the grant is all about. Getting out in the community, promoting reading and robots, has been the highlight of my year. We really did reach new people and new readers. I’m lucky to live in a state that values and supports the arts as much as Minnesota does, and lucky to live in a neighborhood where people turn out to support local authors.

Thanks to Larry and Catherine, Duane and Connie for their support at these events! And a huge thanks to Sarah, Shannon, Chad, and the Herobotics team for making these wonderful events! This thanksgiving week I have a lot of thanks to give.

I’m teaching a Loft class this winter that’s live and in person, inspired by my many posts here.

The Art of Growing Up

01/27/16–03/16/16 | Wednesday | 6:00-8:00 p.m.

Ages: Adult

Location: Open Book-Loft Classroom (1011 South Washington Ave., Minneapolis, MN 55415)

Reg $280.00 | Mem $252.00 | Low inc. $196.00

In this class we’ll revisit two iconic middle-grade series: Beverly Cleary’s Ramona and Judy Blume’s Fudge. These series chart the milestones of growing up without dead mothers or anyone needing to save the world. In the first part of each class, we will discuss two or three crucial moments in the book under discussion and how the comparatively low stakes can feel high in the hands of a skilled author. We will also have a sustained discussion about why such books matter—how “quiet” books that chronicle the lives of ordinary children can be comforting companions to young readers. In the second half of each class, students will bring their own writing and/or favorite books into the discussion. Each participant will have at least one opportunity (and obligation) to do so.

Students are encouraged to read or re-read Ramona the Pest,Ramona and Her Mother, and Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, and Superfudge by Judy Blume.

Sign up here!

Real talk: I didn’t start my career with the intention of working in contract management. And yet, here I am.

I was an assistant at a literary agency when I first learned how to read a publishing contract. Part of my job was vetting signing copies when they came in from the publisher. I would pull out the draft negotiations, lay them alongside the signing copies, and then go through line by line to make sure that everything the agent negotiated was present (or in some cases deleted) in the final copy—flagging any inconsistencies. When I started working specifically on subrights and foreign rights I spent even more time on contracts, and when I made the switch from literary agencies to publishing houses I started working in contracts full time.

But what does contract  management actually entail?

Drafting
Drafting means creating the contract. Once the editor has extended an offer and been accepted the deal memo gets kicked over to me. I select the appropriate contract type and then enter all the unique information into the template: author details, book title and specs, advance and royalty amounts. If it is a book being represented by an agency with which the publisher has an existing boilerplate, then I make sure to include all the previously agreed-upon language as well.

Negotiation
I then send the first draft of the contract to the agent (or the author directly if they do not have representation). If we’re working off an established boilerplate than it’s likely that there’s going to be little to no negotiation since everything that was previously agreed upon will be carried over to this new contract. But if there is no existing boilerplate, then this is the point at which negotiations happen, usually in a few rounds of back-and-forth.

The agent will review the first draft of the contract and come back with a list of requested changes and their reasons for the requests. I review the requests and respond to each one with a yes, a no, or I ask for more information. The contracts department is usually equipped to handle the majority of these negotiations directly, according to the publisher’s policies and practices. I’ve been working with contracts for several years now, and there are very few requests that are entirely new to me. But there’s an exception to every rule, and when a request comes in that falls outside my authority I call in reinforcements. Some contract managers are lawyers; some are not. I am not a lawyer. Publishers will either have a lawyer working in-house, or they will have outside counsel. Requests that cannot be handled by the contracts department directly are escalated for review and approval.

Eventually (and I do mean eventually. Negotiations can take quite a long time) the agent and the publisher will come to a final agreement on all terms, at which point it’s time to draft the final signing copies.

Tracking
Once the contract is final it’s sent off for the author’s signature. The majority of contracts are sent electronically, but at times I do print off and mail hard copies. We need one copy of the contract for each party, so a one-book deal will need three signing copies: one for the publisher, one for the author, and one for the agent (an agent does not sign the contract, but as the author’s representative earning a commission on the sale they receive a copy for their records). If it’s a multi-book deal the publisher will sometimes request an additional signing copy for each title. So a three-book deal would need five signing copies: three for the publisher (one for each title), one for the author, and one for the agent.

It’s my job to send the appropriate number of copies to the appropriate party, and then track them until signatures are returned. And industry standard insists upon “original” signatures, not scans, so once signed the contracts need to travel through the mail.

Processing
When the signed copies of the contract arrive I have to review them and ready them for counter-signature. I review to ensure that I have the appropriate number of signed copies, and that nothing in the document has been changed from the final copy that was sent (believe it or not, this is not an infrequent occurrence). If everything is correct then I prepare the contract for the authorized signer. Unfortunately it’s not as simple as handing it to someone to sign and then standing there while they sign it and hand it back (if only!). The details can vary, but in general it includes attaching the deal memo or offer so that the signer has context for the document, and a written report regarding the changes that were made to the contract and why. Most authorized signers tend to let contracts stack up a bit and then sign a lot in one fell swoop, so part of my job involves keeping track of how long things have been sitting and then nagging the authorized signer with increasing urgency.

Once the counter-signed contracts are returned to me I have to do a lot of data entry. Again, this varies from publisher to publisher, but there has to be some way of informing various departments across the company about the details in the contract because it affects the way they do their jobs. Production needs to know about the delivery schedule and accounting needs to know the advance and royalty structure. The rights departments need to know which subrights were granted to the publisher at which splits. So it’s my job to make sure that each department has the relevant information. Sometimes that involves entering everything into one database that the entire company can access. Sometimes that means contacting each department individually with the pertinent information.

Fully-executed copies of the contract are then mailed to the agent and the author, the publisher’s copy is filed, and if there’s an advance amount due on signing the accounting department is notified.

Those are the four main components of contract management (although of course there are countless other tasks involved, as there are in any job). Bringing a single contract all the way through the process can take months, and at any given time I have an entire catalog’s worth of contracts up in the air at various stages of the process. I live and die by incredibly detailed excel sheets.

I would not have guessed that my career path would lead to contract management, but I’m not sorry that it did. I get to write “Congratulations!” on a post-it note when I send a debut-author their fully-executed contract. I have a small hand in making someone’s dream come true.

This week JJ and Kelly give you tips and tricks on how to keep going in NaNoWriMo.

Show Notes

JJ is hosting a NaNoWriMo pep talk every Friday in November at her blog. Stop on by if you need a swift kick in the pants (since that’s the only kind of encouragement I know how to give).

• Pantser vs. Plotter
• Justina Ireland (tehawesomersace): #kidlitnano
• Pomodoro technique (app for iOS and Android)
• NaNoWordSprints (let us know if you guys would like us to host a Twitter sprint and we’ll try and arrange something!)

Other Resources

• Mur Lafferty’s I Should Be Writing NaNoWriMo podcast episodes (regular episodes and Ditch Diggers)
• Story Wonk’s NaNoWriMo podcast

What We’re Reading/Books Discussed

• Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
• Zeroes by Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan, and Deb Biancotti
• Me Talk Pretty One Day and Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris

Other Creative Endeavors

Just NaNoWriMo this month for both JJ and Kelly, but JJ did write up this epic breakdown of the Hogwarts Houses. Sort yourselves, y’all, and tell us which House you are according to this matrix.

Off Menu Recommendations

That’s all for this week! Let us know how y’all are doing so far!

I think I broke my Facebook. I deleted all of my past posts and now nobody sees the new ones… do doubt due to algorithms that make it impossible to appear in the “feeds” of others unless you have a critical mass of past likes. Kind of like publishing, I guess. You have to be a big deal to be a big deal.

But do I want to trust my public persona to algorithms anyway?  Deep down inside, even in the age of Kardashians, I kind of think that a fame based on being shoved in people’s faces is not the same as having, for lack of better word, a reputation. Some desperate, lonely part of me wants people to seek me out, to find me on the bookshelf, to enter my URL, at the very least to “subscribe” to my posts via email.

So maybe this is for the best. To the five people who see this post because they chose to see it, I thank you for stopping by.

I have two events in November, both cool, and both in stone-throwing territory from my own home… these are both free, open to the public, and fun for all ages.

COOKIES AND AUTHORS!

Join me and wonderful local authors Shannon Gibney and Sarah Warren as we talk about our work, and have snacks. There will also be someone from the terrific-awesome Mid-Continent Oceanographic Institute, a local nonprofit dedicated to helping kids with their writing.

What do the four of us have in common? Alas, it is a secret, but if you come, I will whisper it to you and deny it later.

Saturday, November 14, 2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
The Warren (An Artist Habitat), 4400 Osseo Drive, Minneapolis

DAY OF THE ROBOTS!

Join me and the Herobotics team at Patrick Henry High School in North Minneapolis for a fun afternoon of books, bots, and bars (you know, cookies… I’m trying to stay alliterate here). I will talk about my favorite robot books, which of course includes one set in North Minneapolis (cough). I am so excited the real-life counterparts of my characters will be on hand to talk to younger kids about what goes into bot-building.

Saturday, November 21, 2:00 p.m.- 4:00 p.m.
North Regional Library, 1315 Lowry Avenue North, Minneapolis

Both of these events are made possible because… Kurtis Scaletta is a fiscal year 2015 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Please come and tell your friends to come!

Hey guys! Kat here Today, I’m bringing you an interview with Kamilla Benko, an editor for Paper Lantern Lit who is also publishing her MG novel, THE UNICORN HUNT, with Bloomsbury!

1. Hey Kamilla! Describe THE UNICORN HUNT for me in 3 words. 

Wish-full, Wonder-full, Sister-full. (You didn’t say they had to be real words!)

2. Okay, now you can describe it in a sentence or two. 

The UNICORN HUNT explores that idea that magic exists in anything that requires creativity as well as in family relationships—specifically, sisterly bonds.

3. Where did the original idea for the UNICORN HUNT come from? 

I was inspired by two things: a painting and a tapestry. When I was eight, my aunt painted a picture of two girls—me and my sister—stumbling upon two unicorns in a sunlit meadow. It was the most magical thing I had ever seen, and I always wished I could step inside the brush strokes.

Then when I was 22, I went to The Cloisters in New York City and saw the Unicorn Tapestries that depict a medieval unicorn hunt. These beautiful images are woven of silk and gold, but the milk-white unicorn is covered in blood. There are seven tapestries all together, but one of the panels has been torn and only fragments remain. I asked myself, “Why would anyone want to destroy a tapestry of unicorns?” and by trying to answer that question, The Unicorn Hunt was born.

4. Share a bit about your path to publishing. Have you always wanted to write, in addition to becoming an editor? 

Funnily enough, I always wanted to be an editor, not a writer! At the age of 11, I was reading in the field behind my great aunts’ house, and this thought came to me: Someone thought that I should read this book, and I want to be the person who helps put stories out there. I didn’t know until I asked my mom that what I was describing was called editing/publishing.

I was lucky to land a number of internships during college: at Foundry Literary + Media, Simon & Schuster UK, and Viking Children’s Books. Later I was hired as an editorial assistant at HarperCollins, and now I work as an editor at Paper Lantern Lit. Things came full circle for me at PLL, when authors I had read as Stephen Barbara’s intern—Lauren Oliver and Lexa Hillyer—were now my bosses, and Stephen became my agent.

I find nothing more intimidating than a blank page, and as an editor, I never had to face them. But as I worked with Lauren and Lexa, both writers as well as editors, I was inspired to write down my own stories for the first time. With their encouragement, I drafted the first chapter of The Unicorn Hunt…and then I found I couldn’t stop writing!

5. Fill in the blank: “Fans of _____  by ______  will love THE UNICORN HUNT because… “

Fans of THE PRINCESS ACADEMY by SHANNON HALE will love THE UNICORN HUNT because both follow young girls who feel ill-prepared to face the shifting world around them and must rely on an inner strength they didn’t know they had. Plus, there’s a pinch of magic in both!

6. Okay, last question! What’s one Middle Grade book that should be mandatory reading for all adults? 

Ugh, that’s so tough! I’m going to cheat and give you two.  One is from my childhood that helped me as I grew up and perfectly captures children’s frustration of not being in control of their own destiny, and one that I read now, as an adult, that I wish I could have read as a kid. The first is Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine and the second is The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin.

Thanks for joining us today, Kamilla!

Any of our readers dream of being a double-threat and edit as well as write books?  

—

Kamilla Benko spent most of her childhood climbing into wardrobes, trying to step through mirrors, and plotting to run away to an art museum. After interning and working for several publishing houses, she now dreams up stories as an editor for Paper Lantern Lit. She currently lives in Brooklyn with her bookshelves, teapot, and hiking boots.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind was not the book I expected to read, and the title seems to misrepresent the book. There is history here, sure, but it is more a philosophical treatise than an historical one. Author Yuval Harari suggests, among other things, that:

• Humans are inherently bad for the planet, having driven animals to extinction well before recorded history began.
• Even extinction is a better fate for animals than being domesticated, save a few (cats and dogs) kept as pets and a few more (sheep, no other examples) who manage to have decent lives while still being exploited for their resources.
• The agricultural revolution was terrible for humanity. He even suggests that wheat domesticated humanity vs. the other way around.
• Human Rights are among the fictions we create, like gods and corporations.
• Money is the one true religion.

Any reader is likely to find something here to be challenged by, perhaps even outraged by, if so inclined. I found it rather interesting and provocative, even if Professor Harari (it is hard to think of him as anything but a professor, the sort of iconoclastic one who divides classes into ardent admirers and petitioners who want him fired) might overhammer a few nails. In fact, his tendency to go back and remind you what he just said six times is part of his professorial wont.

In particular I keep thinking about his description/indictment of “romantic consumerism,” as the prevailing western ideology, one which unites people across the political and religious spectrum. He puts this in terms where most people who do not consider themselves to be materialistic would still be very much on the hook: the idea of betterment through travel and the arts, for example. It feels true on a visceral level and gives a vocabulary to thoughts I’ve had and could not articulate.

He also describes the myth/misconception of meritocracy, which is also compelling and important. I think that even progressives who know the statistics of success will attribute their own fortunes to their virtues, even if they magnanimously decline to blame the failures of others on their character flaws.  These are mere fictions used to support a hierarchy. I would say an “unjust hierarchy,” except that justice itself is, by Harari’s explicit reasoning, a fiction.

The religious and the idealistic will find little quarter given, but I don’t I would describe him as misanthropic. Sapiens definitely holds up some unpleasant truths about our particular species that might be easier to dismiss than think about.

I would recommend this book to anyone wanting a little brain food. I enjoyed having it as an audiobook; it was like having a pedantic but interesting passenger as I toodled around town.

I’ve seen a few people posting this graphic on Facebook, in response to a particular issue which this post is not about. I’ve been thinking about the quote itself.

Whether minds can be changed by eloquent quotes, I don’t know, but I do think President Jefferson here captures the mood (or a mood) of the nation’s founding, the pervasive optimism of the enlightenment, which was not especially religious, even if the men themselves were.

I think this idea has fallen upon hard times with a large number of people; the idea that our national story is one of discovery and development. Among some, there is distrust of science. Among others, profound unease about the changing “manners and opinions” of the 20th and 21st Centuries.

Even among those who live by this myth — and it is, after all, a myth, in the broader sense that means a communal narrative of origin and destiny — even among those who live by this myth, I feel like faith in it erodes; people speak with confidence about the right and wrong side of history, projecting a jury of our descendants who have the final verdict, even while lamenting the ebbing tide of progress.

I have mixed feelings myself about this narrative… I don’t completely accept this idea of “barbarous ancestors,” or that humanity has had a childhood which it can outgrow, that we are fit for bigger britches now than we did before. It is a more compelling myth, to me, than one of divine creation and pending apocalypse, but I feel like it is historical to suppose we have only recently matured, after sixty or seventy thousand years of existence.

I have grave concerns about the immediate future and little hope for the far future, for purely scientific reasons that have to do with population and ecology. Whatever our barbarous ancestors did, they lived for many millennia, adapting to climactic and other changes, without making the place uninhabitable. They were more or less leaderless and casteless. Their lives were short but the world was without end.

The title of Shannon Gibney’s debut YA novel, See No Color, has a resonance for people (like me) who were around in the 1980s — “Love See No Color,” was a popular motto, often emblazoned on T shirts, and generally seen (by white people, at least) as an idealistic goal: Color didn’t matter! We could all be color blind together and put the terrible past behind us!

Gibney’s book is a critique of that trope. The protagonist, Alexandra “Little” Kirtridge, is in a perfect position to examine it, as the African American adopted daughter of a wealthy white family. Her father is a former professional baseball player and still obsesses on the game as a father and as a coach. Alex is perhaps his favorite project, a high-school girl who plays on teams of boys and excels. The shared love for baseball anchors a wonderfully described father-daughter relationship, but that relationship begins to fray at the seams when Alex discovers her biological father has been trying to contact her for years and her adopted parents have kept his letters a secret. That plus a black boyfriend have Alex doing a little soul searching.

The Kirtridges say repeatedly that race doesn’t matter, and that they (the reader winces) never “saw” Alex “as black.” But of course, Alex is black, and begins to wonder what’s wrong with that, or why her parents would refuse to see it. She begins to realize that she’s been kept from her family and cultural history.

Gibney builds sympathy for the Kirtridges while showing readers how deeply flawed their reasoning is. They are kind, generous, loving parents; they are also wrong. Young adult fiction has been called “morally simple,” but here is one of many books that challenges that pert assumption (as does any book from Carolrhoda Lab). Real parents can be both lovable and frustrating, and Gibney illustrates that beautifully. Alex is complicated herself — her resentment of her parents’ biological children is conveyed with moving honesty. As a child from a well-off family, she also struggles with judging the more working-class family of her boyfriend.

Gibney is at her best describing family relationships, and I look forward to reading more from her. I happen to know that her second book is set in Liberia — an interesting direction to take after a debut novel about baseball and adoption. ;-)

True confession time: I (probably) have not read your book (yet).*

Like most — hopefully all writers — I’m a big reader. I have loved books since I was a little kid, and that love for fiction compelled me to attempt writing my own. But one of the sad realities of being an author is that I can’t read as much as I want to, and not nearly as much as I should.

I say “should” because even though reading is fun and relaxing, for a long time I’ve also felt some anxiety around them. I firmly believe that to be a good writer you need to read a lot. You need to read anything and everything. And given my druthers (a phrase I’m sure I picked up from a book at a young age!), I would be reading as many books as I can. As a YA/science fiction writer, I also think I should be keeping up on what’s being published right now, participating in conversations about current books, recommending them to others.

As I become friends with other authors and/or like them from panels and their blogs and online interactions, of course I want to read their work! I especially want to help support debut authors, because those first book sales are so, so important. But, well, there are so many of you and so many books coming out every year. Every week.

Some recent estimates of the number of books being published in the United States are in the range of 300,000-400,000. What. In a busy publishing week, like last week, there are typically at least four YA books published by people I know in some capacity, and many more intriguing books that I add to my increasingly unwieldy t0-be-read list. Just keeping up with the “happy book birthday” Tweets is taking more effort than it used to! (The depressing flipside of this for authors is “Ahhh! How will my book be noticed among the 30 that are coming out on the same day? Woe is me.”)

Sigh.

I’m falling behind, missing out on most of the major books that people have been talking about, and I feel embarrassed. Just one example: The Martian was recommended to me repeatedly a long time ago, and it was on my list but I still haven’t read it; now the movie’s coming out, and I wish I’d gotten to it sooner. There are plenty of classics and books considered canon that I certainly should have read by now, but I’m even more ashamed about the books by good friends that I haven’t actually made time for yet. The guilt mounts when I know they’ve read my books because they’ve told me so or reviewed them. This isn’t a quid-pro-quo game, but I do want to reciprocate more when I can. Reviews are so, so important too!

There are plenty of good reasons why I haven’t been able to read everything… I waste too much time on the internet, which I’m trying to cut back on. Family life has required more of my time, what with a baby and all. Work always takes up a huge chunk of time. I’ve had some pretty tight deadlines on my books, too, and I need to do a lot of research for them to boot. I love watching movies and TV, which I make even less time for but still, that’s time I could be reading… And what about video games? I miss those!

Another “problem” is that with so many books to choose from, when I do have time to read, it’s hard to pick which to open next so I just grab the shiny new thing, and older books just get pushed further down on my list. Lately, it seems like I prioritize ARCs, because I want to read them before the real book gets published, and library books, because those come with deadlines.

Double sigh.

Sometimes a friend or another author will apologize for not having read one of my books yet, and I wave them off.** Who am I to judge? But this only reinforces my idea that there’s some expectation that you read your friends’ books. Should I be apologizing too? Am I lying by omission? I’m more likely to simply not mention it if I haven’t read their book, but then I wonder, maybe they think I read it and didn’t like it? There’s also the hope that your friends are buying your books, and that’s where I do a little better. Chances are, I may not have read your book, but I did buy it, and that must count for something, right? Then again, with so many books coming out every week, I can’t buy or store everything, so I at least try to signal boost as much as I can.

Does anyone else feel pressured to keep up with new books? Books by people you know? If you haven’t read your friend’s latest book, do you tell them or not?

____________

*Oh no, I’m not referring to you. Of course I’ve read your book! Duh. Loved it.

**Really, it’s okay. But feel free to post a positive review anyway

Hi everyone! Stacey here today, with fellow pub-crawler, Stephanie Garber, talking about the most painful exciting part of publishing, submission!

With the arrival of fall, and the end of summer Friday’s in publishing, it’s time to talk about submissions.

You can tell a writer who is on “sub” by the long face they wear, the nails chewed to the quick, the scuffled toes of their shoes where they’ve tripped as they’ve paced waiting for a response from editors. We know how it feels, and we’re here to tell you that you will survive. Let’s stop refreshing our inbox for a moment, and take a deep, cleansing breath. Yikes, what have you been eating? Cookies? Okay, good for you. But you know what’s even better for you while you’re on sub? Take a walk.

We’re serious. It’ll clear some brain space. And when you come back, you can read on, and we’ll all be in a better place.

Hi again, now read on for our tips on how to survive SUBMISSION.

1. Recognize it might happen tomorrow, or it might happen a year from now.

We’ve all heard stories about books that sell lightning fast. But if you’re going on submission for the first time, for the sake of your sanity, be aware that selling a book in less than two weeks is the expectation, not the standard.

Stephanie: I’ve been on submission twice. When Hearts Made of Black sold, it actually happened on the quick side of things. But before that I went on submission with another book, a sci-fi about space pirates. My first agent warned me that this book would not be a fast or easy sell. And she was right. We were on submission for a year and a half, and it didn’t sell. The closest we came was an R&R from an editor who ended up leaving her publisher shortly after I finished the revisions.

Stacey: It took nine months for Under a Painted Sky to sell. My agent told me historical fiction is a tough sell in YA, but at the same time, it is one of the staples that never quite goes out of trend. We were rejected by 26 publishers before the last one asked me for a revision. It took three months to revise, and it was a major revision. Those of you who have read my book will know it is about a friendship. Well, it used to be a torrid bodice-ripper! (Sort of kidding.)

For both of us, going on submission that first time was far from easy, but it helped that we both had agents who set realistic expectations.

2. Recognize it might not happen, ever.

This one is important, because the sooner you accept this, the more prepared you will be when it doesn’t happen (and we’re not saying it won’t happen!!!). Bear with us. The statistics are depressing. It’s a proven fact that the odds of being published are less than being eaten by a polar bear wearing moon boots.

Take another walk if you need it and meet us back here.

Chubby Hubby has a buddy, American Dream. Is there irony in this ice creaming pairing?

Prepared people know it is not the end of the world if it doesn’t sell. Prepared people keep their survival kits close at hand (Chubby Hubby, family, Nordstrom gift cards, friends, not necessarily in that order) in case disaster strikes (e.g., my manuscript doesn’t sell).

PLENTY of authors who you think are big deals have had to shelve manuscripts that didn’t sell (like PubCrawl distinguished faculty Marie Lu and Jodi Meadows). Prepared people are already thinking about their next stories—and writing them. It’s like dating, the quickest way to get over one guy/gal is to meet someone new.

3.We’d like to point out that Submission rhymes with Suspicion

Why is this important? This is important because NOT EVERY GOOD BOOK GETS PUBLISHED, and here’s the kicker, NOT EVERY BOOK THAT GETS PUBLISHED IS GOOD. We know this isn’t how the world should be. There should be a little bell that goes ding! every time a great book (e.g., yours) arrives in an editor’s inbox so the editors know which ones should be published. Unfortunately, the rules of “what is publishable” remain rather opaque. It is a hazy box that sometimes is not even a box but more shaped like a big iron shoe. In other words, if you get a rejection, it is not necessarily because your book is unworthy.

4. If you can find a trend in your rejections, rewrite to fix it.

Agents have different methods for submission, and not every agent uses the same approach with each submission. They might sub to a smaller set of editors for something more “controversial” where feedback would be helpful, or in the case where they’ve pinpointed editors who would just love your book.

Stacey: In the case of my first book, my agent subbed to a big list all at once, as she considered my manuscript tight and clean (this is where all that vetting you do with agents comes in handy; if you’ve picked a good one, you can probably trust their advice on this). The rejections confirmed that she had taken the right approach. There was no consistency to the rejections. We got everything from “we don’t think there’s a market for westerns” to “we don’t like cross-dressing girls.”

I didn’t rewrite anything in the middle of submission, but I did take the one R&R offered to me; I felt like I owed it to my book. And once I got over the shock of having to do MORE work, I threw myself into feet first. For me, I felt I had nothing to lose except a bit of time, and everything to gain.

Stephanie: But remember, just because you revise or receive an R&R doesn’t mean your book will sell. When I went on submission with my first book, I also received an R&R, which did not end in an offer. But, I don’t regret taking the time do it. I learned a lot, and I think my writing became stronger as a result. But, for the sake of your heart and your sanity (see a theme emerging), if you do an R&R, do it because you owe it to your book, not because you believe that if you do this, a publisher will owe you a contract.

5) Do not compare yourself to others.

Seriously, this is as bad as checking reviews on Goodreads.

Learn from other people, but don’t compare your submission experience with someone else’s. Nothing good comes from comparing—either you imagine you are better than everyone else and get a grossly inflated ego, or you imagine the opposite and feel like crap, or you come out neither feeling nor worse, but have just sunk a lot of time that you could’ve spent writing something new.

We don’t know who said it first, but there’s a great quote that goes like this:

Yes, sometimes other people’s grass is greener, but you don’t know how much manure that had to go through to get it there.

6. Remind yourself, no matter what, the fact that you are on submission means you have done two things that most people have not.

You have written a book and you have found an agent, neither of which should be easy things, so pat yourself on the back and take another walk (or eat another cookie, we approve of both).

In the comments, tell us how long you’ve been “on sub.” What do you do to stay sane?

In author circles, particularly those writing fantasy and science-fiction, there’s a lot of talk about “world building,” which I visualize as writing ad-hoc descriptions of physical and political structures. (I know world building is more than that; I can’t help what I visualize.)

So I now use the expression “culture building” knowing that “world building” encompasses that, but finding that gets more at what I would want to do in a work of speculative fiction, and because it gets more to the heart of the matter. How are these humans (or animals, or aliens) human, and what shape is their humanity? I came across this incredible list, written by the anthropologist George P. Murdock (via E.O. Wilson; you might have seen that coming), who sought to create a comprehensive list of all the human cultures he’d encountered. The list follows.

1. age-grading
2. athletic sports
3. bodily adornment
4. calendar
5. cleanliness training
6. community organization
7. cooking
8. cooperative labor
9. cosmology
10. courtship
11. dancing
12. decorative art
13. divination
14. division of labor
15. dream interpretation
16. education
17. eschatology
18. ethics
19. ethnobotany*
20. etiquette
21. faith healing
22. family feasting
23. fire making
24. folklore
25. food taboos
26. funeral rites
27. games
28. gestures
29. gift giving
30. government
31. greetings
32. hair styles
33. hospitality
34. housing
35. hygiene**
36. incest taboos
37. inheritance rules
38. joking
39. kin groups
40. kinship nomenclature
41. language
42. law
43. luck superstitions
44. magic
45. marriage
46. mealtimes
47. medicine
48. obstetrics
49. penal sanctions
50. personal names
51. population policy
52. postnatal care
53. pregnancy usages
54. property rights
55. propitiation of supernatural beings
56. puberty customs
57. religious ritual
58. residence rules
59. sexual restrictions
60. soul concepts
61. status differentiation
62. surgery
63. tool making
64. trade
65. visiting
66. weaving
67. weather control

It’s meant to be descriptive, but I think it could be to creative writers — like Joseph Campbell’s work — prescriptive, a means of planning. Murdock’s list is a series of hints and suggestions to creators of imagined and imaginary cultures the many things they might consider working into their book. As I prepare myself to delve into a project that would require full-scale world/culture building, and wondering if I am up to the task, I find this list is extremely helpful. Each item is a question to answer, a challenge that leads me to fully develop my world… and some could lead to passages, with key plot points and character development, that might not have occurred to me otherwise. I don’t think I’ll need to plod people through ALL 67, but I know I would return to this list again and again for ideas.  I also see those points that other authors covered, that made their books rich and wonderful, whether or not they actually read anthropology books: Rowling and 2, Jacques and 22, Richard Adams and 15. They might have had muses whispering in their ear, but for me this list will help me fake it.

* Because I had to look it up: the scientific study of the traditional knowledge and customs of a people concerning plants and their medical, religious, and other uses.

** If, like me, much of your career has been charting the lives of middle-school-aged boys, this one is optional.

Use only… stones left by matri-descendant patri-tribalists

– Heid Erdrich, “Guidelines for the Treatment of Sacred Objects“

I’ve recently become fascinated by prehistoric people. I’m intrigued by how much of human history is in the 50,000-60,000 years between migrating out Africa and founding the first cities. Even taking a conservative view, and eliminating the human-like creatures that preceded homo sapiens in the two-odd million years after the proto-chimp swung that decisive bone tool and the whole process began, the vast part of human history is before we even had writing to record it.

In any of those untold centuries, all the way back to the beginning, ancestors of mine and of yours hunted and gathered, mastered fire, fought off predators, found faith and created art. It was a slow process. Entire centuries were apparently devoted to improvements in stone-flaking techniques, to developing pigments or stone circles. I don’t doubt that lives were more rich and interesting than can be conveyed by artifacts, but very little else is known, or can be learned by excavating the middens and mounds they left behind.

Their stories are usually told with allegorical compression that emphasizes technological advancement; the weapons were made like this until they were made like that, along came agriculture and notions of home. Upon their art, archaeologists seem over-eager to endow their ancestors with high brows. A busty statue must be a goddess and not a bawdy amusement or even stone-aged pornography. Cave paintings of men turning into animals must be evidence of shamanism and not a whimsy before bedtime. Celestial observatories were built to watch the Gods, not simply for the wonders of the stars.

I feel like the opposite of the usual history text prelude is the more interesting truth. These were people for whom time and the world were endless. They must have felt somewhat static, as a kind, and had little regard for haste or progress. Surely they wanted leisure and entertainment, even if it serves the grand narrative arc of human achievement less than, well, less than situating themselves in a grand narrative of human achievement. They were hardly queuing up the Stone store for Projectile Point 5 because it’s one step closer to their civilized destiny.

If I find a story to tell, that’s what it will be. Not savages wrestling with saber-toothed cats, staving off Neanderthals and long ice-age winters, culminating in the climactic invention of NEW TOOL or BIG IDEA that makes them the rightful heirs to the earth. I feel more narrative longing for lives led without much history or purpose, which is to say, gloriously.

I no longer remember what’s what but wanted to post some pictures of our bee garden while it is peaking.

All of my books to date have one thing in common: some aspect of the fantastic which, if looked at from the right angle, might not be fantastic at all. I’m using the “removed from reality” meaning of the fantastic: those things which, by definition, do not exist (because if they do, they are not fantastic). A decades-long rain, a kindred serpentine spirit, a fungus run amok, and even the fate-changing baseball cards could have both supernatural and natural explanations. The magical is usually a human interpretation of what’s going on. They are improbable but not impossible events.

When I am second guessing myself, I wonder if I should inject more fantasy in my books, to be a bigger hit with readers, and their insatiable appetite for superheroes and mythic beasts. Or, conversely, if I should abandon the fantastic all together and write strictly realistic books, and be a bigger hit with tastemakers. Either road would be better than wandering aimlessly between them, I figure.

Why not write both, some well meaning person will suggest. And some writers do, but I don’t work that way. It takes quite a bit of effort to finish a book, and the ones I see through are the ones that reflect the deep indecisiveness of my soul.

And I really don’t know, at least as far as fiction goes. There are uses for enchantment but also epistemology. Personally, I feel like the real world has plenty of miracles that surpass the imaginations of our most fanciful authors, but these miracles take patience, pondering and closer observation to appreciate.

I’m thinking about it now as I look into the abyss of “what’s next,” with one manuscript (which has the least magic of any book yet, but not quite none) almost ready to send out into the world. I have a ghost story that needs revising, an utterly fantastic/fairy tale kind of book I started in a fit of excitement, and a gritty magical-realistic book written in draft form that is probably inappropriate for children. I’ve also considered writing nonfiction, but kind of like the way I’ve considered marathons.

I’ll have to pick one project and see it through, or (more in line with past experience), one of them will pick me.

Rebecca Stead is one of the finest authors of middle grade fiction currently working, writing with precision about the palpable pain of growing up. She has an ear for dialogue and an eye for detail, but the sense she captures best is the vestibular: that is, the feeling of being in motion and off-balance.

Her latest book is about three friends who belong to a club (or rather, a “set”) that is falling apart in middle school. Goodbye Stranger is, for content, practically YA. The children are thirteen, and much of the book courses with the kind of anxious hormonal energy of teenagers. We feel the threats and the heartbreaks of girls who feel pressured to be sexy, to wear suggestive Halloween costumes and text intimate images of themselves to boys they barely know, while they are children at heart. But the deepest sadness and sharpest pain is not the risks girls take for boys (if that’s who it is for); it is the splintering of their own friendships.

Books like this were stock-in-trade of YA in my own teen years, epitomized by Judy Blume, Paula Danziger, and Paul Zindel. But as YA characters have gotten older and savvier, and the awkward early teen years forgotten, middle grade books have gradually picked up the slack. Aaron Starmer’s Riverman pushed at the same envelope, and I’m hopeful that these two books portend a new wave of upper middle grade that replaces what YA used to be.

Still, it’s risky territory for middle-grade authors, since our books are generally considered appropriate for fourth graders. Even a Newbery-award-winning author might feel a ripple of discontent from parents and educators. But there is a gap in the publishing paradigm. We need books about coming of age and sexual awakening, books that help twelve- and thirteen-year-olds navigate the choppy waters of early adolescence and assure them that they will reach the other shore.

This isn’t to say Goodbye Stranger is important because it fills a niche. Goodbye Stranger is important because it’s written by Rebecca Stead. But I love that she is testing herself, feeling out new territory and filling a real need, while delivering once again on the excellent characterizations and concise writing that make her one of the most respected middle grade authors among other middle grade authors. 

Goodbye Stranger is also one of the best books I’ve read showing modern children in their technological milieu, without over-stressing the novelty or gimmickry. But Stead does this with more depth and deftness than lesser authors would. She shows, for example, the over-theatrical friendships splashed across social network profiles, or the lost-a-limb feeling of a teen without a phone, with utter verisimilitude, but neither of these are major plot points. She does not let the technology become the center of the story.

That center is the frayed friendships in the wake of puberty, and the new friendships that form. These will be heartbreakingly familiar to anyone who has survived adolescence in any decade.

Like a lot of avocational writers, I don’t have a room of my own — well, OK, there’s a corner of the basement with a desk, but the desk is piled high with kid stuff and craft supplies and my own mess of half-drafts, notebooks, and swag. I do much of my writing in the living room on a laptop, either early in the morning or late in the evening, when the kid is still blessedly sleeping.

On days I dedicate to writing and revising, like yesterday, I venture out into the wild in search of wifi and outlets. Coffee shops, cafes, and library “quiet” rooms.

I wonder if it would be better to have a regular place, a writerly cove with a pinboard of inspirational quotes and photographs, or if the essential itineracy of my writing life is a good thing: the mixing up of scenery, the people watching, the unexpected inspiration in an overheard conversation or discovery of a new place. Stagnation is its own kind of death. Plus, the homeless feeling gives me and my writing a desparate edge.

I sometimes wander out with really no idea where I’m going. I am Robert Frost, simply taking the least-traveled paths… I set out yesterday for one library, and ended up at another. After seeing the backed-up cars waiting to get on one expressway, I turned down a side street that veered in a different direction than I expected and dumped me on a different highway, under construction, with an infinity of cars crammed into one lane, so I took the first right and ended up at the library on Winnetka.

It meant no coffee (intended library has a coffee shop) and different/less-exciting lunch plans (first one is near my favorite sandwich shop). But it proved to be worth it — I was inspired at that library on Winnetka, and believe I first saw the light at the end of the tunnel with regards to these revisions. I went in feeling like Sisyphus and left feeling like I’d crested the hill by accident and sent the ball rolling the other side. I feel like something there made the difference — running into a colleague, seeing an interesting art print. Maybe just being sort of across the street from a TV studio where one crucial scene takes place, remaining in the radius of my characters’ lives.

I know I’m not alone, and that many writers find themselves writing not only in the scattered free minutes of busy lives, but also at whatever “office” they can find for a few hours. It’s not such a bad existence.

[W]ithin groups selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals.

E. O. Wilson, “Evolution and Our Inner Conflict“

True story: a few weeks ago I was picking up medicine for my cat and on the way back to the car I saw a three-footed squirrel. One of its hind feet had been severed; the wound where it used to be was kind of scabbed over and the squirrel was making do, hobbling along, gathering scraps of food from an overflowing garbage can, watching the world more warily than most squirrels do, but not especially tragic.

I knew I wanted to write about this plucky rodent. I thought of allusions that might tie in: the famous poem about the Scot and the field mouse; a squirrel that was an ironic icon of traffic safety when I was a child living in England. I recalled a crippled beggar I saw in Rome at age seven, how I bawled later, and how my parents yelled at me… one of my most palpable memories, but one I’ve written about futilely so many times it no longer has heat.

I never did write about it because I failed to come up with a narrative frame, something the squirrel would be “about” in the grand scheme of things. I gave fleeting glances in subsequent days as I drove by that building (used to be a grocery store, now vacant and fenced off), but gradually forgot.

Such is the plight of the bush-league memoirist, of which the blogger is a kind. I want to make meaning of my experiences, but fail sometimes to see theme lurking behind a scene.

I thought of that squirrel today because there’s a conversation about what people choose to think and write about. Here is an example of something trivial that I nevertheless cared about, and wanted to write about, no doubt in a week of mudslides and mass shootings that I received with tragedy-saturated numbness. Squirrels are less significant than humans, I know, and not even an endangered species. But God forgive me, I briefly gave a damn about a small thing.

There’s a saying you’ve probably seen or heard before, in some form:

Before you say something, ask yourself: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?

Ironically, this is the sort of wisdom that is captioned onto a photo, say, of a statue of the Buddha or a gurgling grotto, and posted on Facebook or Twitter where it will float along a bilious stream of untruth, unkindness, and non-necessity. But it is worth considering. I have been frustrated with how little currency truth and value have when we enter the online world; I’ve seen some of the kindest people I know disparage kindness; I’ve seen people say outright that the truth of a thing is beside the point. I have thought of this proverb when seeing waves of outrage and thought, “I would settle for any one.”

Researching the origins of the quote (Quaker school tract from the turn of the last century? Ancient midrash? Who knows?) I came across a different construct:

Before you say something, ask yourself: Is it true? Is it kind? Does it improve upon silence?

Does it improve upon silence? 

This reveals the compulsion that leads good people to be unkind and, at best, unconcerned about knowing the full truth. They want to fill the silence. Silence is associated with oppression and victimization; to be told to be kind and true is interpreted as a demand to be silent, sometimes by people who have long been silenced. I get all that, and yet I’m wary of the conclusion. Is any noise at all preferable to silence?

But this also creates a rubric for what construes necessity. It’s the best test there is for the value of an utterance. Does it improve upon silence?

Sometimes I sit one out, and let a cycle of fury rage and fizzle without me. But I realize now that failing to join in the fray is not silence, even without the public apophasis that I am not going to comment on [story of the week] because of my judiciousness and gallantry. Silence is something other than strategic noiselessness.

I have begun to think of this silence as a natural resource to be treasured and protected: the silence of a calm lake at dawn; the silence of a mind at rest; the silence of listening and waiting. This silence, like clean water and star-lit skies, is harder and harder to find. It is also a value: a decision to seek silence inside and out, to turn of all the screens and quiet your own mind. And, if such a place be found, to protect it.

My mother didn’t work for the last ten years of her life, and spent much of that (waking) time watching television, particularly the 24-hour news networks, which sometimes blared different channels in different rooms of the house. Entering her house was to enter a churning noise machine, her own running commentary mixed in with that of various TV pundits and reporters. She took up every news cycle ready to be angry and outspoken. I now see the noise as a part of her sickness, and her inability for her mind to heal. But it’s also a metaphor for my own mind, clattering with noise, my inner muttering monologist struggling to be heard over the din. I can only quiet my mind by choice: walks at dawn, drives with the car stereo muted, the time before sleep where I listen to the breaths of family and pets around me and the murmurings of the house itself.

The proverb takes on power when it is not about manners; it is about soul-nurturing. Is this thing I am about to say worth disrupting my own calm? If I believe in silence as a natural resource, is it now worth plundering? What whispers of the universe might I hear, if I remain silent?